The Whine; Chapter One

Without a great deal of ado I give you Chapter One of “The Whine”. Feel free to offer me your commentary on whatever you may feel compelled to discourse upon. Begging your indulgence:

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The Whine; Chapter One
I’m going to tell my story, for myself or for someone as yet unknown; just let it come out how it wants to. It won’t be the whole story. Telling the whole story is not possible. No one could tell the whole story. No one knows the whole story about anything. Just imagine trying to describe even the moment you are in. Immediately there are things that would be beyond the reach of words. Then, if you were to describe the objects around you, if you were in a room, it might then occur to you that each object had its own story; a personal history. You would soon be out of your depth before you have even gotten to yourself and the myriad connections in space and time that are as defining as your appearance and actions. Even if the story took place in your mind, the entire world would still be there. No, we can tell only parts of the story and let the imagination do the rest.

Life and its presentations are enormously complicated. A host of mental disorders are spawned from a preoccupation with minutiae. You have to concentrate on the point you are trying to make. I’m not Proust, dipping biscuits in tea.

I’ve got some time on my hands. Unless I hear The Whine, I’ve no responsibilities of any kind. This does give me a unique freedom denied to many. In telling my story I hope to understand it better. Should it reach other people it will soon be of interest in the wider world as well. This kind of story has all the elements that generate interest in the wasteland of unexamined lives. And there are so very, very many of you. Never have there been as many of you as there are now.

I will write this with the idea that someone else is listening in or perhaps will soon read it. I have the sense that this will happen. It makes it more of a confessional and suits my purposes, as much as I understand them, better than another format.

Soon, after you have some idea of what I have been up to, you may think that I had best be careful about the possible physical evidence of what I write down; the possibility that I can be traced or identified by events or locations. I’ve no worries on that account. I will be general where I have to and specific when I can and I don’t think it would matter much even if I were known because I have never been known. The mask is seen but the real face is hidden; hidden even from myself. I don’t anticipate exposure. I am private and careful; private by nature and careful without thought. Often it seems as if some other intelligence is on hand to guide me in my actions. I am reminded of so much that might have gone forgotten in the critical moments.

Over time I have gained some small control over The Whine but I do not know its origin. I have learned to surf it like a storm-fed Hawaiian wave. It has become easier over the course of opportunity. Have you ever been enraged beyond control or driven by purpose so focused and powerful that there was no possibility for reflection except in the aftermath? Can you imagine what it is like to host something so powerful and encompassing that you are nothing more than a witness to its efforts within you and upon the outer world? I know well of the compulsions in others and the arcane manner in which these forces travel through strange humors and intoxications into terrible combustions. I have studied these things first hand and seen things that neither you nor intelligent professionals have ever seen. Professionals witness the aftermath. They study the evidence but they have not seen the thing in process. I have seen it directly and from a distance within. I have looked at the face of nightmare and watched the awful rage and the surgical detachment. I know how it is with them.

It could appear to some that with this manuscript I am seeking celebrity for my actions. I am no Jack the Ripper. I simply feel the need to tell my end of it now. It is curious because I have never felt this before. What has until now impacted only upon the lives of certain individuals and those that they might have harmed, is now going to impact upon the wider world. The end result may in some way change the life of everyone now living in one way or another. Some record of the truth should exist along side the speculation and myth that is sure to follow.

Ironically speaking, there’s that chance that someone will know what it is I am dealing with and clear it all up by posting something on The Net. Sure, “wish in one hand and shit in the other” as they say. Maybe that which impels me to act in my fashion, now also impels me to do this. It may be some factor in a wider purpose. Call it a confession. Call it what you will.

I’m not after fame or notoriety. I already have that. Even though no one knows that it’s me. I’m making an impact in the right circles. Telling my story is really about catharsis and clarity. A part of me feels like I will understand so much more once the story has played through other minds. I feel there is a telepathy that links the human race. There is a greater summing up as our individual thoughts add to the collective body. I can tap into that. I am very good at tapping into things. The impact of these thoughts can only do me good; can only help me to a greater understanding. I’m not in conflict about any of it. I’m not at war against some greater driving impulse. I go willingly enough without regard or regret. It’s just that I don’t know why. I don’t know if I’m reading everything accurately. It feels like something I’m supposed to do. At the heart of this is my need to know. I have never understood what has happened; is happening. I see the good of it, even though uninformed moralists may not agree. But I do not know who I am. I do not know why it is me who was chosen. I would like to know these things. That knowledge will not compromise my participation.

