The kid was a fucking menace. Held an entire town hostage. Killing dogs and people—anything for thinking bad thoughts. Controlling what we watched, what we listened to. Forbidding us from singing. This is what happens when pacifists who don’t believe in spanking give birth.
I did what had to be done. Took that axe and shielded my mind—the way my late wife showed me just before she was wished into the cornfield—so that he couldn’t see me coming and ended it in a single clean stroke.
Little did I know that in that instant, things would go back to normal. That it wasn’t the rest of the world that had disappeared, but we who had been cut off, isolated in the bubble of his mind that was severed when I chopped off his head.
Unfortunately, I was the only one who retained any memory of the last six years. The others, who once cowered in fear of him, now looked at me in contempt.
“Child murder!” they called me.
“A cold-blooded killer.”
“A bad man. A very bad man!”
What I am is a monster slayer. I saved the world. And I’ll die in this electric chair with the acceptance that I’m the only one who knows.
© 2021 Nortina Simmons
I can’t be the only one thinking it while watching “It’s a Good Life,” right? In this continuation, our hero is able to rid the world of the little devil. Unfortunately for him, even when you think you’ve escaped the Twilight Zone, it never quite leaves you.
You might also note some similarities to the ending of “Nightmare at 20,000 Feet” in this story.
Nortina's Writing Inspiration Well 