THE DESIRE, THE urge, the impulse to kill is in all of us. It is as old as life itself. Nothing fills us with a greater sense of power, of exhilaration, than killing. Nothing affords a more intense excitement or a greater release of pent-up tension.
Our remote ancestors killed for survival, for the warmest cave, the richest game area, the most desirable mate. Our more immediate forebears killed for power, for conquest, for sport. The age-old impulse is deeply planted.
In former times wars afforded a vast measure of relief. What secret rejoicings there were when war was declared. To be able to kill again without penalty! To kill and be proclaimed a hero! Nearly all countries, sooner or later, resorted to war. Their leaders knew it was a sure way to relieve internal pressures, to siphon off dangerous energy and impulses.
Now, unfortunately, war has become impersonal, dehumanized. There is little personal killing. It has become remote, wholesale, a matter of massive bombs, unseen missiles, gases, pushbuttons. Science has spoiled one of our international pastimes.
But the impulse to kill, to kill directly and in person, remains. Witness the daily headlines—the slashings and shootings, the lethal beatings, the endless round of hourly murder. The killing instinct, obviously, remains strong in us, even in spite of the penalties which may be meted out.
Since my early youth I myself have experienced an impulse to kill. Although a fine inheritance endowed me with the means for education, travel, and endless entertainment, eventually everything began to seem boring. Food and drink, women, gambling, study and philosophical speculation, even work—all became tedious, meaningless.
I knew of course, all along, what my secret desire really was, but I was afraid to face up to it. I was afraid of myself; I was afraid of the penalties; I was afraid of being afraid. Finally, one night, I reached such a state of abysmal boredom and depression that I contemplated suicide. But at the last moment I rebelled.
I reasoned: why destroy myself, cultured, experienced, and intelligent as I was, when there were so many thousands of clods and fools whose dull shabby lives could have no meaning for themselves or for anyone else?—so many half-witted specimens who contributed nothing to anyone, whose mere existence created a burden for someone?
Once I had made my resolution, only one problem remained—the penalties. I certainly had no intention of being electrocuted or gassed in exchange for the demise of some idiot who was not worth a snap of my fingers.
The problem remained unsolved for some time and the solution came about by accident.
Traveling around as always, I happened to be in a small town in Illinois. I had a hotel room, and I was walking around the town one summer evening, hoping to find amusement. I had fully determined to kill at this point, but the means I would employ still eluded me.
As I walked, I grew thirsty; I stopped in at a neighborhood bar and ordered beer. It was a typical, dismal, raucous little dive complete with juke box, television, and the local loudmouth who had had too many drinks.
As it happened, I had no change, so I took out my wallet when the beer arrived. The wallet was solidly packed with bills. As I slipped out a dollar, I noticed a number of the bar sops eying the wallet with keen interest. That gave me an idea.
I finished my beer and then went back to my hotel room to think. Long before I went to bed, my plans were made.
In less than three weeks I was living in a small furnished house on the outskirts of that town.
Once I got settled, I began taking daily walks. After strolling around the central shopping district, I would stop in at the little neighborhood bar—the Cameo—where I had got my idea. I usually ordered beer, but more often than not I paid for my drinks with folding money. My wallet, bulky with bills, was much in evidence.
I began casual conversations with some of the habitués. I explained, honestly enough, that I was retired on the income from a family trust. I was rather vague about my reasons for staying in the town. I just said that I had grown tired of big-city life and that I liked the slower pace of a small town.
After some time I rated surface cordiality, but I knew that I remained an object of envy and suspicion. That suited me fine; I didn’t want to become too well liked. So long as I could hold casual conversations with the bar trade and flash my roll around, my plans were working smoothly.
One afternoon when I walked into the Cameo, nearly everyone was talking about the terrific thunder shower of the night before. It was one of the worst I had ever experienced; it had kept me awake for hours.
But I pretended surprise as I listened to comments about the storm. I insisted that I hadn’t heard a thing. I had slept, I announced, right through till dawn without a break. By way of explanation, I added that I was a very sound sleeper and that ordinarily nothing short of an earthquake or a tornado would wake me up.
As I made this statement, I noticed several of the bar sops watching me with renewed interest. They were the very ones who usually kept their eyes glued to my wallet when I paid for my drinks. One of them in particular attracted my attention.
His name was Frank Reffalto. He was a wiry, dark, sharp-featured young punk who made occasional trips to Chicago and who seemed to manage without working. I wasn’t sure, of course, but I decided right there that he was probably the one.
