Renaissance Killer: Being the Wholly True and Unexaggerated Account of the Life and Times of Henry H. Hugo, the World’s Most Gentlemanly Contract Killer

By Christopher Poole

The most compelling autobiography of the decade!

 

 

Known throughout the world for years as the deadliest, most elusive killer of his kind, and wanted by virtually every law enforcement agency across the globe, famed freelance hitman-for-hire Henry H. Hugo finally tells his amazing story in his own words. From the traumas and indignities of his troubled childhood, to his early days just starting out in his controversial profession, to his triumphs over all manner of uncommon adversity, the die-hard crime enthusiast will positively thrill to the eclectic, eccentric exploits related in harrowing detail within the pages of this tell-all tome.

Alternately deeply disturbing, darkly funny, and strangely erotic, Mr. Hugo’s unprecedented memoir is a tour de force of violent action, heart-rending drama, unnatural perversity, and strange and colorful predicament, the likes of which the ranks of history’s foulest individuals could not invent.

• Language: English
• Publisher: AuthorHouse
• Release date: Mar 24, 2008
• ISBN: 9781467851633

Christopher Poole

Christopher Poole is 24 years old. He lives in Dover, NH. This is his second novel.

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© 2011 Christopher Poole. All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means without the written permission of the author.

This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, names, incidents, organizations, and dialogue in this novel are either the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

Published by AuthorHouse 04/11/2023

ISBN: 978-1-4343-6448-7 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4678-5163-3 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2008901762

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Thinkstock are models,

and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Thinkstock.

Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

FOR MOM AND DAD.

And for Stephanie, who’s been like the sister I always had.

No doubt, he is horrible, he is abject, he is a shining example of moral leprosy, a mixture of ferocity and jocularity that betrays supreme misery perhaps, but is not conducive to attractiveness. He is ponderously capricious. Many of his casual opinions on the people and scenery of this country are ludicrous. A desperate honesty that throbs through his confession does not absolve him from sins of diabolical cunning. He is abnormal. He is not a gentleman.

—Vladimir Nabokov, Lolita

The killing was the best part. It was the dying I couldn’t take.

—Craig Volk, Northern Exposure

CONTENTS

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Chapter 0

A Man of Wealth and Taste

Chapter I

I Am Born

Chapter II

School Daze and Holy Crap

Chapter III

A Rude Sexual Awakening

Chapter IV

The Turning Point

Chapter V

My Victory Day

Chapter VI

The Summer of Marcus

Chapter VII

The Autumn of Gwendolyn

Chapter VIII

Finding the Joy in Life

Chapter IX

To Those Who Are About To Kill, We Salute You

Chapter X

Shrinking Heads

Chapter XI

We Play Fair and We Work Hard and We’re In Harmony

Chapter XII

As Great As All Outdoors

Chapter XIII

It’s My Party, and I’ll Cry If I Want To

Chapter XIV

Good Night, Saigon

Chapter XV

Exodus

Chapter XVI

Surfside 6! Who Lives There?

Chapter XVII

Vision Quest

Chapter XVIII

The Lullaby of Broadway

Chapter XIX

Every Girl Cries the First Time

Chapter XX

Workin’ For the Man Every Night and Day

Chapter XXI

Come On, Pretty Mama

Chapter XXII

When Irish Eyes Are Dying

Chapter XXIII

A Fiery Rematch With Josiah Trent

Chapter XXIV

I Never Drink…Wine

Chapter XXV

The Good, the Bad, and the Seriously Fucked-Up in the Head

Chapter XXVI

Hugo of Arabia

Chapter XXVII

Life During Wartime

Chapter XXVIII

The Passion of the Hugo

Chapter XXIX

Bushwhacked

Chapter XXX

Quelle Chagrin

Chapter XXXI

The Devil and the Deep Blue Sea

Chapter XXXII

My Island Home

Chapter XXXIII

Sins of the Father

Chapter XXXIV

Face to Face With the Elephant Man

Chapter XXXV

The Tears of a Clown

Chapter XXXVI

Strawberries

Chapter XXXVII

Vivre la Difference!

