The Art of Killing by C. R. Clarke

Author:C. R. Clarke
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Crime
Publisher: Troubador Publishing Ltd
Published: 2023-08-02T00:00:00+00:00

TWENTY-FIVE

SPATTERING RAIN speckled off the windscreen of the cream Vauxhall Vivaro. O’Leary’s back hunched over the wheel, leaning into the urgent sweep of the wiper blades, pleased that he had managed to complete his latest ‘work’, his latest ‘piece’, his latest ‘message’ to an ignorant world that needed prodding to make them listen, before the skies had opened and the heavens descended.

He’d been doubting the words of the voice in his head, the voice of his mentor, but now, after tonight, it was all beginning to make some sense, even if not perfect. He felt he’d turned a corner, but was he really sure?

‘Did I do good?’ he asked.

‘You did, my Son,’ came the response from the voice of wisdom. Deep, low, resonating off the tin and the hard plastics of the utilitarian interior.

O’Leary fell silent again. ‘What is it, my child?’ asked the voice. ‘I sense a reluctance inside of your mind.’

O’Leary shook his head so slightly it threatened to be imperceptible. His eyes dropped to his lap. ‘Why so young?’ he asked. ‘Why a child?’

‘You feel a child can be absolved from blame, simply because they are perceived as innocents?’

‘No. I mean, yes… I– I don’t know?’

‘A child wears the stains of their parents’ misguidance, what better way to punish that wanton corruption of purity than to take from their bosoms the gift they chose to besmirch?’

‘But, is that not unfair?’ O’Leary asked.

‘What is fair?’ asked the voice. ‘Is it fair to murder an animal, simply because the mouth that grins wide when it slays the beast craves the taste of the flesh whose life it denied? Is the temptation of that flesh not to be considered the same as the apple from the tree of knowledge?’

‘I know, but—’

‘Did my Son – my own flesh and blood, not die on the cross to absolve the sins of those who stood, and watched, and let it happen?’

‘You’re right. I know you’re right, and it is an honour for me to be chosen, believe me. But… it’s just sometimes, as wrong as I know it is to feel it, I find myself, enjoying the killing—’

‘Shhhh… Quiet, my child… To take the young is to send the strongest message we can, and in gifting their souls to heaven so near to the seeding of their corrupted lives is to end, early, a senseless reign of tyranny and killing, a lifetime’s worth of supping on the meats of the creatures they chose to disrespect.’

O’Leary considered the words of ‘The One’ and allowed himself to find solace in their questionable logic.

He turned the bleached-bone coloured van into a gravelled driveway. The wet pebbles looked like a million flayed skulls carpeting the floor of hell in the hot, halogen glow of the sweeping headlights.

He crunched along the path of sinners, approaching a red-brick building that had once been a working farmhouse, a lot like his childhood home, but that was now no longer alive to the calls of animals waiting their inescapable fates.

He parked in the avenue of ghosts, and the engine fell silent.

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