Conten Warning: discusses intrusive thoughts, suicide and self-harm; brief description of blood
and violence
The first time it happens, it goes something like this:
I am lying in bed like a dead man—that is, I’m lying on my back. I’d like to sleep on my
stomach, but the internet says stomach sleeping is no good. It twists your spine in an odd way. It
could probably give you scoliosis or something like that. But sleeping like a dead man is no good
either. I hate staring at the ceiling. And I hate leaving all my vital parts exposed.
Nonetheless, I turn off my lamp. My eyes close. And that’s when my imagination kicks
in. I see him, a man, slipping inside the house undetected. He creeps up the stairs and comes to a
crossroad of doors—one to my room, one to my parents’. He chooses mine. The door creaks
open. I feel a weight at the end of my bed. A knife on my throat.
My eyes open. The lamp goes on. I sigh—there is no one there.
Lamp goes off. Eyes close. I roll over onto my stomach. I suppose I’ll just have to do
with scoliosis.
But the man does not go away, not even when I lay on my stomach, because once you’ve
thought of him, he’s with you for the night. He’s stubborn like that. I see him again, slipping in,
creeping up the stairs, coming to the crossroads. This time, though, he makes the worse choice:
he goes into my parents’ bedroom. They are oblivious in their soft stillness. He bends over my
mother, knife in hand. He puts the cold metal to her throat.
She spurts and soaks the bed in deep red. My dad wakes and screams, scrambles for the
light. When it comes on, his breath catches; he cannot process what he is seeing. There the killer
is, standing over my mother’s drained corpse. The maniac’s face—it's mine. I am the killer.
Eyes open. Lamp on. I cannot seem to fill my lungs. My head snaps to the digital clock at
my bedside. It glows in red, murderous numbers:
11:17.
Sleep does not come that night. Instead, I stare at the white popcorn ceiling. When the
walls start to close in, I read the Children’s Bible next to my bed, just to make myself feel less
dirty.
The morning after, I want to confess the evil thought that crossed my brain. I feel that, if I don’t,
the guilt will eat through my guts. I stare at my mother as she makes her morning coffee.
Do you know I murdered you last night? What does that mean? Am I going to hell?
My eyes dart to the kitchen oven’s clock:
7:22.
Recently, I can’t stand to be near a knife. I’m afraid of what I’ll do with it.
One day, after my mom has made us dinner, steak and potatoes, she sits down with her
plate and scrolls through the TV cable guide. Suddenly, she gasps and asks my dad and I if we’d
like to watch Star Trek: The Wrath of Khan. She’s a huge trekkie. She cuts through the steak
while she asks us. Its meat is bloody and raw.
I respectfully decline. My appetite’s not really there tonight.
I notice the time on the TV guide:
6:24.
I do not want to kill my mother, I tell myself. I do not.
It’s Sunday. Church day. The three of us—my mother, father and I—pack into the car and head
into town. We’re late for service, as usual.
During the sermon, the pastor mentions that there are crimes even worse than murder. He
mentions Sodom and Gomorrah. He mentions sexual deviancy. He mentions...
No. Don’t even go there.
But I do, and when I do, I have to check my phone. I pull it out of my pocket, sneak a
peek at the time:
11:27.
Murder and sexual deviancy are not the only things that get you sent to hell, you know.
Allegedly, suicide does too. Now, every time I glance at a sharp object, I see myself plunging it
into my abdomen. I suppose I must be suicidal. Probably because I’m a deviant maniac. But I
don’t want to be. I don’t want to go to hell. The only thing that scares me more than killing my
mom and dad or myself is burning eternally in damnation.
Crying, I admit to my father my fears of killing myself, of killing him, of killing Mom. He tells
me none of it’s real, that it’s all in my head, they’re just intrusive thoughts. I don't believe him.
He asks me why I’d want to kill myself, anyhow.
Because I can’t stop thinking about hell, I say.
He thinks for a moment.
You know, suicide doesn’t necessarily mean you can’t go to heaven.
Really? I ask.
And suddenly, I don’t worry about suicide anymore.
