The Journalist

Incipere.

There’s something different about you, but I can’t quite place my finger on it. Outwardly, there is nothing to catch the standard passerby’s attention; you don’t have an aura that sucks in attention from a room, nor do you slip through the scenery invisible. You’re just there. Plain and boringly average little you, so why is it that you’re here? For some godforsaken reason, the universe has decided to give you a chance, and if you get this right, I could be your ticket to journalistic fame. There isn’t a load of experience beneath your belt, else you would have begun with different questions and skipped over the trivial pleasantries of small talk. First mistake: people don’t small talk with me.

Your voice is soft and insignificant as it echoes throughout the room, a poor substitute for the vast expanse your anticipation has left. You are not a shark, but a mouse; you are not hungry for a story, you are scavenging for answers, and despite your rocky start, I’ve decided to give you a chance. But whatever answers it is that you seek, you haven’t been asking the right questions. Each one thus far has been meaningless, and though I’ve picked you from the masses, you are trying my patience. I tell you so, none too gently, and a predatory grin stretches across my lips as your eyes immediately seek my hands.

How strange human nature is, I find. I know exactly what I look like, I know just how threatening I appear. It isn’t my cold, calculating eyes or my twisted, feral snarl that scares you, nor should it be. You are smart in this way, for these are mere appearances. My hands, though, that’s where the danger lays. They cannot touch you now, but they are a weapon in and of themselves. Perhaps it’s subconscious, the way you instinctively glance towards them as if to ensure they are still handcuffed to the table. You are foolish to believe that these simple chains of metal and first degree laws will keep you safe, but I suppose you are wise to be wary. These hands have killed thirteen people, after all.

You take a deep, stuttering breath, glance towards the large mirror spanned across the length of one wall (the feds aren’t going to help you, sweetheart), and ask about my childhood.

Wrong. Try again.

Don’t misunderstand me, I don’t like you. That isn’t the reason I’ve suddenly decided to speak to you and you alone; in that press room, your hand was picked and you asked me about something that everyone else dismissed. So, color me intrigued, here we are, but now you’re just getting on my nerves. You should know by now that I grew up in a typical suburban house with a loving mother and father, who passed five years ago and will never have to look into their child’s eyes, fully understanding what exactly it is they raised. I don’t blame them, of course, they didn’t do anything wrong. I didn’t have a plethora of friends growing up, but not so little in a way that was abnormal. There was nothing to traumatize me, I merely floated through adolescence and into adulthood and that’s a fact you simply will have to come to terms with: people are just born the way they are. If you bothered to do your research, or, hell, picked up a daily newspaper, you would know this, but instead, you insist upon pretending to know my story. You don’t, and you never will, so move on, dearie, you’re wasting all our time.

This strikes a chord, I can tell. There’s a shift in your demeanor, one that would be miniscule and arbitrary to the untrained eye, but a change all the same. You start slowly, your meek voice steadily gaining momentum as you tell me you are already familiar with the facts; you know exactly where I was born, who I was raised by, what happened in my life according to my files, and how you speculate that there must be something missing because there is no other explanation. How you don’t care about my life in the least. That―second mistake―you don’t want a story, you just want the truth.

Please. Just give me the needle now. Of course it doesn’t make sense for a seemingly normal child to turn into such a monster, but psychopaths are made and sociopaths are born. Though the words often serve a synonymous purpose, believe me, sweetheart, the difference between them is paramount. I’m not interested in hearing about the remorse I should have for the faceless victims of the past; there was no reason for them to die, they just happened to be there, and that was their own error.

You give me a name. And after that, a date. You begin with this person’s appearance, the way their hair became sun-bleached in the summer, the way their eyes looked clear and bright on a cloudless day, the way their laugh was loud and boisterous. This person would get down on their knees and pray each and every night. They liked their coffee black in the morning, they were a strong advocate for equal rights everywhere, and they always placed others above their own wellbeing to a fault. On that date, that random, July night, they would begin to walk home to their family but, the next time they would see each other would be through the impenetrable lid of a coffin because the body had been too gruesome to show to the public. I don’t recognize this information, nor do I see its relevance, but the way your frame is trembling, your eyes a whirlwind of confusion, anger, and loss, it is then that I understand. This person was your mother, and you want to know why I killed her.

I’ve made a mistake, I see. It’s not something different about you that I saw―it’s just weakness. So you figure that something horrible had to have happened in my lifetime that resulted in a monster like me. That there must be some sort of plausible explanation because people don’t just become serial killers. This is what you’re here to learn, but what you really want to know, at the very essence of its core, is why. You want an explanation for why you had to endure those lonely years of loss and fear, why life unfairly placed your mother in my path and why I was cruel enough to take her from you. You’ve made this personal in your quest for answers and that’s your final mistake―I don’t owe you anything.

Three strikes and you’re out, sweetheart. I look forward to the execution.

But then you ask about the knife. Ah, yes, the final murder weapon that is the reason both you and I are here. The press is calling it my fatal mistake, a gift from God granting the public safety. (I, of course, have nothing to say on the matter. You don’t believe in any sort of deity either, not after me, so there’s really no point in dwelling on the silly faiths of others.) The police, on the other hand, were grateful for the overconfidence that came with walking away from one too many murders, for it eventually became my own downfall. They found it quite poetic, but not you. You know my crimes intimately, so you found it just a bit unusual, and that’s why I decided to speak with you. Because you asked if the weapon left behind had been deliberate.

