The Hate List

The last time he killed, he was 71. That was also the last time he ever did anything. It had all started when he turned 51. Wondering about his golden years, he realized he had made many enemies, people he now remembered loathingly. He wrote their names, down to the very first person to ever cross him, his high school bully. More than a handful of high school bullies took their places on the list. Indeed a list it was. The Hate List, some called it. Written on a legal pad with blue ink, the list of his enemies kept at the back of his mind, constantly screaming for attention. Soon enough, the Hate List became a to-do list.

His very first murder, Jonah McGill, a man that had once fired him from his last job, rehired him and then fired him again. He recalled the very cold laugh every time Jonah called him to his office. The media buzzed with the news of this, since McGill was found seated in his office leather chair with blood blotches on his Cashmere.

The murders were featured on the news. The media liked to display the grotesque scenes of people at their work, house, or cars, bathed in their own blood. That was his modus operandi: observe them for some time and analyze where, when, and what they would be doing that most favored his own agenda. He preferred to kill them at their jobs or in their beds.

Seldom did he make blunders. He was, nevertheless, excellent at everything and anything he did. But so were many restless detectives, whose very passion and determination assisted in pinpointing the murderer. It wasn’t difficult to map the pattern of his killings: staged scenes, unrelated victims, cause of death. The poison he used was cooked in his kitchen. The detectives didn’t know him, yet they did.

The fact that people were now on the lookout for his next mischievous plan did not put him on edge. On the contrary, he fancied the idea that his future victims might get a hint if they had known the ones that he had already taken. People tend to fear what they cannot see more than when it is right in front of them. He smiled himself to sleep sometimes with that thought in mind.

Murder after murder, he scratched each name out of the Hate List. More and more, he craved to end it. He became 61 when just six people were left. Having very few activities now, he managed to finish five in less than three months. That was his second mistake.

The detectives cleverly discovered all of these last murder victims to have attended the same high school at the same time. Whether they speculated that he was the murderer or not, he did not consider. He had decided to hold back on his sadistic hobby, even though only one name remained on the Hate List: Kate Lynch. Perhaps the most satisfactory task is the one that is left last.

Ten years later, he decided to resume the List. Ten years later was also the third time he made a mistake. Ten years later were his last ten years.

He had chosen to do it when she slept. The night would be his ally, as it has been to many dark minds. He entered the house through the back door which was conveniently unlocked. Kate Lynch lived alone in old age, hardly had any visitors. He clutched in his hand the small flask which stored his homemade poison. Many crayon drawings covered the refrigerator door.

At last, he thought, I will have accomplished what years before I had proposed myself to do. At last, the people that treated me badly will have had a taste of what they deserved, my revenge, which luckily for them, comes in a drinkable form. He laughed out loud.

“Who are you?” said a little boy.

Stunned, he searched for the source of the voice that nearly caused him a heart attack. A boy of about five years old stood wide-eyed at the foot of the stairs. What to say, what to do.

“I’m-I’m a friend o-of your…grandmother.” This last word he assumed to be true.

“Oh,” the boy replied, as if relieved. “I’ll go get her.”

He remained paralyzed where he stood near the kitchen entrance. The boy had not been absent for more than a minute when the very Kate Lynch came slowly down the stairs. She looked just like he remembered with a head too big for her body. Her expression was confused, but as soon as she saw him, she gasped audibly.

“My turn has come at last.”