DIARY OF A KILLER

I killed a guy. Not just any guy, my best friend. A guy who had been there for me since the dawn of our life.

I was standing next to his limb body, bloody, messed up, so beautiful, like a work of art. I had watched as he had taken his last breath. I had watched him call out my name so slowly like a whisper from a ghost. I had taken his life from him. But I didn’t feel anything, no remorse, a single tear, and a foreign feeling in my tummy. I had always wondered how it felt like to look at a bloody dead body. I had always had different delusions on how it would be but never would I have thought that it would start with him.

I remember how the day had begun. I had walked into his apartment after walking up five floors. There was no elevator in his building. It was an ancient building, the one that you could clearly see falling apart but no one had the courage to say it out loud. I had once made a joke about how he would die young if he continued staying in the building. I guess it did come to pass.

He was seated in the living room watching the news. I don’t know what possessed me, I don’t know where the thought came from. I had slowly walked into the kitchen, taken out the huge butcher’s knife that he had kept in the lower left drawer. The drawer slowly creaked as I closed it. He turned around looking so happy to see me, his childhood best friend. He held out the wine glass he was drinking from calling for me to join him on the sofa. I was all he had left after his parents died in a fire when we were kids.

I slowly walked towards him and swung the knife at him. He fell with a thud. I hadn’t expected him to fall so dramatically, like he was performing at a Broadway show. He looked at me with teary eyes. I don’t know if he was crying because of the pain or the realization that it was his best friend who had betrayed him. He called out my name so slowly and gently like he was waiting for me to call the ambulance and tell him that it was a mistake and that he was going to live. I didn’t turn to look at him.

I sat on the sofa and waited. I don’t really know what for exactly. I just sat there.

I wander into the memories of us as kids. How he had said that he couldn’t imagine a world without me. Maybe now he doesn’t have to. He had been such a good friend. But he was too loud. I hated noise and he made so much of it. I guess toady was the last straw.

I heard him whimper. I didn’t look. Then – silence. I got up and walked toward his body. He lay there, bloody, his limbs spread out like he was making a snow angel. I let out a little laugh. We used to make those together when we were kids. Maybe that was his last memory of us before he left. Maybe he did it just to tell me that he would haunt me for the rest of my life. I just stare at him. He’s beautiful, death is pretty. He looks so peaceful but betrayed at the same time.

I don’t feel the tear that slips from my eyes and lands on the carpet. I stare at the small spot it lands. Am I really feeling it, or it’s the feeling of killing for the first time. Maybe the tear wasn’t for him. Maybe it was for me - for how hollow I felt after the ecstasy passed.

I grab my bag. Pause. One last glance. I hope someone finds him. Before the smell does. I want him to get a proper burial. I would attend it.

I don’t even think of the police, whether I’ll get caught or not. I don’t care. I did it. I was my first time and it felt so good, so ethereal, so emotional, like entering another realm where everything was so clear. As I walked down the street, I could see everyone clearly. I felt as if I could tell what their sin was, what they hid behind closed curtains, behind every laughter, behind every story they’ve told. Behind their lives.

But what was Tommy’s sin. I don’t really know. Maybe it was trusting someone he always saw never truly saw. Laughing, drinking, talking, but never looking deeper. Maybe his sin was loving the surface and ignoring the storm beneath it. He should have known me better, understood me. That’s why he had to go. A sin of never truly knowing me. And now just a snow angel covered in his own blood.