THIS IS A STORY
TELL ME WHAT YOU THINK
I read in my mothers diary once that I'm passive agressive. I remember sitting there in her car, sifting through the pages like important files; searching for my name. I sat there for an hour seething in the backseat and telling the air and God that no, I'm not passive agressive.
I'm just agressive.
Amazing, how I was so angry about what she said that I proved her point. I boiled in my own rage about that one statement for years.
I became the dog that sits in the corner and bites out of fear when anyone comes around. The one that dares to look in the bigger dogs eyes, but twitches while doing so.
My psychiatrist told me that would be my undoing... She jested... One day, I'm going to be backed into the corner, and I'm going to have a handgun.
And I did.
The first time I ever took someones life I was in a backalley behind a pub, lighting up a cigarette to soothe my frayed nerves after so long in a crowd. Crowds always bothered me, you could get a knife in your back and no one would ever know who it was.
A man came up to me with a 45 and demanded my money, among other things. His hand in my hair, I panicked. Backed into a wall with a gun in my stomach and another in my hand a shot rang out.
But I wasn't the one that fell.
It's amazing to see the life wiped from someone's eyes, like a cloud passing over the sun; except when the cloud passes, the sun isn't there anymore.
A raincloud rolled across his irises and all light fled from them as the cloud dispersed. I prodded him gently, as if expecting him to get up and back away, but he didn't move.
My heart pounding in my ears with the speed and ferocity of a horde of rampaging elephants, I called the police. They assured me that no, I was not in any trouble.
Self-defense.
They had a female officer calm me down, she stayed with me and patted my knee comfortingly. It'll all be better soon dear, you can go home now.
As I lay in bed that night, I could still see his eyes. Glassy, like a window that's been frosted over. Blank and staring.
I had taken someone's life... And there were almost no repercussions.
You never realize your own power until you play god. I didn't sleep at all that night, as thoughts whirled through my mind like a tornado through Kansas.
I had an epiphany. Sudden understanding flowed through me like a swift moving river. Even my blood felt alighted with knowledge.
An epiphany is defined as A comprehension or perception of reality by means of a sudden intuitive realization. But that doesn't even begin to describe it.
Your entire body reacts to a single thought pattern, your blood pumps faster, your heart beats louder, and your eyes fly open wider than they've ever been opened before; Because now you see. The epiphany that you had, large or small has taken hold of you, and you'll want to share it with everyone.
But mine? No. Mine couldn't be shared. Some people are a bit squeamish when it comes to killing and that's exactly what I realized.
Every single second, of every day, of every month, of every year of our lives; We have the ability to kill someone. Whether or not you believe you're "the type", that doesn't matter.
If you wanted to, you could. In the right situation, a nun could kill someone.
Every day at any moment, just any random moment, the people surrounding us our depending on us. Their lives are in our hands, and they don't even know it.
What's stopping us from lashing out? Next to nothing. Lack of reason? Guilt? They say psychopaths have no guilt. A shockingly large percentage of people are psychopathic, they have no concious. They could be anyone, at any time.
And we don't know it. Just by walking down the street, you're placing your life in everyone on that street's hands.
The second time I killed someone, it was to see what would happen. And I didn't call the police. Turns out, my theory about crowds was entirely correct. Everyone jostling everyone else, trying to get two feet ahead of the crowd as if that makes a difference, no one noticed the flash of silver. No one noticed a knife being absorbed into someone's side until a scream echoed through the sidewalk.
There was chaos. More jostling. More shoving. More screaming. I put the knife in a plastic bag and back into my pocket, then bent low over my "victim" and watched them die.
It was a middle aged woman, with a haircut that seemed pre-assigned to those of her age group. Tears fell down her cheeks and landed on the pavement, and I brushed her hair from her eyes.
She smiled at me, her eyes full of warmth.
And she thanked me before she died.
Seconds afterwords, I dissppeared into the crowd. Death, I realized, is an honour. Moving on to another plane of existence is usually preserved for the elderly, the sickly, or the suicidal; but I saved that woman.
There's no pain after death, or atleast that's my opinion. Pain is what lets us know we're alive. Pain is a little shot of mortality. I imagine pain as a reminder that it's not your time to die. There are wounds that don't hurt.
But when one goes of natural causes, I imagine the pain is nonexistant. I never asked.
I took a job at a hospital so I could "save people". I put that on the application and they went for it. But death is the greatest escape, and though I did save a lot of people...
I saved them from life.
At night I'd wander through the morgue to gently pry open the eyelids of the dead and try to find a shred of their soul. But it was like staring through the window of a house long abandoned.
Empty, cold, desolate.
There was a hospise in the building next door, sometimes I'd leave on my work uniform and wander through there. What always surprised me was that an equal number of people were happy there, as there were sad ones.
The ones that would stare through the window all day, but only when it was raining. The ones that refused to play chess with the orderlys... And laughed during the cheery disney movies that the happy ones would watch.
They were the ones playing chess with the orderlys, and usually winning. They were the ones that were always happy to see me. They fascinated me because they stood on deaths stoop and they seemed absolutely thrilled.
I was tempted, quite a few times, to tell them of my epiphany. Maybe tell them what I'd done, what I was doing at the hospital next door.
But they might think that I'd do the same to them. I would never do such a thing. It's so close to their time, why rush things?
But I always sat and talked to one woman. Every day I'd go there to see her. An orderly told me that she'd gone through so much in her life, it was a shock that she was so happy.
But she was.
"I'll be joining my loved ones soon enough, dear. Why spend the rest of my short years missing someone who I'll be spending the rest of eternity with?"
She'd lost half her family over the course of her life. Her parents had drown when she was twelve, her husband had been lost in the war, and most of her children were dead as well.
I offered to play chess with her, but she refused to play that "old persons game". She'd always tell me "I may be old, but I'm not that boring."
We played air hockey, and she told me not to go easy on her. I didn't.
She still won.
She was the most brilliant human being I've ever known, and when she died she left me something. A picture of all of her children. Even the ones that were still alive.
Flipping through the photographs, I stopped. I flipped the picture over and read the name in awe. Anne Marie Cullingston.
She was middle aged, with a haircut that seemed pre-assigned...
Metuo