Hands

When you’re alive, nobody prepares you for seeing the hands of your killer.

Those hands, you’ve watched them operate in normal life, doing vanilla things we all do: scratch a nose, juggle a biro, thrum fingers on a tabletop in thought. You’ve seen them do good things. You’ve been there, you’ve witnessed those moments, and you were happy to witness them. They made you feel glad to be alive, glad to be a part of this wonderful tribe called humanity. I give; you reciprocate. I am your brother; you are my sister. We all make out well and share our time in the sunlight.

Mr Staniland made out well. He did good things, and he had goodness done unto him. But nobody prepares you for the bad things those very same hands can do. Those hands and their purpose can change in the blink of an eye, transforming like a switchblade from closed to open. And there’s no lesson for that.

He was a teacher, a bestower of knowledge and wisdom. I learned a lot from Mr Staniland: I learned of Joseph the Dreamer who interprets the dreams of The Pharaoh, I learned a mnemonic to help memorise the vowels, I learned numbers of days in months and planets in the galaxy. All good things.

I learned he had a temper. I learned to never raise my voice or to speak back to him. I learned never to look him in the eye or to smile or sneer. I learned to be grateful when he whipped my bare backside with his leather belt. I learnt how it would be even worse if I cried or whimpered, don’t you make a fucking sound boy, do you hear me!? Those were the bad things.

But I heard. I was a good boy, and I learned. But still, I died. My obedience was all for nought.

Mr Staniland’s hands killed me. They are good at killing, those hands; very efficient. I think they’ve had lots of practice; it didn’t seem like his first rodeo. His skilled hands knew just the correct amount of applied pressure a little boy’s throat can withstand. He knows the perfect pounds-per-square-inch to ease in to the task and then just, click, turn off the lights. That’s what he said to me, I remember: you’re a good boy Charlie, you shine bright. But now I have to turn off the light. I’m sorry!

Click. And I was gone. He apologised. And he cried while he did it. I didn’t understand that then. I don’t understand it now. That’s a lesson he never got around to teaching me, maybe that would have been on the syllabus in the next semester? But I watched my classes go on without me the following year. I saw my classmates, one year older, one year wiser, one year removed from remembering me sitting amongst them. Mr Staniland spoke with his words and his hands, his killer’s hands, and he never did elucidate on why one may cry when taking a young life. Maybe some things go left unsaid? You have to make your own mind up about them? It’s a judgment call, eh?

Well, I’ve a judgment call of my own now, I think. But the time to make it is on my side. Do I think time will be kind to Mr Staniland? I do not. Time isn’t on his side. The good he’s done in life will be snuffed out by an altogether different end. Those hands that knead invisible dough in the air while he describes the meniscus effect in a glass of water, or the way canal locks work, those hands that clicked off lights will soon lay still.

I watch him in class. I watch him drive home. I watch him remember to pick up milk. I watch him stop off outside the school in the next town - watching the next town’s children. But he doesn’t know he too is being watched. He doesn’t know I’m there. Who knows, maybe he’s already forgotten about me? I’m old news now. A thrill gone stale. A body gone cold. A light gone dark.

But I’m here, and I see the one he likes. That little bright spark in the crowd. A bit of a loner that boy, I think. Shy? Definitely. I was shy too. But not anymore. Now I’m wise. In fact, I wish that was etched on my gravestone that mom had to use her scant life savings to buy: here lies Charlie Wells, shy in life, but wise in death. 

Maybe Mr Staniland will be wise in death too, when I put him here. Maybe he will learn. It’s never too late to learn. I can teach him. He can learn from me the wisdom in death he never had in life. He is a faker, Mr Staniland: fake smile, fake words, fake tears, fake apology, fake life. But he’s lucky, I’m here to help him, and I’ll help him see truth, the truth that clicking off young lights is an evil thing; possibly the most evil thing of all.

I watch him in his home. I watch him with his wife and children. His skilled hands weave in the air as he teaches his children the tricks of the universe and the oddities of the English language— “…So you see - bough, through, laugh, cough; all words ending in ugh, but none pronounced the same…!”

They too have seen a killer's hands flutter and fly before them, but they don’t know it. His children aren’t wise like me. Their lights are on, but nobody is home.

I want to scare him there, at his home. But I have to be careful. I don’t wish to open the eyes of his children to the victims of death - of me. I’m a victim. But I have the right skillset now, my hands are taught a new purpose; I can scare that man all to hell. My hands, my skilled hands are invisible to him. He didn’t see my hands move his chair. How does his favourite painting fly across the room that way? How are the words, I know you killed them all, appearing on his laptop screen while he marks homework? Why is his leather belt - that leather belt that he used to teach me a lesson - swinging on the door handle when he’s sure it was tucked away in his closet?

That’s all me. In fact, no, that’s all him. He put me here. How many others has he put here, I wonder? None so far since me at least. I’ve been watching, just to make sure. I know his game and the next one he wants to play it with: little Freddie Winstanley caught his eye. Freddie’s golden hair does stand out so when he’s out in the schoolyard, stood there looking awkward and beautiful, oblivious to the perfection of his light and the darkness ready to extinguish it.

It’s funny, I was oblivious to that too. But I can recognise it now. And I can protect it and keep it shining bright. That’s my purpose now, I think. My hands are newly skilled and have all the strength I need. I can feel the balance of pounds-per-square-inch it takes to get the job done. My hands too will be the hands of a killer. Mr Staniland, he’ll see. He’ll learn. My hands will weave and teach him the lesson. His eyes will be opened, and his light clicked off, but unlike him, I won’t cry or apologise. He deserves to be forever in the dark. And I’m going to put him there.