Chapter XXXVIII

Manglers on a Train

Chapter XXXIX

Waltzing Grim Matilda

Chapter XL

The Ballad of Palooka Dan

Chapter XLI

Will No One Rid Me of This Meddlesome Priest?, and Other Short Stories

Chapter XLII

Loverboy

Chapter XLIII

Sinner Take All

Chapter XLIV

Hugo and the Tar Babies

Chapter XLV

Hearts, Flowers, and Drastic Measures

Chapter XLVI

Road Warriors

Chapter XLVII

Hugo Does Hollywood

Chapter XLVIII

The Impudent One

Chapter XLIX

Fall From Grace

Chapter L

The End of It

Chapter LI

When the Wood Is Dry

Chapter LII

In Closing

CHAPTER 0

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A Man of Wealth and Taste

M y flight lands punctually (two minutes early, in fact, according to my two hundred and thirty-five thousand dollar Rolex, which is never wrong) at Los Angeles International Airport, and I drain the last of my Cheval Blanc ‘89 (excellent year) from its crystal glass.

Disembarking from the plane with the rest of the first class passengers, I tip a flirtatious nod to the handsome, auburn-haired steward who has seen to the charging of my glass with sparkling French wine over the course of this particularly dull, uneventful flight (really, dear reader, I sometimes wonder how I find the strength to go on at all), and emerge in Terminal 4 of the world’s fifth busiest airport. I pop quickly into the little boys’ room, then proceed downstairs to baggage claim where I retrieve my single leather suitcase, and conduct a brief but thorough examination of the combination lock to assure it has not been tampered with.

From here I stride purposefully – but not hurriedly – towards the exit, delaying only long enough to purchase for myself the day’s edition of The Los Angeles Times.

It was a cold, raw, bitter bastard of a February morning when I’d boarded American Airlines Flight 32 at JFK in New York, four hours – and as many time zones – ago, but California is more agreeable, meteorologically speaking, and I am permitted to enjoy the fleeting warmth of a yellow sunbeam on my face as I board the bus bound for downtown L.A., some fifteen miles to the northeast.

Now, ever since the dawn of my financial prosperity, I hardly ever ride buses anymore, and I certainly never found it to be a pleasurable experience when I was destitute. Buses are filthy and smelly and full of bacteria, not to mention the positively grotesque pack of sub-humans with whom one is forced to share the ride. There are times, however (and this is one of them), when the anonymous, uniform conveyance of public transportation is just better suited to one’s agenda than would be a rental car.

Taking a seat up front – the back is where you’ll find candy wrappers, wads of dried gum, and discarded condoms littering the floor – I hold my suitcase on my lap, and am addressed unceremoniously by a vulgar, pot-bellied man in a yellowing t-shirt and a pair of blue jeans with holes in the knees, sitting across the aisle from me. His accent is distinctly of the southwest – Texas, probably – and a faded tattoo of a topless, amply-endowed mermaid festoons his hairy right forearm. All that’s needed to complete the picture of such an obvious redneck is a rifle full of buckshot tucked lazily underneath one sweaty armpit, and a John Deere cap over that bad comb-over.

So, what are ya, some kinda fag or somethin’? he asks me.

I don’t dignify his query with a response, though I must commend him on his astute power of perception, which apparently belies his outer demeanor. On the other hand, I doubt that I am one of the more difficult homosexuals to spot on the street, as I do tend to make myself rather obvious. But, as I always say, dear reader, if you can’t be with the chromosome you love, then love the one you’re with.

I admit to the crime of looking ‘interesting’. I’m a tall, thin, pale-skinned man, with long, skinny arms and legs. I’ve been told in the past, by more than one person, that I could pass for the brother of that illustrious literary pedagogue Ichabod Crane, and, in school, the other children used to call me ‘scarecrow’ (until they discovered I was gay, at which point they began calling me other things). My hair is shoulder length, and very blond, both my earlobes are pierced, and my chin is sharp and pointed. My eyes are of a pale blue, my cheekbones are high, as if pulled back by wires, and my lips, deep red though they are, are ghoulishly thin. Often I’ve wished they were fuller, but I’m damned if I’m going to pump them full of collagen and come out looking like some freakish Angelina Jolie.

