It was a cold and blustery November morning. I was looking out the window of the mediocre, three- bedroom house that my brother Mark and I received after the horrible slaughtering of our parents. I stood there, in the still dark, dinning room just steps away from the front door, and gazed out at the grey, monstrous thunderhead combined with a tenacious whirlwind of rain. It was as if God himself was watching with grave disappointment in me for the awful crime that I had just committed. I was in deep remorse.My guilt was unbearable, like a hot air balloon constantly filling with pain, unconscious thoughts, and selfish acts. I truly wished my life would have turned out differently, but the choices I made ultimately made my fate inevitable.
Then, in the midst of my intense contemplating, a knock on the door broke my focus. Everything was standing still and quiet as if to make the dagger of the recent evil action penitrate and dig further into my chest, except for that one piercing, gut- retching sound. The knocking continued relentlessly at the elegant oak door as if it was a football team that was losing the game but they kept fighting. It wasn’t a normal knocking sound, however. It sounded to me like a soft rumbling, a threatening, deep voice coming directly from Satan. It made my heart start to disintegrate with every degrading chant : “You’re going to hell.Come to me.You shouldn’t have killed him. Hahahaha.”
My mind raced back to the very beginning of the pain.



All the pain and all the trouble began after the tragic death of my mom and dad. Before that, I was a relatively good kid . I was always getting good grades, and I was even captain of the varsity football team. I had the University of Wisconsin offering me a full four-year ride to play quarterback for them, and, to top everything off, I had a beautiful, amazing girlfriend. Unfortunately, that night my “life headlights” went out, and I missed the road to the right path. I took the exit which leads to an eternal life of evil, manipulation, and lies.


My dad was a pastor for the New Hope Ministries here in Flemingsburg, Wisconsin, and my mom was a nurse at St. Andrews Hospital. I would like to believe that they had a good marriage, but Mark and I knew better. In public some would say our family was better than the Brady Bunch, but behind closed doors it wasn’t as it seemed. My parents were always getting into intence fights like one night my mom chased my dad around the house with a plunger all because the toilet was overflowing. My dad tried to let it slide and ignore it, but my mom would keep going. She was always looking for a fight andshe really liked to start aggrivation with Mark. She was constantly nagging at him, saying, “You need to get a job, and cut your hair. You look like a devil child. When are you going to move out? You’re almost twenty.” Mark just let it go in one ear and out the other.


Along with mom’s constant nagging, Dad would always preach to us, especially to Mark, that we had to do well and stay on the right path or we would go to hell. He always said, “You have to have Jesus, you have to have Jesus,” but he never told us how to get Jesus.



My parents never had any enemies. Everyone seemed to get along with them, except for a guy that they were helping, a guy by the name of Beck Stanford. Beck was a local homeless man who lived in an ally between the pharmacy and Dave’s Bar. Beck was a very hot tempered man. If you even said one wrong word to him he would snapp like a lion pouncing on a gazzel. He had shoulder length greasy brown hair that was covered by an old, stained John Deer trucker’s hat. He wore a beer tainted dirty green and brown army camo coat with the name “Stanford” stitched on the right front side and kaki pants covered in holes. One night somebody ran up to his box in the ally and kicked it in. He jumped out of the box and chased after the hooded figure who Beck thought was me. The next day he went to the church and started yelling at my dad, saying he knew it was me that kicked his box and that he was going to kill me and any one who tried to stop him



Viciously the heavy pounding on the door jutted me back from my memory. I crept over the dark red, rosewood floorboards that passed through the living room to the front door. With every step I took, I could see the seconds of my freedom start to wither and fade into the black abyss of passed time. When I arrived at the window right beside the big oak door, I slowly pulled back a small portion of the blinds. Four state police officers stood on the porch. The looks of terror painted on their faces took me back to that awful night.




I had just arrived home after the junior prom when I noticed something a little off about my house. The front door was slightly off its hinges like an old Vietnam War veteran with post traumatic stress syndrome. I cautiously stepped up the stairs, and my veins ran cold. I pushed the crooked door open and entered my home. At that point, my heart was crumbling with each passing moment. The further and further I got into the house, the more the silent paranoia stepped in. The house was darker than a moonless, foggy night. As I walked through the hallway, I noticed something on the ground. It was an old John Deer hat. The fear in my body was built up so high it began to stream out my fingers like blood from a freshly gutted deer. My body rapidly began to shudder. I entered the kitchen and was abruptly greeted with the smell of onions, spices, and something I hadn’t smelt before:blood. I looked around to see if I could find a trace.However something urged me to continue on. I turned the corner behind the island which contained our sink and dishwasher. Suddenly, the most horrific feeling that anyone could ever get came over me. It was a sensation of loneliness intact with a disgusted, sick feeling. What I saw changed my life forever. There lay my mom by the refrigerator with her head partially attached covered with blood and immense slash marks on her chest. About two feet away by the slider door, my father lay with his chest gutted and his entrails hanging out as if the killer was searching for something. With that, I stumbled backwards and passed out.




