[Jake.Ashworth]

Introduction

I love this feeling, the feeling of complete satisfaction as the blood pours over my knuckles from the jagged cut in his throat. It has been a long time coming and the anticipation has built to this beautiful moment. I know this is an odd place to start my story, but its one of my favorite parts. His name is Joseph and he is a handsome young man of 22. His young wife, Sarah, is on the other side of the room trying not to watch. But lets start at the beginning and work our way up to here.
I have lived in this house alone for a long time, I think my name is Michael but I haven’t heard it spoken aloud in some six years. I raised myself from the young age of thirteen. My parents passed when I was twelve and the caretaker when I was thirteen. I had a great childhood, I grew up very wealthy and could have anything I ever wanted. My father was in the oil industry and spent very little time at home, always flying from state to state. My mother on the other hand was always there, but never present. She held up in her room most of the time. She was a beautiful woman, and incredibly smart but she hated that father was always away.
I was always a little different. I went to a private school until I was eight. I had a problem keeping my hands to myself. I loved the way people’s skin felt under my fingers. At first it was just light touching, boys or girls, it was not a sexual thing. Just a quick brush against as I walked by, or an “accidental” trip and fall, lightly grazing their skin as I went down. They all thought I was so clumsy. I was fascinated with the way everyone’s skin felt different. Sometime in my eighth year, after a scuffle with another boy, I realized that when you squeeze someone’s arm tight you can feel things under the skin. You could feel their muscles move and their tendons tighten. All I wanted from that point forward was to see it, see how it all worked under there. I started to get into more fights just to get the opportunity to grab and squeeze and feel how a person’s body moved. The Dean said that I was dangerous and told my parents I was no longer welcome. I managed to convince mother and father that it was a misunderstanding, that the other kids would pick on me and I was just defending myself. They were incredibly gullible.
My father decided that I would be better off home schooled. They hired a nice live in teacher, her name was Jennifer. She was a beautiful young girl in her mid-twenties. She had long black hair, green eyes and always dressed appropriately. Her skin was so soft, not a flaw to be seen. She was the nicest person I had ever met and we got along great. Looking back, she was one of the few people I never fantasized about skinning.
Being home so much proved bad for my fantasies. I spent a lot of time daydreaming. Things took an interesting turn about three months after I started taking my lessons at home. The house is huge and a little secluded. We have an amazing forest all around us. I wasn’t good at making friends and I honestly had very little interest in trying to so I spent the majority of my free time exploring those woods. I knew them inside and out. I had built a small fort a good mile from the house in a small clearing not far from the little creek that ran through our property. It was made from logs that I had found in the woods and had a roof made of tree branches. There were no windows so it was a little dark inside, but for Christ’s sake, I wasn’t a carpenter. Inside there was little to look at. I had a table and a lantern. I hung a sign on the outside that said “Enter at your own risk”, even though I knew that nobody would ever find my little retreat. My father owned 500 acres and I was so far from the property line that I never even heard cars drive by. I spent a lot of time carving sticks into spears and playing with my Ninja Turtles out there after my lessons were through.
One spring day I had come across a rabbit on my way to the fort. It was pretty big and wiggling around on the ground. It had broken one of its back legs in what I imagined was an epic battle with a pack of coyote’s. I looked into its eye and saw incredible fear, I felt like I could see into its soul. It was screaming out for help in that look that it gave me. My first thought was to take it back to the fort and nurse it back to health. I fashioned a makeshift stretcher from sticks and carefully moved it onto it. I carried it the rest of the way to the fort with my mind racing about what I would be able to do to help it.
After about 15 minutes I arrived at my fort and walked through the small door past the sign meant to keep away any intruders. It was exactly as I had left it, Leonardo and Shredder in an endless battle. I sat the rabbit down in the middle of the room and turned on the small battery powered lantern that I had hung from one of the branches making up the roof. I moved the rabbit from the home made stretcher to the little table that I had fought to get out of the house without anyone noticing, not that they would have noticed me anyway. I stood there, just looking at it and trying to figure out what to do. I thought I could make a splint for the leg and went to gather a few small sticks. While I was outside rummaging through the brush I heard a horrible screeching sound coming from inside of my fort. I dropped everything and ran back thinking to myself that the coyotes had followed us. When I got about 20 feet from the entrance I slowed to a walk and moved very slowly and quietly, as to not alert the coyotes, up to my little shanty. I was listening to the wailing of the rabbit and for any noises the coyotes might make. Peaking slowly around the doorway, I saw the rabbit laying on the ground but no coyotes anywhere. It looked like he had tried to escape and fell off of the table. A quick jab of anger shot through my body. Why would it try to run away when I was just trying to help it? Didn’t it want to be my friend? I walked over to the rabbit and grabbed it by the broken leg yanking it up and back onto the table. It let out an incredible screech of pain that I barely heard. My vision had gone red and all I wanted to do was take this mean little creature back to the woods and let the coyotes have it. After slamming it back onto the table I noticed my hand felt a little wet and I looked down. There was a small amount of the animal’s blood on my fingers and my anger instantly melted away. I didn’t notice at the time but everything melted away. The sound of the rabbit screeching was gone, the thoughts of my lessons and gorgeous Jennifer, even the eternal struggle of good vs. evil happening between Leo and Shredder just feet away, disappeared. I felt… completely satisfied as I slowly rubbed my fingers together and felt the warm blood smear. As I watched it start to dry and turn more ruddy and sticky. It was the single greatest feeling of my life so far. It was then that I noticed, from the corner of my eye, the rabbits muscles ripple under its fur. At that moment all of my curiosity about what happens under someone’s skin came rushing back and all I could think about was how I could finally know.
I grabbed it by the ears slid the point of my pocket knife into its throat. It twitched and its back legs kicked out, but only for a second. I watched as the life drained out of its eyes and I thought I could almost hear it thanking me for putting it out of its misery. The following may have taken hours or days. I fell into a blurry, confused, daze as I tried to figure out how to take the skin off of it. After a few failed attempts at finding somewhere to start and unfortunately ruining some of its better parts, I cut a circle around its neck and wiggled my fingers under the skin. Again that feeling of ecstasy came over me. As I worked at the skin over the next few hours, enjoying every second, I took my time looking at every muscle, every tendon. I bent the joints to see how they moved, it was amazing. It was everything I had wanted and more. After a little time I looked around and realized that it had gotten dark and my lantern was starting to die. If I wasn’t at the dinner table when dinner started someone would come looking for me. It felt wrong to just leave the little thing there but I didn’t want to bury it, I wanted to keep it. I took a hammer and a couple nails from the small tool box that I keep in the fort and nailed the lifeless body to the wall by its ears. I stepped back and admired it for a moment longer, soaking in every emotion that was washing over me and loving this feeling. Just before I was about to run out the door and head home, I decided I wanted to take something with me so that I could remember this occasion. I took my pocket knife, still bloody from my day’s adventure, and cut off one of the rabbits still furry but bloody little feet. I giggle and thought to myself “My first lucky rabbits foot!”