Warmth, food and shelter. That is what man first said he needed to survive. Warmth, food, shelter and companionship. That is what man then claimed he needed to survive. Warmth, food, shelter, companionship and a band of like-minded individuals followed. And what does man need now?

Warmth, food, shelter, companionship, a leader, electricity, wealth, hot running water at the turn of a tap, dominance over people who are different, radio, television, newspapers, an automobile, so-called knowledge.

My name is Steven Kerwin and I refuse many of these things. Yet I am alive. I am surviving whilst you… you are DEAD, motherfucker!

Consider the .38 calibre revolver. It is probably the most popular gun in the USA—the land of the free. The accuracy is not guaranteed for long-distance shooting, so it isn't popular for people who are hunting animals out in the woods on the weekend. So the most popular gun in the USA has one true use…

It kills people.

Should we not say that killing is the thing that man truly needs to do in order to survive? We've had two wars this century that the entire world wanted to take part in. Even after all that bloodshed, we needed more. Vietnam was the most recent. And look at cops and the new Mayors that we bring into power! Tough-talkers who declare a "war on crime", whilst the cops are guys who want to get paid for pulling a gun on somebody who does not want to be part of the accepted tribe. War on crime. The real crimes are committed by the Mayors, who waste the taxes on their private coke habits and cum all across the exposed tits of a Negro hooker too out of her mind to recognise that it's the damn Mayor. A filthy-rich white boy who's moaning like a bitch as he shakes the remains of his liquid pearls all over her, the girl too out of her mind on LSD that has been contaminated by the CIA to keep the chains of oppression upon you. It's the Mayors who promise to help the poor but see them worse off. It's the Mayors who sell them to the streets.

You want to know about me, that is why you're here. So let's travel back to last spring. That's where I will begin, because that murder in spring has been pinned on me with deadly accuracy. I admit to that, I let it go down in the books as my first kill. The police are desperate to get me for crimes that occurred before that. But no matter how many times they have slammed my fingers in desk drawers or stomped on my chest when they've knocked back the chair I'm sitting in, I always laugh and wipe my bloody fingers on their pristine white shirts. Let the bastards have their unsolved crimes and open cases where the hollow eyes of a photographed victim looks up at them in desperation. I'm not being anybody's errand boy.

Spring came like it did every year, with early rising suns and blossoming flowers that opened beneath the shadows of sexually rampant farm animals. Spring has an effect on man, too. Makes him happy for a reason he can't explain. Makes him regain all the hope that he has lost through the long winter nights. Suddenly the women aren't all wrapped up tight to keep warm, so he sees her flesh and gets a stiff one. But don't let the joy of spring fool you. The world is still a dark fucking place, and that darkness can crawl into man like it did me.

I walked into a bad part of the city. There was still a chill hanging round the night air, so I decided to wear my leather jacket to keep out the cold and to hide the .30-calibre revolver that I had stolen from a two-bit drug pusher who lived just down the street from me. That gook walked round with his head held fucking high because he was making better money than the stiffs who worked a respectable 9 to 5 behind a desk. Those nine to fivers may have came home and slapped their wives, but they did it behind closed doors and their wives covered up the bruises in the name of love. But this motherfucking gook beat his girls in the fucking street, with no fucking shame. I called round his place and made out I wanted a bit of hash. He brought me in to his apartment and into the kitchen, where the fucker was cooking rice! I tried my best not to laugh. He had his back to me, reaching into a tin that was placed on the top shelf of one of his cupboards, when I took hold of the pan and threw the contents on his back whilst he was telling me how amazing my high would be. I got a better high without his shit as Charlie screamed out in pain, I can tell you that. Fucker probably thought I was packing napalm! I kicked him about some, stamping down on his jaw, and then I noticed the gun at his waistline. He sobbed like a whore when I pointed it at him, but we made a deal. I'd let him live if he let our beef go.

Days later he was walking round all bruised and swollen, claiming police brutality! It took all of my control not to laugh when I'd be buying vegetables and he'd walk into the store and lower his head on seeing me. But yeah, anyway, I had the gun and I eventually took a bus into a bad part of the city.

Pimps like the kind you see on TV shows were standing on street corners, velvet clothes and sunglasses at night with a peacock feather in their hats as they tried to sell the merchandise. I walked straight past them and their calls. Funny thing was, a convenience store was open late and I could hear the new song by Paul McCartney and Wings. The Beatle who had called for love and peace with his fellow man. To that, I say these words: PIGS, RISE and HELTER SKELTER.

