Confession

He was an asshole. Is that enough justification?  Probably not, but it worked for me. 
I met him some years ago on the school bus.  He noticed my glasses and promptly called me four eyes and asked me where he might be able to locate my penis.  I turned my head, frustrated that he had chosen me of all people to verbally bludgeon on this innocent ride to school.  He then smacked me upside the head, demanding an answer.  I continued to ignore him for the sheer fact that this kind of issue is generally resolved from ignoring the perpetrator.  They should, in theory, get bored performing the talk if there is not a certain response…
Victor Miter wasn’t of that variety. 
He once again popped me upside the head, repeating the question of the location of my genitals.  Upon the realization that he wasn’t going to be leaving any time soon I decided to answer.  I asked him why he wanted to know.
“Well, fagot, I was just wondering if queers have any balls?” he asked.  My mind immediately spit out a response that would bruise me later that week.
“Don’t you have any?”  Probably not my best idea.  But the violence was really starting to push me into a realm that I didn’t like.  I was getting angry and embarrassed. 
He glared and raised a fist to punch me.  The bus driver, apparently oblivious to dialogue but respondent to a raised fist, told him that if he did punch, he’d be walking home.  Mr. Miter lowered his fist, not wanting to be late home for his daily beating from his own father.  Yet, as soon as the driver began paying more attention to the road, he grabbed my head and pulled me close to him.
“You listen good bitch, you’re gonna fucking pay for that.  Hear me?”  And just as quickly I was released, quite literally, seconds before the driver checked the mirror again to reassess the trouble going on between me and Miter.  The bus driver was this story’s version of See No Evil.
The promised payback took a few days.  I assume that Mr. Miter had done this enough to know that if seen threatening me in the same day, he would be the obvious suspect if I were to show up bruised the next day.  Hence he waited until Friday afternoon to sneak up behind me and sucker punch me. 
As I was bent over recovering from the surprise attack, he came around the front of me and backed up a step.  He then approached me as though I were a football being sent to the other team after a score.  Luckily, for me, his aim wasn’t as true.  He hit me just below the chin, getting the toe of his shoe into my chest.  Painful, yes.  Deadly, not as much as if his toe had collided with my nose.  My natural response to this strike was to fall backwards upon my rear end.  He walked straight up to me and grabbed my slightly unruly hair and spit in my face.
“Think your funny now queer?”  He then proceeded to punch me approximately 6 times in the face.  He broke my nose and dislocated my jaw.  He also popped out a couple of teeth, 3 to be exact, one of which I swallowed.  He then let go of my head.  Fading in and out now as I was, I couldn’t begin to comprehend what was next.  But when a warm shower began to hit me I knew, he was urinating on me.  “Marking his territory” so to speak.  I lay there, trying to figure out why I had questioned this maniac at all.  But I couldn’t exactly move, so I simply took it in. 
Once the flow stopped he once again bowed over me and grabbed my head.  He pulled me close to him and once again asked me if I thought I was funny.  I coughed up a no and he said that was good.  If I did something like that again, he would take care of me again, but he’d make it worse.  Unable to feel the left side of my face, I wondered what he could possibly do worse than this without killing me.  I decided that I really didn’t want to find out.
He then ran off and I was quickly discovered by some other kids.  They called the hospital, the hospital called my mother, and my mother called the school.  Since I was only two blocks from the school she correctly assumed it was a classmate.  They all asked me who had done this to me.  I responded honestly, telling them his name and which classes we had together.  Then they asked if I knew why he’d come after me like this.  I told them of the bus ride earlier that week and they all nodded saying that I should have known better than talk back to a bully, but they would take care of it.
To a degree, they even held up their end of the bargain.  He was expelled from the school and charged with assault.  They sent him to juvie for a couple of months where he was apparently a model youth trying to turn his life around.  He got his GED a couple of months before we graduated and they released him shortly after, telling him that if he could keep in mind all of the lessons that he learned while he was there, he wouldn’t have a problem re-adapting to life outside of the walls.
But he had something else on his mind.  He wanted to once again take revenge for an act that I had taken against him.  This time he claimed he wouldn’t be satisfied with leaving me stranded on a street corner where I could be seen.  He wanted to me keep in mind that I was the lowest person on the world’s food chain.  He wanted me to know that no matter what my i.q. was or what job I held, I just another fucking queer ass nerd.  Another little fagot.
This he divulged to me while he had me cornered in an alley about 6 months after his release.  He once again came from behind me and sucker punched me and then threw me to the ground.  At this point he took the time to tell me about where we both stood in the world and why I had to be put down like the little bitch dog that I was.  During this monologue I retrieved a small knife from my back pocket and when he came after me, I pulled it out and stabbed him in the gut.  His shock was absolute.  Why he didn’t think I would arm myself was completely beyond me.
He stumbled backwards.  I held fast onto the knife and stood there, hopefully looking threatening.  He fell to his knees, a wounded animal.  At that point I went ahead did what any halfway decent hunter does.  I put the poor animal out of his misery… 
I walked up behind him and grabbed his chin.  I didn’t say anything to him, I just pressed the blade to his throat and dragged it very slowly across his throat.  Once again, he sprayed me with a warm liquid, only this time, it was his blood, not piss.
I am writing this letter to the police as an apology and form of turning myself in.  For two weeks they have been unable to get close to the killer, me.  However, I am filled with two very diverse feeling that I fear for different reasons. 
One is guilt.  I didn’t like Victor, nor did I have a reason to.  Yet, was it really me that should have decided his life?  The first stab was self defense and I could have left it at that.  But I took it upon myself to take another man’s life.  And that will live with me forever.  I fear the guilt because it has begun to manifest itself in the form of a ghost that constantly sits just inside of my field of vision, taunting me.  Always telling me that it is my fault that he is dead.
The second feeling though was elation.  I had taken out the bully.  I have gone into battle with a tested warrior and won.  Initially I thought that this is what roman gladiators must have felt like.  To have the world at your fingertips because you bested another on a field of combat.  And yet, that high is beginning to wear off.  I’m starting to catch myself wondering who else deserves this kind of justice?  Perhaps the man down the street who is trying to sell the world a different God?  What about that lady at McDonald’s who can’t ever get the damn orders right?  Maybe they deserve it too.  But I’m smart enough to know, I cannot be their judge, jury, and executioner.
So please, come and take me away before I hurt someone else.  Put me somewhere where I can’t even hurt myself…