Years later, after I’ve learned to control the fear, I will absentmindedly look up a condition called
OCD. A section will go into brief details of one of its symptoms: intrusive thoughts. Dimly, a
light will switch on in my head.
But for now, I am a growing boy, maybe 13 or 14 years old, and I am going through the scariest
part of my life. I don't know where they came from or where they started, but the numbers are
always, always there. I see them constantly—on clocks, on walls, in dates and newspapers.
The numbers are:
17, 22, 24, 27, 32, 36, 44, 52, 56.
They mean something, I know they do. I think maybe I’m in a simulation, and the
numbers are sent from men in the sky to mess with me. Or perhaps the numbers are from God
Himself. In my personal Truman Show, I am slowly spinning into a dark yet fitting end.
Probably a scripted end. I am not sure if anyone else is real, but, if they are, they will eventually
come to despise and condemn me. They’ll lock me up and execute me for sins too indecent to
speak of.
The fear of suicide and murder abates. My mind is aflutter with a new fear.
In my math class, I throw a glance at Kyle Kinsley. Then, just as quickly, I glance away.
Kyle and I run in Cross Country together. He is one of the only boys I have ever managed to
become friends with.
I sneak another peek at him, but this time I drink his image—his tall frame, his short hair
that curls at the ends, his square glasses which he rarely wears but, for some reason, excite me. I
love seeing how focused he is, how all else falls away when he’s pursuing something. He is
looking at that sheet of equations as if it’ll kill him if he doesn’t solve it. He is serious,
intelligent, charismatic, funny. He also happens to be vehemently religious. He is good at being
religious. In a way, he’s everything I feel I am not.
He is not my best friend, but I want him to be. I want a lot of things from Kyle Kinsley.
His head turns back toward me. I fix my eyes to my own sheet of math. As it happens, the
answer to the particular question I’m on is 32.
I find myself thinking about more boys than just Kyle. There is another boy on my Cross
Country team named Michael Langston. I notice the way his eyes light up when he laughs one
day while we stretch before a race, and it's as if a warm bulb is radiating my insides.
Later, when I receive my runner’s bib, I can’t help but examine its number with a charged
curiosity:
“14452.”
Sometimes I will go home and dust off my Bible (I’ve upgraded from a children’s edition) and
find a specific verse, the one about a man laying with another man and the abomination of it all.
The verse is Leviticus 18:22.
Alone in my room, I want to look something up. A few pictures of a few men, men without
clothes, men in alluring positions, men with other men. It’s just to prove something to myself. To
prove these thoughts are the same as the old thoughts, intrusive and meaningless, evil yet hollow.
When the pictures show up, I try my best not to feel anything.
I beg myself to not look at the time. I plead.
It’s 5:56.
A sign from God. Or maybe it’s a sign from the men in the sky. Either way, I know my
fate is sealed.
Soon I am looking forward to these pictures, every day after school, every night.
One particularly windy evening, my parents go out for a date and leave me at home. As is
my habit, I take out my phone and google the ever-familiar terms, but my finger will not press
“Enter.” I’ve just seen the time. It is 7:27, and 27 is the worst number. The one I see most. It is
prophetic and malevolent.
Suddenly, I know that if I do this, something terrible will happen. The men in the sky are
warning me, they’re giving me a chance. Or maybe they’re only teasing me.
The numbers mean things. Of that I’m sure of. But this time feels different. They’re
waiting for me to search those pictures up, do my unspeakable deed. God’s waiting for me to do
it. Satan’s waiting, too. They’re all just watching and smiling. They’re going to do something
unspeakable. The one thing I’m afraid of most. They’ll take them away.
If I look at these pictures, my parents will die. Yes, I see it now. Mom and dad on their
way home, the wind whipping at the trees. Somewhere, a man in the sky presses a button and
one of the trees crashes down through their windshield. They are crushed to death.
So I sit here, my thumb poised over “Enter.” I think of monsters, of gaunt men, of knives.
I repeat the numbers over and over: 17, 22, 24, 27, 32, 44, 52, 56, 17, 22, 24, 27, 32, 44,
52, 56, 17, 22, 24, 27, 32, 44, 52, 56, 17, 22, 24, 27—