What a beautiful day. The sun shines boldly through branches high above me, enveloping me in its impartial embrace. One would say it’s the perfect day for a walk in the woods, the perfect day for relaxation. But that’s not why I’m here. If I wanted to relax, I would have gone to the tea party I was invited to; a gathering for aged, retired folk who like to play bridge and complain about young people these days and all the problems in this country that supposedly didn’t exist in our youth.

No, I don’t feel like relaxing. I don’t know what I feel or what I want to feel and I don’t know why I’m walking through these woods, but it certainly isn’t for the same reasons as most people. I am not like most people. I have no destination, and I have no interest in getting in touch with nature or anything like that. I was just passing by, on my way to the assembly, when I happened to glance at the woods and something inside me turned on. I heard a voice, one that sounded so alien and yet so familiar at the same time. The nature of the voice I could not discern. Good or evil, its pull was strong. Indeed, the way was clear. The forest was calling me, and I had no choice but to bend under its will. The forest was summoning me into its midst. The redwood trees towered over me like Gods who possessed the power to seal my fate. The leaves swaying in the wind resembled hands beckoning me into their dark embrace.

Other people would not understand how I could be so influenced by this mysterious force, for they do not hear the voice. Were I to discuss it with them, they would most probably insist that nothing more than a sense of nostalgia had brought me into the depths of the forest, a desire to relive my childhood. What a quaint explanation that would be. When I was a little boy, my father would take me hunting with him through woods such as these. The first time he told me we would hunt out our dinner together, I was excited. I didn’t understand what hunting meant, though, until I saw him shoot a passive deer who had stopped by a stream to quench her thirst. I watched it stagger helplessly and stumble to the ground. The blood ebbed from its side into the stream, coloring it a red hue. I remember feeling angry. I remember sobbing and screaming and displaying all kinds of emotions I no longer really know what it’s like to experience. I can recall my father’s hurt and confused expression. He put his arm around me and tried to teach me about Darwinism and the nature of the food chain. He told me that animals aren’t like us, that they don’t have feelings as we do. Nothing he said made me feel any better. My father dried my tears and said he wouldn’t make me go hunting with him again.

As I got older, I began to feel ashamed of my childish reaction, and each time my father left the house to go hunting with his friends, I felt a longing to be with them and share their happiness. When I asked my father to take me hunting with him again, he smiled and pinched my cheek, something he hadn’t done in a long time. When I watched him and the others shoot down the unsuspecting animals, I remembering feeling what I can only describe as ‘cold’ inside. I hid my emotions well, however. I noticed that each time someone successfully killed an animal, he was patted on the back and praised for his skill. I yearned to receive the same kind of attention, so I asked my father for the chance to kill something. He said he was very proud of me.

I never enjoyed killing animals, but I enjoyed the enthusiastic response of the others after each successful shot. I hid my disgust. Eventually, I managed to make the sense of disgust disappear. I tried to think of the creatures I killed as machines that were indifferent to their own existence. This proved to come in very handy later on when I was drafted to fight in the Vietnam War.

Perhaps that is why I chose not to go to the social gathering I was invited to attend. Sooner or later the same old question would arise. "What was it like in Vietnam?" When people ask me that, I tend to say that the whether is much hotter in Vietnam, even though the sun looks exactly the same there. No one really understands what I mean by that. That’s why they can never understand what it was like in Vietnam.

Who can really everyone to understand what it was like in Vietnam? But can’t they understand what it’s like to be alone but surrounded by people? Can’t they understand what it was like to come back from Vietnam? Not likely. The people who welcomed me back didn’t, did they? Upon my return, beheld a swarm of welcoming faces whose joy reflected an optimism I’d never share again. In the watering eyes of my relatives, I saw a sparkle of vitality I couldn’t recognize. I could not smile back at them, not even at my wife who held up my son above her shoulders. It was the first time I’d ever seen my child, yet I felt nothing. I could not play the part of the dashing war-hero, back from battle to suddenly transform from a killer into a family man. I could not say I was happy to be home, because I wasn’t home, and I knew I would never be home again.

I was a stranger in the very town I’d grown up in, though none of them had really changed since I’d left. My father still spent his days talking of patriotism and the righteousness of democracy in between large gulps of beer, sitting lazily on the same couch in front of the same old television set. How could I bother arguing with him when he didn’t even have any views of his own to argue with? He didn’t really know how to think. He only knew how to imitate. I saw through him. I was disgusted.

