How do you kill a monster?
"Ben? What are you doing in there?" I glanced up at the door briefly where my wife stood on the other side.
"I'll just be another minute."
There was no point in answering her question,
She-she knew what I was doing. I'm sure.
and she didn't like it, but she just didn't understand.
Because she wanted me to move on.
My eyes then slid back down to my phone where they stayed glued to the screen for another four minutes.
I had scoured the internet for months looking for the rest of the trial
but all I could find was this six minute segment that had been televised by a current affair.
I'd seen the video so many times and I knew every detail of every second.
And yet still I watched.
Because I still needed an answer.
The camera was currently focused on the jury.
They were all leaning forward and concentrating on the testimony of the forensic expert.
The camera then slid over to the witness stand with Dr. Felmore
talked about the decomposition of Andrew's body in the state it had been in when a dog-walker had discovered it the previous may.
Felmore then walked over to the overhead projector,
tapped the stack slides on the table to straighten them, and then peeled off the top and placed it on the projector.
A graphic photo of Andrew's naked body appeared on the screen and the entire courtroom gasped.
A current affair had blurred out the photos, but I remembered.
I remembered what was on them.
And they were right to be horrified.
Hearing an expert drone in a monotone manner about the graphic abuse of a five-year-old was much different than saying its effects for a saying.
The doctor explained the slides without emotion, pointing out the countless abrasions, bruises, and open fractures.
He spoke about the ultimate manner of death
- strangulation - and showed the court how the handprints on Andrew's neck matched perfectly with the defendant's.
Then he turned the projector off and began to speak about the presumed time of death.
The camera then pulled back at this point to show my family,
just quietly crying in their seats.
And then finally, it panned over to the defendant's table.
The boy sitting beside his lawyer looked downright... bored.
He flipped a pencil back and forth between his fingers and sighed loudly, every few seconds.
But.
This was the monster I wanted to kill.
He seemed to feel the camera was on him now because he suddenly turned, to look straight at the camera and,
just gave this smug, intelligent little smile.
As if he wasn't afraid of the consequences.
As if he believed it had all been worth it.
Well in the end, he was right.
The boy had been sentenced to be incarcerated until his majority and then another 7 years after that.
But it was nothing. It was less than nothing.
I looked over at the straight razor I had begged my wife to get me for my birthday.
How do you kill a monster?
This- this was the answer. It would be so easy.
But, could I bring myself to do it?
My little brother deserved vengeance, even if it came sixteen years later.
Andrew suffered horrors no human should endure. Days of it.
I looked back down at the tiny screen and watched the last few seconds of the video.
The boy had suddenly sat up rapt attention as some of the makeshift torture devices he'd created were brought out and placed upon the table near the jury.
My family was escorted from the courtroom and a current affair had caught the video off there
But it didn't matter,
I remembered.
I remembered what happened next.
The detective had held up each one of the devices for the jury to examine.
And I'd rock back and forth of my seat, and giddy with pride at my creations.
[Knocking]
"Ben, are you coming to bed?"
But I was contemplating a much more important question,
the only one that mattered.
In truth I...
I knew how to kill a monster.
I glanced over at the sharp blade on the counter.
That part was easy.
But the problem was a bit more complex than that.
Because how do you kill a monster?
When it's inside of you?