Homeless filth – Short story

The thing about living in a larger metropolitan city is that you need to shield yourself from the pain and misery of other people. You don’t really understand what they are going through and at the same time you don’t care and just want them to leave you alone. Some people “help” these poor souls by giving them change, food or anything else that they might have use for. But why, does it really help or does it only prolong their suffering?

This is a story about how I killed a homeless man.

The thought began to grow in me one day when I was walking past a group of beggars. I was eating a hamburger at the time and one of them cried out “Oh come on man, I know you can’t eat that whole burger by yourself!”. As usual I didn’t even give them a glance. I just walked passed and ignored all of them with my cool indifference that I have practiced for so long.

But as I was hurrying towards the train I kept thinking of what I should have done and how that might have affected the people who were shouting at me. The first thing that came to my mind was one of those silly things that I must have seen in some movie. The perfect response to a question like that.

“I know you can’t eat that whole burger by yourself”… What if I had stopped right there in my tracks, turned to the man, looked him straight in the eyes and said “Sure I can!” And then jammed the entire thing into my mouth, smearing it all over my face and then just spat it out on the ground saying “oh I guess you were right, what a shame” and just continue to walk away.

What reaction would that incite in a homeless person? Anger? Sadness? Joy? I have no idea and I never will because the day I become homeless is the day that I die. I, Owen Windsor will NEVER become homeless. And if I do may God strike me down! And when God fails doing that, someone please just kill me.

So I decided to kill a man. That very moment when he gave me that shout I decided that I want to kill someone. Kill a man that is a leech on society. What gives him the right to just wander about all day asking people around him for help? It really was time for it to stop.

A society where people are homeless is really a society that has failed. Failed to accept everyone as equals and failed to take care of the people who fell through the safety nets of society. If there ever were any nets to begin with, but that doesn’t mean that they have the right to stop contributing to our society.

I live in a house in one of the suburbs where I lead a normal and laid back life. It’s just me and my dog Barney. I have some projects going on like retiling the roof, building a new patio and a lot of garden work. My neighbors like me, we all get together every now and then for barbeques and what not. We also do the day to day over-the-hedge-talk.

I was walking around downtown one day and happened to see a man standing in a corner begging for money. When I got closer he turned to me and asked if I had any spare change to give him. I said “No” of course… But as I passed him I stopped and turned around, looked him from head to toe and the wheels in my head started turning. What if…

“How old are you?” I asked him
“34”
“34… Are you healthy?”
“Depends on what you call healthy I guess, can I have some change or what?”
“I said no already. But I might have something better to offer you” I said
He really looked dumbstruck.
“Follow me and I’ll show you”

What was he supposed to do? He didn’t have any choice so he followed me home.
His name was Aaron, he had been homeless for about 5 years, ever since the factory he worked at shut down and his wife left him. He was from one of the smaller towns out in the country but decided that it would be a greater chance of him getting a job in the city than anywhere else. So he took his belongings and left for a new glorious life in the big city. Much good that did him.

The thing one must understand about Aaron is that he really got into that factory all those years ago on a fluke. It was a stroke of luck that made him the man he was. A man without any ambition what so ever, he would not lift a finger to do something with his life. Miraculously enough he made that one choice to go to the city, but when he arrived he didn’t look for any work. He was waiting for something to show up with the attitude “Everything will be alright; it always turns out well in the end”. And there he was 5 years later without a job, begging for food, pestering good hearted people with his presence. But now finally he thought that everything would change. Everything would turn out for the better, what a lucky day when a stranger comes up and offer him a job.

I made him work hard and only paid him in food. I did not want any drugs in my house and if I didn’t give him any money he would not be able to buy any. I gave him a bunk bed in my tool shed and there he stayed, took care of the garden fixed my fence, painted my house, worked on my patio. He cleaned up real good. Even my neighbors took a liking to the filthy beast. He might fool them into believing he was human and not a waste of space. But I knew better, the slightest touch and he would fall off the wagon and into begging again. No will power what so ever, only a basic sense of survival.

About 6 months later when my neighbor was going away for a 2 week vacation they asked him to house sit. HIM. What the hell were they thinking? They’d let that filthy animal into their home and have him watch it for them. This would not do, according to me a man is still homeless if he lives in a shed. But if he stays in a house he is not homeless, he is with house. My real work had to begin.