The same can be said of my mother, a woman who spent her days cleaning up after my father and making sure he had a sufficient amount of alcohol. She’d hover in the corner of the living room, barely participating in whatever pointless discussion was taking place, waiting for my father or anyone else to give her an order. She as the kind of woman who smiled whenever everyone else was smiling, who frowned whenever everyone else was frowning and who only got agitated when half of everyone was smiling and the other half was frowning. She was a joyfully passive person, almost proud of her complete lack of willpower. Everyone had always loved her, describing her as a simple but sweet housewife who wouldn’t hurt a soul. I’d describe her as an empty-headed maid who’d hurt any soul if the others put a weapon in her hand and told her to. I could see right through her now. I was disgusted.

Why waste time in the company of such people when there is nothing that can be shared with them? They liked to mention the War now and then, not to openly discuss it in detail but to simply remind whoever was in range that their son had gone to a hot and stinking jungle in some country they couldn’t even place on a map. For them, it’s something to be proud of. I saw through them. I was disgusted.

That is why I stopped communicating with them. Little by little, I cut contact with them and pushed them out of my life like everyone else. I think the last time I talked to them was eighteen years ago, maybe more. I received a call from my mother, who told me in a shaky and timid voice that my father was angry and disappointed in me. I replied that he could tell me himself rather than obliging her to express his feelings for him. As I’d expected, she quickly passed the phone to my father, thus wiping her hands clean of responsibility. Indeed, my father was displeased with me. He scolded me for not having paid them a visit or having even called them in the last year and asked me what I was doing with my life. He wanted to see my wife and son as well, he told me. When I replied that my darling wife and son had left me, there were a few seconds of dead silence … then my father burst into a furious rampage, half-angry and half-terrified. He desperately demanded what had happened to the beautiful son he’d raised. What had I done with his son? He sounded like he was on the brink of tears, though I had never seen my father cry before, so I might be mistaken.

I let him yell for about two or three minutes, and then realized I was wasting my time. I gently hung up the phone. A short while later, it started ringing again … so I unplugged it. I wasn’t expecting any other calls, anyway.

I still consider my estrangement of people a perfectly logical decision. When faced with the choice of being alone while surrounded by people and being completely and utterly alone, I prefer the latter. For what reason should I pretend to be the same man I was before I went to war? What purpose could it possibly serve to continue spending time with people who don’t know me and who could never possibly know me? Their image of the war is as clear as the San Francisco Bay. They talk of the evil of communism and the glory of fighting in the name of liberty and justice for all, without any inclination of their own ignorance.

I once shared their illusions. It wasn’t until I was actually fighting in the war that I began to realize morality had absolutely nothing to do with why we were there risking our lives. It was about power, like everything else in the world. Isn’t life really all about power in the end? Is the ultimate question who’s right and who’s wrong or is it who’s in control and who isn’t? I don’t hold any grudge against the government for their decision to send the country’s children to kill and die in Vietnam. A government’s duty is to make their country as rich and powerful as possible, and sometimes that requires war. Right and wrong have nothing to do with it, and that’s the way it should be.

I was as much estranged from my family and friends who moralistically supported the war as I was from the long-haired social misfits who preached world peace. I wondered how those rugged hippies would run the country? They criticized on everyone who worked in the system without even understanding how the system worked. The same can be said for my son. At an early age, he was sucked into the rebellious subculture and took action against almost every form of authority. His grades in school were rarely decent, and he loathed to do anything constructive with his time. As a child, he spent his days sitting wide-eyed in front of the television set, watching superheroes save the world. As an adolescent, he spent his days smoking grass and blaming everyone else in the world for his lack of initiative. My wife took him to four different psychiatrists, and they all shared a similar diagnosis. According to them, I was the problem. Perhaps they were right.

I didn’t try to change my son. I let him continue with his lifestyle and his beliefs. If I’d had a better, more constructive and meaningful philosophy to offer, I would have shared it with him. But I’ve never seen myself as a role model, so who am I teach him how to live? His way of life is as blind as any other. The way I see it, everyone has to choose their own version of reality sooner or later. Everyone needs bullshit ideas to give their lives meaning. Why should my son give up his bullshit for someone else’s bullshit?

My wife hated my lack of interest in effecting our son. She came to despise me and blame me for every problem that transpired in our family. I suppose that’s why she left me, although I don’t see how leaving me could have helped our son. I was never really with them in the first place. My wife wanted to change me into a good man in the hopes that my son would then look up to me as a role model and then I, in turn, could change him into a good man. But she, herself, was not especially an effective or admirable person, so her whole plan basically failed.

