Somewhere in the rear-view mirror sits a line in the sand. Crossed long ago. That distant line must be a sandcastle by now, constructed lovingly by another caring parent, another beautiful child. Prescient to my mind is that my life as a father will not be returning to rediscover such a line. Investigating my new horizon far beyond the boundaries of a moral compass is my new heaven.
Take this young lady strapped into the passenger seat by my side as a prime example. Innocent bystander never having been in the wilderness beyond their own line in the sand. Believing in a fantastic knight in shining armor, the girl almost launched herself into my environmentally friendly Tesla. All it took was a shower of rain on the last breath of a winter’s Antarctic blast to usher her across her sandy line to nestle in the shelter of my shiny new battery-on-wheels of the future. Futuristic car becomes future pain for Emily the damsel in distress. Not happily ever after for Emily.
Consideration of Emily’s line in the sand materialized as a dark trench crossing the black volcanic ash in my mind’s eye. Emily failed to notice my black line in the dark of night. Emily crossed from common sense to nonsense as she ignored the lessons of stranger danger.
Little darling is begging me for release to the swaddling cloth on her side of the line. She guarantees not to tell a soul. She promises never to call the police. She pleads through her tears. As her hopes drain before my eyes my excitement builds to such electricity that I spasm with pleasure.
I do concur though. Yes, young lady, you will never tell another soul. Nor make a report to the police. You will scream and you will beg, you will plead, and you will promise. But the opportunity to speak again with another human being will never present itself.
Sexual Predator is not my thing. Sexuality is not my thing. Sexual power is inconsequential to me. I go directly to the one power, the gift of life balanced by the extinction of life. Complete power.
Power explodes within a man as life is extinguished. Such power is my thing. Where I get off. Transferal from cold sweat fear, eyes ablaze in shock, throat torn by animal screams into emptied nothingness all by my own will and by my own hand. Ultimate power is my perfection.
The act of physical torture firing hot pain was not my driver as she pulled the car door closed. Breaking her rib or cheekbone is not a thrill to me. My delight will be my vision of her realization that cruelty has fallen upon her. Stark reality unveiling itself as her captor fractures a bone within her immature body. The shocking realization of the predicament fires my mind. She will be horrified by her science book knowledge, the availability of 204 more bones now at the mercy of her master.
Razor’s edge slicing thigh meat is a means to an end for me. Paralyses as she witnesses her blood flow from the wound, claret pulsing through soft white tissue, there is my reward. Victims gazing upon their lifeblood as it escapes the confines of sheathing skin. Leaving ruby red stains across the flesh. Screaming in wide eyed terror as her murderer licks surgical, cold steel. The choking sound of her caught breath, not yet her last, as such dire finality dawn stars bright in her eyes.
Oh, how perfect a moment can be. My memory will capture a wild red veined eye falling free of the socket, surgically precision at a flick of my wrist. The sight of optical nerves hanging free whilst sending electrical impulses of horror to the stem of a darkening brain stem. In the words of the immortal Colonel Kurtz, “The horror.”
My horror? Returning to the office tomorrow as a slave to the financial millstone. Awaiting my entrance at the door she will grip my quarterly barren sales report, choking my career in her fist. She is the Team Leader from hell, bearing down ominously over career drudgery. Thursday is payday, mortgage payment day, child support day, bills due day, binge drinking day.
A good night’s sleep would not go amiss.
But first, then last and always, I will cruise into the moonlight.
Somewhere across the line.