It started when I was five years old. Something disturbed me when I was asleep, it took a moment or two to work out where I was, in the gloom of my bedroom. Just the slightest hint of illumination creeping under my door from the landing light. I remembered that the babysitter was downstairs, because my parents had gone out for the night. I think the sound that had disturbed me, was of breaking glass and I then realised I was never going to get back to sleep until I had found out what the babysitter had broken. She was going to be in so much trouble, especially when I told my parents on her. I had gone downstairs to investigate; the door to the sitting room was slightly ajar and there was just enough of a gap for me to look into the room and see precisely what it was she was doing in there. I say this, because as I came down the stairs there had been more noise from the room, muffled scuffling and a dull thump.

 

Looking through the crack I could see what was happening in the centre of the room. The coffee table lay on its side and I could just make out the shattered remains of a glass of milk spilled to one side. The babysitter was lying on the hearth rug, which covered two thirds of the floor and there was a man on top of her. I had never seen the man before and he seemed to me, especially in my memories, to be nothing more than a dark shade. Dressed entirely in black, he was straddling the babysitter, his left hand pinning her wrists above her head and a long-bladed knife in his right hand, pressed firmly against her throat. She was whimpering like a scolded puppy and writhing under his weight. It was quite pathetic really. I suppose, thinking about it now, as a five-year-old child seeing a strange man in my house attacking my babysitter, I should have been frightened. I believe most of you would have felt this, but I didn’t; generally, I don’t feel anything. The world of emotions is a closed book to me, it comes to me diluted and dull; a fuzzy sensation of hope and possibility, of interest and pleasure; everything else feels like I’m looking at life through cloudy pond water. Fear I know not, nor guilt, nor love. Or at least it was thus when I was younger. I have had time to learn since then, study you and your emotions, to ape them. I am a chameleon.

 

No, what I felt upon viewing this traumatic event was interest and excitement. It stimulated and titillated me. There was a trilling sensation in the pit of my stomach, which moved downwards to warm me between my legs, it was an exhilarating sensation and one I have craved for, ever since. I continued to watch as the man cut away her blouse and bra, still pinning her to the rug. She was pleading with him to stop, to not hurt her, to not kill her. He told her to be quiet, in a hushed tone, telling her that he wouldn’t kill her or the boy upstairs if she just let him do what he wanted to do.

 

It was only at this point that I considered my position in all this. He had threatened me; again, I was not scared by his threat, partly because I was now aware of his potential intent towards me. I looked behind me, into the hallway in which I stood and saw the corner table where my parents had a key bucket. Sticking out of the top of it was my mother’s mobile phone; left for emergencies, the first number on the opening screen would be my father’s phone. I could go and use it now, either to ring them or to ring the police. But I didn’t want to do that. I had another idea; I wanted to watch, it was making me excited, it was fulfilling a need and desire in me that I had hitherto been unaware of. I wasn’t about to have some random authoritarian figure stumble in and ruin my fun. As to what to do when it had all finished, this had not yet occurred to me, I was too engrossed in the moment.

 

He had the knife to her neck again. Pressed firmly into the flesh, so that it creased and folded around the edge of the blade. I could see a crimson trickle running in a rivulet down the gorge of that crease, pooling in the hollow caused by her straining tendons and then overflowing to drip down onto the white hearth rug, staining it pinkish red. I imagined the warmth of that liquid and had a great and almost overwhelming desire to run into the room so that I could lick it. I had to physically brace myself against the jamb to prevent myself impetuously charging in. I continued to watch, my right hand was now between my legs, clutching and gripping myself as the warm tingling rush continued to build inside me. The man had now removed the babysitter’s jeans and cut off her panties, he had also had the time to lower his trousers and I watched as he pushed himself between her legs, the knife ever constant on her throat. Then the greatest moment happened for me, she looked away from her attacker as he started to violate her and she looked across the room to the doorway. Our eyes locked in an embrace all of their own. I could see tears in her eyes and some deep-seated emotion I did not recognise, but have been told since then, was most likely fear. Her expression changed as she saw me and a new sense of panic rose in her. She clenched her mouth shut and imperceptibly shook her head at me. Even in this moment of mortal danger she was trying to protect me. If I had been another sort of person I would, perhaps, have found this endearing or had some sense of pride that she was still thinking of me as she was being raped by a stranger. Of course, none of these thoughts came to my mind, they are merely ideas that have been presented to me since then, by counsellors and psychiatrists. It is good to know what a normal person’s response would be to such a situation; it has stood me in good stead since learning it.

 

I continued to watch, still playing with myself as she closed her eyes and wept at her misery. I revelled in the stranger’s control and despised the babysitter for her weakness. Clearly, she deserved everything that was happening to her because she was weak. I had no idea how long the stranger rutted on top of her for; I could not see the mantel piece from my position, but I could hear the old gold clock, that was a centre piece for it, ticking its slow, ponderous ticks. Time moved slowly in these moments as I drank in the gloriousness of it all. The man grunted heavily after he had rubbed himself against her, before finally removing himself from her. I could see now between her legs; the first most notable thing was the blood that seeped out from the gap between her thighs. I found this odd as I was not aware that he had ever put the knife down there, it was a momentary curiosity, because I was more taken by the blood itself. Like the wound at the neck it pooled in the coarse hair that grew down there, dripping into the white hearth rug and teasing me to come in and drink it. I was broken from my reverie by the movement of the man who had stood up and was pulling up his trousers. He looked down at the babysitter and spat on her.

 

‘I’ve had better,’ he said with utter contempt in his tone.

 

I moved away from the door before he could spot me. I made my way quietly to the kitchen; I knew precisely what I was going for and what I would do with it when he came out into the hallway. He may have been an adult, but I knew I was superior to him and this would be his downfall. I waited at the kitchen door, prepared for my assault; but he never came out. I waited and waited, but he never came. Towards the end of this time I heard shuffling coming from within the sitting room; so, cautiously, I stalked back to my vantage point. There was a breeze that welcomed me as I came to my resting point. Through the crack in the door I could now see the babysitter had gathered her shredded garments about her with trembling hands, tears pouring down her face. She was kneeling in the pool of blood that had formed from her neck wound. On the other side of the room I could see the veranda door was open. My prey had left by the route he had entered, denying me my prize. I was crestfallen, a great weight of disappointment suddenly took over from the warmth that had nurtured me these last tens of minutes. I was not to be sated.

 

When my parents returned there were screams from my mother and a great fuss ensued, culminating in a circus of police and forensics swarming over my house. I was awoken by my mother dashing into my room and sweeping me up in her arms. After an initial exchange with the police, she then took me away to my aunt’s house on the other side of town while my father remained at my house to ‘sort everything out’.

 

The police did eventually catch the rapist who broke in that night, he had been on a rampage, according to my father, so it was just a matter of time. Years later when I looked into his case, I had the opportunity of watching his interview tapes. I was unable to interview him personally, despite my profession, because he had been executed long before I qualified. It always brings a smile to my face when I watch the tape where for the first time, he is accused of murdering the babysitter.

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Hi, my name is Ralph Mackinson, I am a psychiatrist and though I do say it myself, I am pretty good at what I do. It is not because I can empathise with you for all your emotional baggage, if anything it is quite the opposite, I have no empathy to speak of at all. I have, however, learned about empathy and emotions. For instance, when one of our training counsellors showed us pictures of faces with a similar expression on them and told us this was terror, I finally knew what it was that people had been showing me over the years just before I slit their throats.