On this particular day I am wearing a tan leisure suit (yes, I’m aware the leisure suit attained its peak in 1975, but I’ve always retained a fondness for it) with matching fedora, and a pair of immaculately shined Donnell leather shoes. And this has been typical, dear reader, of my day-to-day dress for several years now.

The bus makes a stop on Hill Street, in what they call the Historic Core of downtown L.A., and I get off, my suitcase clutched in my right hand, my newspaper folded in half beneath my left arm. I remain standing at the curb, and, after the bus has driven from my sight, I hail a taxi. Once the yellow cab has screeched to a stop in front of me, I climb into the back and instruct the driver to take me to a Holiday Inn I know in the Old Bank District.

I can see from the driver’s identity card that his name is Muhammad Abdul, so I eschew any further conversation. After a few questions from him concerning the nature of my visit and whether I’ve ever been here before fall by the wayside unanswered, he seems to get the picture, and clams up.

The Holiday Inn is hardly my kind of accomodations, dear reader, but in this case the location is right. After paying the cab driver, I stroll into the hotel lobby and ask the desk clerk for a room on the third floor.

I’m afraid the third floor is full, sir, he says. May I propose one of our excellent rooms on the second floor?

No, I’m afraid it must be the third, I insist. And on the north side.

I slip my bony hand inside my coat, then pull it out again, wallet at the ready, and the clerk’s eyes just about pop out of his head as I lay down ten one hundred dollar bills on the desk in front of him.

With a shower, if you please, I add as an afterthought, remembering my patronage of L.A.’s public transportation system.

I think a room just opened up, sir, said the clerk, disgustingly sycophantic, pocketing the money and picking up the beige telephone at his right elbow. Just give us ten minutes, please.

Precisely ten minutes later, I sign in as ‘John Hancock’, and follow the bellhop to my room. I insist upon carrying my suitcase myself, and there’s nothing the boy can tell me about my room that I don’t already know, but I tip him anyway, though not nearly so handsomely as I tipped the desk clerk. And, after the eager little go-fer is out of my hair, I commence preparing for work.

In a shielded compartment in my suitcase, beneath my toothbrush, toothpaste, and a change of clothes, lies the disassembled M82A1 sniper rifle, given to me early in my career by a very dear, now departed friend. I snap it together like a three-dimensional jigsaw puzzle, load a single bullet (it’s all I’ll need) into the sleek, sexy weapon, take it to the window facing out over the street, and fix it to the bipod so that it’s aimed, more or less, at the big window set into the luxurious penthouse apartment across the way. By this time it’s only mid-afternoon. I have some hours to burn yet.

I strip off my clothes, go into the bathroom, and have a nice, hot shower with plenty of foamy soap, cleansing away the sticky, grubby filth of the city’s common element. After ten minutes, I leave the bathroom without taking a towel (I like to air dry), pick up the phone, and dial room service.

A grilled sirloin steak, medium, I order, concisely. A baked potato with plenty of butter, some green beans, and a bottle of Merlot.

After returning the receiver to its cradle, I sprawl, gloriously naked, onto the king-sized bed and reach for the TV remote. I hardly ever watch TV at all, dear reader, but I have precious little to entertain me until my mark shows up.

After clicking through a heap of gauche drivel, I smile to find a Welcome Back, Kotter rerun airing on TV Land. I have no special love for the show itself, but I’m not embarrassed to tell you that I’m absolutely head-over-heels for that yummy John Travolta. I’ve fostered a crush on him ever since he did Saturday Night Fever, and I own a copy of absolutely everything he’s done. I even sought out and acquired a copy of Austin Powers: Goldmember after I’d learned that it featured a cameo appearance by my favorite celebrity.

The show is halfway through when there comes a knock at my door.

Advance, friend, and be recognized, I proclaim.

The door opens and a waiter appears, carrying a silver tray, and he nearly drops said article when he observes me in my state of casual undress, arms folded behind my head, legs outstretched, phallus twitching ever so slightly as Barbarino flexes his muscles.