Every time before, I’d gotten away without leaving so much as a fingerprint, so why so careless that particular crime? Why stop at thirteen, or even at all? The rest believe it to be arrogance, a cocky mistake that cost me my freedom. But, perhaps that isn’t it. Living a life of deceit and lies can only go on for so long. Slowly, it began eating at me, chipping away at the block of ice I had surrounded my heart in until the only thing I had left was a gaping hole where my humanity either once was or should have been. Everything must eventually come to an end, and with that black hole of empty space residing in my chest, that bloody knife wasn’t a mistake on my part at all.

Interesting theory of yours. I must admit, I’m rather fond of the idea that I’m currently here not by someone else’s accords, but of my own. Perhaps I just grew bored. Oh, don’t look so startled, you didn’t get it right. Then again, I suppose you didn’t quite get it wrong, either. Here’s the thing, sweetheart: I can’t give you the closure you’ve been longing for all these years. I can’t undo your time of suffering, and even if I could, I wouldn’t because that isn’t a sort of thought that crosses minds like mine. And I know it isn’t fair, that you could never be innocent and naive because your mother’s murder would never allow you to be. Blame it on me, or on forces beyond both our power, either way, it won’t matter. Whether any of you live or die, whether that knife truly was a mistake or a subconscious decision to be done once and for all, it doesn’t make a difference to me. You won’t ever find a greater reason for your mother’s death because there simply isn’t one. She was just there, and now she’s not.

Go ahead and portray me without a soul; that’s what the press does, after all. They alienate the facts in favor of telling a story that will sell, mold people into characters that are far more believable, and turn me into an uncontrollable beast that―no need to panic!―is to be put down, the likes of which never to be seen again. You don’t realize this is all a lie because you’ve been swept away by the whims of a frightened child who genuinely believed that one day, you would deliver that monster who tore your world to shreds exactly what he deserved, and the only way you felt you could do that was to pick up a pen and bleed. So believe me when I tell you that you don’t really want the truth. It’s oftentimes a difficult pill to swallow󠀭―some wind up choking on it. Sweetheart, I’m not here to protect you; I’m going to tell you exactly why you’ve got it all backwards. It’s not about the facts that brought a serial killer who committed thirteen atrocious crimes to justice. It’s not about the story of the homicidal sociopath who ripped your mother and your childhood from your grasp. We may be very different, you and I, but in the end, I am not a monster. I’m just a human being, and sometimes, humans do terrible, terrible things.

I wait for you to lash out in anger, or to launch into another monologue refusing my claims and denying their veracity, or even, at the very least, to release your feeble control over the water pooling in the corners of your eyes. You grew up fast though, and deep down, some part of you must recognize that you cannot argue against the truth, and so you remain silent. I must admit, I was anticipating something a bit more dramatic. It’s rather disappointing, really. Instead, you blink away your tears and, shaking, carve one last momento onto a scrap piece of paper. Pushing away from the table and bringing yourself to your feet, you leave me your final note―folded hastily in half―and thank me for my time before disappearing. Your anticlimactic retreat is a victory on my behalf, but I am unsure as to why I wasted my time with you at all. As I am lead away, I glance down at the paper you handed me, unable to quell my curiosity. You are braver than I believed you to be; at least you’ve left me with your own words. All the same, I do not expect them:

“If a man does not know that he has gone mad, does that make him any less insane?” ~ I didn’t have an answer, but maybe you will.

Time goes on, but your final words haunt me. No matter how hard I attempt to dispel them, they cling to the forefront of my thoughts for longer than I care to admit. I turn them over and over, examining them with scrutiny from every possible angle. We are all mad within our own rights, so isn’t it just a tad bit redundant? You’re smarter than that, though. After all, you’ve left me with this little riddle, this parting gift, to ponder over, and perhaps it won’t make a difference to you whether I solve it or not. Perhaps they were just words you couldn’t bear to speak aloud, yet still believed they needed to be said. Ironic, isn’t it? I left a knife, and you left some words, but they cut through the body just the same.

Even so, I know there’s more to it. ‘Sanity’ is one of those lying words the fool will attempt to explain the meaning of, but its definition is where the deceit truly lies. It is not a term bound by any set of words written within a book. Of our brief crossing of paths, I suppose ‘humanity’ is the only other lying word that could possibly be interchangeable. Is that what you meant? Is that the conclusion you wanted to bring me to? I refuse to allow this to linger, but your words are stubborn in the way that they don’t listen to my demands. My thoughts continue to gather in a dark cloud of uncertainty, and though I am running, I fear I will not be able to escape their storm. It’s not one I’ve ever been faced with before, and I find myself suddenly desperate to understand. Is it possible that, maybe, though we are all born human, and it might not matter how but just maybe, a person can lose their humanity? Can one lose something they were supposed to have had but possibly never truly possessed? I am not a monster, but I am a killer, and that’s never made me feel anything before. Is it even supposed to? I am quite reluctant to admit it, but the truth is, I just don’t know.

I can’t―won’t―apologize for what I’ve done. Even if I wanted to, I don’t know how to be sorry. I simply don’t have the capacity to feel such a thing. There is no remorse, or guilt, or empathy, or regret, or even sadness in my heart. There is only ever a steadily beating organ pumping blood to my system and slowly counting down on a clock I had presumed to have control over, but now I’m not so sure. I am not missing anything vital, and that hole you described, it will never be filled because it will never exist. But I’m beginning to wonder if maybe it should. How peculiar. Who would have guessed that I was right all along? You are weak, insignificant, and your memory will fade throughout time. Your name is a mere whisper throughout the unfathomable choir of voices singing all the world’s history, no more than a passing face among billions, and yet, you’ve gone and made me feel doubt. I am human, and I am a killer, and because of these two truths, I am going to die. I am not repentant, nor am I scared, but because of you… I am doubtful.

(I knew there was something different about you.)

Fin.