Rationalizations of Murder

You:

The fan in the coffeehouse spins at the pace of a slow jog – slow enough to count the blades, but fast enough that you have to recount a few times before being absolutely sure about the total. Your focus rips from the ceiling as you are suddenly assaulted by a table-side after your friend aggressively throws herself into the stool opposite of you,

“Look what I found in the bathroom!“ She pats the flyer she had slammed down in front of you at the same moment she had collided with her seat, “tell me that doesn’t sound fucking awesome.”

You’re only a little embarrassed by your friend’s antics. If she can do anything, Kat can make an entrance, and you’ve been slightly startled by each of them your entire life. You scan over the flyer, planning to mutter an “oh, wow” of convincing but fake intrigue, when an uncomfortable shiver slides down your back and over your arms. Your heart speeds up a little, and you wonder if your shirt shrunk in the dryer, because you don’t remember it being this tight. The flyer advertises a conference on “Bravery in a World Full of Fear.” The title kept you just long enough to read the first line of the description; after that your eyes are glued. The flyer bluntly states that at this conference someone will be murdered, on stage. They then ask if you’re brave enough to watch. There is an innocent picture of your average Ted Talk speaker, smiling while speaking into a mic. At the bottom there is a place, time, and date listed. You can hear Kat talking but it’s just noise as your gaze wanders slowly over to a man sitting in a corner of the room, watching you.

You only get a glimpse of him before Kat is pulling your face back towards her, “Focus. What do you think? Go with me.”

Your intuition simultaneously begs you not to go. The flyer is obviously fake – a pyramid scheme trying out a new and edgy way to draw in some additional wallets; but for some reason you’re scared. Something about how plain the flyer is, and how meticulously the description is crafted terrifies you. It reminds you of a quiet guy from your literature class, the one who’s majoring in both psychology and marketing, that makes you anxious for no discernibly logical reason. You decide, as you usually do, to trust your instincts just in case,

“Not my thing.” You’re impressed that your voice remains even. Kat only glares at you for a few seconds before she pulls out her phone to start inviting other people.

“You know this kind of thing would be perfect to write one of my Philosophy finals on. I wish you’d come support me for once.”

Kat has a way of being so lovingly manipulative that any other time you’d probably give in; but that fear still clings to you – even tighter than your stupid shrunken shirt. You look back over to the corner of the room, and make accidental eye contact with the watching man as he stands and grabs his coat. His face is average and you’re sure your brain will delete the details as soon as he’s out of sight, but his smell as he passes you – eyes never leaving you – makes you even more uneasy. He smelled like something sweet mixed with a disinfectant of some sort, almost like a hospital.

“They’re just selling something. And trying way too hard, in my opinion. I rather nap on my new couch.”

“You’re so negative. I love it.” Kat gets up and kicks her stool in, “Say hi to your new couch for me, this thing is in like two hours. I have to get ready.”

She grabs her bag, multiple reusable water bottles, and two different sets of keys before patting you on the head and leaving. You clean up your trash (and hers) before grabbing your stuff, and leaving shortly after.

You barely make it a few steps outside before you can’t breathe. There’s a jacketed arm pressing into your forehead, obscuring the top half of your vision, and a gloved hand covering both your mouth and nose. After an indeterminable amount of time, you start to lose consciousness to the sound of a fading struggle and your heartbeat in your ears. Just before you pass out you feel the hand leave your face, and as you instinctively inhale you recognize the watching man’s scent.

Kat:

“That sneaky bitch! Look!” Kat claps twice excitedly and points at your restrained, unconscious body, slumped in a chair on the stage in the middle of the conference. She has never known you to play pranks or plan anything in advance, so she is pleasantly surprised when she decides you must have planned all of this as an elaborate, early birthday present.

Kat turns to explain to Alice, who she ended up bringing with her to the conference instead of you, what is happening. Alice is worried about the way you’re leaning over, but Kat points at the police officers stationed in and around the crowd,

“It’s completely fake. See? Would the police be this calm if she was actually in danger?” Kat’s friend laughs, and is immediately put to ease. Kat starts to yell your name to try and “wake you up.” She wonders if you’ll be able to pick her out from the crowd, or if she’ll have to find you after to tell you how impressed she was with the whole thing. She wonders how you got this huge crowd to show up, but her curiosity is quickly replaced as the speaker strides confidently towards the mic.