Erm…your food, sir, he gulps, adorably.

Ah, yes, just set it down on the bed, I tell him, not taking my eyes from the TV screen.

He approaches with some caution, lays the tray down, then draws back and departs without another word. I chuckle to myself, sit up, and tuck into my early bird dinner. Not the finest of cuisine by any stretch of the imagination, but adequate.

When the episode ends, I heft the TV remote once again and take another trip through the channels, cascading past me like the roaring waters of Niagara. I begin to think I shall not find anything to suitably ease the digestion, but then, to my delight, I stumble upon Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory on channel fourteen, and I remain there long after I’ve finished my meal.

The sheer volume and frequency of commercial breaks ultimately overwhelms my patience, and I turn the set off, resolving instead to continue in my paging through of my dog-eared copy of Great Expectations. I’ve just reached the part where Pip learns the ugly truth about the identity of his benefactor when I notice a light flash on in the penthouse across the street. He’s early, but that’s no inconvenience.

Tossing my book aside, I somersault off the bed and roll over to the sniper rifle. Looking through the telescopic sight, I can see a paunchy, balding Hispanic man sporting an open Hawaiian shirt, a pair of khaki shorts, and a pair of floppy sandals. He’s got a cigar clenched between his yellow teeth, and he looks inexplicably pleased with himself as he stands like a king before that huge window. His name is Julio Cortez, and he’s a famous drugs baron, so you needn’t feel sorry for him, dear reader.

The bipod is steady, the silencer is equipped, and the crosshairs are centered on Cortez’s broad forehead. I don’t stand on ceremony. I just pull the trigger and watch my little lead wasp rocket across the street, punch a tiny hole through the window, and sting Cortez right between the eyes. He falls on his ass and stays there, a look of pure surprise on his face. End of job.

Calmly, and with not a single breath wasted in haste, I clean and disassemble the rifle, then return it to my suitcase’s shielded compartment. I then proceed to don my fresh suit (a very fetching powder blue ensemble) and store my other one inside my suitcase. Before I leave the room and head back to the airport to catch a night flight out of this tacky town, I draw a Dunhill cigarette (my preferred brand going all the way back to my adolescence) from my gunmetal cigarette case, place it between my lips, and light it up with the same chrome Zippo I’ve carried for decades.

Leaving us so soon, sir? the desk clerk inquires, as I pass him on my way out of the lobby.

I’m afraid so, my good man, I tip the fool a courteous nod.

Is there anything we can do to better accommodate you?

Thank you, but I found your facilities quite suitable to my purposes, I assure him. The view, in particular, was breathtaking.

CHAPTER I

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I Am Born

P ermit me, please, to introduce myself, dear reader. My name is Henry Hadrian Hugo, and I am one of the world’s most gifted contract killers. As of this writing I am forty-five years old, and number four on the FBI’s list of its Ten Most Wanted Fugitives. The book into which you are about to delve is my collected memoir, related without exaggeration or myth, compiled not only for your education (and, perhaps, your entertainment), but also for the sake of my own grasp at relative immortality. You see, dear reader, people in my line of work don’t always live to be of a ripe old age, and though I am thusly forced to entertain the possibility that even one so talented as I may come to an unhappy end, I simply cannot bear the idea of just fading away after earthly death, leaving not a trace of myself in the hearts and minds of generations to come. That is why I am sending this manuscript out into the world; to ensure that my story will be preserved, and my contributions to society remembered. Thus I put pen to paper (with full cognizance of the potential for pesky Son of Sam laws to hinder publication), in the hope, dear reader, that the story of my life will live on with your good self long after I’ve shuffled off this mortal coil.

To wit, let us begin at the beginning.

I was born in 1966 (the same year that saw the murder sprees of Richard Speck and Charles Whitman, and the death by lung cancer of Walt Disney, incidentally) on the night of the eighteenth of April, in St. Matthew’s Hospital in South Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. I was supposed to be one of twins, but I’m afraid I was the cause of an unfortunate accident in utero just before my mother went into labor. After going all the way to full term with my twin sister, I bobbed left when I suppose I should have bobbed right, and my umbilical cord wrapped around my sister’s neck, choking the life from her fetus. The sad result was my sister’s stillbirth, for which my parents never, ever forgave me. So, you see, dear reader, I had that much of a strike against me from the very start of my days, as I could never hope to recapture the unconditional love and adoration of those who should have cherished me most of all.

