Parletto - The Road to Nowhere.

Parletto:

I get up and head for my room. Opening my eyes, I feel a searing pain in my eyelids. Swallowing, I feel a searing pain in my throat. When I lift my leg, it feels like 5kg weights are tied to it. When I lower it, I feel the pain of the leg pillows being lowered onto the rough floor. And if anyone else is unsure, "no," I don't want to shoot myself in the head. And as it happens, I even have something to use. I enter a large room, which isn't really large, let alone small. Everything looks almost perfectly normal: a couch, a TV, a few chairs, a rug my brother sent me back from Egypt. And almost, those are the only two problems: me and the door. There are currently 12 locks on them. All sorts of anti-theft locks with keys, latches, and locks. Plus, there's a burglar alarm on every window.

My name is Bill Not. I have a terrible last name. They wouldn't leave me alone at school. I think I need a new door because there's no room left for locks on this one. I need countless doors to feel safe. In my last apartment, I had three. I don't go out without my .44 Magnum and my .550 Sig AV. I have a sick sense of insecurity. I don't even know why. I had a completely normal family. When I turned 18, I moved to a separate apartment. And that's when it started. I woke up at 2 a.m., practically sleepwalking. When I woke up in the morning, the door was boarded up with about 150 nails. I spent all day taking them out. When I asked the caretaker if anyone had been around the building, he replied that the only interesting thing the night before was the sound of nails being hammered around midnight. I barricaded the door, but something was bothering me, so I moved. I'm 34 and have had trouble staying in one place for at least two years.

"Throw away the gun," the psychiatrist says curtly, without even looking at me.

"But that's the only thing that gives me a sense of security."

He shakes his head, wondering what he should say.

"Are you arguing with me? I'm the psychiatrist.

I'm just starting to wonder what I'm doing here? Telling some idiot something just so he can tell me something equally stupid?! I leave without a word; the guy doesn't even say a word.

Actually, I could say I look normal. I met a nice girl recently. When I brought her to my place, she gave up after the fourth lock. She left with some curt comment like, "

I'm in a bit of a hurry.

I forgot I'm supposed to tell every woman I live with a mentally ill tenant who needs so many locks, and that I only need to start locking half of them. Actually, half is enough. This is about my safety, not my house?

" "So you're protecting yourself, not the house?"

"Yeah, actually."

The guy gives me a long look, then says,

"Drop your gun."

For a moment, I considered putting a bullet in his forehead. He's stopped seeing a psychiatrist; I practically just stay at home. I collapse.

The doorbell snaps me out of my typical Jamais Vu. I get up and go to the door. First, of course, the peephole, then the crack under the door, and finally the slit in the middle, which I made myself, through which I can check if anyone has a weapon. Of course, with my first peephole, I see that the police have arrived. The jerk is maybe forty years old. He's dressed in a regulation uniform, with three bars on his shoulder, so he's just stopped taking cats off roofs and joined, so to speak, a police party. This guy looks like a guy from the narcotics unit. Why? Because only those people seem to come out of buildings gray with filth. He has no weapon, a mustache under his nose, and a telescopic baton at his belt. I'm terrified; everything I have here is illegal. On the glass table is a SIG, a semi-automatic handgun. No permit. One to three years in jail. On the wall hangs a French Famas assault rifle, a long automatic weapon. Forty-five rounds in the magazine. No permit. Up to five years. Of course, it hangs on the wall on a hook without any display case. So it's clear I didn't buy it out of passion for weapons. I bought it because I don't feel safe. And finally, a .44 Magnum. A revolver that holds six bullets. A handgun, a small-arms weapon. Incredible power. One shot to the torso from a maximum of 10 meters, and internal body parts can be collected within a 15-meter radius. All this is swirling in my head. I might add that there are knives and scalpels lying around everywhere. Until I finally come to the conclusion that I've had a 15-minute blackout, and that this idiot hasn't left yet. On the contrary, he's standing there, banging on the door. The biggest fear is that I'm not even sure if it's a cop. Maybe it's a mafioso. I have to open the door quickly. I'm still standing still. Quick! I can't.

"Who's there?" I call out, playing for time.

"Police. Firearms Law Enforcement." I'm still standing

there like an idiot. "Excuse me, but I've been knocking on the door for fifteen minutes. Please let me in immediately."

I open the door very carefully, hiding behind it like a monkey. The cop takes advantage of this and simply pushes in. He immediately looks at the Famas and looks away, as if he knows they're there. I make a stupid face. It's possible it really is a cop. I'm so terrified that I only just now notice my shirt is soaked in sweat. Another moment and I'll start sweating blood. "

Do you have a permit for these?" he asks, staring at the gun.

