Do you want to know why I have this bloody knife in my hand? I just slashed the throat of a beast. Yes, a beast! No, that beast is neither a wolf nor a wild pig! Not even a bear. That beast is my neighbor — Mang Tomas. Imagine, he raped and killed his 10-year-old daughter. Would you call him a human being? No! He wasn’t. He was a beast. So, I butchered him. And if among you there are beasts clothed as humans, then beware. Beware of me.

Do you wish to know who I am? Listen!

My father was a communist rebel. He was brutally peppered with bullets — ironically, by his own comrades — when he tried to give up his armed struggle. We were not completely orphaned, though. My mother is still alive — but far from us, and not free. She went abroad to work as a domestic helper, so we would not starve. Her employer, an Arab national, tried to molest her one night while his wife was away. She cut his throat before he could finish what he started. Self-defense, she called it, when she wrote to us. The court called it murder. She is in prison now, in a country that will never let her come home.

My brother sells drugs; my sister sells herself. Don’t judge them yet — I will tell you why, later. But our youngest brother, our five-year-old angel, my only source of inspiration, is dead.

He was hungry that day. Before I brought him to the hospital, he asked, “Can I have some biscuits, please?” I rushed to the store. The owner refused — cited our unpaid debts, cursed me besides. So I ran to the hospital instead, my brother limp in my arms, burning with fever.

“Doctor, my brother is dying.” “But Doc, I don’t have money.” “Doc, have mercy. Doc, please.” He refused. Said his hospital was not a charitable institution.

Our neighbor, the tricycle driver, offered to lend me money for the deposit. “Please lend me money,” I begged. He looked at me and said he’d lend it — but only if my sister agreed to what she always agreed to, when he lent her money before. When I refused, he punched me in the face. Kicked me while I was down. Left me in the dirt beside my dying brother.

That night, my brother asked me a question — a question I never thought an innocent five-year-old would ask. “Why has our family suffered so much?” I answered with a deafening silence. I groped for an answer I myself have asked God, more times than I can count. He held my hand tightly before he breathed his last. He looked at me. In his eyes was a plea — that I do something, so no one else would suffer what my family suffered. He smiled at me. Then he closed his eyes.

(pause)

That smile is frozen in my memory. I will carry it to my grave.

That very day, I took the caliber .45 my father left behind. By my brother’s grave, I made a vow: “I will cleanse this world of its dregs and scum. Whoever pushed my father into rebellion, my mother into exile and a foreign prison cell, my brother into pushing poison, my sister into selling her body — whoever let my brother die hungry and unheard — will pay. I will be their hero. No — antihero is better.”

The doctor and the tricycle driver were my first. Killing them came surprisingly easy. Who would suspect this boyish face hides a butcher’s hands?

Where are they now? In shallow graves. I gave each of them a nasty hole in the skull. Right now, worms are feasting on what’s left.

There was also a usurer in our place. When I went to him for help, he offered it — in exchange for a night or two with my sister. Another beast in men’s clothing. I burned his house down while he slept. He was roasted alive.

I also killed a well-known politician. The honorable gentleman who promised roads, bridges, school buildings — promises he never kept.

Just last week, I saw him in a brand-new car, parked in a dark alley. My brother — yes, my drug-pushing brother — handed him wads of cash. The next day, I saw the same politician in another new car, pulling into a motel. The woman with him was my sister. My whoring sister, you’d call her.

Guess what I did. While the honorable gentleman waited in his car, I planted a bomb beneath the driver’s seat. His body was mutilated beyond recognition.

(pause — hold the silence)

Now look at me. Look at me. I said — look at me!

Is this the way you want me to teach social responsibility?

Should my way be the way?