When he was asked about his music once (I don’t remember the context now), John Lennon said, “I’m a musician. I could bang two trashcan lids together and make music. It’s what I do.”

What I do is kill people, all kinds of people. I have killed men and women, old and young, rich and poor, all this without regard for race, creed or national origin. I’ve killed a musician; a farmer, business people, lawyers, a preacher, a multi-level marketer, a butcher and a baker (but no Indian chief, so far) a politician, a pimp, a biker, an infomercialist, a landlord and a plumber. Surprisingly I have killed no banker yet but there is one on the list. This particular banker and his sidekick are often on my mind Sometimes it seems as if I live their lives and the lives of their associates as much as I live my own; what little I have in the way of a personal life.

I’ll get to them when The Whine tells me to. I make the present count at 36. This is my first effort at recording any of it so we have to trust to the power of my memory which, if I say so myself, is much better than average. All the people I have killed shared one thing in common, something, someone, didn’t like them and they deserved to die. This involved an application of that Texas standard; “the sumbitch needed killing” law. Though not an actual law, it does exist and has been accepted and applied on various occasions. Some would say that was a feature of the Kennedy assassination.

Right about here I can feel certain minds saying, “What gives you the right to determine whether someone should die?” That’s a fair question. Something or someone gives me the right and since I in fact do carry it out then I must, in fact, possess that right. Is this not so?

This all comes back to the fact that it is impossible to tell the whole story about anyone or anything. Trust me on this, if you knew what I knew, if you were as compelled as I am, I do not think we would be all that dissimilar. Because you were not chosen to do these works, a great deal may seem foreign to you. Wait until I am done before you render your verdict. Let me add, in addition, that though events and personal claims of ability may seem outrageous and unbelievable, they are all true and stated without embellishment or taint of pride in respect of them. I am simply recording.

These were not good people. Most of them I did not meet until our only meeting, but, on occasion, I observed them from afar, within the theater of my mind and sometimes in dreams. You may think my responses, in any case, were a supreme over-reaction. There is a great deal more to me and my process of selection than can be so simplistically dismissed. If I killed all the people who provoked occasional dislike and annoyance in me the number would be much higher. I’m not a big fan of the human race. I hope to go into that at some point in my tale.

Let me just say for now that all of the people I killed were either devoted toward causing Suffering in others or well on their way to being so. These people generated Suffering. Suffering, like Happiness, has an infectious quality. It spreads. I can feel Suffering. I can see Suffering. Often the aura of Suffering will pulse like an envelope over a small town as I pull into it. I possess perceptions that would be called paranormal. I often know what people are thinking. I know when someone is approaching my location, well before I can hear them normally and regardless of their intention. A psychiatrist would look at this and diagnose some form of paranoid schizophrenia. Sure. However, the “proof is in the pudding”. I am still moving freely about and have avoided confrontation and possible capture many times.

I see as I continue that my narrative skills are not technically precise. I have a tendency to wander. I am not a professional writer. I ask you to be forgiving of my limitations in this area. I will do my best.

Suffering affects me in the same way that some people are affected by a set of fingernails dragging down the surface of a blackboard. I can enter some larger communities only through a great concentration of Will. Luckily that concentration is not my own. I feel the tension of the personal against the greater impetus by degrees. I wonder if some part of me fights against my actions and the pressing of The Whine. When I have located and dispatched a specific source of Suffering (for which I was sent), the subsequent change in atmosphere is wonderful, overwhelming really. I feel sometimes as if a soft summer rain were misting and falling all around me. I notice a lightness of step and mood in the people I pass on my exit. There is a definite sea change. I am of the opinion that I do good and necessary work.

I’m rich, well off from inherited money; not super rich but the kind of rich where I can go anywhere I want and stay as long as I like. I can’t maintain a string of luxury houses and boats and planes and retainers but I don’t want any of these things. I’ve got some toys and I can travel first class. I don’t live conspicuously by nature or design. Personality wise I am a very adaptive sort, easily integrative into the local coloration. I can wear a suit. I can go about in jeans and sneakers. I automatically adapt myself to the level of my company. My early drama training and ability as a mimic come to the fore on demand. In all honesty I have to say that I don’t feel any different acting out or being myself. I don’t know who ‘myself’ is anyway. Is it me in the day to day or me on a mission? Once again, it doesn’t trouble me. I’m comfortable in my skin. I don’t know why things are the way they are, why I am the way I am... but who does?