My father was Gregory Hugo, aged thirty-one at the time. He was the family breadwinner, providing adequately for us with the reapings of his own used car dealership, called Fourth Street Motors – so called because it was on Fourth Street, naturally. He was a fair man, but strict and severe, and we children knew not to cross him unless we wanted to get acquainted with the business end of his belt. He was also a scornful, emotionally distant man, dear reader, especially when it came to his relationship – if I may call such a thing by that name – with me. They do say these days that young boys who lack a caring, guiding father figure are liable to grow up into fags, and I suppose I must be compelling evidence of that hypothesis.

My mother was – and still is – Linda Hugo, twenty-seven years old at the time of my birth. Luckily for us – that is, her offspring – she was far more nurturing than our father, though she liked me the least. Even with Dad gone these past twelve years, we still bristle in each other’s presence, and I haven’t spoken to her in ages.

I have two siblings, both older than I; one brother and one sister. My brother Stephen is eight years my senior, and was always cruel to me. He was a spiteful bully who resented me from the day I was brought home from the hospital, and may the God who killed Goliath and massacred the Egyptians strike me dead, dear reader, if my very first memory isn’t that of his thuggish face scowling down at me as I lay helpless in my crib. As for my kind sister, Sarah, she is five years older than me, and was always very maternal where I was concerned, loving to play with me and teach me things, and never approaching me with any degree of sternness or severity. Looking back, I think she sensed the way in which my mother and father withheld their love from me, and was perhaps trying to fill that void herself. The poor creature must have known she could never save me from such traumatic rejection, but bless her wholesome heart for trying. I know she would make a fabulous mother, but, now in her late forties, I fear she’s waited too late. Oh, Sarah, my angel, I wanted so much more for you.

We lived in a split-level house – with a porch, a garage, and a modest front lawn – in the South Philly neighborhood of Southwark, though you may know it better, dear reader, as Queen Village, which they renamed it in the late seventies (ironic, really, since the late seventies was the time during which I discovered that I, myself, was a ‘queen’). It’s Philadelphia’s oldest neighborhood, and home to a lively variety of entertainment in the form of several nightclubs, conventions, and swingin’ social scenes; not that we, as children, were ever allowed to sample much of it, as our parents were devout Catholics, and brought us up so to be, and if you know anything about Catholicism, dear reader, you know that the faith regards all forms of entertainment or recreation as inherently chock-a-block with sin. (I still remember the screaming match I had with my father when he discovered I had gone to a cinema to see Grease.) Pope Paul VI was on the throne in those days, and if you weren’t tending studiously to your homework assignments (we all attended parochial school, of course), then you were saying the rosary and begging God’s forgiveness for all your faults.

But, dear reader, I am getting ahead of myself, and am liable to do so from time to time throughout this narrative, as I am not a writer by practice – throughout my life, the sword has proven perennially mightier than the pen – and must be forgiven for any unprofessional digressions from my subject of the moment. We’ll broach my childhood in due course, but I mean to devote this chapter to my infancy.

As I have told you already, dear reader, my mother and father’s cup did not runneth over with appreciation for me. I don’t mean to say they didn’t take care of me. I was as healthy and secure as any child from a white, middle-class family of the era could hope to be, but the diligence with which my parents fulfilled their duties towards me was more in keeping with the letter of the law than with the spirit. Was I the victim of cruel neglect, dear reader? I suppose that’s a matter for debate. On the one hand, my appointed caregivers did everything to ensure my safety and comfort. They fed me when I was hungry, cleaned me when I was messy, tended to me when I was ill, and changed my diaper when it was soiled. But it was instances like these, dear reader – instances when they were obligated to fly to my assistance – that were the only times when they cared to have anything to do with me. If I didn’t need something from them immediately, they put me out of their sight and out of their minds. If Mother wasn’t holding me to her breast, then she wasn’t holding me at all. (I was to learn later in life that she weaned me from her teat more eagerly than either of my siblings before me, and I do believe that, had she not been such a good Catholic, she’d have gladly started me on a bottle and formula at my birth.) They didn’t bond with me, dear reader, nor did they care to interact with me beyond providing for those most basic of needs of which I was incapable of meeting myself. You see, I was their child, but I was also the little shit who had killed their beloved daughter. Did they love me? Would they have wept for me if I had perished? Dear reader, I really don’t know.