Occasionally, she tried talking to me about God, hoping vainly that I could become a respectable person through a fresh and passionate absorption in religion. I don’t personally see what difference it makes in life whether you’re religious or not. My father was a good Christian, but I don’t see how his religion has ever affected his daily life. What difference does it make whether a man’s a Christian, Jew or atheist drinking in front of the television? In fact, what difference does it make whether God exists or not? How could we be able to tell the difference? What difference does it make to a soldier whether he’s fighting a war for a good and noble cause or for a government’s self-interest? His objective is to survive and kill everyone on the other side, either way. Changing the rationale for a war doesn’t change its method or its outcome.

I carefully attempted to explain this to my wife, but she either couldn’t or didn’t want to understand my reasoning. It came to a point where practically all she ever talked with me about was God. She even talked about God in the note she left me when she ran away with our son. I woke up at one O’clock in the afternoon that day and went into the kitchen to get a beer. Stuck to the refrigerator was a very long and carefully written message which started boldly with the line, "Congratulations for successfully driving your family away."

The note was patronizing and hilariously cliché, containing nothing that she hadn’t already said to me before. I didn’t even bother reading the whole thing. I got half-way down the page; rhen I got bored, ripped the note off the fridge and threw it away. I got myself a beer and proceeded to head back into the bedroom. I lay myself down on the floor, sipping my beer and staring up at the same little crack in the ceiling that had been there ever since my return. A peculiar sensation gradually took hold of me, a feeling that’s remained with me ever since. It was a feeling of liberation, a sense of happiness tinged by an element of fear, because I knew I shouldn’t be feeling happy at all. But I am happy. It’s a fact. There’s no one left to disturb me anymore. I have no more family and therefore no more responsibilities. I am completely free. I have the couch, the television set and the radio all to myself. They’re all gone, everyone.

Solitude is my only comfort nowadays, and maybe that is why I came here instead of going to the tea-party. But I wonder if I’ll be able to find my way back. I’ve completely lost my sense of direction. Which way is the road? If I continue deeper into the woods, I may pass the entire day pathetically trying to find my way back to the car. I should probably stop and try to get my bearings straight but, no… I won’t. I don’t have a valid reason for turning back, and I still have the odd feeling that there’s something waiting for me in these woods.

I’m walking in the direction my instincts push me in, without a clue as to what I’ll find or what I want to find. But I can hear a sound, the sound of water rushing, and it attracts me. I can hear the river calling. The sensation of being pulled grows stronger with each step I take.

Is this the feeling the birds undergo when they fly south in the winter? Instincts are a beautiful but frightening thing, and you have to wonder where they come from. Just how much of what we do in life is driven by our natural instincts and to what extent are our actions influenced by what we’re taught? My mother taught me to love, y father taught me to hunt and the army taught me to kill. They taught me to kill certain people, of course, but instincts are a funny thing. Even if you try to train or harness them, you can never completely control them.

I remember hearing some prejudicial words spoken against the communists when I was in the training camp, but the actual circumstances behind the war were rarely discussed. I can remember being told, more often than anything else, that I was nothing but a machine who’s function was to kill. Are human beings meant to kill each other? Is it natural, or is it unnatural? In society, you kill someone and you’re a monster. In the jungle, you kill someone and you’re a hero. In society, it’s unnatural to kill. In the jungle, it’s natural. I know that people hate me now, but why must they hate me for the wrong reasons? Is ignoring my family and all the ones who supposedly love me really worse than what I did during the war? It seems people only judge you for the sins that affect them personally. The more I try to understand those around me, the more I hate them. They’re all liars and hypocrites. I hate all of them. I do not judge them, I simply hate them.

Wherever you go, you will always find people trying to sell you their bullshit. Every individual has his own version of what is right and what is wrong, of what is true and what is false. And coincidentally, people tend to select versions of morality that are the most convenient for them. A man who’s inherited a fortune from his parents isn’t likely to have communist political views. A man waiting on death row doesn’t usually support the death penalty. A man who’s been drafted and sent to battle more often seeks to justify the war he’s fighting than not.

But what does it matter to me now? I am alone, I am free. I’m walking through these woods of my own accord, and not because I ‘should’. I’ve never really understood the meaning of the word ‘should’. I ‘should’ be at the tea party with all the other old farts, but I’m not. I’m walking through these woods simply for the sake of walking through them. I’m not here because my doctor says walking and fresh air are good for my health. I’m not here because the radio says that now is a good season for marveling at nature’s beauty. I’m not here because I ‘should’ be. I’m not even here because I especially want to be. I am simply here because… no, I am simply here. There is no ‘because’. There is no ‘why’.

Now I can see the shining water of the river through the trees, and it fills me with anticipation. The air is refreshingly cool here. My senses are alert now, as vibrant as they were in the jungle. It’s been so long since I truly felt alive.

