Free Hell on Church Street by Jake Hinkson Page A

knife. I guess she was just too scared. I don’t think she ever even realized it was me .
    I wrested the knife away from her. Then I stuck it in her chest and stomach and throat. I did it over and over without thinking until she stopped kicking and the scream which never did emerge from the back of her throat finally bubbled away and she was dead.
    And that was it.
    I was a murderer. The whole thing probably took less than two minutes. Sister Card had lived for forty-odd years—was born, grew up, fell in love, got married, had sex, made babies, gathered friends, lost friends…and in two minutes I’d murdered her.
    I knelt there beside her body, feeling the linoleum sticky with blood beneath me, and looked at her.
    Dead.
    I was thinking about that when Brother Card screamed. He’d heard us thumping around in the kitchen and had run up the hall to find his wife dead on the kitchen floor next to me. His hair stuck out like a wild man’s and he wore a plain orange t-shirt and white briefs. He lunged at me, screaming. He did know it was me . I could see the recognition—clouded by horror as it was—on his face. He must have thought he was in a nightmare, or maybe hell. He slipped a little in his wife’s blood as he came at me, and I stuck the knife into his throat, going through his Adam’s Apple and up into his head. It happened quickly, quicker than with Sister Card, although Brother Card made more noise. He screamed, a high pitched , almost female scream, but the knife tore up his throat too bad. He tried to strangle me, but I just kept pushing on the knife, trying to get it up to his brain, and the handle cracked but I kept pushing. He kept trying to get at me and although he didn’t know it, the more he tried to get me the more he helped me, and the whole time I kept pushing. Finally, he couldn’t take it and started clawing at his throat, but by then it was too late. He was choking on the knife. I kept pushing. And finally he stopped moving.  
    When it was all over, I lay covered in their blood, shaking like a newborn baby. I pulled myself off the floor and slumped onto a kitchen chair and looked at them. Brother Card lay at his wife’s knees, still clutching his throat. Sister Card stared at the ceiling. Blood soaked everything like someone had dumped a bucket of it on us.
    I don’t know how long I sat there. Too long to be smart, I suppose, but nothing happened. I just stared at them, and they just stayed dead.
    “Jesus,” I said finally.
    I said it as a curse, of course, but when it came out, it just sort of sat there: Jesus. I looked at the Cards. Nothing. They were a bloody pile of meat and bone, just like me. I was sitting on a wooden chair at a wooden table someone had carved out of a tree. Everything seemed heavy and solid. Even the name: Jesus. All of a sudden it seemed like there was a god. It was as if I’d always been a little off center and someone had bumped me and, just for a second, I was on center and everything seemed thick and hard and real.
    I shook that out of my head and got up. I had some important things to think about. Focus. What if Card had made a phone call before he came in and the police were coming? I went to the front window and parted the blinds. Nothing. The street was empty and quiet. I turned around, and then I saw something that made me smile. I walked over to the couch and picked up the cordless phone resting against a cushion. The only phone in the house.
    After making sure all the windows and blinds in the house were closed, I strolled back to the bathroom and turned on the light. Underneath a damp red sheen, my face was pale. I ran some warm water and washed up, and pink water swirled down the drain and splattered on the sides of the sink. I looked in the mirror again, and my face was still bloody. The more I looked at the blood, which an hour before had been running through their veins and soaking their muscles, the more disgusting it became. I stripped off my bloody