You played your part in making a killer, Paul. You and your boys calling for love when you were putting hidden messages in your songs. If hearing Wings wasn't a sign that I was on the right track in life, I don't know what is!

I walked on. On and on until I realised that I was being drawn by the loud beats coming out from a disco club. People were walking in, girls in short skirts and syphilis coating their beef curtains. It seemed the ideal place to go. So I walked in real cool-like, and handed over the dollar twenty it cost to get in there.

'Be cool, brother.' The meat-head on the door nodded to me.

'Right on, friend,' I answered as I held up my fist. The spirit of the sixties was desperately trying to hang on to some people, even though the decade had died. It died a sudden death alongside its far-out ideals and sounds. The beatnik now worked for a major coffee manufacturer that ripped off the Colombians and used the expensive cocaine that the country produced in bulk as whitener.

Just years ago, clubs played experimental music that went hand in hand with the mind altering drugs. Now the music was a repetitive din, the drugs cost more and were tampered with by the US Government to destroy the free love movement. They didn't understand that the movement killed itself. I sat on my own, watching the people dance and guys lighting up smokes to look cool at the bar. I roll my own cigarettes. It makes it that little bit harder for The Man to get the right drugs into my system… the drugs that will make me buy all the products shown in infomercials before shaving my hair and stepping up to join the military.

I fight my own war.

An hour later I walked to the girls' bathroom, happy to find them empty. I locked myself in a cubicle, tried not to look at the urine-soaked seat where a gal had squatted over the john so she wouldn't catch the clap. After a while, the music became momentarily louder as somebody entered the room. Two of them, each getting a cubicle to either side of me. Quiet as a mouse, I took the revolver from my trousers and held it to the side of my face as I listened.

'Rob is such a dick,' one moaned. 'He just pleases himself and that's it.'

'Well, why don't you try and get on top?' her friend suggested as she pissed.

'He says it's wrong. We got to go missionary.'

'Who told him that, his mother?' laughed her companion. 'I can't believe a crab, no a squid, no a jellyfish stung me at the beach.'

'Fucking Rob,' she complained as she flushed the toilet, and suddenly I could smell marijuana. That's it, people, let The Man control you that little bit easier.

'Are you holding out on grass?' the other chuckled as she flushed. Both doors creaked open.

'No, I knew you'd want to light up on the dance floor. The place is hip, but not that much!'

I listened to them talking, guessed that they were talking at the wall just across from the cubicles where you wash your hands. The job had to be done fast, because any minute somebody else might walk into the room. But I was smart enough to slowly unlock the door, so they wouldn't hear the barrel screeching back into place.

'You hear about Francine? She's engaged to Bobby McCall.'

'Bobby the neo-Nazi? What the fuck?'

'I know! He says he wants to move to England. Says if they want kids, America isn't the place to start.'

'That's bullshit,' she claimed as I slowly opened the door. The two of them were standing at the mirrors, both rooting through their bags as one pulled back on a fat joint. I saw my reflection, piercing eyes looking back at me as if I was an intruder.

'That Bobby. The racist who digs Motown! What's that about?'

I cocked the gun and fired, hitting one right in the head. She fell forward and then dropped down, leaving a splash of blood across the nearest mirror as her friend screamed in horror. Confident that the music kept the song of a gunshot within this very room, I fired two pieces of hot lead into her back and watched her fall to the ground. She gasped like a fish out of water as thick blood ran from her mouth like lava from an erupting volcano. Standing over her, I looked deep into her eyes as I pointed the gun at her face. Only God heard her final whispers.

Briskly walking out of the bathroom, the revolver stuffed down my trousers as I brushed past dancing slaves. Maybe I brushed past Rob on the way out? The only thing that I am certain of is the fact that I felt so alive as I returned to the night air and sounds of passing traffic. Drunks crowded into burger bars like animals, eating the flesh of innocent beings slaughtered for their selfish use. One day, the world will see that carnivores should only exist in the wild.

A quiet bloodlust held me in loving arms over the weeks. First I got the Jewish taxi driver—a single bullet to his neck as he locked the cab doors. As he sat on the pavement with a hand over his wound, I put two more into his chest. I played Oswald one night, sitting at a warehouse window whilst I waited for the feminist group to leave the community hall where they had held their meeting. Despite all their tough-talking bullshit, you'd better believe that they wanted a strong man nearby when the fourth lesbian fell with her brains pouring out of her fucking head. A China-man in a launderette took a bullet between the eyes as he was spraying starch onto a freshly cleaned shirt, and when his wife (or fucking grandmother) came rushing in from the back, she barely had time to take in what was going down before she was also kissed by death.

