no excuses, no regrets.

   
   
   
It wasn’t until I was smashing his fingers free from the handrail that I began to think it was going to work. I had smashed them three times, and he was staring up at me from where he was hanging, his feet, his whole lower body dragging in the water, the wake of the boat pulling at him. He begged then, did the whole bit; “no, please no”, made me feel ashamed of him with that, made me think less of him as a man. There was one last moment when he was about to go, so I told him why, and I think he understood all of it, stopped begging. I re-gripped the heavy piece of steel in my hand, raised it up and swung it down one more time. His hand tore free. He grunted, swung for a moment from just his other hand, his body twisting away from the boat. He couldn’t last that way. His grip went and he slipped into the sea, bounced along the hull and was gone.    
   
I stood still, not sure what to do next. I had planned all this, but not what would come after, not really. I walked back to the yacht’s cockpit, slipped the steel winch-handle back in its holder, checked the boat’s course on the nav-station and went below to wash my hands. The boat, autohelm on and surging along in the night breeze, seemed uncaring, blindly unaware to what had just happened. After I washed my hands I sat on a bunk, looked down at the blood on the cabin floor. There was so much of it. Doing him that way had been a good idea, so easy, so clean. I wished I had done them both like that. True, they had both gone quietly, him with that last look and the begging, and her with just a long sigh in her sleep, while the knife-handle twitched in time with her failing heartbeat. The blood though. The fucking blood. It almost seemed rude of her to have leaked herself like that. She was still doing it. I had felt something for her before, but not now. Now she seemed stupid. Dull. I looked over at her body, my lips pulling back to sneer something good, but her head moved. One flinch and a sigh. Bitch still alive.    
   
I really swore then, tore at her hair to sit her up on her bunk, swung in behind her, locked my arms under her armpits and stood us both up, dragged her up the stairs glad she was old and little and light. She was moaning, barely conscious. I pulled her to the side of the boat, thought I heard her groan again, yelled at her for it, “fuckin’ fuck!”, then lifted her, shoved her roughly over the side. Her lower leg caught the railing, bent itself backward at the knee as she pitched forward, her shinbone snapping as her momentum carried her. She screamed, the pain waking her, but too fuckin’ late. She slammed into the water, tumbled once and disappeared, and the thing was truly finished.    
   
I had done it as well as could be done, except maybe for her second act, but many things in life don’t go to plan, and I know it. If murdering parents was easy, everyone would be doing it. Not that they were ever my parents, not really. Left me in that place, ashamed of me, disposed of me, then got married and had the children they could admit too, never one word or thought for me. I found them. Made friends with them, took this trip with them, and even then they never mentioned another son, not fucking once mentioned any but the good ones, and so I made them sorry, made him sorry. She was just in pain, but I think he was sorry.