Late Night Walks With A Sociopath.

          As we walked, I couldn't help but notice how she looked at me. But as I always had before, I ignored her feelings, they were just as silly and useless as she was. It was another cold night in the beginning of winter, we walked the streets in search for things to burn. This was just one of hundreds of nights that had gone just the same and always she was beside me, she didn't have to be here with me, freezing in the dark. But she always was and I suppose someone in my situation would appreciate that but I just think she's silly, silly and desperate, which makes her the perfect ¨friend¨ for a kid like me. She looked at me with desperation, with hope, with what I assume is love, and I just looked at her the way you would a tree, it was just there, it was more work to get rid of than it was worth. But I, the gardener to this pathetic little tree, kept dumping poison into her soil, so she'd never see her leaves as beautiful, so she may never bloom. I stomped on the roots that grew out of the ground and tied a rope to her branches so I could swing back and forth, kicking off of her trunk to send myself around again. Circling her like a predator circles prey, and she was just happy to have me around, such a stupid little girl. She was always good at listening to me though, and she would listen to me talk about anything from weapons to video games to the best way to kill someone with an ordinary kitchen knife, tonight like always I carry with me an ordinary kitchen knife. The best part of these walks, of this companionship, is that we don't talk about my mother's addiction or her father´s. Most people would feel unsafe at night with me in the dark holding our sharpest kitchen knife. But not her, I´ve trained her to expect this from me. Her parents did so before me, chaos lives in both of us and we've been burned so many times we no longer shy away from its warmth. And she will trust, she will rationalize with herself every time I am brought up in conversation, she will defend me, she´ll tell herself they just don´t know me like she does, which may be true. But she doesn't know me like she thinks she does and that may be her biggest mistake. As she bends to pick up another stick to add to the ever growing pile in her arms, I raise my hand and land the blade down along her spine, she doesn't even cry out. I pull it back and reinsert it where her lung is located, just in between the third and fourth rib. By now she has dropped her pile of sticks and fallen towards the ground, unable to scream. And finally she turns and looks at me with a mix of shock and betrayal, but deep in her brown eyes I can see she always knew this would come one day. She knows living with me comes with a price. And then I blink and I see her bent over picking up branches and sticks, the knife still glistening in my hand, it has never seen a drop of her blood. As she stands back up she asks me something about my favorite video game and I get lost in explanation, it may still be of use to me to have a ¨friend¨ like her, even when she looks at me with so many useless feelings.