Pin Wheel

My name is Jonathan Milky Milk. I'm a man of few words. Of these words, only a select few of them will ever reach people's ears, and even fewer will leave with a strong enough punch that will make their little shit brains, their little shit neurons, create a new neural link so that they can store them.

When I was a child, my mother had bought a new car from the divorce settlement with my dad. I was almost always sad that my dad was now millions of miles away. But there was this morning where I woke up, brushed my teeth, went to school, and saw one of my friends with her dad—her dad who loved her very much, so much he couldn't even contain it. And for the first time I saw them, I didn’t feel like dying.

At first, I was nervous when my mother started driving me to school. She just finished taking her driver's license, but just like anything else, it eventually turned automatic. Manual cars turn automatic the more you use them. Who remembers the first time a guy walks into work and tells them 'good morning' on a good morning? The security guard at the entrance had formed the link centuries ago, so many times over that the words don’t mean anything anymore.

It’s the same as when people ask, "How are you?" No matter how shit your day was, no matter how not good your morning is unless it's something significant like your mother dying in a car crash because she used the money she got from her divorce to bribe the instructor and never worked hard for anything for her life ever, your answer is always the same. Again, words lose their meaning the more you hear them. 'Good morning' went from a sincere wish upon someone to have a good morning to just something you say to avoid being rude. When someone sneezes and spreads their corona all over your sandwich at Subway, you tell them bless you; you say you're fine because you don’t want to drop your problems onto other people's laps. And I'm sure that ninety percent of people who ask, "How are you?" don’t even care how you are; it's just a filler phrase, something you say to not be rude.

Now I want to ask you a question: Why is it that the things we, as humans, consider rude are the ones we remember the most? Well… the answer is in what I just told you earlier. I'm a man of few words, so people are surprised when I share them, but eventually, that shock is lifted the more I talk to her, the woman I always talk to in the break room.

She's petite with jet black hair; her hands feel like someone who uses gloves full of sand to play tug of war. She's not the kind of woman you would find lying in a ditch with a car she bought from her husband. No. It's got to the point where we started saying things to each other, things that if said in the hallways would get us fired on the spot. I started to walk a little bit faster; I started talking a little bit louder.

But let me ask you something: Why, after so much time, do we still feel the need to say things like good morning to each other? Why don't we just jump into something less certain? Get to know each other better? Learn something new. This pains me deeply, pains me to know that even if we skip the formalities and reveal our true selves, eventually, those things that used to shock us, those things we learned about each other suddenly started to become as natural as saying hello when you ask her something that you'll already know the answer to, just like asking a stranger in the street how they are.

I started to be bothered by this after a few days with this female co-worker. In just a few days of meeting in the break room, I can feel like I'm becoming less of a variable and more of a constant, like I can no longer shock her when I speak. Most people would just tell me to ask her on a date, but what would that solve? After a few years, we'll get married, and then what? After a few years, we'll have kids; then what? We'll be sitting in our chairs rocking from side to side, every question asked, every mystery solved, like a detective novel you've read over and over; you stop thinking about the mystery; you start focusing on the characters. But what happens when you read a book so many times that you already know all their lines? You start reading other books. In better words, you start to cheat, you file divorce, you buy a car, you die.

I like this woman; she's smart, fit, competent, honest, and happy, and I'm sure if I asked her out, she would say yes. But could I subject her to the future I just outlined? No. At first, I was excited to do this job, but slowly, sitting in an office chair for hours, doing shit on a computer that isn't mine, moving numbers that aren't mine, transforming it into cash that isn't mine, the excitement turned to torment, torment to rage. But when I started talking to this woman, I realized torment is a cycle; torment is inevitable, so... the only way I could think of freeing her from this fate was by raping her.

I'm currently sitting on trial while my attorney passionately defends me; the jury looks at me with disgust; her family weeps and shakes their head at me. However, one thing I noticed was the look on the judge's face; he looks... bored... and that makes me smile, makes me happy. How many times did he witness this before? How many murders and tortures and kidnappings and pedophiles and zoophiles and bad cops and cop killers and serial killers and serial killer killers and serial killer killer killers?

On the witness stand is the woman; she's holding it in, her tears, her words, her curses, her shame, her fear, her embarrassment. Deep down, she's thanking me though. Yeah. She might not know it now, but I did her a favor. Because from that day forward, her life will never be the same. And to me... that makes me happy.