1.

The first person Jim ever sees killed is his primary school teacher. He is five years old, the day is cold and it is nearly Christmas. His school is taking the mile and a half walk to the church at the other end of the village for a church service celebrating the birth of Jesus. Jim is holding the hand of a year 6, who is much larger than him and walking too quickly for his legs to keep up with. The rush of cars fills his ears and he is too hot in his coat, hat and gloves. He absentmindedly grumbles that his mother prohibited him from removing them until they were inside the church. Ahead of him is his teacher, walking briskly and hurrying them on because they "mustn't be late". Jim knows he is not looking forward to sitting on an uncomfortable bench for an hour to listen to a bearded man talking about something he doesn't fully understand, and so he makes his feet drag as he would when his mother takes him around the supermarket.

They turn the corner, having to cross the road and the teacher is the first to cross. The corner is a blind spot, but the path stops there and so they have to cross. Jim tightens his grasp on the year six's hand, and watches the teacher stand in the middle of the road so as to stop the traffic. In a flash, he sees a car attempt to stop, slide on the ice and crash into her, its windscreen creating a giant, expanding crack where she impacts. The teacher is lying prone on the ground, and Jim can hear someone crying in the background. Red liquid is showing at his teacher's hairline, and her eyes are open. Jim meets her gaze, and thinks oddly that if the car has stopped, it must be safe to cross the road. He relinquishes the hand of the year six, who seems to have forgotten their purpose, and crosses the road alone.

Nobody follows him.

2.

The second person Jim sees die is his grandmother. She is a frail old woman, lying in her bed looking shrunken and lifeless. Her wispy hair fans across her pillow and Jim thinks about twining his fingers in it and plaiting it like his mother does with her own hair. Next to his grandmother stands a man looking stern, talking quietly with his father who looks distressed. A lone tear runs down his father's cheek, and then the stern looking man clips his bag shut and walks past Jim to the door, patting him gently on the shoulder in a commiserating way. Jim frowns at this, because he doesn't understand what the man has said to make his father sad, and he certainly doesn't want the man to touch him if he made him sad on purpose. Jim's father's hands are shaking, and he picks up a pill bottle from the side of the table, before also brushing past Jim in the direction of the kitchen. He pauses, and tells Jim to,
"Look after your grandmother, will you Jim? There's a good boy." He pats him on the head and moves out of Jim's sight. Jim walks cautiously to the grey figure in the bed. His grandmother has always frightened him slightly, her bony fingers always turned in like claws, ready to grab at Jim's face and make him hurt. Nonetheless, Jim always does as his father tells him, and he links his fingers with his grandmother's bony, swollen ones and smoothes her hair away from her face. Pale, watery eyes look up at him and he forces a smile, commanding his lips to pull back and reveal pearl white baby teeth. A whimper escapes his grandmother's mouth, a pained cry that makes Jim feel sick, because normal people don't make such strange noises. Jim is frightened once again, of the old woman in the bed in front of him and the strange noises she makes. He is therefore relieved when his father re-enters the room, looking grave and holding some steaming soup in a large bowl. He ushers Jim out of the room hurriedly, and Jim remains peeking through the crack in the door. He watches his father spoon the soup into his grandmother's mouth, tears dropping on her blanket and down his long nose. His father holds his grandmother's hand, stroking the withered skin steadily, and suddenly the old woman goes lax, her breathing stilled. His father cries openly, a loud sob echoing in the quiet. Weeks later, in black mourning clothes and Jim still hasn't told anyone what he saw. He doubts he ever will.

3.

Jim is 8 years old when his mother kills his father with an iron. In the darkness of the hallway he hears them screaming at one another in the living room, occasional phrases clearer than others,
"How could you? What sort of a monster are you?"
"She was dying! I had to help her!"
"You murderer!"

Jim watches enough television to know exactly what a murderer is, and is intrigued by this last sentence. Since the death of his grandmother, his parents' relationship has steadily worsened, culminating in this final fight. He creeps forward in the dark, and looks once more through the crack of the door, to see his father shaking his mother, spit flying in her face and a truly wild look in his eyes.

