I suppose you want to know my name. Fine, I’ll tell you. I’m Nick. My full name is Nicholas Michael McMasterson. Now that you know that, stop smirking and just listen to my story. It isn’t spectacular, it isn’t sexy, nor is it really that exciting, but it’s a story, nevertheless.

I’m a killer. My last victim truly deserved it. He was this big dude, thought he was, anyway. You know the type, they get all offended when you tell them some home truths and then decide to get physical with you. Eight feet tall, five feet wide, that sort of thing. I don’t like being pissed off. Or pissed on, I’ll leave that for the dogs to do to the trees.

I was drinking a beer, happy as you like, when this dude came up and told me to get off his seat. I told him that I most certainly wouldn’t, after all, I was sitting there long before he came along. We got into an argument and he strong-armed me out of my seat. He punched me and I landed on the floor. I got up and punched him back, then walked away. One punch was all it took to render him unconscious.

When he next saw me in the pub, he tried it again, so I left the seat and let him think he had won. He hadn’t, obviously. I had a plan. I decided I’d check him out, so I took a photo of him from afar, then used a reverse image search engine to find him. The internet is a wonderful place, when you know how to use it.

It turned out that he was pretty easy to find. His Facebook profile was set to private and all his information was just splattered all over the place, free for the taking. The judge described my crime as “a pre-meditated, disgusting abhorrence”, but he was wrong. I didn’t meditate on it at all. I had a fleeting thought and carried it out. Sure, I gathered information about this man, but it wasn’t as if I was planning to actually kill him. It was something of an accident.

I got to know his movements, where he would be, when he would be there. If anyone was abhorrent, it was him. He used to talk of scaring little children, ripping the heads off ducks and all sorts of horrible things. He had pictures of animals that he had killed and took pleasure in their deaths. That kind of pleasure, yes. How could someone like that be allowed to live without a lesson being taught to them? That was only my intention.

One day, he went hunting. I found one of his friends and pretended I didn’t know where I was going. The friend gave me directions and I headed off. I then circled around and found a small cabin in the woods. A cabin that the man owned. To this day, I can’t even remember his name. It wasn’t important to me.

I needed to do something to scare the guy, so I paid off the housekeeper to take off. I’m not exactly short of a few bob. I suppose you could call me rich. I worked for it and probably could have paid a private detective to track the dude down, but there would be no fun in doing that. I trained as a chef, but ended up doing mercenary work. I know, it sounds weird, but it was something I just stumbled into. Both skills turned out to be very useful in everyday life.

The man walked into the cabin, took one look at me and started fuming. I told him that the usual housekeeper had to take a day off, so she asked me to fill in for her because we were old friends. Lies, I know, but he bought them.

“So, what’s for dinner, you fucking poof?” He asked me.

“It’s a surprise. I’m sure you’ll like it.”

I had a friend who was good at art and he taught me how to make food sculptures. There was this one he used to do to freak his guests out. He’d take the meat from assorted animals and make them look human. Then he’d make them look as if they’d been murdered. I could hear this idiot in the front room with his idiot friends bragging about how they slaughtered all those animals.

“Don’t you eat them?” I asked.

“Why would I? I’ve got a perfectly good larder here!” He laughed.

“That’s wasteful,” I said and then went off to the kitchen.

“Aw, just hurry with the dinner, poof!”

Homophobic, animal abuser and cocky bastard extraordinaire, he’s the kind of person you want to meet, isn’t he? A right fucking keeper.

“Okay, dinner’s ready. Just make your way to the dining room and I’ll get serving.”

The loudmouthed bastards made their way, as instructed and waited at the table, swilling their beers and making disgusting noises. As I wheeled the trolley out, I watched their faces shift from laughter to pure dismay.

“What the hell is this?” The idiot asked.

“Your dinner. I killed this fucker in cold blood and now I’m serving him to you.”

“You sick bastard!” The idiot bellowed.

“Relax, I’m having you on. It’s turkey and deer, made to look human. Gave you a nice scare, though, didn’t it? Just think, that’s how people feel when they see you posting your horrible animal abuse images on Facebook.”

“How did you know?”

“You make everything public. It isn’t rocket science.”

The rest of the idiots excused themselves. Car doors were heard shutting and before long, we were left alone in the cabin. The idiot grabbed his gun, a rather impressive shotgun rifle combination, but wasn’t very well maintained, and started cursing about his hunting rights and calling me a fag and that I should stop being such an idiot, that he was in the right. Be that as it may, it still didn’t give him the right to parade his kills all over the place. I wasn’t scared of him and his gun. I knew he’d never use it, judging by his reaction to my prank.

“Get out of my cabin before I shoot you,” he warned me.

You know what I did? I sat at the table and carved myself some turkey. Calm and collected, I sat and ate the food that I’d prepared, all but the parsnips because I didn't like them. I walked calmly to the kitchen and grabbed some beers, removing the caps and throwing one to the idiot. He fumbled and dropped his gun. Just as well it hat the safety on, or it could have been painful for him. The way it landed, it brushed against his crotch.

“Sit and eat!” I told him.

He sat and ate, as I’d told him to. Ate every morsel on his plate too, the greedy bugger. I smiled as I watched him eat the food, wondering where he put it all. He seemed to be enjoying it and stopped clutching his gun, instead clutched his beer. I then proceeded with my plan. I only wanted to guilt him into stopping his abuse, but it seems he took it the wrong way.

“Listen, poof, I don’t have to answer to you!”

“No, you don’t.”

“Get out!”

He fired his gun at me and missed wildly. I calmly walked out and told him one last piece of advice:

“If you continue the way you are, I’m going to be the least of your problems. I know some nutters out there who could tear you to shreds for what you do to those animals. Tred carefully, idiot.”

Those were the very last words I said to him before I went away. It wasn’t until the police came knocking on my door that I found out he was dead. They took me in for questioning and, boy, did they question me! It wasn’t unlike an interrogation, but I’ve been interrogated more than a few times in my time as a mercenary, so I knew how to take it. They couldn’t break me.

It was the toxicology report that gave it away. I didn’t kill him directly, but I was responsible for his death. It was an accident, but his friends made me out to be some kind of deranged loony, so the judge took the idiot’s side, and now I’ve been branded a killer.

When I was cooking dinner, I accidentally used hemlock. I genuinely thought they were parsnips, but the judge didn’t believe me, due to the idiot’s friends. I’ve always been a lone wolf, never having many friends of my own, so I had no real character witnesses. When the judge found out that I was a mercenary, he made a snap judgement and decided I was a bad person.

“Nicholas Michael McMasterson,” the judge said, in his closing statement, “Your actions that day were motivated by pure intent to kill. You found out all you could about this man, simply because he did things that you did not agree with. You found where he was going for a hunting trip and fed him hemlock. You pretended you didn’t know what it was, when, in fact, you did. You trained as a chef, you should have known it was hemlock. This crime was disturbing, pre-meditated and done in cold blood. I am sentencing you to life in prison. Congratulations, you’ve just won yourself a nice little cell to live out the rest of your pathetic existence.”

I’m sorry that the man died. All I wanted to do was scare him, but it turned out that an honest mistake was my undoing.

Oh well, I’d better get dinner ready. My fellow inmates are starving...