An Englishman in New England

You're standing in the kitchen, cutting up tomatoes for dinner. The kids are watching cartoons after school, and you can hear their gleeful yips of joy as Yu-Gi-Oh triumphs yet again over. . .whoever.

Out of nowhere: "They have to die"

You jump - "Who's there?" you whisper fearfully, dismissing where you think it came from.

You look around the corner to check the kids are okay - they're fine, as if they didn't hear a thing. You look around the house - there's noone there. You start to relax a little - must've been hearing things.

Then once again, calmly, rationally: "They have to die. Don't ask why - it's just faith, that's how it works. I will show you how to do it. Look for the signs."

Once again, you check on the kids, who are chortling at the TV still. Something on it catches your eye - Wile E Coyote, in his trademark style, yet again has a large rock introduced to his skull.

"You see?" says the voice "That's how you 're going to do it. That's how it must be done. You're not crazy - you've been chosen. But you must prove yourself."

You try to ignore it, you think you must be going nuts. But over time, the voice persists.

A few weeks later, you start to think that it might be telling the truth. . .

This woman is easily dismissed by the majority of people as crazy. They're probably right. But they think it couldn't happen to them.

"What a nut job", they scoff, contemptuously, "I mean, how could you kill your kids??".

I would ask "How couldn't you?"

After all, when you really think about it, we've all thought about swerving into oncoming traffic, of leaning over the edge just a little too far, of pulling a revolver on the guy who just cut you up on the highway. We 'hate' this TV show, and 'want to kill' that person. And I think all it would take is a little persuasion for us to put iron in our words.

We're all, all of us, tenuously clinging to sanity by a thread.