Inside the steel cage

The door clanked shut . The keys rattled against the heavy steel  as the door locked . I felt trapped in a room with a rattle snake even though the guard was just outside the door. I was in their with an animal. 

He did nt look my way at first , he seemed full of nervous energy not at all what I was expecting. He flicked back his long hair and preened like a rock star , I d heard he had aspirations of been one once,  the counter culture rebel.  This man was the very spirit of  anarchy   wild untamed beast-ail almost playful in his actions, like a cruel child who liked to burn ants with a magnifying glass. He paced the room uncomfortably, caged but wild. 

I pushed the record button on the tape recorder and the little red light came on. " We are trying to understand men like you " I said " I d be grateful if you would talk to me. 

Suddenly he darted a look my way. " Men like me " he asked with a nonchalant curiosity " ai nt no men like me. What you mean men like me ? Serial killers , I spoke back slowly in a low tone to calm down his bearly   contained mania. 

" I never killed no body " he spat out out like a cobra spitting venom. 

I d meet several serial killers now as we had come to call those who feel compelled to kill repeatedly The agency wanted to understand and profile their actions no easy task as each one was different in their demeanour. 

Just last week  one eyed me with the cold eyes of a shark. He sat their like a physical Buddha an unmoving vast physical weight. His eyes where  black holes which sucked the life out of Suns, emotionally as cold as he listed his crimes,  empathy was a strangers to him. I  sensed his heart was pierced with ice was he born this way ? Or turned cruel somehow , how could anyone be born so evil? 

Another I meet a month ago in Sacramento  was a tall straight laced man well groomed with good manners and diction , he seemed easy going and even quite likeable like a mild mannered Clark Kent. This  made him especially dangerous to the young college girls who hitch hitched with him, never to be seen again. 

A  wolf in the fold he befriended local cops at a local dinner to follow the case of the missing girls. 

  Some months later he handed himself in to the cops tired of the monster he'd become constantly murdering his mother over and over again in the shape of young girls he desired. He had some sense of his crimes and at least seems remorseful for the horror he had unleashed. 

 This man I was in a steel cage with was that he was a different animal all together. It was true he had not murdered anyone , at least it could not be proved that he had. No this creep was  a cult leader an arch manipulator. His followers thought he was some kind of latter day hippie prophet. 

His stature he was in no way intimidating small and light framed but it was his Svengali like hold on the young and highly impressionable that made him a man apart. 

It's a historic fact Hitler never signed a single document linking him to the death camps. This guy was the same nothing but constant denial of the facts . 

" It was their actions , I never told no body to kill ". I ai nt no killer I am all about love man , it's you and your system that kills" . I love my family,  man but I don't control em tell em how to act how to be". He flicked back his hair again with pride and rubbed his beard sat high on his stool like a king holding court. 

This man was evasive. As elusive  as a young Classius Clay when Liston the hulking barbaric champ could nt lay a glove on him. He was never going to admit to his crimes, it would always be somebody else's fault. Till  his dying day this  would be the story he told it was his associates, society his up bringing at fault the list went on. 

I was glad to get out of their when the half hour visit was up. This man was like a demon incarcerate he hated everything civilised society stood for and would love tear it down and watch it burn for the sear hell of it