He Was Very, Very Bad - John Fetto

No one really know how very, very bad Tate was. The Colonel thought he was just tough. The Colonels aides would add mean. They didn’t know what went on inside when he was beating his face with a shovel. The anger would give way to something else, more than curiosity, a kind of excitement. People say that real killers don’t care. Well then he wasn’t a real killer, because there was something more when he did this, no matter what the weapon. Knife, gun, wire, stick, brick, especially his fists. He enjoyed it. He felt excited. Sometimes afterwards he would almost want to giggle and chatter like a school girl, did you see how I fucked that guy up? See the how his head cracked open, first one line of blood and then it gushed as his eye’s rolled back? Did you see how he struggled against the garrote? Kicking, pulling at the wire until his fingers bled? Did you see what he did, how he killed him? This is what he wanted to say, but he couldn’t really talk to anyone. He was too flush with excitement, adrenalin maybe. No, other guys get that adrenalin rush. They’re not excited the way Tate was excited. There was only one thing he could do afterwards, and he had a list of telephone numbers to call to help him do it. The woman would answer to. They knew what they were in for and that they’d be well paid.