Jacob had apparently been in the hospital for a few months before I met him; he’d committed some sort of terrible crime and was deemed a threat to other people as well as himself. I guess they made some sort of breakthrough, or he managed to keep quiet long enough, because now he’s allowed to walk around and interact with others like all the non-murderers.
To be honest, I think it’s kind of cool that a guy who killed his own family likes being around me. It’s like a really weird indirect compliment. My family can go eat a bag of dicks, but you, you’re pretty cool. You get to live.
I guess I kind of deserve to be here with thoughts like that.
Anyways, I was talking to him for a long, long time, figuring out what his favorite food was, what pets he had, what pets he wished he had, whether he was gay or straight or bi or pan or ace or who-in-god’s-name-knows, whether he’d ever done drugs, if he liked to collect anything, blah blah blah, insert meaningless small talk here, how much longer do we need to do this before it’s socially acceptable for me to ask how and why you killed your family.
Well, I guess he liked me a whole lot, because by the fourteenth petty question I asked, he said he didn’t want to be impolite or anything, but he really feels we’ve gotten to know each other quite enough by know and would I like to know something a bit more interesting about him?
I said yes. Why the hell wouldn’t I say yes?
He kind of shuffled in his seat a bit and cleared his throat. He said he wanted to tell me the reason he killed them. He said he had never, ever told anyone this before, and even though he knew we were being monitored, he felt that I just had to know, because I’d been nothing but nice to him the entire time we’ve been together and it made him feel bad about how standoffish he could be, and he thought this would make it up to me.
I said I understood if he needed his space and he doesn’t need to make up anything to me.
He said he still wanted to tell me.
I said okay.
So he starts off telling me that his parents were these really strict Independent Fundamental Southern Baptists, no, wait, they were just Independent Fundamental Baptists, Southern Baptists are totally different, he thinks, and well anyways, sorry about that, but yeah, they were super conservative and believed a lot of wacky stuff, like that the universe was six thousand years old and AIDS is God’s punishment to gay people even though it affects a lot of not-gay people and women shouldn’t tell anyone if their husband is abusing them because it’s not their place to do so.
I said that that sounded crazy. He nodded and said he actually believed it up until he was twelve, when he started putting two and two together and realizing that the Bible can be really contradictory and doesn’t seem to outright condemn a lot of things normal people would say are bad, like having sex with children or discriminating against someone based on their skin color, and plus having a consensual relationship with someone of the same gender means you hate God and will never be saved, it says so right there in Romans, but raping someone never has the same explicit warning, but blaspheming the Holy Ghost does, and it seemed like God’s priorities were really fucked up.
Once he stopped believing it, he said, he still trusted his parents a lot for some reason, and he told them that he was an atheist, or maybe an agnostic, or whatever, he just doesn’t believe the Bible, and he was totally prepared to tell them exactly why he didn’t believe it, but before he could say anything his parents laughed in his face and tried to explain that the Bible was the infallible word of God because it says it’s the infallible word of God, and when he tried to tell them that was dumb they laughed again, but they were noticeably annoyed, and they explained it again, and he tried to do it a third time and they got angry and his mom slapped him.And then he wasn’t allowed on the computer or allowed to keep his not-Independent-Fundamentalist-Baptist friends or allowed to have any sort of privacy besides getting dressed and bathing himself and other things that would make his parents come across as downright pedophilic if they tried to monitor him doing it.
So within a couple of years, he got really tired of being an outcast in his own family, his only family, and the only social circle he was allowed to have, and he lied and said he had realized how dumb he’d been and he believed the Bible again and everyone was so happy to hear that, but he still didn’t get a lot of his privileges back, but he got enough of them back to feel like he was able to express himself somewhere other than his own mind.
He kept up the facade really well for another couple of years, memorizing Bible passages and going door-to-door to tell people how Jesus Christ died for their sins and even courting a godly Christian girl because he needed to get married someday and God didn’t want him to move out before he got married.
And then he learned how to drive.He said he’d sneak out at night regularly without giving a shit about whether or not they caught him and when he went out, he’d just kind of cruise around worldly places like the mall and sometimes bars even though he was only sixteen and he’d hit on every guy he came across, he didn’t even like guys, he was totally straight and he made a joke about how his own dick grosses him out at this point, but being gay made you a reprobate according to the Bible and there was nothing more he wanted than to be a reprobate, he’d fuck a guy and start spewing blasphemy about the Holy Ghost when he came, he didn’t care, God wasn’t real, his parents were assholes for imposing their stupid religion on him.
They caught him when he brought a guy home, he didn’t even know the guy’s name and he was totally drunk, in fact a lot of the guys he’d fuck were usually drunk and it never even crossed his mind that it was kind of rape, well, not even kind of, it was totally rape for a completely sober guy to pressure a drunk guy to sleep with him.He said he thought he went a little too far with that. I agreed with him, but made sure to add I didn’t think any worse of him for it, because he had been oppressed for so long and was finally beginning to fight back.
His eyes lit up at that and he said yeah, they’d been shoving their shitty beliefs on him and he could’ve either broke and let it happen or push back, and he just pushed back with all his might.So that was what he did, he pushed as hard as he could, if he could get his hands on a car he’d bring back a guy and try to fuck him in the living room, he’d drink, he’d smoke weed, he’d swear, he’d hit, he’d do anything to piss his parents off.They’d lecture him and beat him and there were times where they just locked up every possible door or window he could use and leave him in there for days at a time, and when they’d finally let him out only to discover that he’d been pissing and shitting in his room because he didn’t have access to a goddamn bathroom, they’d beat him until he went unconscious and he usually woke up to learn he’d landed in his own shit, probably because his dad would specifically throw him on it when he was done just to be a dick.
So he was just pushing them and they pushed him and they kept pushing each other, pushing like crazy until he pushed hard.
He pretended to be good for three days and was allowed access into the kitchen, and that’s when he grabbed a knife and killed his older sister, and then when his mom came out he killed her, and it was a lot harder to get his dad and he accidentally got the knife stuck in the wall and his dad almost hit him but he pulled it out in time and got him in the eye and then to make sure there weren’t any witnesses, he killed his twin brother, before you ask he was fraternal, and then he didn’t know what to do, so he just went through the house and tested all the beds, and when he figured out his parents’ bed was the nicest he went to sleep on it, and he woke up a whole day later when the police kicked down the door and arrested him.
He said he might’ve pushed too hard.
I guess he did.
I still think it’s pretty cool that he likes me.
***
Before you say something about how no Christian believes stuff like that, I can tell you right now that yes, yes they do. My parents believe almost all of what Jacob mentions. Look up Pastor Steven Anderson and you'll very quickly find out just how strange of a place you end up in by interpreting the Bible as literally as possible.
I also wanted to mention that this was a change of pace for me and one that I really enjoyed. Usually, I'll have only one run-on paragraph thrown in every few thousand words or so, but I decided to run(get it?) with it on this one and I like how it turned out. The whole run-on style was kind of inspired by a short story called, "Repent, Harlequin! Said The Ticktock Man", and if that isn't the greatest title you've ever heard then I don't know what titles you've been hearing but tell me them.