For some reason, I always became hungry around 2:00 p.m. To this day, I still don’t know why. It wouldn’t matter if I had eaten hours or minutes before. When 2:00 rolled by, I found that the diabolical time had stolen every bit of food within me, and left only hunger.
So, it is to 2:00 that I blame the events that unfolded on the 7th of August. For had it not been for 2:00, I would not have been hungry, having eaten just one hour prior on that day. Had it not been for 2:00, Jennifer, Bob, the boy, and Lucy would still be alive. But, like most killings, it all started with a sandwich.
The apartment was hot that day, since the window AC unit had broken down in July and I lacked the funds to get it fixed. But heat or no heat, I walked to the fridge in my denim jeans and white T-shirt, just like it was any other day. Unfortunately, it wasn’t any other day. It was the 7th of August. And it was 2:01.
I don’t usually like talking about it very much, so I tend to let Max do the telling. He was there and unlike me, wasn’t drenched in blood for half the time and crazed out of his mind. Oh, but don’t let him fool you. His hands are not clean, and they drip with my blood. I’ve seen to that myself.
Anyways, I felt that a turkey sandwich with swiss cheese and mustard was best for a hot day like August the 7th. It just seemed to go together properly. So I got out all of the needed supplies: Bread, turkey, mustard, swiss, tomato (I still can’t remember why I chose to put tomato on the sandwich. My imperfections astound me), a plate, and a knife.
The sandwich making process is easy enough, for anyone who hasn’t partaken in it. You place your imagination’s whims within the two pieces of bread, sealing them off save for a small portion along the sides, like a glimpse at a lady’s slip. Sandwiches aren’t modest or shy though. And there’s no need to rip the bread off to see what’s beneath, since you already created it. I wonder, then, what a boring life God must lead. For one who knows and sees all, there is no mystery. Slip or no slip, you know exactly what’s underneath. Life would have no purpose. Would the news report it if God committed suicide?
The mustard squirted out lazily from the head of the bottle, lolling forth like…well…I’m not exactly sure what to compare to mustard. I suppose I shall use itself in comparison and say that it was spewing out much like mustard does. That fits nicely. I drew the mustard onto the turkey and bread in the shape of a star. It made my sandwich special, none like it in the world. But why make something special if it will soon be destroyed? I have no answer to that.
Next, came the tomato. And of course, the tomato was red. Red, the color of passion. Lust. Hatred. Rage. A color that sparked with ferocity and demanded attention. It was not the red that bothered me, as I rinsed the vegetable (or fruit, given modern standards of horticultural definition. One must always be politically correct, even when dealing with plants and planets.) So round and supple. With skin so taught and soft. It resembled the shape of a pregnant woman’s belly, ripe with the bearing of fruit (or vegetables). But it wasn’t the shape that set me off that afternoon.
It was the seeds. Hundreds of little seeds, scattered around a thick pulp. I would later learn that there were 239 seeds inside that tomato (thanks to Max) and can only assume that it was this number of seeds that caused my…spike. I cannot call it anger, for I was not angry. I was just different. I was new.
Smells were different. I knew which smells went to which sources, but they were still different. Colors were also different, yet exactly the same. Perhaps, as I recall all this, I simply understood my senses in a different way than I had been before. Or it could all have never happened.
