He thought about death a lot.
He thought about how it would feel to bash Dad’s skull against the wall until it was splashed with bright red viscera, he thought about how it would look to squeeze the life out of Mom with just his hands and watch the light pour out of her eyes, he thought about how he’d kill Connie and Dakota once he ran out of fuel to the rampaging fire.
He thought about worse, though, as if it could get worse than running through every possible way to kill his loved ones. He thought about leaning over when Dad drove him to practice, when the Jeep was in the shop and he needed a ride to class, and sucking him off, just to see what he’d do. He thought about throwing Mom onto her bed in the nursing home and shoving her elastic pants down, just to see how long it’d take the nurses to stop him. He thought about forcing himself onto his friends just to see if they’d push him back and tell him “no,” but he already knew Dakota wouldn’t.
He thought about how he had the capacity for wrongness, for evil, and yet he did not act on it. He thought he never did it because he just didn’t want to put in the effort and try.
He thought that deep down he was innately evil, and he thought that he wasn’t scared enough of that fact. He thought, when the last vestiges of his Sunday School propaganda crept up on him, that he was the Devil’s minion, maybe even his son.
And he thought, only sometimes when the night had lingered too long and he’d overworked all of his normal trains of thought, that might not be such a bad thing.