Kenny is a 16 year old struggling actor "in the anti-glamour of Hollywood, California."

     He sat on a conduit of action and thought. The razor buzz trickled through him every breathing moment, sometimes stirring him to verbalize when I needed him or he thought he was needed.
     He lives with my mother in a brownstone on some sort of bi-coastal hybrid metropolis, population billions, population none.
     His name is often Frank.
     He is my conscience, and this is why I have to kill him.

#

     My murderous intent took shape two years ago at an Expo for CCA (Cooperate Climbers Association) in Stockton.  I attended primarily to hear the guest speaker and host Michael "The Emperor" Renoldi discuss his meteoric rise to the Forbes 500 and how one could benefit from his "take no prisoners" approach to the scheming world of industry.
     Naturally, I arrived early, but even my impressive punctuality would not be good enough to beat the crowd.  Nearly four thousand suits bustled like ants through the rows and columns of chairs in the convention center, pre-game prep on their minds.
     Early attendance estimates concluded that about eleven thousand people would show up.   This conclusion was broken and discarded come show time.  A thronging thirty-three thousand men and women waited for words from "The Emperor."  Needless to say, the crowd was an entity, an ocean of steady heartbeats.
     The Expo began soon enough with a flourish of whiz-bang PowerPoint presentations and billowing puff from a smoke machine.  The Emperor entered, hands up a la Nixon, and took center stage.   He held his microphone to his lips, panting for a moment.   Silence.  I could feel the crowd's buzz and hum begin to pick up in anticipation.   Finally, the lips moved.
     "I want something out of all of you today."  His eyes flashed, darted left right up down, searching.  He walked back and forth, still intensely searching the crowd.
     "I want to KNOW," he paced, alive.  "I want to KNOW, that EVERY. SINGLE. ONE OF YOU," he breathed heavily, eyes blazing, "EVERY. PERSON in this room, is WILLING to do what it takes."  The crowd readied themselves, electric energy raising every hair. "That EVERYBODY is willing to do what-EVER it takes to reach The Top."   He walked back and forth.  The anticipation and eager gut-wrenching urge to shout or clap or yell "SAY IT! SPEAK! SPEAK!" was almost unbearable.
     "I WANT TO HEAR YOU SAY, YES!"
     In a monumental snap of force, thirty-three thousand listeners began to clap violently, literally rocking eardrums and bodies alike.  Within the storm of noise was our King, arms up and grinning.

#

     It took about three minutes for the applause to stop.  Once there was a moment long enough for an Emperor to sip some Evian, the meat of the show began.
     Looking back now reveals that, although there were many note-worthy quotes and lessons Micheal bestowed upon us, one in particular would bring me where I am now.   Three hours into it, our Emperor raised his hands and brought them together as if he was a nun, a saint.   He said, "One necessary evil will ultimately lie in your path to success. This demon will confront you time and time again, to the point where you may stop thinking from the gut altogether. And can we afford to do this?" he asked his faithful choir, and a soulful "NO!" echoed back to him.  He waited a beat, then gestured to his head.  "The roadblock in question, my friends, is that nagging, little ol' conscience."  He put his hands behind his back, now in Mad Professor mode.  "Your moral sensibility, in a word, will send you to the trash. You will constantly ask yourself, 'Was I right to do that?'. 'Is this wrong?'"  He shook his head and laughed. At that moment, I'm sure he looked like Judas.   "And as I said, as we ALL said, we will stop at NOTHING to reach The Top. Therefore, you must find a way to get rid of this little do-gooder. Find a way to push it aside, push it down and say," he straddled an imaginary victim on the ground below him, "'This is NOT your place.'"  He put his hands out as if they were holding a precious peach.  "You must be able to KILL... your conscience."
     Squish.

#

     This is when I made the conscious (no pun intended) effort to keep the little voice quiet during business.
     The going was steady at first, and I now attribute this to my lack of knowledge about my conscience.  It was within the second or third month when I had my first confrontation with Frank.   At the time, I assumed (like most everybody else) that my conscience was a part of me, one that could be numbed and possibly even controlled in the short-term.  As time progressed, I began to find out that, not unlike that bug-thing in that Disney movie, my conscience had a personality (and even a mind) of it's own.  More conflicts of interest provided me a little insight into the being of my moralistic side.   His name was Frank, he looked like a shorter more poetic version of me (or at least I think so), and he lives with my mother in some sort of condo in my brain.
     As time went on, we had more run-ins, (the conversations of which I am excluding for a reason I will later reveal) and eventually reached a point where I could not push him away.
     During this period I lost thousands of hours of sleep and often found myself doubting the way I handled my business.  Frank would try and coax me into feeling good about 'where I was at in my life', and 'how I dealt.'
     A severe decrease in my annual income finally convinced me that in order to succeed, in order to be the best, I would have to kill Frank.

#

     Formulation on how to "kill" your conscience being is puzzling.
     Maybe you should... perform a bad deed, a cardinal sin of the mind's eye.   Or maybe you should hire some part of you to do the job for you.
     I optioned a third possible fix at first.  In order to kill my conscience, I would picture him (Frank) in a fatal situation, such as drowning or being crushed to death.
     For three months I struggled to kill Frank in one situation or another.   In operation, it was much like blocking a play.   I told Frank to go here and do this, etc., and he would generally hit all of his marks.  But, Frank (and I suppose all conscious beings) possesses animal instincts that tell him not to let himself be killed.   My orchestrations all went off without a hitch until the last crucial moment.
     I attempted murder by way of lynching, shooting, stabbing, clubbing, asphyxiation, introduction of cancer, and use of the electric chair.  And through all this, Frank prevailed.
     His attitude was not unlike that of a human being after the attempts on his existence.   He became very vulnerable, and often spoke of being betrayed.  Coping with the sad morality of his words was the hardest thing to get over, and I often found myself crying.

#

     For a time, a long time now (three hundred and forty-eight days), I have been able to keep him under a sort of sedation.  I can feel his presence, but he does not speak to me anymore.   I think of him a lot, and I see his face.

#

     I will now chronicle the final moments of his life.  He still lay on a bed, pale and sorrowful, a heart-broken image of myself.   The slow "beep, beep, beep" of his lifeline is heard.  I approach his bed, and see the chord.  I bend down, and grasp the plug.  My hand, my mind's hand trembles and sweats.  I gulp, my stomach vile and churning.  I hear a sputter of lips.  I know it's him, but I don't look up.  He calls my name with his gentle, desperate, loving voice.  He whispers memories and faces and fears we've shared into my mind's ear.   I grab the plug. He strains now, fear touching his voice.  He mumbles things I love to hear: 'Poo-tee-weet?' he chirps.  My hand tightens.  Tears choke him now, and he screams that he loves me, and that I should love him too.   I prepare to pull.
     For success.

© 2005 Kenny Baumann