Yes I'm insane, yes, I am a killer, but I'm really a nice person once you get to know me. It's pretty simple, be polite, be honest, don't break your promises, and treat people with dignity, and we'll get along just fine. Otherwise.... well, I don't kill right away, I first teach a few lessons and let people go. The ones that don't learn? Well, don't cry for them. I did give them a chance. -- Anon Guest
You have doubtless heard the phrase, Manners Maketh a Man? They are the grease by which the cogs of civilisation keep turning. As long as things are civil, everything is pleasant.
As for those who are unpleasant... I have my methods.
They say that The Edge breeds people like me. Well. It's most often The Edge. The Edge, and a lot of Greater Deregulations. I'm not from either of those. Even in the most civilised places, there are monsters. Monsters like me.
You may have heard of me. Mr Sunshine. Pronounced, soon-sheen-eh, though I do understand how you may read it. Once you are taught, I expect you to remember it. Especially after what I did to my neighbour.
His name was Vern. A second-generation Deregger escapee. His background came with him from the pit. He stayed under the radar by moving a lot, and made the mischance to move opposite me.
He pronounced my name as sun shine. He thought it was funny. Those were just little drips of spite. When I found out what he did to his family... that was the trigger.
Did you know? Most monsters can live their entire lives without once becoming monstrous. They never need the brutalities of monstrousness. They never feel compelled to remove a cancer from the world around them.
Vern the verminous was teaching his children his own monstrosities. Reporting him to the authorities didn't work. He would flee the area, find a new place, a new name, and start again.
I found out by tracing his face, not his records. The same agencies that could stop an abuser from finding the abused again could also help an abuser avoid justice. If said abuser knew the right things to say to them.
It was luck and happenstance that I worked in one of those places. My duty was to check and ensure that the victims were flourishing. It was how I learned about it all.
One errant complaint from the youngest. "I don't wanna move again. I hate having to start over every year."
It wasn't hard to follow after that. To learn what sort of a monster lurked in my neighbourhood. It was a duty.
I arranged for an "extended business trip" for Vern and gave the spouse and children a lovely holiday. Then I took Vern aside into a secret little place and tried to teach him basic manners.
I never left a mark on his body. Just like he never left a mark on his family.
I gave him a chance. I gave him a warning.
Like so many of his kind, he didn't listen.
Like so many after him, he paid in full in pounds of flesh. An eye for an offended eye. A tooth for an offended tooth. His tongue for the bad taste his presence left in my mouth.
I was visiting the Forensic Cleaners too often. Feeding them too much "organic waste". That was how they found me.
That was how they found the holes in the system and patched them, too. But that's not the important part.
The important part is to be nice to others. Remember your manners. And never, ever, vent your bad emotions at other living things.
That may have been my mistake, but it felt so good to deal with Vern the way I did. And now it is my task, occasionally, to teach others as I tried to teach him.
Are you ready to learn? Or am I going to have to take another finger bone?
[Image by Nick Fewings on Unsplash]
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