That very night I changed my sleeping schedule. It wasn’t hard for me. Actually, instead of being a sound sleeper, I am an insomniac. It takes me hours to get to sleep. I can stay awake all night with little effort. Now it was extra easy.
By ten o’clock all the lights in my house were out—but I was wide awake. I had a flashlight handy and a loaded .38 revolver tucked in my belt. I sat quietly while my eyes adjusted to the darkness. Every hour or so I made a round of the house, moving carefully and keeping back from the windows.
Nothing happened that night. When the sun began coming up, I went to bed. I slept nearly five hours and woke up perfectly refreshed.
That afternoon I was back in the Cameo bar, flashing my roll of bills, boasting what a sound sleeper I was. I exchanged pleasantries with Frank Reffalto. He was unusually genial; we wound up buying each other drinks.
I continued my nightly watch. The almost unbearable tensions building up in me were a little soothed by my solitary vigil. I liked the darkness, the quietness, the sense of expectancy. And the new sleeping schedule all but cured my insomnia. By dawn I was tired but relaxed; I could sleep my necessary four or five hours.
One night, after I had been on my night schedule for about two weeks, I felt unusually tense and expectant. Maybe it was just the full moon—or maybe I’m actually telepathic as I have always believed.
I prowled the house every half hour, watching, listening. With the aid of the moonlight, I could see perfectly. And my hearing had grown more acute after hours of nighttime listening. I could hear every small rustle, every tiny click and crepitation.
It was a lovely night. Moonlight turned the earth to an immense silver shield. My solitary house, set apart in its little plot, was like the secret home of a magician where anything might happen.
I heard someone walking softly outside. I was alert and ready in an instant. My heart beat wildly with joy rather than fear.
Concealing myself in a dark corner of the living room behind a window drape, I waited hopefully, the .38 in my hand with the safety off.
A board on the back porch creaked, and then there was a fumbling at a window. I heard the tinkle of falling glass, the sound of a window being slowly raised.
While one hand held the .38, I reached for the light switch with the other.
My bedroom was upstairs. A prowler entering through the porch window would have to cross through the kitchen and into the living room to reach the foot of the stairs.
The beam of a tiny flashlight stabbed the darkness. Someone stumbled against a chair in the kitchen, swore softly. The flashlight beam danced forward into the living room.
When the intruder was halfway across the room, I flipped the light switch. There was plenty of moonlight; I could have managed without the electric. But I didn’t want to miss any small part of this special midnight performance. I had waited too long for that.
It was Frank Reffalto. He stood there with such a stupefied, comical look on his face that I almost laughed. How I savored the moment! The burst of light all but blinded him. He looked around wildly without seeing me.
Aiming for the belly, I fired carefully. Frank Reffalto screamed, dropped the flashlight and doubled over, grabbing at his guts. He teetered there in the middle of the room, doing a crazy lurching little dance while his face turned green and greasy.
I called softly, “Frank!” He looked up and saw me. Smiling at him, I fired again. This one caught him in the chest, and he toppled over backwards.
He twitched and kicked a few times and lay still.
Sighing, I stepped out from behind the drapes. I was sorry it was over so soon, but I was filled with a wonderful sense of peace, of accomplishment. All the dark, knotted tensions melted away. I felt more relaxed and satisfied than I had ever been in my life. A feeling of power, of soaring exhilaration, surged through me like a rare and cherished wine. At last I had found a way to accommodate the lethal impulse which had tormented me for years!
Patting Frank Reffalto’s pockets, I found a small automatic. Taking it out with my handkerchief, I pressed it into his hand. Then I called the police.
There was never any question about the killing. The investigation was purely routine. I told the police that after I heard a noise, I got out of bed, took my gun from a drawer, and came downstairs. I said that I met Frank Reffalto in the living room, that I saw the moonlight glinting on the automatic in his hand. I fired. What else could I have done? Under the circumstances it was sheer self-defense.
Also, as I suspected, Frank Reffalto had a police record. He had been arrested for burglary in Chicago and had spent some time in jail.
I had done society a service. Who would ever believe that I had deliberately lured Frank Reffalto to his death?
I didn’t depart immediately; that might create suspicion. But I remained away from the Cameo bar, and after a few weeks I left town unobtrusively. The climate in that town had become, I felt, a trifle unhealthful. I didn’t fear the police, but I couldn’t be sure that Frank Reffalto’s friends might not resent the manner of his passing.
I drove around aimlessly for a few weeks, finally settling in a small town in southern California. For a time I was content to loaf. I went swimming, read quietly in my hotel room—and reminisced. I was completely relaxed and serene. In my own mind I reenacted the killing of Frank Reffalto a hundred times. The memory of it soothed and amused me.
