Any given time before now if you had asked me if I were crazy I gladly would have told you no. I was never crazy, I am not crazy now; I merely- how do I put this? -I merely have a suggestive frame of mind that contradicts reality. But, I am not “crazy”. I am locked away. Why? I quit my day job and began to kill people for a living. Most people quit their day job to play golf or have a family, but to each his own. This wouldn’t have started if I had not discovered the word crazy or mad.

When I was younger I never questioned my sanity; I just knew I had it because I had seen people who were crazy and I knew I was not one of them. All of my friends were also not crazy; weird, perhaps, but not crazy. It wasn’t till high school when someone even asked me a question in regards to my sanity. It was a spontaneous question “Are you sane?” I was the quiet one who sat in the back corner of all my classes; no one had ever approached me much less to question me. Of course I was sane! I had always been sane. Who was this person to question what I knew as a universal truth? They struck up a conversation with me and it was all about sanity and being crazy and the world how it wasn’t real. If you want crazy, there is crazy. I went home and pondered over the conversation. Sanity wasn’t something I really wanted to think about; I was no philosopher, so for the time I ignored the question and lived my everyday life as it had been normal, average. My life was average there was no insanity confined within it. However, I soon discovered my life was nothing more than a petty lie. It wasn’t the world, it was me. I was odd, I was crazy!

It hit me like a wonderful revelation, I was crazy. I had never considered the possibility of being crazy but better than that I was stark raving mad! It took me years after realizing my insanity to understand just how much of a glorious concept this was. It opened my eye to a new evil. There is a great misconception about crazy people; we are saner than the average sane man the problem lies in what we know. We know the cruelties in the world; we can watch the gut wrenching torture and know the meaning of pain in a way no one will truly understand. We see the world in all its evil and it was upon this profound discovery that I had my epiphany. The world was destroying itself and I loved irony the thing from which life lived was also from which it would die. Whatever higher power at be must have had some humor. It was the most amusing moment in my lifetime which, until now, had been filled with nothing more than reality TV shows and the occasional drink at a bar. I wanted to join in I could pretend to still be sane, which was as much fun as a root canal, or I could live as a “saner” man. I chose to do this.

My new job was more interesting than that of a business accountant. I had first attempted to choose a man of older age. I found once such man he was going to die within the week, a cyanide pill. He wasn’t my first victim. My first victim was the poor soul who, happened to cross my shadow as I walked by the alley, now buried in some cemetery somewhere while I, at least before now, was off gallivanting and pretending I was a normal victim of circumstance. His blood had covered my shirt, my Boy Scout pocket knife lodged up under his ribcage. Oh yes, glorious revolution! it wasn’t long before police showed up and all I had to do was play the part. This man made me realize just how evil the world was and is. Every night after I had a victim. Many were convicted felons but on occasion an innocent life suited my tastes. (Hehe) It was…advantageous killing the innocent every so often was a thrill and who was to say they wouldn’t be the next felon. Besides, innocent men kill other innocent men daily so why shouldn’t I, a saner man, have the opportunity to cleanse the world of all infections? I should be given that right seeing as all my fellow men have such opportunity but alas, it shall not be. Or was it? No it wasn’t, couldn’t, have been, for you see I got caught. Oh, I had relished that time when a knife gliding down someone’s bare chest letting the line of scarlet blood that seeps out of wounded flesh as they scream in agonized torture. It was a symphony, a glorious chorus that pierced a midnight sun and awoke all means of spirits and made men leap in fear to their windows to discover a source. Every night the song was different and occasionally the weapon was different a chain, and knife, scissors, pills, the melody was always new the song an enticing accomplishment which put me in a state of reverence for my victim. One night though, someone lived that incredulous jerk lived and damned me to a white hell for eternity! My identity plastered on the news and subway stations I couldn’t go out. Night after night police searchlights came as I hid in the shadows to find my next victim. I had hoped they would grow wearisome of the search for a man that couldn’t exist, but they only tried harder. For a while more my raids persisted till one night I stumbled and attempted to kill a rather drunken, haggard officer. Shot once in the chest knocked to the ground. He sat upon me, I couldn’t move but his large girth kept the blood inside my wounded flesh. I bled, they came, I tried to fight, they shoved me into the back of a squad car.

I was driven here, stripped down and given white clothes. Shoved into a room full of innocent padding like some sort of mongrel mutt being thrown into a dog house. Men came in and out in and out all day long. Some asked questions I often refused to answer or merely with a sinister grin “how would you answer the question?” they often grew frustrated. Men came in with needles they injected me with some form of drug that was supposed to make me cooperate, I laughed no matter what they tried they couldn’t break me. Finally, they just choose to leave me alone in my room. I went to court many times. Each time lead in a jacket of the magicians with a chain hooked to the front. I was always amused by the scared look on people’s faces it was almost as good as the killing, I laughed and skipped about at the end of my chain. Each time the judge gave a verdict I was mentally unstable and they couldn’t punish me anymore than leaving me in an asylum.

I was a terrible problem for the men there; they couldn’t control me I annoyed others who were there. Other who really weren’t insane they just weren’t sane enough. I found enjoyment in this activity too. I would have been happy living my life like this being let out every so often of my room to waltz about and wreak havoc, it wasn’t to last. I was not the only murder in the asylum but most of the others weren’t saner men. They were just being held until something better could be done with them. I was about in the courtyard in my jacket with the chain, just walking with no audience there was very little to do, they put that man out in the courtyard, by accident of course, but he died that day. He tried to attack me and I had nothing to hurt him with other than myself. He died I stood over him, the men in the white coats came running, they had assumed I was going to be the dead one. Oh ho-ho they were wrong again. But I wasn’t able to celebrate even locked up I had still accomplished my goal of purification, but a great price came with it. I was moved to a cold damp room with a rock floor and a hard cot. There is a rotating hook in the room it whirs all night my chain is hooked to that it lets me move about the room but there is no company, no audience. There is nothing left for me the saner man. I cannot philosphize as I once did. There is a window and from it I can see the world, the world that is destroying itself one person at a time. I’m still not crazy I will never be crazy, but I will live this life of mine in this prison of my own mind with a chain that keeps me from straying too far. For you see all the people want to do is keep those of us who know from speaking again. I’m not crazy, I’m not mad, I’m not insane, I am just the more sane man who will die labeled crazy.