Most analysts, I suppose, would rule that this cold detachment from my parents is due thanks for what I ultimately turned into; that is, a homosexual sociopath with little capacity for affection and absolutely no respect whatsoever for life. Of course, I might have turned out this way even had my parents been Mike and Carol Brady. Nature or nurture, dear reader? I’ll leave you to draw your own conclusions.

I was to learn in years to come that it had been dear, sweet Sarah who had nurtured me through my early, vulnerable days. Possessing compassion and selflessness (virtues of which I, personally, cannot boast) beyond her tender years, she seemed to recognize a soul in need of a friend when she saw one, and became, in a quaint sort of way, my surrogate mother. It was she who stayed on the floor with me and played with me while I chewed on stuffed animals and plastic toys, it was she who kept watch over me for hours as I slept, and it was she – and she alone, dear reader – who heard me gurgle out my first word. She tells me it was ‘mama’. I like to think I was referring to her.

I am indebted further to her for keeping brother Stephen at bay. He was one of those brutish little bastards that frighten young mothers away from having sons. I’m sure you know the type, dear reader. The boys who scare babysitters, shoot bebes at cats, and play too roughly with the other children. I wouldn’t have stood a chance under the same roof as he if not for my darling Sarah. Subject to all manner of malicious schemes though I was, Sarah was always there to spare me the worst of it. If not for her courageous defiance of the brute – she wasn’t even half his size, and he certainly terrorized her as well – I might not have lived to take my first steps (and you may judge her for that as you will).

He tried to put you in the oven, Henry, she told me when I was of an age to take such a harrowing revelation in stride.

We were raised in the parish of Our Lady of the Sacred Covenant, dear reader, under the auspices of the elderly Father Patrick Fitzpatrick; a kindly, inoffensive gentleman who, when last I heard, was still living to this day, albeit within the confines of a home for the aged and infirm. Our community leader, alpha priest, and school principal, Fitzpatrick was the man who baptized me approximately one month following my birth. On the appointed Saturday, I was swaddled in the family christening dress (yes, dear reader, that’s dress, irrespective of gender, and it is extremely unlikely that being dolled up in said garment contributed anything at all to my hormonal abnormality) in which Stephen and Sarah had both been swaddled before me, and taken to the church, where assembled the members of my immediate family, alongside my paternal grandparents (who lived only as far away as Scranton), my prospective godparents (a pair of septuagenarians in perpetually ill health, whose fortune would have been miraculous had they been likely to outlive Father Fitzpatrick, let alone my blood parents), and a smattering of my parents’ friends (a few employees from my father’s auto dealership, and some hens with whom my mother was known to associate on weekends). I was handed over to Fitzpatrick, who sprinkled a few drops of holy water upon my brow and made the sign of the cross, during which time, I have been told, I opened my little mouth with a fixation on Fitzpatrick’s forefinger. I suppose I was just reacting with the oral fascination of any infant that finds an object placed near its mouth, but I like to think I was trying to bite the old buzzard.

After the ceremony, my parents invited everyone back to the house for refreshments and conversation, as is the custom. I cannot state to absolute certainty, of course, that any of the following actually occurred, but I have been told that Stephen slapped more than one of my mother’s friends on the behind, one of my father’s employees drank too much and became embroiled in a very personal argument with him, and an ambulance had to be called for my new godfather, who ignored his doctor’s wisdom, attempted to metabolize that which he couldn’t possibly, and promptly suffered his third stroke.