But, gradually, the past began to pall. Slowly the old tension built up again. I became restless and irritable. I didn’t try to fight off the impulse. I knew what I had to do.
I rented a little house near the outskirts of town. Shortly after that I began visiting a neighborhood bar. My billfold, firmly packed, was much in evidence. Before long I was telling the local bar sops what a sound sleeper I was.
It worked like magic. A few weeks after I began stopping in at the bar, I looked out of my window one evening and saw someone standing across the street, studying the house. I thought I recognized the young punk, but I wasn’t sure.
That very night all my lights went out at ten, and I began my vigil. I padded around the house like a great cat, hungry, silent, waiting to kill. During the day I was all knotted up with tension, but at night I relaxed a little. I prowled patiently, alert to every sound, every shadow.
The break came sooner than I had expected. I was standing in the darkness one midnight, looking out my bedroom window, when I heard someone trying the rear screen door. Only a small catch lock kept it secured.
I tensed as I heard the lock wrenched out. My visitor had no light, but I could see so well in the dark it didn’t matter. When he came into the bedroom, I was hunched in a dark corner, .38 held ready.
I let him cross to the middle of the room where he made a perfect target. He paused there, never knowing he was an instant away from oblivion. How I relished that moment! I felt a surge of wild, primitive joy. The age-old killer instinct coursed through me like a flame, searing away everything else.
Aiming very carefully, I fired at his belt line. He sagged down with scarcely a sound and just lay there. He was so silent, I grew a little suspicious. Just to make sure I fired twice more. Both slugs ripped into him, and he didn’t move.
I was coming out of the corner when I heard the sound of running feet.
I didn’t think; I acted. I was out the rear door like a tiger bounding after his prey.
Someone was running across the field in the back, making toward a fringe of trees. I fired twice as I ran and somebody yelled.
Then he was down there in the burdock weeds and the burnt grass, his strained white face watching anxiously as I circled warily at a distance.
“Have you got a gun?” I asked.
He sounded like a kid who’d got stung by a bee. “No,” he said. “I got no gun.”
I waited a moment and a rush of words came out of him, panic changing his voice. “I’m bleedin’ bad, Mac. My leg. Get a doctor. Hurry up, get a doctor, Mac!”
Grinning, I moved up on him. His mouth fell open; his eyes looked as if they’d saucer right out of his head.
I inched closer, making sure of my aim. I would have waited longer, but a kind of shocked, sudden understanding hit him. He closed his mouth. When he opened it again, I figured he’d start yelling for help.
The slug caught him right between the eyes. He slammed over on his back and lay there motionless in the grass with one leg twisted underneath him at a crazy angle.
After that people came running, including the cops. I was commended for the thorough job I’d done.
But later on I was called in for a few questions. The punk I’d killed inside the house had a gun. But the police were a bit uneasy about the young thug I’d shot in the back field. Apparently he had acted as lookout. But he wasn’t armed. And the police had figured out that he was shot in the head after he was shot in the leg.
I explained that I thought he might be faking, that I’d seen him reach into a pocket for what I assumed was a gun.
“Probably getting his handkerchief to use as a tourniquet,” one of the detectives suggested.
I shrugged. “That might be,” I acknowledged, “but how was I to know?”
That ended the interview. I was dismissed and never called back. If there was any lingering sympathy for the young punks I’d killed, it was pretty much diluted a few days later when a local housewife was stabbed to death by a burglar who got away.
After a decent interval, I left town. I was relaxed, loose, and easy again. I drove towards the East Coast at a leisurely pace. I was content to roll along and look at the scenery. At night I’d stop in a motel and watch television. Sometimes I’d spend long periods just lying back on the bed, thinking about those two suckers I’d killed in California. In my mind I killed them over and over again. It was great fun; it helped hold off my insomnia.
I reached New York and managed to find entertainment for a while. But after a couple of months, I began to get bored. I grew less relaxed as each day passed. My insomnia came back; I found myself getting moody and irritable.
Finally I could stand it no longer. I drove up to Connecticut and looked around. I knew what I was going to do, and I went at it with great deliberation.
I settled in a little town and rented a cottage near the outskirts. I’ve already been visiting the local bar. I carry a thick roll of bills, and I never seem to have any change when I buy drinks.
Lately I’ve been bragging about how only a dynamite blast can wake me up once I get to sleep. The bar sops have taken a definite interest in me.
One of these nights somebody will be around to pay me an unscheduled visit.
I can hardly wait. . . .