The regular slayings made the press. I was deemed a psychopath, and Detective Byrne—a war hero given countless medals for bravery in Vietnam—was the man given the case. This encouraged my slaughter. Byrne tried to call me out somewhat unsuccessfully by branding me a "coward" and an "obvious fag", but I just laughed and carried on with my night-job. It was a local news report that told me where I was going wrong. They put a map on the screen with little red dots to indicate my work and work that may have been by my own hand. Thanks to Channel 6, I knew that I would have to spread my destruction if I wanted to remain hidden.

So I went nuclear. Hitching rides, I would travel east and spend a day there before killing at night. For kicks, I started getting real close to my prey so their blood would find my skin. You have no idea to how alive you feel, standing in the night air with a gentle breeze making the blood that coats you feel cold. I'd then hitch a ride further east for a while or change direction totally. Local law in towns where I had made a brief stop were more than interested in me, but it was Byrne who the press kept hunting down for quotes and news on the investigation. But my attacks were now all the more random and my victims were finding themselves with less and less in common.

One great murder was a pig farmer who had pulled over to give me a ride. We were driving along a bumpy road when the discovery of a body some miles south was announced on the radio news. They wouldn't give any details, but they made it clear that they suspected the killer whom Detective Byrne was supposed to be catching was responsible.

'Isn't that a darn shame?' the farmer said as he lit a cigarette.

'Excuse me?' I asked, pretending that he had pulled me from sleep at the last second.

'Another murder—just days after that sixteen-year-old cheerleader was killed. Sixteen. Jesus, her whole life was in front of her.'

'Napalm was dropped on children who were sixteen months old. We let kids younger than sixteen sign up for the World Wars, long as they claimed to be older.'

'No,' he said. 'No, that is horse-shit. War's a different thing altogether.'

'Why?'

'Son, if I have to tell you that, you need to get off at the next school or library and start reading.'

'Maybe,' I shrugged. There wasn't another building to be seen before or behind us—never mind a school or library. Road was empty, too. 'You make a quick stop at that tree?' I asked. 'I really need to go to the bathroom.'

'I don't know,' he replied as if it pained him. 'I'm trying to make good time on this trip.'

'C'mon,' I pleaded as I reached into my pocket and pulled out the leather wallet that I had taken from a banker back north. 'I'll give you two dollars just to make a quick stop and then we'll carry on.'

'Two dollars to stop for a pee?' He smiled as he indicated a stop, despite the fact we were the only people around. 'You must be desperate. Just be quick.'

'Thanks,' I said as I turned and pushed the door open with one hand as I discreetly took the revolver from my trousers with the other. Who knows what he thought was happening? I turned right round like a striking snake and hit him bang in the nose with the gun. Blood was spat against the windscreen by a tiny mouth that opened up at the bridge of his nose. It must have been a clean break, because blood soon ran from his nostrils until it was dripping from his chin and onto his shirt.

'Dig that, motherfucker?' I asked as I climbed onto his lap and beat him about the head with the revolver, blood splashing around the front of the vehicle. 'Fucking killer on the loose and you're stopping for any fucking hitchhiker with long hair?' I pressed the gun to the bottom of his chin and cried, 'You really are fucking nuts!' before pulling back the trigger.

His brains escaped from a hole at the top of his skull and found the roof. For a second, it looked like his head had ejaculated. I climbed out of the vehicle laughing. He really had proven himself to be a dick-head. Blood was on my clothes, but I was confident that when it dried in the baking sun it would resemble the mud that had splashed onto me during my travels.

The walk was so long that I regretted killing that stiff so far back. But I eventually reached farmlands and passed animals that stood behind razor wire like the lost souls who had been imprisoned in concentration camps over Europe some decades gone. Under a full moon I reached the farmhouse at the end of a dirt road that was anchored by a mailbox with SHUSTER stencilled against the cast iron. I tapped against one of the glass windowpanes on the door and a second later, an old man who had obviously stood tall and strong in his youth answered the door.

'I help you?' he asked politely.

'I'm real sorry to bother you this late, but me and my friends are travelling to the beach and we broke down. I've been walking for miles. Do you have a telephone, so I can call repair?'

'How far back?' he smiled. 'I can get one of the farm vehicles and tug you back here. Used to be a mechanic.'

'That'd be swell,' I answered enthusiastically. 'But can I just use your bathroom first?'

