Yours truly, Billy Idol.

Dear Abby,
It’s me again.
Quite a bit has happened since we last spoke. After we decided.
In the room, I’ve read about it. The old woman gave me an iPad, and I learned how to Google things and ask questions. What I needed was a thing called a ‘Cleft Lip and Nasal Reconstruction’.
That procedure could’ve corrected the hideous deformity. There were a bunch of pictures of people who looked almost normal after that procedure. If I looked like that, maybe they would’ve let me go to school and out in public.
The two old ones would never have paid for an operation, but jeez…maybe that would’ve saved me from all this trouble.
Abby, do you think they should’ve tried to fix my face? I think so too.
That Joker guy turned out OK.

Dear Abby,
I remember when the old man first started bringing the customers into the room.
It was usually after dark. They were always loud, and they smelled like cigarettes and the cheap whiskey the old man drank. The old man always told me I had to pay my way, and that this was the only work I could do because of the hideous deformity.
They would laugh and call me, ‘donkey mouth’, or ‘Billy Idol’. They’d call me, ‘cuntface’.
I’d lay very still until it was over, and they left.
On the TV in my room, Dr. Phil would call this ‘exploitation of a minor’. He’d call it sexual abuse. Child prostitution.
Abby, do you think this is abuse? I think so too.
Dr. Phil doesn’t know shit.

Dear Abby,
Whenever I fart in the bath, the smell is so horrendous, it makes me gag.
Abby, why do bath farts smell so bad, and how can I make all my farts smell like this?

Dear Abby,
The rage. As time goes on, the rage consumes me. It corrodes any goodness and poisons my blood. I hate the old people. I hate my room, and I hate my mangled face. My body has been changing too. The old woman gives me pills to take, and feminine hygiene products. She gives me books and magazines about puberty. She shows me websites on the iPad.
When I cut myself, I want the tainted blood to leak out and leave me cleaner, less polluted. I’ve been thinking about boys. Maybe there’s a boy somewhere who also has a hideous deformity. Maybe I’d be able to tell him about the old people and the customers. Maybe he’d understand about the rage and the cutting.

Dear Abby,
When the customers are gone, I can’t get to sleep anymore. I lay on my bed and stare at the ceiling. When I do fall asleep, my dreams are obscene and violent. In my dreams, the cutting escalates. It becomes frenzied slashing and I can feel the blood splattering onto me. It isn’t my blood though.
I want others to know how it feels to have a hideous deformity. I want to hack and maim and deface. I want everyone to look and feel the same as me.
On the TV in my room, Dr. Phil might call these thoughts and behaviours, ‘red flags’. He’d say I’m at risk of developing a ‘Psychopathic Personality Disorder’. He’d recommend an urgent intervention and behaviour modification therapy. He’d prescribe clozapine.
The old woman isn’t much bigger than me now.

Dear Abby,
If I shaved a monkey and taught it to wipe its arse, would that make the monkey happier than a dolphin? Dolphins are always smiling.

Dear Abby,
On the TV in my room, I’ve been hearing about the pandemic and the rising mortality rate.
I really hope the old people don’t get sick and die.
Not before I get to kill them both.

Dear Abby,
I smashed my bathroom mirror a long time ago when the rage started. The old people, they never replaced it. I pulled out the biggest shard and I wrapped a t-shirt around the wide end. When the old woman unlocked my door to bring in the food, I stabbed the sharp end deep into her neck. Just under the jaw, next to the windpipe – there, you’ll hit the Carotid artery every time.
I never thought a person’s eyes could go so wide! She slapped her hand to her neck, but the blood spurted out between her fingers just the same. It left bright red patterns on my walls and floor.
She turned and ran back out the door, but before she’d made it to the stairs, her face was grey and her legs were buckling under her. She didn’t scream, she made the same gargling sound like when she brushed her teeth at night. She was breathing hard when she slid down the wall at the top of the stairs. She didn’t look at me, she just stared at the wall with her arms at her side, as the blood leaked out of her mouth and neck. Her teeth were glossy red.
When she stopped breathing, her face was the color of Prestik.
I’d been in their bedroom before; the old woman had taken me in there to try on some of her old clothes. This time, I sat at her dresser mirror. The house was silent except for the sound of the wind outside. The room stank of body odor and the old man’s cigarettes. The bed wasn’t made up. My hair was matted and I had streaks of blood all over my face and arms. I took some red lipstick from the make-up box on the table and tried to apply it to where my lips should’ve been. I ended up with lipstick on my front teeth and nostrils, but I thought I looked better.
By now there was a sticky pool of blood under the old woman’s body at the top of the stairs. I kicked her over and watched as she tumbled down like an over-sized doll. Then I went down after her.

I found the axe in the garden shed, next to the carport. It was much heavier than I’d imagined, but I managed to carry it back inside. I stood in the dark behind the front door for about two hours waiting for the old man to arrive. From where I was standing, I could see the old woman’s crumpled body at the bottom of the stairs. Her neck and some limbs had been broken on the stairs because most of her parts were now at unnatural angles. Her chin was just above her left shoulder blade. Apart from my giggling, the only sounds were my breathing and the ticking of a clock on the wall.
If he’d arrived with customers, I would’ve had to drop the axe and run through the kitchen and out the back. But he didn’t.
At some point, I heard his car pull up. It took him a few minutes to get his key in the lock – he was drunk. He swung the door open, stepped into the room and threw his keys onto a chair. I stepped out from behind the door and brought the axe down as hard as I could.
The axe went into his head like a cleaver into a cabbage. He was dead before he hit the ground.
I sat on the floor as his blood pooled around me. His eyes were open and one pupil was much bigger than the other. Because of the new hole in his skull, his face became distorted and misshapen like a Halloween mask. One of his eyes ended up alongside his nostril. When I wedged the axe out, the blade was full of hair and bone.

Dear Abby,
While I was waiting for the customers, I had time to explore the rest of the house. I had time to put on more lipstick and other make up. I found a wedding dress in the old woman’s cupboard, so I wore that for a few days. I also found a machete and some other weapons in the old man’s room.
I left the front door slightly ajar. When I heard a customer’s car pull up, I stood behind the door and waited for them to enter, just like I did with the old man.
So far I’ve killed three. They walk through the door like cattle entering an abattoir.

Dear Abby,
The stench is bad and it’s getting worse. The customers were wearing masks for the pandemic. I’ve been wearing two at a time to try and block out the smell.
And I’ve been thinking.
I’ve seen reports on the TV about the pandemic. Everybody has to wear a mask. The malls and streets are full of masked people now.
I’ve never been able to walk around in public because of the hideous deformity. In the past, with or without a mask, I would’ve looked like a freak.
Now I can walk through a mall with a mask on, and nobody will even notice me.
I’m going to wash all this blood off and get dressed.
I’m going to take the machete and find the nearest mall.
Before they stop me, I’m going to kill as many customers as I can.

Yours truly,

Billy Idol.