While I came out of my infancy and into my early childhood relatively unscathed physically (my brother’s fratricidal attempts on my life notwithstanding), I’m sure the same cannot be said for my psychological condition. Indeed, I wouldn’t care to gaze upon the scarred, disfigured mess my young psyche had become – ravaged by issues of rejection, abandonment, and self-loathing – for all the crystallized sugar in Gumdrop Land. After all, dear reader, there are things in heaven and Earth that frighten even this wicked, worldy creature.

From the very beginning of my stunted emotional development, I was a meek, passive, soft-spoken little boy, utterly lacking in courage, assertiveness, or indeed any particular strength of character. Thanks to the discouragement of my oppressive elders, I was set on a path to becoming the human equivalent of a wet dishrag. But therein lies the wonderful paradox, dear reader, for though my exterior was that of the most harmless and unremarkable of milksops, there simultaneously stewed inside of me a terrible storm, raging through my confused and frustrated mind, and it stood to reason that it would not be stifled and shut up forever.

Why do they hate me? I asked Sarah, sometime after the passing without incident of my ‘terrible twos’, which, like all the rest of my potential for healthy self-expression, had remained bottled up inside of me.

They don’t hate you, sweetie, she answered, a very precocious seven now.

Yes, they do, and so does everyone else, Stephen sneered at me.

No, they don’t! she shouted at him, before turning back to me, her eyes warm with affection. Henry, Mommy and Daddy love you very, very much. If it doesn’t seem like it sometimes, it’s just that…well, some parents play favorites, that’s all.

Yeah, said Stephen, his arms folded across his chest. I’m Dad’s favorite, Sarah is Mom’s favorite, and you should never have been born.

Sarah scowled, and punched Stephen on the shoulder, and Stephen returned the blow, much too hard. I could tell she wanted to cry, but she always tried very hard not to cry in front of me, as that would always lead to me crying.

"I wish you were my mommy, Sarah," I lamented, hugging her tightly, after Stephen had gone off to burn some ants with a magnifying glass or something.

Well, I kind of am, aren’t I? she smiled down at me, hugging me back. I’m kind of your mommy.

This, dear reader, was true enough. You already know about the immensely important role Sarah played in my young life, and whether I needed the answer to one of life’s great riddles, required a Band-Aid on a skinned knee, or simply desired praise for something I had constructed from colored paper, string, and dry macaroni, she – not Mother – was always the first to whom I would go.

Alas, dear reader, not even sweet Sarah’s love was sufficient to spare me from the dark side, and I found quite early on in life that I enjoyed a certain affinity for mindless violence and an attraction towards humanity’s less flattering side. I can’t say whether this fetish has its roots in the sexual, the vengeful, the fanciful, or any other single realm of my consciousness, but throughout my childhood and adolescence, any snippets of bad news I happened to catch coming over the radio or TV put me in a slightly more chipper mood for the day, and even made me giggle sometimes.

I remember some of the more pleasant moments. The National Guard’s shooting of four students at Kent State in 1970 was the first travesty to really get my rocks off, and 1972 followed up obligingly with the shooting of George Wallace, and the slaughter by Palestinian terrorists of eleven Israeli athletes at the Munich Olympics. (Even my father – an outspoken anti-Semite – found the massacre atrocious, but not I.)

The macabre parade of hatred and horror marched on. I laughed out loud when the TV reporter from Sarasota, Florida, blew her brains out during a live broadcast. My eyes gleamed as I listened to the grisly details of Robert DeFeo, Jr.’s inexplicable murder of his family in what would come to be known as the ‘Amityville Horror House’. I couldn’t deny a certain sick satisfaction in hearing of the twenty-five babies burned alive in the ill-fated maternity wing of a Yugoslavian hospital. I cheered the debut of the Son of Sam, I was held transfixed by the reports of the Jonestown incident, I danced to the tune of Mount St. Helens erupting, and I was humming ‘Yellow Submarine’ to myself all evening the night John Lennon was put down like a blind, arthritic bloodhound that’s had its day.