Physically I am a little over six feet tall and weigh right at one hundred and ninety pounds. At the moment I am halfway through my forty-first year. I’ve been told I look like Keanu Reeves. I imagine this appearance of vulnerability serves me well. People don’t run from me, though later they may have wished they had. Women like me. I think they get the impression that I’m a decent sort. I am a decent sort. Outside of my work I would say that I am pleasant and easy to be with. I’ve been told that I have an appealing and ironic wit. Now I am smiling.

I look like one of ten thousand men on the streets of any city or town. Besides the mental (psychic?) abilities, I do have one other characteristic; I am very physically powerful and I can move very, very fast. It seems like I have a more direct connection to the atavistic self than most people. I’ve noticed something similar in the men of the South Pacific islands. They are not much removed in time from the primitive life and I think that accounts for it. I don’t know how to account for myself. I work out. I stay in shape with the martial arts as well as rock climbing and hiking into the wilds but that does not account for the strength. I can rip a quarter in half and lift the front end of a car off the ground. Quite possibly I could lift the car entire off of the ground. There seems to always be more strength than what I actually use. This isn’t something that only comes about when I work. I can do it any time so it’s not some sort of psychophysical, adrenalin thing.

One time I threw a bowling ball through a living room wall and it had to pass through someone’s head on the way. Sexually I have remarkable stamina. Well, strength and stamina are not the same thing but I have no doubt there’s a connection. I don’t seem to lose vitality even though my interest is often less than I would suppose it is in another. Maybe that is the key. Sometimes it seems I am doing it the same way that a child will sit rocking in a chair for hours. I’m just doing it because I’m doing it. I don’t like orgasms and I rarely have them. Usually when I cum it is in my dreams and I am with someone fairer than anyone I have known in this life. In my dreams I meet many people in a great intimacy of heart and mind. Then I wake up and I am here again. Moments before there had been a closeness that only long association and a special sympathy could provide. My actual life is nothing like that.


As I have already stated, I’m not troubled by what I do but I often wonder if I’m not missing some basic human quality. Other people don’t follow an unpleasant whine that ends in what could be called murder. I know there are people that kill professionally. I’ve often wondered what they might have done without the official sanction of their work. I am here referring to soldiers and others in some line of government employ.


For years I’ve been a serious practitioner of meditation along Zen Buddhist lines. Now I can hear someone saying, “Don’t the Buddhist’s subscribe to a non-violent harmlessness toward all creatures?” Yes they do. And didn’t I say, “Along Zen Buddhist lines?” I doubt that most of the people who read this have spent anywhere near the time that I have in the study of Eastern philosophy. If so, you would find that there are exceptions to everything and that ‘everything’ is included.

I consider myself in line with that certain aspect of the Eightfold Path that refers to following a ‘right livelihood’. I believe that whatever you were meant to be is what you were meant to be; not so much that we are all fixed in fate but more as if what we are is what we chose to be for a specific reason across the course of a great distance in time and determined long before we got here. I also think that you should be the very best you can at whatever you are. I think there is a redeeming feature in dedication, even if it concerns actions considered evil by the larger body of humanity.

I think most people are doing something besides what they really want to do. This comes about through familial and social pressure. Fear and confusion also play a part. Conditioning accounts for most of what most of us are. Most people are cowards in search of a safe harbor. Because they are not engaged in their true Dharma they slowly eat themselves up from the inside. You should be the best at what you do. I am. I am the very best killer I can be. I think of myself as a sort of cosmic policeman, a soldier on unusual assignment, cut off and alone from the greater body of troops but driven by duty to the success of his commission. A large number of people, especially the people of today, hold soldiers in contempt. The soldier often gives his life for people who would rather not know what he was about. I am reminded of Kipling’s poem “Tommy”.

Well, there is a lot of dark and dangerous work on this planet and all the people who do it are not heroes but some of them are. And they are heroes all the more since their work may never be known, understood or appreciated.

I believe that I am a warrior on special assignment. My superiors know and approve because they know all the whys and wherefores of its ultimate value. The man in the street doesn’t know shit. In the Bhagavad-Gita, Krishna says “there is nothing better for a warrior than a righteous war.” So I think of myself as an honorable warrior, a man of Bushido, in a private and very necessary war.