Black Sheep



They pulled onto the driveway. One by one. Like lambs to a slaughter-

''Robert. Control yourself. The days are over. The past is gone.''

He took a deep breath and walked away from the bedroom window. It was a clear day, perfect

''Perfect for a killing. ''

No. It was perfect for a picnic. Maybe that was what he'd do.

He looked at the bottle of pills lying next to his bed. He lived alone, now. After he had killed his fifth wife. He was always the black sheep of his family. Just how black he was, though, was questionable.

Taking the bottle of pills in one hand, he used his free hand to pry the lid open. His mouth dropped open.

The bottle was empty.

Now his family was ringing the doorbell downstairs. It looked like he had to tough it out today.

10 AM
"Rooobert!" his mother exclaimed, instantly pouncing on him the moment he opened the door.

"Hi, mom," he said, embarrassed.

''What are you embarrassed for? She's a dead woman''-

Stop. That. Now.

He took a deep breath, and shook the hand of his father. He then proceeded to hug his sister.

"I'd never thought you'd invite us, Robert," she said. "You were always sort of a... black sheep, I guess."

"I don't think being anti-social makes me the worst member of the family." He reminded her that he his book on the study of sheep once had been a bestseller... in the sheep-studying section of Amazon, that is.

"Well, it's good to see you guys," he said, looking around at their faces.

Such nice faces to wear

"Do you want to come in?" he asked them. They all eagerly stepped into the house.

11 AM
The TV was blaring in the living room. His dad sat on the couch, silent. One would think that he was nothing but a couch potato- in recent years, he had gained quite a lot of weight. The truth was that he was shot through the neck in the Vietnam War. Robert had never heard his father's voice one in his entire life. When he was young, he would dream of a magical day when he woke up and his dad was next to him, talking to his mother in a rich, deep voice. Of course, that day never came. Until today.

His dad turned his head towards Robert, and opened and closed his mouth, pushing in imaginary bits of food in his mouth as he did so. Then he pointed to the clock on the wall.

"Just one more hour, dad," Robert reminded him.

Then you can create your masterpie-

"One more hour until lunch. Can you wait? Are you hungry now? I can get you something." Robert turned around to grab some biscuits when he heard a large slamming sound behind him. His father had slammed a TV remote down onto a table. Robert looked back to catch his dad in the middle of shaking his head.

Robert walked into the kitchen. His sister would usually help him cook, but she probably followed his mother out into the backyard, to "examine the wounderful anatomy of flowers." The more time he spent away from people, the better. He never knew when he might break out into a frenzy.

He was humming a bit as he opened up the oven to take a look at the prime rib roasting inside. For a split second, he saw something else, though, something from a memory long forgotten...

A head.

His fifth wife's head.

He had beheaded her when she came home late one night. Her lipstick and hair was messed up, and his inner beast just lashed out unexpectedly. Still in a frenzy, he had stuck her head inside the oven to cook while he dragged the body outside, burying it in the garden-

Your sister's in the garden now, won't you want to add her to your collection outside?

When he finished burying her, he was already gaining control of himself. He had rushed back inside when he spotted a solitary black sheep grazing on the grass nearby. Of course, no one could interrogate a sheep, but in this case, he wanted no one to know what he was doing. And that included his family.

He rushed back in when he realized that he had nothing to eat for dinner. He opened up a frozen TV dinner in the fridge and was about to stick it in the oven when he realized he'd left something in there. But the oven door was already hanging open.

His wife stared up at him, her hair frizzled, the golden luminescence now solid black. The face had turned from something pretty to something resembling a zombie: eyes hanging out, parts of the brain exposed. And then there was the mouth, still open in amazement from Robert slicing her up with the axe.

He used some mittens to take the head out of the oven. Gore spilling everywhere, he sliced it up, and, realizing that he didn't want to go back outside, reluctantly ate it, bit by bit, trying to make the parts of the skull look like pork ribs.

When he was done, he threw the bones away. He put the TV dinner in the fridge, and, in an act of defiance to his inner monster, vomited onto the floor.

It took him three days to clean the mess up, gore and vomit.

12 PM
Robert had a bell. He rung it every time he finished cooking meals. It didn't work very well, due to the fact that he only used it when he was cooking meals, and also to the fact that he rarely cooked meals.

Kill them taste them feel them violate them

"Lunch is ready!" he called out. The back door opened and closed, and a few seconds later his sister and mother came in, talking about flowers.

"Can't you see the yellowness of this?" His mother was holding a sunflower in her soil-covered hands. Soil was dropping onto the floor.

"Mom, only some things are truly beautiful, and this... this isn't," his sister replied. She looked at me. "Sorry," she said, "I'll clean it up."

Three days

"I-"

SHIT!

His hands started shaking uncontrollably. He was in a battle with himself, trying to fight off instinct while keeping his secret.