" – You have to understand. I did it for us; I did it so we wouldn't be held down by her."

"Let go of me!"
"Not until you understand, you understand don't you? She was going to die anyway, I just helped her out." His mother is struggling, like a fish out of water, twisting and turning in the strong grip of her husband's hands. His father's knuckles are white with the pressure, and he is digging into her arms, leaving dark bruises and crushing the skin. Jim pushes the door open, not sure of his intent. The brief distraction causes his father's grip to lax just slightly, and his mother reaches behind her, to the ironing board with the hot, still plugged in iron and pulls it forward, out of the socket and into his father's face. A gargled scream is heard, and Jim's fathers skull is crushed, the bone pushed inwards. He isn't breathing, and Jim understands this time he's dead. He looks at his mother; her face flushed, her breath uneven, and tilts his head just slightly. She is shaking, and her hands trying to reach for him, to pull him into an embrace perhaps. He moves out the way, uninterested in a hug at this current point in time and walks upstairs to his room where he changes into his pajamas and sleeps.

The next morning, as the sun is rising and the sky is tinged pink, they pack the car and move to England.

4.

The place Jim lives now is not what anyone would call nice. It is one of the council estates in central London, rife with crime and he falls asleep every night to the sound of police car sirens. Jim dislikes it, the hallway he lives in smells of piss, and the lighting is always flickering. Inside his flat, it's fine though. He and his mother never mention what happened before they left for here, and they live almost separately. They eat together, and she drops him off at school, but that is the extent of their interaction. Jim uses this new freedom to his advantage; often frequenting the streets after school and spending all evening reading in the local library. If there was any benefit to living here, it would be that the local library was situated in the nicer part of the area, and they had a large non-fiction section which filled Jim's head with countless facts and theories. Some of the things he did in school, he'd covered weeks before in his own research, sitting in the library absorbing fact after fact after fact. The fourth person Jim saw die was also a visitor to the library, who lived in the same block of flats as he did. The boy in question was a teenager of around 17 who had an odd penchant for romantic novels, something Jim himself had never got into. The boy, named Arthur, sometimes walked home together, especially on nights when it was dark, and chattered mindlessly, with Jim usually spouting new things he'd learnt that day. He was the closest thing Jim had to a friend, he'd never really spoken to people at his old school and everyone at his new school was an idiot, so Jim never bothered with them. Arthur might fill his head with romantic nonsense, but he was interesting and could hold a conversation with Jim without boring him. Jim actually cried when he died.

It was a warm night in summer, around seven o'clock and the council house was oddly quiet. No sirens. Jim's palms were sweating, and he was nervous for some unknown reason. Beside him, striding casually was Arthur, his face cast into shadows by the flickering lights inside the building. They made their way up the stairs together, until they came to a floor inhabited by a group of hooded youths, looking ominous in their tightly packed group. At the sight of these, Arthur's face blanched, and he quickly told Jim to run. One of the larger hooded teens looked up and smiled malevolently,

"Fag. What're you doing in our estate? Who said you could come here and touch our estate with your filthy hands?"

Arthur looked more worried still, his eyes glancing at all the exits and at Jim,

"I don't want trouble." He said quietly, pushing Jim slightly, trying to get him to move.

"Is that your boyfriend? Can't touch a girl so you go after a kid? What sort of sick fuck are you?" The hooded boy continued, moving slowly towards him.

"Jim! Go, go home, now! Please." Arthur pleaded, glancing at him and pushing him further.

"Yeah, run along now, your boyfriend's going to have a nice chat with us. I suppose that'd save you from having his cock in your mouth." Jim didn't understand what they exactly meant by that, he didn't understand a lot of the slang that the teenagers used, so he nodded, and edged backwards.