Do you disapprove of me, dear reader? You’re entitled to your opinion, of course, but know that I am removed only a degree or two from your gentle self. I am not a monster, but a simple man, and though my convictions be unsentimental to say the least, I implore you to take a good, hard look into your own soul, dear reader, before you cast judgment upon me, and ask yourself, honestly now, just how many times this bitch we call life could put the thumbscrews to you before you, too, began taking solace in the misery and suffering of others.

But this is neither the time nor the place to delve into such heady things, as this chapter finds me but a small and unimportant child, and there will be ample opportunity later to shock you further with additional drawings back of the curtain enshrouding my admittedly abnormal mind.

Naturally I can’t remember every little thing occuring during this early stage of my life, my powers of perception being somewhat less then than now. I do, however, recall the important things, including the year in which both the Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr. and Senator Robert Kennedy were assassinated, though I was barely two years old at the time. The King killing didn’t faze my family to any great degree, as we had little vested in the civil rights movement or the plight of the black man. (My parents were not racist per se, but simply preferred to remain out of Negro affairs. To dear old Mom and Dad, that sentiment’s most stringent application was in the geographic sense; wandering west of Eleventh Street unaccompanied was a belting offense in my family.)

As you might expect, we – and by ‘we’, of course, I mean ‘they’ – were significantly more distressed at the murder of that good Catholic, Mr. Kennedy, whose heroic brother had been taken from us – though not me personally – a mere five years prior. Honestly, I don’t think my mother wept so bitterly when it came time to bury her own husband.

America’s conquest of the moon and triumph in the space race the following year perked everyone up, however, and my family, just like every other all across our proud nation, gathered around the TV to watch, in hushed excitement, Neil Armstrong take that first giant leap for mankind. I’m sure the picture quality was perfectly horrendous anyway, but I was used to gray, grainy images, as we never had a color set when I was growing up. (When I would ask my father about it, he’d only reply that it was bad enough we had a TV at all.)

I didn’t see what all the fuss was about anyway, and if you, dear reader, are somewhere within the general vicinity of my own age, I’m sure the alleged magnitude of the event had you equally perplexed. After all, what was so great about the moon? It was cold, and dead, and boring. What exactly was everyone’s obsession? Of course, this could merely have been the disappointment talking, since, given my similarity in personality to that creepy kid from The Omen, I had probably been rooting all along for Apollo 11 to explode en route.

CHAPTER II

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School Daze and Holy Crap

I have been asked, dear reader, Mr. Hugo, how can you possibly account for your present lifestyle, given your religious upbringing? Surely all the things you enjoy – murder, money, vice, violence, vanity, decadence, promiscuity, and homosexuality – go against the teachings of the Catholic Church?And indeed they do, dear reader. But I’m not a Catholic; not anymore, anyway.

Does this mean I deny the existence of a Supreme Being? Dear reader, how could I? After eighteen years of indoctrination and propaganda, God is as real to me as is the sun shining brilliantly over the day. No, I could no more readily argue against the existence of God than I could against the existence of gravity, and I fully concede that He is out there, somewhere. I simply choose to ignore Him, as my quality of life has improved dramatically ever since we parted ways. I don’t bother Him, and He doesn’t bother me, and I like it that way. Having been born into a family of devout Catholics, however, I was required to put in my time, in the same manner as so many other, similarly unfortunate youths, and the subsequent passages are meant to go some way towards describing my ordeal of obligation.

As soon as my motor skills had developed sufficiently, I was required to stroll, under my own steam, into Our Lady of the Sacred Covenant every Sunday morning at ten-thirty, dip my fingers in the font of holy water, make the sign of the cross, genuflect in front of the tabernacle, and take a seat in a hard, wooden pew with my family in the middle section, where, if I knew what was good for me, I would keep my butt glued for two and a half hours until the conclusion of services. It was simple enough, dear reader, but I was not quite as graceful then as I am now, and my dear brother Stephen only made matters worse when he was in a playful mood and decided to amuse himself by degrading me; his favorite tricks included tripping me as I went to genuflect, and pinching me hard during Father Fitzpatrick’s sermon, causing me to cry out and draw a great deal of scornful attention to both myself and my embarrassed parents, who were never satisfied with my laying the blame for my disgraceful behavior on their