THE WAY HE PREFERRED IT
jake kehoe
I still remember the knife he used to kill them. The handle was made of wood and looked natural in his rough hands. The blade, stainless steel, not shiny, but dull from overuse. Their eyes remained open, always on him; leaving their last breath, entirely at his discretion. He preferred it that way. To watch the air go in and out. In and out. He counted them, and used them, to calculate the exact moment he would render his victims permanently disfigured.
Fresh blood soaked through the sports section of last night’s Lancaster New Era. It eventually stained my mother’s front porch. The porch where I pulled up a chair countless weekends and watched him carefully slaughter then carelessly scale those fish.