[ WP ] You are a `` normal '' person trying to fit in in a world where everyone is a psychopath .

Kevin eyes me over his lunch, an ugly sausage centered exactly in the middle of one of the office's chipped plates. He breaks his stare to draw a big, red K with ketchup on the plate like he does with every meal. K for 
 Kevin. K for ketchup. 
 
 `` How are you this morning Marla?'' Kevin has an awful voice. He speaks in a sluggish monotone with the end of every sentence clipped just a little short, like he's dragging it out as far as possible and then killing it. 
 
 `` I'm fine, Kevin. Got yourself a... sausage?'' I immediately regret asking this. 
 
 Kevin spends an eternity tilting his head down to his sausage and then back up at me before saying, `` Actually Marla, this is Mr. Wiggles.'' 
 
 Oh God. Why, Marla, why did you ask? 
 
 `` Mr. Wiggles belonged to my mother for many years. He was the only living thing she ever loved.'' As he speaks he slowly cuts off a corner of the sausage and drags it through the ketchup K. 
 
 `` Hello Kevin. Hello Marla.'' Peter's voice startles me out of my barely suppressed horror and, were he a normal person, I'd be relieved for the interruption, but. You know. He's a psychopath. 
 
 `` Ah, Kevin, is that...?'' Peter drawls out as he leans closer to peer at Kevin's plate. 
 
 `` Mr. Wiggles, yes.'' Kevin smiles and I can see chunks of meat and ketchup between his teeth. `` This is the second to last sausage link. I will eat the last one on the 14th of next month.'' 
 
 `` The 14th was your mother's birthday, was it not? Delightful, Kevin, delightful.... Where are we with the sales reps from Atlanta? Have they sent us an updated quote?'' 
 
 I back out of the break room. This is my life. Kevin. Mr. Wiggles. Peter and his shoes, which he made from somebody's skin... his aunt's? His neighbor's? It does n't matter, they look terrible and smell worse. 
 
 I work as a marketing liaison for a carpet manufacturer and distributor based out of Raleigh, North Carolina. Carpet, like gloves, was one of the industries that blew up shortly after people started going nutso and killing each other. It was horrifying at first, like truly and deeply disturbing, but then somebody realized that people were n't going to stop hacking each other up and they still wanted to live in pristine homes, so... carpet. Gloves. Plastic sheeting. Aprons - there are so many different kinds of aprons now. I remember the first commercial I saw for goggles, the tagline was `` Clean living, clean killing!'' Commercialized killing and killing accessories. 
 
 There were a few news reports early on about this sick-headed individual or that one, and then they started to get more frequent. Breaking news would interrupt breaking news. But something changed... the reporters sounded too fascinated. Car chases filmed from a helicopter became in-depth interviews. You did n't see defendants in handcuffs being pressed for statements outside of courthouses, you saw coffee and comfortable, leather chairs. `` Why did you do it?'' became `` How?'' and `` What did you use? How long did it take you?'' 
 
 So now I keep my head down. I keep a notebook at my desk for ideas on things to say - I'll just sit for an hour at lunch and brainstorm horrible things in case someone asks what I did with my weekend. It's tough to keep the stories straight. I think I've skinned and hung up my grandmother at least 6 times. I have n't seen my grandmother in ages, I'm not sure I would want to. I have n't called her since her nursing home burned down, I'm too afraid it was her. 
 
 All I have to do now is wait. It'll happen to me, I'm sure of it. It happened to everyone else. I wonder how many people are faking it? I'll have to actually do something soon, I ca n't just keep getting my carpet redone for no reason. Are you still a psychopath if you're killing just so you can keep pretending to be a psychopath? Is this how psychopaths felt before? 
 
 That's it. I'll do it this weekend. I'll do it, and it'll be Kevin. I'll carve a K into him. K for Killed. K for Kevin.
