Conscience

What we are hearing is not palpitations of Jack’s heart. What we are hearing are palpitations from Linda, Jack’s girlfriend of eighteen months, from the waiter, from the other patrons at the very fancy restaurant Jack has taken Linda to tonight after so very long waiting. We are not hearing palpitations from Jack because Jack’s heart is beating steadily, matching his always-dependable expression as his fingers lock together around Linda’s throat and he slams her head into the table again, again, again, again.

Now it is three months later and we can at last hear Jack’s heart palpitating as 2000 volts of alternating current courses through his body, charring and melting some skin onto the chair, where a guard will have to scrape it off in an hour or so. We can’t help but smile a little and think of Linda, poor Linda, Linda sitting in the window of her father’s house and staring at the street. Brain damage, they told us, from lack of oxygen. We nodded, we never really liked Linda until we had to feel sorry for her. We always did like little Christine from down the block, though, and we were sorry when she ran away from home and sorrier when they found bits of her in Jack’s basement along with Jack’s sister and mother, and when they carried them out in bags and told us, Jack has no conscience, we nodded. And so we smile a little, now.