I remember I was looking down at the grey table I was cuffed to when a detective entered the dark room. The detective pulled up a chair and sat down opposite to me.
“Christopher Arts,” the detective started, “That's your name, isn’t it?”
I looked up at her and answered.
“Yes, that is my name.”
The detective looked back and asked, “Why did you kill that man?”
I stared at her straight in the eyes and said. “Let me explain.”
The detective pulled out her pen and I started to tell her my story, my reason for shooting a man who was walking alone in an alley.
---
It was December 14th, 1995. I was fifteen years young and happy with my little home and family. I was drawing in my small black sketchbook while my mother looked through the newspaper for a job. My dad was about to get home from work, so we had been waiting for him. He got home around 7 o'clock. When he walked through the door, he told us to get ready to go out.
This was a big deal for my mother and me. We didn’t have much money. In fact, it was hard enough for us to have food in our house, so going out to do anything was uncommon for us. My mother and I were caught off-guard by my father telling us to get ready, but we did as he said anyways. He wanted to take us out to eat at our favorite place, “The Fandom Diner.” It wasn’t that far away from where we lived and the food they served was both good and inexpensive.
My mother got up from the kitchen table and put on her old white jacket. I followed along and put on my red and blue jacket. We left the house and began to walk towards the diner. It was about three blocks away, so it was a short walk.
We entered the diner and began to eat. I remember how good the french toast I had ordered was. I enjoyed it very much.
We all had finished eating, so my father went to the counter to pay the bill. My mother and I decided to wait for him outside. That's when things started going south.
The sun was no longer overhead. The snow outside was falling from a dark sky, like an abyss. No stars were visible, not even the moon was. My mother and I were standing there in the cold waiting for my father when we heard these dreadful words.
“Give me all your money.”
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“That is when I met him,” I told her.
“The man you killed today, did he kill your mother?” she asked.
“Yes he did, but he did more than just kill my mother,” I responded.
“So, what happened?” The detective asked.
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My mother was a good person. She avoided conflict. She would have given the man money if she had any, but the problem was that she didn’t have any.
The man was angered because my mother told him she had no money. He became indignant. He was all but screaming at her, telling her she was lying. He started grabbing at her bag, planning on going through it himself. Instinctively, increasingly getting scared, my mother made a quick movement to get in front of me. Perhaps he thought she was trying to attack, and that is why he shot her. I’m sure he would have shot me as well, but my father heard the gunshot while heading towards us and started to run. He found his wife on the ground, covered in blood, and a man dressed in black holding a silver revolver. He was wildly switching between pointing it at me and back to my father ready to shoot if one of us made a move. I was frozen in shock, but my father jumped into action. He jumped towards the man, pushing the line of fire past me. The man grabbed the gun, sending off another round into the building, and they both struggled to gain control. Four more shots pierced my ears. When I saw that my father was winning, my attention returned to my mother. Her white coat was stained red. Her hair was covering her face, so I brushed it back. I looked back to my father to see that the man lost his grip on the gun.”
“Where did the revolver land?” asked the detective.
“The revolver landed in front of me, so I picked it up. I felt some anger towards the gun before I realized it wasn’t the gun's fault in the least. My father had pushed the man to the ground, they were both on the ground but one of them was bleeding. I didn’t know who until the man pushed my father off of him. He got up and saw me, a boy covered in blood with a revolver in his hands that was pointed right at him. So the man ran.
“What did you do?” asked the detective.
“I pointed the gun at him, I squinted, and I pulled the trigger. Nothing happened, the revolver had run out of bullets. I was still on my knees by my mother's side. The snow was falling, making my hair look white, and making my mother feel so cold and wet. I wanted to stay with her, but I heard my father groaning. I put the revolver in my pocket, not thinking about what people would think if I were caught with it, and I started knocking on doors. I asked for help, but nobody did anything. I assume they didn’t believe me. I thought that I would have to run all the way to the nearest police station in the snow by myself. Thinking back on it, I wasted a lot of time since the diner had a phone I could have used to call the police. Unfortunately, the thought never crossed my mind. The police station was very far from the diner, and it would’ve taken too long to get there on foot. I had to find another way to get there. I decided to try hitchhiking but that didn’t work. Most of the people who lived in my area were too poor to afford a car or would only use it when they needed it to save on gas. Mostly wealthy people would pass through our small town to get to the next city over, so they wouldn’t pick me up. I had to try something else.
I ran up to a nice car that was stopped at a stop sign and I knocked on the window. There was a man inside who was talking on the phone. He rolled down the window looking annoyed. I had two choices. Choice number one was to tell the man to give me the phone so I could call the police, and choice number two was to take the car and risk driving with no experience in the snow.
-----
“What choice did you make?” asked the detective.
“I chose the most logical choice, of course."
-----
Showing the man the revolver I told the man to give me his phone and he did. He sped off and I ran towards my parents in the alleyway next to the diner and dialed 9-1-1. I knelt down by my father who was now covered in blood. I hadn’t realized it before but he had gotten shot during the struggle. I grabbed my mother and held her, because she felt so cold I wanted to warm her up. At that point, she was already dead. I started to talk to my unresponsive father, unsure of what else I could do. It didn’t take that long for the police to get there because someone had actually called after the first gunshot. The police arrived but there wasn’t much they could do at that point. I gave them the gun but they couldn’t track who it belonged to. All they could do was take care of me. I was asked many questions and I answered them the best that I could. I even gave them a description of the man but they never found him. I was put into foster care.
There, my anger festered, and I began to plot. Everyday, all I could think about was getting revenge. I wanted to see the man who did this to me pay. I wanted him to feel what I had felt that day, and everyday since.
I began to collect information on the crimes that took place after my parents' death to see if I could find a pattern. I had no luck. It seemed as if the person who killed my parents went into hiding. I had to continue my search. My parents' killer was not going to go unharmed. I walked around town knocking on every house, building, and trailer I could find. I had no luck doing that either. By the time I stopped knocking on the doors, I found myself next to a church.
This was an old rundown church but at the time it was still being used by the locals. My parents always went here to pray in times of need. So I entered because I needed help as my parents did before. I wanted to ask God to help me out. I knew what I was asking was sinful but maybe God listened because when I entered the church I found myself standing in front of a tall middle-aged man. This was the man I had been looking for.
The man looked at me. He then smiled a sad smile and whispered, “So this is why God had called me here.”
Now I don't know if it was fate, God, the devil, etc. What I do know is that I had found the man I had been looking for, and it was time to avenge my parents.
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“--And, what happened once you confronted the man?” Asked the detective.
“You know what I did, I did what I had to do.”