"Oh look he's nodded. You sick, sick fuck. A little kid? At least go for someone your own size. I'd feel bad getting rid of him." The boy jerked his head in Jim's direction, "Nah, we'll just take you. The boy don't know any better. You on the other hand, you're disgusting." He grabbed Arthur's collar, and he shoved him into the wall of the hallway, Arthur flinched when his head smashed into the tiles. Jim turned the corner and ran into the shadows, still able to see Arthur and hear him when they punched him in the stomach. He hid there, waiting until the hooded boys ran away laughing without a care in the world; then he moved back to Arthur. If it was physically possible for his heart to break, now would be the time for it to do just that. Arthur's normally sleek blonde hair was matted with blood and he was breathing shallowly, holding a hand to his stomach underneath which dark red blood was spilling. His face was pale and he was wheezing. He glanced up at Jim and smiled,

"Hey kiddo." The few words made him choke and cough, drops of blood spilling from the corner of his mouth. Jim brushed them away with his sleeve and held Arthur's hand tightly. The door of one of the flats opened, and he didn't turn to see who had gasped so loudly, just waited for her to call an ambulance. Arthur's breathing was more laboured and there was a pool of blood around him on the floor, he clutched Jim's hand tightly. Jim was stock still, hardly even breathing, just holding his hand and waiting for the sirens.

"Guess…I…won't be…coming…to…the…library…with you…any…more." He said between splutters, "You…keep…on…-" He stopped there and Jim waited expectantly for the next word, ignoring his glassy eyes and the now lax hand holding his. Jim wiped a tear, and ignored the pain in his chest. He stood and rearranged Arthur's hair to its typical neatness with the sound of sirens as his soundtrack.

5.

The fifth person Jim saw die was in the supermarket. A man, mid thirties, just collapsed in front of him when he was buying frozen peas. He was clutching at his heart and Jim found it almost comical the way he tried to breathe and couldn't get his lungs to work properly; his eyes bulging like a goldfish's. When the man stopped struggling, Jim merely stepped over him and picked up the pack of peas he wanted. Nothing to see here, he thought, as the other shoppers gasped and screamed behind him.

+1

Jim hated Carl Powers so much more than he'd ever hated anyone in his life. A stupid lump of a boy, the same year as Jim but so much older looking than him. His only call to fame was his records at the swimming pool that both he and Jim attended. Jim enjoyed swimming because it gave him a chance to focus his thoughts and relax, instead of constantly thinking a hundred different things at the same time. He was particularly good at it, and Carl Powers often laughed at his shoddy breast stroke and his awful swim times. Jim hated to be laughed at. It made him feel mediocre, something he knew for certain he was not and no one seemed to care that Carl was an idiot, but they found it hilarious to watch Jim Moriarty flounder in the water and choke when he accidentally inhaled some whilst on front crawl. Of all the people who humiliated him, Carl was the worst. When in the changing rooms, he'd stolen Jim's clothing and made him parade around in his towel until he'd reclaimed his underwear from the showers, sopping wet and his jeans from inside the girl's changing rooms. The way Carl had laughed so heartily made Jim's blood boil, he found it so hilarious that Jim had to suffer such indignities. Carl's laughing face kept him up at night and he planned to exploit Carl just like he had done to him.

In his many trips to the library, he'd studied chemical compounds. Access to a school library and a chemistry teacher who seemed to have taken a liking to Jim meant it was easy to talk about deadly chemical compounds. In practice obviously, as he was always keen to reassure the teachers. The discovery of Clostridium Botulinum made Jim's stomach flip in excitement. Finally he had a way to destroy Carl Powers, to humiliate him like he'd done to Jim. Jim used Carl's eczema to his advantage, slipping away from their swimming practice early to replace Carl's eczema medication with his own. A swimming competition was to happen the next day, a large space full of people to be audience to the failings of Carl Powers. Jim's hands were shaking as he replaced the bottle with an identical one and returned to the pool, grinning from ear to ear.

The next day, Jim watched as Carl Powers struggled in the water, 3 metres deep and sinking towards the bottom. Confusion was evident from the expressions of people at the poolside. People reacted too slowly, and Carl Powers sunk underwater, not to be resuscitated again. Jim turned, back to the changing rooms and picked up the trainers that were sitting in their changing area. Carl's mother was sobbing loudly, the wailing could be heard from where Jim was standing, out of sight and out of mind.

He didn't understand why people had to make death so melodramatic. People die. That's what they do.