Free The Toxic Children by Tessa Maurer Page A

conclusion that it’s because killing things is like killing what’s inside of me. If I kill the things that move, I move less. It dies quicker, the essence.
    So I kill. Human, animal—it’s all the same. If it moves, I kill it.
    I stiffen. I hear something—something is alive in the silence of the wind. I can feel the energy like a rash on my skin. I want to scratch it and kill it and put it out. Put it out—put the fire out so it doesn’t burn. Burn and you feel; feel and you live; live and you are human .
    “Shut up, shut up,” I say aloud, and damn it, shut up, Inanis, you have something to kill. Do not startle the kill. My breathing disappears; my energy becomes still. I am ready.
    Something moves to my right in the tall brush. The only parts of me that move are my eyes and my eyes see nothing. Nothing, and then something—something bright red and human—
    “Stop!” I scream, but the words weren’t supposed to come out, and the redness disappears. I can feel that it’s gone. I hit my head, punishing the thing in me that does stuff, that feels stuff. Go away, go away, you stupid relic.
    I move on. In a hollow in the road, I find a rabbit and skin it alive. Something in me screams, writhes and lashes and tries to get as far away as it can. I ignore it. It needs reality. I kill; it does, too. When it enjoys it, I will be whole, and I will become beautifully dead.

Chapter [2]
     
     
    I don’t like sleep; things are inside of my head when I sleep, things I cannot control. The essence runs rampant when the chains on my mind break. Awake or asleep, the people I have killed never leave me alone for long. The little blonde girl is here tonight. She was one of the first whose life I took.
    “Still don’t get why you do it,” she says. Her hair is a mass of curls and she never sits still. I want to pin her to a wall with nails.
    “Not my fault you’re slow,” I say. I look around. I don’t realize where we are at first, and then as if to answer me, the world forms. We’re sitting in an empty field—a green field all alive and wrong.
    “Am I? Come on, don’t you think you must be the slow one? You tell me what to say, don’t you?” she says, watching me. Her eyes shine with detail, with a light she should not have. Human eyes are so alive with unseen worlds. When they are dead, their eyes only reflect me. I match the dull, lifeless stare. Some part of me finds comfort in the emptiness.
    “You’re a pest. You buzz. I don’t make a pest buzz.”
    “If you lie to me, you lie to yourself, Inanis. I’m just a friendly reminder of humanity. I’m helpful. Least I try to be, anyway,” she says, swaying.
    “Don’t kid yourself. It’s not healthy,” I say, and I want her to shut up, but she won’t. Why can I make the world but not the people? Why can’t they just shut up?
    “You don’t care about my health, silly boy. You wouldn’t have killed me if you cared about my health,” she says. There’s a rabbit in her lap that she keeps stroking. It sniffs at her fingers and she smiles at it.
    “Maybe I thought you were better off dead. You really think flesh like yours can survive this? No. I did you a favor. Could’ve been worse.
    “And you know, it’s funny how you act like you’re so much better. Your kind made me. Don’t you fucking forget that,” I snap, cracking like ice because she’s a hammer that digs and chips and wants to break me, but I don’t break.
    She opens her mouth to say something, but I stare so hard she disappears. And for the rest of that night, I sleep in peace.
     
    ***
     
    I walk the silent world. They say it used to be loud, cars and planes and voices filling the world up to the stars. Now it’s just the wind and the souls and the hum of bloodshed in the distance, a sound like a heat wave in the back of your mind. The loudest, most incessant places left are the cemeteries….
    Something feels off. I am in the field by the house. I hear this noise, this ticking,