My Confession

My name's John.  If you don't like it, tough.

I'm not telling this to make a name for myself.  And not for your benefit.  Confessing is required to get a parole from this hell hole.

Begin at the beginning.  Yeah, yeah.

Unlike some excuses you'll hear, my going bad had nothing to do with Mom and Dad.  Can't blame poor old Dad.  Never knew him, although I guess there must have been one.  Not many virgin births these days.

Looking back, Mom was a looker.  Her hair never came out of a bottle.

No, NOT HOOKER, LOOKER!  You nit.

Shut up and let me tell my story.  Where was I?

Oh yeah.  Going bad.  You'd probably say that started when I was about 10.  A neighbor had a flea bitten old hound that just lay around all day waiting to be fed.  To liven things up, I loaded his dog food with the hottest pepper I could find.  Livened things up to a fair-thee-well.

Did I feel sorry for the dog?  Hell, he got more exercise that day then he had in a month.

Move things along you say.  Well, sure.  Let's get to the prize winner.  You gotta know there's a body at the end.

In this case, the body was of one "Barry the Rat".

Why the Rat?  He ratted everybody out of course.  Only I wouldn't put up with it.  So I left him with a sure fire sign.  I stuffed a broom stick up his back side to serve as a tail.

"Has there been any progress Doctor?" asked the nurse as they observed through the one way mirror.

"Very little I'm afraid," replied the goateed Doctor.  "Once these writers of hard boiled crime stories go around the bend, they begin to believe their own stuff."