text: I once impaled a child with a knife. Or perhaps I didn’t. Memory can be such a fickle thing sometimes. Echoes of memories, events taking place long before today, playback in my mind. They bounce around my head every now and then to invade my brain for long moments. Occupying all space. Today I remember being harassed by a group of strangers in the streets of Paris three years ago. They mocked this hunched skeleton shambling before their eyes with a surprised look on its face. They found reasons to laugh at the expense of this clown. Its looks, its pace, its reaction time, its clothing, its face, its choice of words, its lack of wit...Oh they wanted a laugh you see so...any reason would do really. It was the third time this week that strangers I’ve never met had a go at me. Ah and they had gotten away with it too. Not once, but twice...not thrice however. I was scared you see. So I decided to carry my old trusty knife in my pocket. The one given to me by my father when I was a kid to carve hearts in trees. I didn’t want to hurt anyone of course. I wanted to be safe from strangers and the mockeries. You understand how an hunted animal feeling backed in a corner will react, don’t you? Of course you do. You already know how this story ended. I pulled out the knife when the glee of the pack became evident. With these wide and devilish smiles of hunters finding easy prey. I waved the knife at them. I yelled something but I forgot what it was. Forgive me. I...they didn’t care. They didn’t listen. They never do. I killed four people that day. Every member of the pack. I remember my brief moves to their throats and the sudden drop of their bodies as blood spewed forth. The others didn’t move or shake when they saw their comrades fall. They couldn’t believe it. A prey? Fighting back? Ridiculous! Hopeless! They kept smiling as I charged each of them one by one. I struck. Then moved to the next. I struck again, another body fell. They were none left. I fled. I looked around me as I moved as fast as I could. The crimson knife was still in my small hand. But the world did not care for what I did. The birds were singing. It smelled like shit due to the fertilizers recently used in the public garden to my left. Luckily there was nobody currently enjoying the flowers or walking the street rue de Grenelle. The front of the Invalides was empty this Monday of November. The early sun rays softly warmed my skin and I briefly thought myself in Elysium instead of the 7ème neighborhood as I crossed the esplanade, a park in front of bridge Alexander III. Then I reached the other side and found myself in the neighborhood of avenue Bosquet where my humble abode awaited me. I walked on the road, saw an opening in the gutter leading to the sewers and threw the knife of my father inside it. Gone. I went home. It wasn’t far. Yes I remember doing all that three years ago. Or perhaps I didn’t.