"I-I-I-"

OH, F- SHIT!

ROBERT

DON'T 

GO

IN

THERE

His feet started moving. He knew what was going to happen next. A rage. And he was forced to watch as he killed.

"RUN!" he shouted.

"Robert, what's going o-"

Robert grabbed her throat and started choking her. His mother screamed and ran off. His father was still probably in the living room. Hiding? Better find out soon.

He tossed the limp body of his sister on the ground, as if she was just an oversized doll. Her blank eyes stared up into the ceiling.

Mary...

He cried. But only his eyes cried. The rest of the body went outside the door and towards the garden shed.

As he closed in on the shed, it burst open, and his father came out with a hunting rifle. Loaded.

He tried to yell, but could only make threatening gestures with his rifle.

Robert walked on.

12:15 PM
Bang!

It missed.

Robert kept on walking.

Nearly there

WHAT THE FUCK DID YOU DO TO MY SISTER YOU SICK LITTLE BASTARD I'LL GET YOU FOR THAT

''Oh, yes, The anger. Good.''

He growled and leaped towards his father. His father only had time to fire off one shot before Robert got him on the ground.

"Uh!" his father grunted as Robert brought his full weight upon him.

He slashed at his father's face, slowly ripping it apart, into little shreds. Two blue eyes flew off and rolled off into the thick, green grass.

He finally stopped after about a minute, realizing that his fingers hurt. He looked at them, salivating. They were bleeding. The fingernails were probably off in the grass somewhere. He didn't care.

''The voice... it was everything I expected it to be...''

''Your mother... she will be EVERYTHING I EXPECT HER TO BE.''

He got up and started back towards the house. There was one more victim to claim. And that was the holder of the womb that gave him life.

12:30 PM
The rage was great this time. Robert wondered if this was to be the last rage he'd ever have.

Maybe.

His vision was slowly getting blurrier, and his walking speed was slowing down.

Wh-

He looked down. It looked like his father didn't miss after all.

The entire left section of his white shirt was stained red. He was going to bleed to death if he didn't find first aid soon.

We won't need first aid.

Fueled by a sudden surge of adrenaline, he walked towards the door and pushed it open.

When he went in, he thought he could hear whispers. He strode into the kitchen, eyeing his dead sister on the floor, before grabbing a cleaver. He looked up. The whispers were coming from upstairs.

"Don't you dare CALL THE POLICE!" Robert shouted. He heard a scream coming from his bedroom, and he walked there.

It was getting harder to walk. One foot in front of the other. His feet were getting heavier.

YOU CAN DO IT COME ON

12:45 PM
As he was about to turn the doorknob, he heard his mother say something from inside.

"Y- You can't kill me!" she shouted.

"Let's see me try," he shouted back, and opened the door.

She was cowering against the corner with nothing but space to guard her. He smiled.

"Now it-it-it-"

His hands were shaking again.

He was gaining control.

"Robert...?" his mother whispered.

"R-run, mom... come on, get out before I... I... I-I-I-"

And the control faded away.

She was right next to him when he tightened his grip on his cleaver and swung it towards her head. It beheaded her instantly. Just like with the axe.

His inner beast having done its job, it released control over his body, and he fell to the ground.

"M-m-mom?" he asked.

No reply.

He had no more strength. Maybe... just maybe... he could end this quickly.

He crawled to the window, his vision getting even blurrier. He was losing a lot of blood. The phone was still off its receiver, and he could hear a person on the other end shouting, "Ma'am! Are you all right? We still need to get your address! The phone... somehow, it's untrackable! Ma'am!"

He picked up the phone. "It's... it's off the village, just to the right..."

"Who is this?" the officer at the other end shouted.

"I'm... I'm the person that killed my family... the address is 15 Greenville Avenue... it's..."

He dropped the phone.

1:15 PM
He lay there, silent, unbreathing. The sirens in the distance grew stronger and stronger, until there were footsteps inside the house.

In a matter of minutes, policemen were around and in the house, securing evidence and the bodies, and trying to identify them.

A detective walked through the yellow tape that surrounded the scene.

"Officer," he asked. "Where is the killer?"

"Upstairs bedroom. Dead."

The detective rubbed his chin. "Why did you think he did this?" he asked the officer.

The officer shrugged. "I don't know. It was a drunken frenzy, I guess, but judging from how much blood he lost between the time his dad shot 'im and his death, it was something more..."

"His sister always said that he was the black sheep of his family," the detective offered.

"Yeah," the officer said. "I guess that explains it."

They looked at the scene in silence. "Any witnesses?" the detective asked.

"Just the sheep. We still have some questioning to do, but this place is so remote that I think no one came to watch the show."

"You mean that guy?"

The detective pointed to a solitary black sheep grazing on a hill in the distance.

The officer shrugged again. "Yeah. The black sheep."