You:

There is a hoard of at least a hundred blurry faces spread out below you, and you can’t move. When your eyes finally focus you see you are front and center on a stage, tied to a chair. You are gagged, and the thick rope trapping your body is tight.

“Now we just need a volunteer! Who wants to claim their fear, so that the people who plot to use it against you cannot?!”

You wonder where you are, if you’ve been kidnapped by a cult, or if this is some kind of sick joke. A man in the front row raises his hand, yelling something you miss. You see movement out of the corner of your eye, and turn your head to look at the woman with the mic; she’s waving the volunteer up to the stage. You look to your other side, and propped up on an art easel is a blown up, cardboard version of the flyer Kat had found in the bathroom.

“The stairs are to the right, sir. Come on up!” You watch him bounce up the stairs; he is unable to stop nervously smiling and laughing. You can hear some of his friends cheering for him. He walks behind you, and you struggle, but you can’t turn around. You start to struggle harder, wondering again what this is supposed to be – this has to be a blatant violation of consent. It hits you then that you probably weren’t knocked out, bound, and put on stage by people who care about your consent.

The volunteer steps into your line of sight and the woman with the mic sounds farther away, like she had moved across the stage. You have no idea what she’s saying because your brain goes blank as you register the scalpel in the volunteer’s hand. Your adrenaline crashes through your veins, and your mind manages to produce a single thought: You’re going to die.

You’re crying, screaming around the gag, drooling and choking. Your skin burns; you are injuring yourself while struggling against the ropes as hard as you possibly can. This man is going to kill you. You look out to the crowd. One of them has to do something – at least one of them has to realize this is real – just one person . . .

But all you see is frozen bodies, wide eyes, and cameras flashing.

“Do it! Embrace your fear! Be brave!”

The mic sounds so loud as you feel your chair start to tip. Your head bounces off the floor. You blink hard, trying but failing to grab at your throat. You hear people start to scream, and the police start to shout. You have fallen to the front edge of the stage, within reach of the crowd. All you can see – right before your heart stops – is a disembodied hand, stretched up level with your face, recording your death on a cellphone.

The Volunteer:

The conference volunteer steps, for the first time in years, in front of another, smaller crowd. This time he isn’t holding a murder weapon; he’s holding a book. He stands in front of rows of seated people – crammed beside children’s book shelves – prepared to read an excerpt from the autobiography he wrote about his experience committing voluntary manslaughter.

He isn’t thinking about you as he reads. He’s hoping he doesn’t stutter or misread a line and embarrass himself in front of his fans.

His face flushes when, before he can deliver his carefully practiced introduction, a woman stands up from her seat and points at him. Her tiny frame shivers and her voice breaks as she screams, “Murderer!” over and over again.

A couple of security guards get to her quickly. As they are pulling her out of the small bookstore, she locks eyes with the volunteer and her words puncture not only him, but everyone seated at the reading:

“Don’t worry murderer,” she lets out a sob before she finishes, “We’re all murderers here too.”

Kat:

Kat convinces security that she isn’t a threat; she only makes it a few yards outside of the bookstore before she ducks into an alley and drops to her knees. She hunches over and hugs herself, digging her nails into her upper arms. Her guilt takes possession of her body, her face distorts, and her breathless cries wrack her malnourished frame.

After regaining her breath and disassociating completely, she drags herself to her car, and it feels like she’s only blinked but somehow she’s now kneeling in front of your grave. She traces the engravings on its face and talks to you, hoping more than she’s ever hoped for anything that you can hear her,

“I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry that I all I did was watch—I just watched.”

She leans her forehand against the cold granite that someone who never knew you carved to memorialize you. It will take Kat only a few years longer than it took the volunteer to convince herself that she couldn’t possibly be faulted for what happened to you. And your ghost will be forced to hear all of your murderers’ different rationalizations on loop, for the rest of eternity.