As I come to stand by the riverbank, I behold the last thing I would have expected to. I am not overtaken by shock or disorientation, but a subtle sense of bewilderment. I ponder what will happen next. I don’t believe in fate. I never have and I never will, so it can only be my will that brought me here. But I can’t even remember the last time I truly wanted anything. What have I come here for? What do I want?

Lying outstretched on the riverbank is a slender and attractive woman who can be no older than twenty-five. I silently walk over to her fragile form to examine it. Dressed in a red blouse and shorts, the woman has curly blond hair and soft, girlish features. The expression on her face is one of total serenity. She appears to be in a light slumber. She doesn’t see or hear me. I watch her chest gently rise and fall, listening to her soft and steady respiration.

Then her eyes suddenly flip open, and she emits a startled gasp as she bolts upright in shock … but this is quickly followed by light-hearted laughter, high-pitched and musical. She excuses her dramatic reaction and says she hopes she hasn’t disturbed me. I offer a thin-lipped smile and reply that she hasn’t. I tell her that I should be the one excusing myself for sneaking up on her like that. I saw that because it seems like the appropriate thing to say.

The young woman gazes at the river and comments on what a beautiful day it is. I concur with her. I proceed to ask her why she decided to come here. She informs me that she’s lived by the woods for many years and frequently comes to the river to relax and sunbathe. Our conversation is simple, and somewhat formal. I do not ask her for her name and she does not ask me for mine, but I’m beginning to wonder why she appears so comfortable in my presence. Do I seem like a harmless person? Perhaps it is my age that makes me seem so. She gives me the impression that my company is welcome. I also have a positive feeling. It’s been a long time since I last had a conversation with someone so young. I find the situation interesting.

But after a few basic exchanges of information, we come to a long period of silence. She then declares that she’s very hot and asks me to excuse her while she washes her face in the cool water. She stands up and walks gracefully to the river bank, then kneels down to cup the water in her hands.

For a moment, I simply stand and watch her, reflecting on how vulnerable she looks with her back turned to me. Next, I silently advance until I’m standing directly over her, looking down at her thin and fragile neck … and then, before I even know what I’m doing, I’ve grabbed her small head and started repeatedly bashing it against a nearby rock. Her screaming blocks out the sound of the river, blocks out everything else in the world. I see her blood taint the crystal clear river water and a vision flashes before my eyes of the deer of my father killed.

I pin her light body against the pebbles, my hand clutched over her throat. She looks up at me with a child-like expression, her eyes wide with terror and disbelief. She can’t believe I’m doing this to her. She doesn’t understand why. I don’t either. I hold my position for several moments, listening to her screaming.

Her shrieking turns into sobbing and her sobbing turns into sniveling. She speaks to me in a cracking voice, begging me not to kill her. I ask her why I shouldn’t kill her. She tells me she’ll do anything if I let her live. All I want is a reason why I shouldn’t kill her. I ask her to give me that, but she won’t answer my question. She tells me she has a little daughter who needs to be taken care, but I detect a hint of dishonesty in her voice. She talks about her friends, her family and all the people who love her. What do they matter to me, or to anyone else? One day, they’ll all die too. People die every day, all over the world. What’s one life?

When she realizes she can’t appeal to me through pity, she attempts to dissuade me with fear. She speaks about God, about judgment, good and evil and all that of that stuff. None of it moves me. Does she even believe in her own preaching? Maybe she doesn’t even know or care what she really believes. As I kneel here, her life in my hands, I realize this young woman will say absolutely anything to save herself. This realization causes me to experience a slight sense of sadness.

I’ve heard enough. I drag her head, meeting little resistance, into the water… and I hold it there… waiting patiently… looking at her blond hair wavering in the water… listening to the peaceful noises of the forest… until I finally feel her body go limp… I continue to wait for a little while… and then I softly let go.

I spend the next few moments lying beside her corpse, wondering why I killed her. The action of smashing her head against a rock was completely spontaneous. Afterward, I suppose it just seemed logical to finish what I’d started. I remember hearing that killing people is wrong, but I can’t remember why. It’s an accepted fact in society, but I wonder how many people stop to ask why? If she had given me a valid reason why killing people is wrong, I would have let her live. Now it’s too late. But what difference does it really make? We all die eventually. How is killing a person any different from killing a deer on a hunting trip, or a soldier in battle?

I look at her pale body, and wonder if I should bury it. Then again, what’s the point? The girl with the beautiful smile is gone. Her body is no longer part of her. Leaving her lying by the river bank, her face resting in the water, I stand up and begin to walk back in the direction I came from. I feel nothing. What a beautiful day. The sun shines boldly through branches high above me, enveloping me in its impartial embrace. I’ve killed someone, but it’s still a beautiful day.