“What? No, everything is fine,” I said to my lovely and charming wife.

“I asked who do you want to kill next,” she said. “Honestly, Luke. Where is your head? I’m starting to think you’re not fully committed to our murder spree.”

Psh. Me? Of course I’m committed. I’m not having second thoughts or anything. When your wife says we’re doing a killing spree, well by golly we’re doing a killing spree! I’m 100% into this.

I honestly couldn’t believe she asked me that. Am I committed? I’m like, LOL, right? Oh, you know what it is? I bet, this is funny, okay, I think I know what’s….you see I’m just a bit tired that’s all. I haven’t been sleeping well. It’s not like I’ve been staying up with regrets or anything. I’m totally not seeing the faces of our victims in my dreams. They don’t call out to me in nightmarish screams begging for mercy. Nothing like that.

The reason I can’t sleep….is. You’re going to laugh. You see, when we were back in Illinois, I didn’t want to say anything then, not a big deal, you know, but I kind of bumped my knee on a table. That’s all, and you know, like I said, not a big deal, it’s just, well you know it’s still bugging me. And yeah, that’s it. I can’t sleep, because of the knee. It kind of hurts still. Like not bad or anything, just more of an annoyance really, and it keeps me up at night. Tossing and turning. Because of the knee, not regret. No siree! I am all about vengeful genocide.

I don’t keep secrets from my wife. No way. There was a time, sure, when I kept a secret or two. But Joanne hates secrets. When she found my stash of Maxim magazines, she was none too pleased. Silent treatment for a month, and she flushed my pet fish Samson down the toilet. “What did Samson have to do with it?” I had pleaded as she held the little guy above the bowl, flapping his fins at me as if crying for help. She let him go. There was a plop, then a flush. I fell to my knees crying, and her only response was, “That was so you won’t hide anything from me next time.”

I learned my lesson after that. Don’t keep secrets from your wife. It was my own fault, and I have to live with that. I couldn’t save Samson. That one was totally on me.

But it worked. She’s so smart. I needed to learn that lesson. I was just a dumb guy, you know? Playing video games every day. Going to work with a smile, befriending coworkers, having an overall sense of happiness. Joanne wisely put an end to all that nonsense. Coworkers are competition. Video games waste time. A smile shows weakness, and happiness is a distraction.

“Hey, I have a great idea,” I said to my sweet honey pie. “Let’s put on some tunes.” That was a terrible idea. Turning on the radio killed the car for some reason. I don’t know why, probably wires or something. You know these old 2013 models with their faulty Volkswagen GM emissions voltage whatnots. Yeah, I have this mechanic friend….Jason. Mechanic Jason, we all call him. Like, ‘Hey there, it’s Mechanic Jason, just being all mechanicy and drinking a beer and swinging a socket…..wrench.’ Totally a real person I know, and Mechanic Jason, he says these cars are always running out of gas when you turn on the radio.

So we had to walk to this little diner. Joanne didn’t like it as much as the Burnt Toast Diner. “Yeah,” I agreed. “The coffee is a little weak.”

“Not the coffee, you idiot,” she replied. Oh, she has the cutest terms of endearment for me! She’s so great. “I meant how there are no Evos here for us to shoot. These hillbilly waiters aren’t even evolved enough to be called human. They’re neanderthals at best.”

“Right,” I replied. “What a bummer, yeah. And I just reloaded my gun too.”

I cut into my steak, without any trouble whatsoever, just normal steak cutting, you know. “Hey now,” my beautiful wife said. She eyed my steak suspiciously, though I didn’t know why. It was just a perfectly normal steak being cut in a perfectly normal way. “Didn’t you order rare?”

“What? Rare? No. This is rare. It’s medium-well, a little over, but it’s nothing. This is fine. It’s fine. Everything is fine. I didn’t do it.”

“Of course you didn’t do it,” she said. “Their neanderthal chef screwed it up. Send it back.”

“No, no. I’m good with this. You know what, I think it was my fault, yeah, that’s it. I accidentally said well-done instead of rare, because I was just thinking of how you shot that speedy guy in the AA meeting and so I was thinking well-done, you know, like gosh that shooting of hers sure was done well. Yep, some well-done shooting. And so I said well-done.” I laughed it off and added, “It’s funny, really.”

We finished our meal and checked into a motel. Joanne thought it would be a good idea to rest up and go through these Evo files in order to prepare for our next mass shooting. We have a big day ahead of us, and I’m so looking forward to it! In fact, I was so excited I told Joanne I just needed to go for a quick jog, to release some of this energy that’s been building up from all the anticipation. “You go ahead,” I said. “Order up some room service. Flip on the television. Ooh, Dr. Ken. I bet that’s good. I’m just going to get some fresh air. I’ll be right back.”

And so I went for a nice relaxing jog. Nothing out of the ordinary. It was a little hot, but that’s Texas for you. The bright sun and all. Hey, might be a good time to work on my tan!