A cannibalistic serial killer entering retirement reflects on his accomplishments. Trophies litter his cramped apartment — bloody panties in the living room and frozen fingers in the fridge — and he values them like the retiring company man values that Rolex watch given for thirty years of faithful service. He knows that others value those mundane things like friendships and love but he has always found pleasures in other things: being alone, inflicting pain, carving quivering human flesh, cutting, cooking, roasting…. A cruel smile covers his face as he looks thoughfully out the window.
“Am I ‘evil’?” he muses. “Who decides? We all choose our values. Some choose to help, others to harm. We all choose what to value. Some value human beings. Others value one or another race. Others value spotted owls or sea turtles. Others embrace all sentient life in some complex calculus of descending — or ascending valuation relative to a complex set of psychological attributes. Fine for them. We all pursue the good life on whatever set of values we decide. And that’s me too.” He grins and puts a hand on the moist pane. “Yes, even me.”
As the rain falls steadily outside — though some people love warm sunny days, he loves the dark and moist chill of November evenings — he sits back in his favorite wing chair and opens his most cherished book of poetry. Though many find Frost to be overly sentimental, he loves those immortal lines for they tell his story. And so he reads:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference…
