During the summers my friends would all go out of town. I would often be lonely and cry for hours on end in my bedroom closet, behind all my clothes where my parents wouldn't hear. There was one other state of emotion I experienced during those times, boredom. This would inevitably lead to mischief. The grown-ups always thought this was cute, and it was fun. It seemed to be the perfect drug, something wrong I could do and get smiling, understanding sideways looks for. I hated those summers, and loved them. It was then that my friends were gone, but Alexis was there. It was then that we had those sideways smiles which would inevitably be turned into nervous glances when my other friends returned. I don't remember exactly when they were replaced, I don't want to remember, but I know they were. That's when it became hard. I didn't know what had happened to that sacred ground where both my excitement and the approval of the grown-ups resided. Alexis made it easier. His approval replaced theirs.

It was easy for us, then. We would spend long hours hiking through the woods shooting at anything that moved with our bb guns. Our kill would then be taken back to the rusty barbed wire fence near the end of the road opposite my yellow and green house. No one went back there, under the octopus tree. It was there that we buried what we had killed. They became mounds in the dirt with small twig crosses tied with twine sticking out of them. We would stand there, looking down on what we had killed, looking at what we had conquered, smiling.

I was the first one to make the move to larger animals. I told myself that I didn't really mean to hit the cat, that it moved in front, that I was aiming for the branch. I told Alexis, and he smiled. The cat had a larger cross than normal, but it was still made of twigs, and it was still tied with twine. I think I stopped telling myself that the cat was an accident when we stood smiling over three larger crosses, the third freshly cut from the tree above us, its earth freshly turned over.

I don't think we understood what was happening. I don't know if I can let myself think that we did. Especially after Alexis made the next graduation. We were sitting on the barbed fence, in the place where it sagged a little from our frequent visits and supercilious vigils of the once small graveyard we had both founded and furnished. He had seen the newspaper that day and something in it had prompted a visit to the hospital. I protested, the long walk looming in my mind.

"I have something in mind," he said.

Our walk to the hospital passed in silence as I speculated as to our mischievous purpose in visiting the "no-kids-allowed" building. I stopped halfway into my next step when the idea came into my mind. One look at me and Alexis knew I had it. He smiled. There was something in that smile, it seeped in through my eyes into my mind and body, and I wanted to go. I smiled back, and we went in.

The first time we pulled the plug on a patient we didn't know, we expected something to happen. We expected and needed something to satisfy our anxious anticipation. Nothing did, and after waiting several minutes we had become angry. No one had come running like we had thought. No one had even noticed that we had killed the sixty-four year old, gray-haired, five foot ten, 184 pound man named Edward Newbanks that lay in front of us, losing his warmth. We wanted to sit on top of him. We wanted to look down on him. We wanted to walk away as others went into a panic. We didn't because they didn't. It surprised us how easy it had been, and it enraged us that our presence had not been acknowledged.

We quickly then moved from room to room, patient to patient, from Elaine Curtson to Austin Shepherd. many of them were not unconscious as Ed had been. They would lose the fresh supply of oxygen from the respirator and sit up, gasping and groping, looking at us in utter terror. It was then that we had our satisfaction. It was then that we sat upon the high, unscrewed swivel chairs, and smiled.

Submitted by songthen/written by Saudercain