For months after that, my whole attitude changed. I dropped out of high school and traded my girlfriend for my two new friends: alcohol and heroine. Mark and I were given the house that I didn’t want to live in.


After about three years of drugs, the raw addiction finally paid its toll. One day I went to St. Andrews Hospital for my chronic back pain. By this time no one cared if I survived or not.



RING! RING! RING! I snapped back. I looked at the window again, and the police were still there. RING! RING! RING! I turned and ran to the little corner stand where the phone was located and picked it up.




I lay in the hospital bed after having been wheeled in from my cat scan. Mark showed up and sat with me for a couple of hours. I could hardly recognize him because I came into the emergency room with clothes that I had worn for three days, a full beard, and long shaggy hair, all dazed and confused. I was high.


“Hey, Jack. How are you feeling?”


“Okay now, I guess.”


Before I could even get out all the words, an alarm went off, and the doctors and nurses started to scramble. A few seconds later, a yellow and black stretcher, guarded by four paramedics, was being rushed into my room. I looked over at the innocent stranger and instantly froze. It was Beck, the homeless man. I asked the nurse what happened, and she told me they found him outside the church parking lot, clothes all torn and reeking of Jack Daniels whiskey. She told me it was alcohol poisoning along with a heroin overdose.


Three minutes later his heart monitor flat lined, and he was dead. That really hit close to home, but yet I didn’t seem to care when I looked at him. I turned to Mark; his big green eyes were bulged and glazed. He was like a deer caught in the headlights of an oncoming car. Then, I interrupted his astonishment.


“Mark.”


“Yeah, Jack?”


“Do you remember when Dad was preaching about Jesus and how we need Him?”


“Yeah, of course,”


“Well, did he ever tell you how to get Jesus?”


“Yeah, he never told you?”


“No, he didn’t.”


“Huh…”


“How do you get Him?”


“All you have to do is ask for ...”


The doctor walked in before Mark could get out the words. “Jack Tills?”


“Hey, doc.”


“We got your test results back, and, unfortunately, we found two massive tumors on your kidneys. They’re in a place where we can’t remove them without taking your kidneys.”


“So what can be done?”


“Sadly, nothing. We can put you on a transplant list; however, that takes a long time and… well, you only have one month left to live. We will notify you if we have anymore information. Good luck.”



Later that night, I sat in my dark pungent basement, and my mind started to race. I thought about the conversation I had with Mark and how I would get Jesus, and that I couldn’t die. I needed to be forgiven. Then suddenly, something inside me snapped. I screamed up to God, “Why? Why are you doing this to me? Why did you give me cancer? God, if you are who every one says you are, then give me a sign.” I waited and waited. With each passing second my anger and frustration started to simmer like boiling coffee left on the stove too long. When nothing happened, I realized I had to do something to save myself if I wanted to live. That’s when I made my plans to kill the only person I knew who had the kidneys to match mine:Mark.



The next day when Mark got home from a long day at the sausage factory, I lured him to the basement by asking him if he could fix our furnace. After he got down the stairs, I picked up an aluminum baseball bat and was about to kill him. My blood started to calm, and I was on the verge of backing out, but I couldn’t. I had to live; I had to make things right before I died. I couldn’t die, so I needed his kidneys. CRACK! I hit him on the back of his skull as hard as I could. Blood went everywhere, and his body hit the floor. I knew it didn’t kill him, so I hit him again and again. CRACK! CRACK! CRACK! That was it; the last hit cracked his skull and his brain seeped out.





RING. RING. RING.




“Hello?”


“Hi, Jack Tills?”


“Yeah, this is Jack.”


“I’m so sorry; we mixed up the results from your test.”


“What? What do you mean?”


“You don’t have cancer. I am terribly sorry.”


After the nurse said that with deep sadness, my whole life ended. I was done for. I dropped the phone that was stained from my evil, bloody, life-taking fingers. I slowly made my way to the door. Immediately when I opened the door, the tall officer said, “Jack Tills,” glancing at my bloody hands, “You’re under arrest.”