I invited Aaron to my house in order to put up a game plan. How we could make him a free man, a man with a home, a life and a fortune. Aaron knew my neighbor was rich, not filthy rich but rich enough to have nice things inside that house. The bastard even had a pool. So we decided to empty the house, put Aaron into hiding in my uncle’s lodge a couple of hours outside of town and then when everything had cooled down, we would sell everything in an orderly fashion. That way he would get enough money to sustain himself until he could find a proper job. His life spark was lit once more.
We opened up a section of the fence between my neighbor’s yard and mine, when this was done we started to carry out all their furniture and belongings through the back door and into my yard and to a big moving truck I had rented. It took us about four nights to clear the entire house of everything that was not nailed down to any walls or floor. From their house into the truck and then off to an offsite storage unit that was open 24/7. During the days we would move stuff out of my garden just to keep my other neighbors’ curiosity at bay so they wouldn’t wonder why I had a moving truck in my possession without moving anything. And it seemed to work, I only got the usual questions “Clearing out for summer eh?”, “while you are at it why don’t you move some stuff from my yard as well!” and so on, everything with a chuckle quickly following the statement, to let me know it was a joke.

The sixth day came and we entered the now empty house, the only thing that was left, was the curtains, these only kept to try to turn this empty shell of a house into something that was more alive than dead. With curtains you can’t really see what’s inside and thus you don’t know that anything is wrong. I thumped him in the head with a baseball bat; he fell hard on the floor and passed out. It was time.

I brought forth my heavy duty fishing line and tied that around each of his fingers and then attached it to a larger rope that I let hang from one of the beams in the ceiling. The rope was also tied as a noose and wrapped around Aarons neck. It was quite an intricate build actually. I don’t think that it ever had been done before. It was intended as a two step process where first his fingers would be torn off by the sheer weight of his body, and with the fingers gone he would fall down to be hanged the god old fashioned way. Aaron started to wake up as I hoisted him up in the air. He started to scream, or he tried to anyway, the cloth I had put in his mouth really put a stop to that. And actually, it almost looked as the filthy animal was in pain. Excellent.

After about 2 hours he stopped kicking. I guess he realized that it didn’t hurt as much if he was still than if he was flaying about whilst hanging there. This did not really please me and something definitely had to be done. He was not here for leisure. He was here for pain. No pain, no fucking gain! It appeared as if the lines I had used were a lot stronger than I initially had suspected and now it was time to put them to a real test. I took some rope and fastened it to his legs. I anchored it to my chair, but the rope was not long enough to let the chair rest comfortably on the ground. It was tilting about 50 degrees.

Aarons eyes widened when he realized what was about to happen. I looked at him and smiled. He had panic in his eyes. I sat down ever so gently and the muffled sound of his screams, they were like music to my ears. I put a tad more weight on the chair and saw his legs stretch out a bit more and how the now very torn fingers were struggling to hold together at their joints. His feet were right in front of me and if I put up my arms in the air I could reach his knees. I took a knife and did a small cut on the left side of his left knee, trying to sever some of the tendons holding everything together. Aaron passed out so I stopped for the time being, no point continuing when he can’t feel it.

While he was passed out I took a ladder and checked the status of his fingers. A few of them were about to snap, give it a few more hours and he would fall towards his death. How much pain can a man handle before he dies from the pain itself? Can one die from pain alone or does it only drive you mad? This was something I had to explore. But not with Aaron, no Aaron was precious.

When he woke up I started to talk to him, I wanted to let him know why this was happening to him and what he had done to deserve it. So he would understand and not judge me. He must understand that I did this for his benefit. I did a cut on the right side of his left knee, he winced. Interesting, his pain threshold had increased. I sat down on the chair and heard his knee joint make this violent SNAP. He screamed, oh how he screamed, it was like music. Shortly after the fingers gave in, he plummeted to his death. His body twitched violently when the noose around his neck was tightened. Aaron was no more, time of death, Thursday 6am.

I cut him down from the ceiling and put him in the lower floor bathtub for safe keeping whilst I took care of the mess I had created in the living room. And this is where my perfect crime turned out not to be so perfect after all. Apparently my dear neighbor decided to cut the vacation short. So while I was sitting on my knees, on the floor, trying to get all the blood taken care of, they had walked in through the back entrance and straight into the bathroom. That scream was also beautiful but not in the same way as a tormented scream. And I guess I looked a bit odd where I sat in a pool of blood with my cleaning gear around me when they stormed into the living room. Needless to say, I was caught red handed, no pun intended.

One might say that I killed two men that day. Aaron was one, and I also killed myself. Tomorrow, Thursday at 6am the electricity will be turned on and I will be turned off. The world works in silly ways.

I still think he was filthy.

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