Maniac

Larry hung his chainsaw up on the wall of the shed and wiped the blood and hair from the chain. He chuckled to himself remembering the faces of those teenage campers as he drove the saw blade deep into their bodies. After all these years of slaughtering drunken or high sex crazed teenagers the thrill was still there. He was doing God’s work after all so why shouldn’t there be some pride in it.

 It wasn’t always the vicious slaughtering of teenagers that got Larry excited. He was once a used car salesman; which to some doesn’t sound like much of a step up from completely insane serial killer. But he did enjoy selling cars to people. He felt like he was helping them, even if he had to turn a blind eye to all the injustices in the world. He just happened to be in the right place at the right time when God spoke to him and told him to purify the wicked with blood.

He was driving a pretty beat up pick-up he’d borrowed from the used car lot so he could get to his nieces birthday party when it happened. The pick-up truck just lost power in the middle of the woods and just wouldn’t start. This was just too much for Larry. All the things in his life always seemed to go this way. A car stalling. A missed train. A girl rejecting him. The rent going up. His paycheck too small. His ceiling leaking. His parents rejecting him and moving out to be Amish. His sexually abusive priest. The crime. The guns. The stabbings. The rapes. The wars. The bickering politicians. The world.

Larry snapped. He left that pick-up on that two land road and just walked into the woods. It was then that the light came to him. The blinding light of the heavenly Father who commanded Larry to take up the sword of St. Michael the Archangel and become his wrath on Earth to begin the great purification.

He was initially a little resistant. He wasn’t sure why God commanded him to only purify half naked post coital teens at their summer camp but he did not question his holy charge. So he began. So far it was going pretty well. He’d only been shot three times, electrocuted, set on fire, stabbed, run over and drowned and still the Lord kept him moving on his quest.

Larry closed his shed and headed up toward the cottage he’d found and had been slowly restoring. It was a true labor of love and since he knew he couldn’t ever go into town he had managed to do a pretty fair job using the materials available in the woods and from the summer camp. He was just about to settle down into the armchair he’d made from the bones of two teens he’d caught smoking grass when he heard a familiar sound.

“Come in the water Johnny”, giggled a woman from the river.

“Oh my god Sarah, you’re naked”, said an excited male voice.

Larry sighed. His work was never done.