'Sure,' he said as he opened the door for me and turned back into his house. 'Straight up the stairs. I'll just put my shoes on.'

I closed the door quietly as I pulled the revolver from hiding. I could hear Detective Byrne spitting fire and brimstone on the radio and it felt like he had been waiting for me at this isolated farm. 'I'm not disturbing you, am I?' I asked. 'If you and your family are having dinner…'

'No,' he insisted as he kept his back to me whilst he slipped into a pair of boots caked in clay. 'Just me here.'

I shot him three times in the back and during the trio of blasts, he went real stiff and stretched his arms out like Christ on the cross. It was a surprise when he slowly turned to face me with a look of hate in his eyes and an animalistic snarl. Laughing, I charged towards him and put two more in him and that caused him to fall back and topple the kitchen table over. I silenced the radio with a bullet. That night a group of hippies decided to camp out on the land, and I crouched in the vegetation and listened to the Hendrix that they played on the radio. They said things like "Far-out" and "Groovy!" Yeah, that's good, motherfuckers—aren't you the trippy radicals? I waited for them to get good and tired before heading to the barn and climbing inside one of those vehicles with a cylinder occupied by a thousand metal teeth that are used for cutting the wheat once it's high enough. A wheat shredder? Maybe. It isn't so important. I remember them stirring as I was getting close. I remember them being taken over by fear and waking one another and pointing at me before trying to run. Crying with laughter, I stuck the revolver out of the cabin window and fired shots to slow down the few that were gaining too much of a distance between me and them. One by one, they fell beneath me screaming and blood that looked black in the night fired up and christened the windows. A limb or two was flung to the sides. Once it was done, I jumped out of the cabin and laughed at the full moon that looked down on me admiringly.

The farmer had plenty of envelopes and stamps, so I posted a finger to Byrne's mother before heading back home—the Detective wasn't listed in the phone books, but his mother was. I killed three and no more on the way back, regardless of what the papers say. I never found out if old Mrs Byrne received my letter, which is a bummer.

The city was uglier than I had recalled on my return home and the bitch had aged terribly. The stench of car fumes and contaminated pussy made me want to vomit, and even the clean clothes hanging in my wardrobe had been touched by this dirt. But I prepared myself for a trip into the wilderness, walking down the street to pick up a newspaper from the news-stand. And who was leafing through the latest Playboy when I got there? That's right—the two-bit drug pusher.

I barked at him like a dog and asked, 'Hey, Oddjob—does the pink slits really run sideways on your girls?'

He turned and looked me up and down as if I was something he would never want to step in before turning his attention back to the glossy magazine.

'Don't turn away from me!' I cried and I pulled the revolver from my waistline and shot him in the back. He fell to his knees to a chorus of screams from terrified witnesses, but I was certain that not one of them would have the balls to point me out to the police. Unfortunately, a squad car screeched to a halt in the road as I put a bullet to the back of his head.

The cop was a rookie, calling the crime in over pulling his gun. I ran at him and fired two shots through the glass and into his body. Dumb fucking luck, another police car must have heard about the shots already and it screeched into the road with sirens coming to life. Short of options, I pulled the dying rookie from the vehicle and stole his car. You would have thought the newcomer would have stopped to check on the wounded, but I found myself in a car chase and I was no longer able to laugh.

The chase lasted under three minutes, with many diving out of the way, but my vehicle mowed down two ass-holes and they cracked the windshield as I refused to slow down. I found myself with a clear run. Without any other vehicles, I was certain that I could outrun my chaser. But fate tossed me a bad hand. A ginger cat ran out onto the road in pursuit of a pigeon and I swerved to the left to avoid hitting the creature. I ran right into a fire hydrant and fell against the wheel, cracking my ribs and knocking the air right out of me. By the time I regained my composure, water was falling heavily against the windshield and a cop was standing at the side with his gun on me.

'Don't move!' he screamed.

I grabbed for my gun and got three bullets for my troubles. Falling unconscious, I was certain that I was dying and I felt that I had won. You can imagine my disappointment when I woke in a city hospital—handcuffed to a bed and later told that Officer Grant was the hero of the hour. But at least it wasn't Byrne, right?

Psychiatrists deemed me boring and self-obsessed. One of them even had the nerve to claim that my intelligence was below average! But now, hours before my execution, you sit in front of me with your press card and recorder as an armed guard stands outside. New rock and roll bands have written to me and asked for me to write words that they can put music over. The disco scene won't stand a chance.

I am a hero, if just for today.