Now something inside me stirs.

"Do you have a warrant? Who are you? How do you know me?" I try to sound aggressive. "

I'm with the Firearms Law Enforcement section. Jake Williams. And I can't tell you how I know you or how I found you."

-Could you repeat where you're from? - I'm stalling. I'm saving myself!

"New York Police Department. Firearms Legal Section. Building Kh4.

" "Yeah, right..." I try to look as blank as possible. "

Do you have permits for these?"

"Of course. Wait a moment."

I go into my room. This guy is suspicious; he didn't even show his ID. How could I have been such an idiot and let him into my apartment? I gather a thick stack of warranties, receipts, and hundreds of other pieces of paper from my desk, and under the scrap paper I find a scalpel. I bring him the scraps. I carefully hide the scalpel in my sweatshirt sleeve. He takes the stack of papers from me, bound with plastic, and sets it down next to a patch of sunlight in the middle of the room. I stand right behind him.

"You keep this here?

" "Right, look through the last pages." My voice breaks.

I wipe the sweat from my forehead with my hand. He takes the scalpel out and looks over his shoulder. He'll be leafing through everything. I have to do something. The guy wants to kill me, I'm sure!" I have to defend myself. I take a swing behind his left shoulder. And just as he's about to remind me that it's a fax instruction, not a firearms permit, I plunge the scalpel into his neck. The scalpel's blade is short. But stabbing him there might immobilize him for about fifteen seconds. I pull out the scalpel and for a split second I see a gash on his neck. Blood is oozing from it. It looks like a common razor cut. I take another swing and plunge the scalpel in, rotating it ninety degrees. This creates a star on his neck. Now for the final blow. I plunge the scalpel under his ribs and force it in with all my might. I learned this in my advanced self-defense course. It was called the "three steps." The guy actually goes down, just like the trainer did when I hit him with a block of wood. Only that jerk from the "gun legal" department will never get up again. This whole thing could have lasted literally seconds, or maybe hours. I have this attack, mastered to perfection. I put him on the ground. I move him to a corner, change, and run to the store. I buy duct tape, two packs of the thickest garbage bags, and cellophane wrap. I go home. My corpse lies just as I left it. I take his documents, business cards, and other trinkets, and from the ID I find in his wallet, I determine that he's a police officer after all. It doesn't matter now anyway. I wrap him in all the garbage bags. Then I use almost all the duct tape to seal him. He looks like a mummy and is wrapped very tightly. I wash the footprints, blood, and sweat from the floor. I carry him to my room. For the next four hours, I think. I think about everything, absolutely everything. Finally, it's dark. I wait another half hour and load the corpse into the trunk of my Ford. There's no one on the street. I pull up to the bridge two blocks away. I'm lucky; the water is thick and the stream is rushing like crazy. I push the body out of the trunk and throw it over the embankment. It slowly rolls into the water. I return home. I'm terrified, not knowing what to do. First, I take out my magnum and holster it on my belt.

The police are coming to see me in two weeks. I think the court knows the rest.

"Indeed," he says without looking at me.

I sit down and listen for another half hour. Finally, the gray-haired judge takes out his gavel and places it next to—what do you call it, "the hammerhead"? I mean, the board you tap with the hammer. He looks at me again, raises the gavel, and... "

26 years in maximum security prison.

I'll be released when I'm sixty. I'll be an old, gray-haired old hag. I leave the courtroom devastated. Or rather, I'm led away in handcuffs. Then they take me to the prison in Seeatle, give me a red jacket, and tell me to shut up. I'm the weakest mentally and the strongest physically, which really makes for a psychotic mix. I tell myself it's a good thing I hit someone because I'm safe here in prison. I actually feel safe here—steel bars, a big brass padlock. It's just these people who are so strange."

"Strange, how?" The prison psychologist looks at me like I'm an idiot.

"Just like you. You simply don't understand me. You sit there and listen to people with problems, I could be called a person without problems. And my murder is a whim. My life is nothing. And my psyche is only moderately interesting.

"You're getting out of prison tomorrow, do you have any new prospects?" He talks to me again as if I were a child. Fortunately, starting tomorrow, I don't have to listen to him anymore. "

I have a certain one." The guy looks at me with what seems like sincere interest.

"Parletto is my path for the future."

"I bent him." "Repeat that.

" "Parletto.

" "And that's your new goal?" The guy is surprisingly unsurprised.

"Yes, I want to make that my new goal." "

Whatever that means, let him save you."

I smile and leave the room.