Rush

   What did I dream? What did I eat last night?  What was my last thought before closing my eyes and falling asleep? It’s silly, but I don’t remember any of it, or at least not once. I have to be still and really try hard to remember the answer to every single one of those questions and many more that appear many minutes after I wake up. Does it all have to do with this? Is it all connected, as many people believe? They think that if one thing happens and then another or something else on the other side of the globe, then it’s all connected. To me it sounds stupid and very easily dismissible as a theory but who am I to trump over the delusions of so many of our fellow human beings. Maybe it’s better to let them wonder through the cosmos and just not pay attention to whatever they might have to say.

 Yet, I feel confused, scared and my stomach is rumbling like mad. Did I lose my last meal too, even if I haven’t vomited at all? It feels like I have. My belly really hurts and my body overall feels tired and weak in a very weird way. It’s like something took away my bones for a single second but I can still feel them readjusting to their original positions. It also feels as if the room had been completely moved like a gigantic cube while I was sleeping, causing my senses to become insane. I can’t really tell if up is that way or down is that other way. I don’t know and to be honest I have no intention to help anyone in that department. I just want this very awful feeling to leave me, my heart to stop pounding. It seems it wants out.

 Turning on the light in the room, and I say it in singular because there’s only the one, was not the best idea. Only to see the mess I caused… Well, it wasn’t me and it was, all at the same time. Maybe that’s why I feel a little bit guilty too, like when you’re little and you pee your bed. And you are conflicted between going to your parents and tell them what happen. Or maybe, you think, you can clean it yourself and put the linen in the washing machine and no one will ever know. And when they realize what happened, you feel weak and shaky and you cannot really talk and you want to cry but know it’s not really a moment to cry because, somehow, it doesn’t feel like it.

 My stomach is the worst part. It’s still restless and I don’t know if it’s a good idea to have breakfast. I mean, what if I just expel all of that in an hour or less? I don’t want to be cleaning that or feeling even worse than I feel right now. I don’t want to risk my mental health and my physical one. Besides, the possibility of having to clean the floors (here’s hoping it’s the floors…) does not really excite me at all. If anything, it makes my stomach even more restless, as if I had a very violent electric eel trapped in there and she stings me every time I think of pulling her out of her cozy environment. I don’t feel good, that’s the point.

 Breathing has become harder. I don’t know why, but it feels like this room, filled with freezing air, is running out of oxygen. However, I don’t want to open the window and become a human popsicle. Because even know, seating on my bed, I can feel that damn cold air like a snake going up my legs, through my belly and chest and to my brain. My fingers feel weird too, like they are about to crack. And I still cannot breath. Opening my mouth seems futile and only my nose is trying to keep me alive but I have no idea how skilled my nose is, even less right now when the punch had come from the area. I try to inhale some air and it feels heavy, almost solid. I can almost feel its taste and it doesn’t taste good at all.

 Why is that? Because of the surroundings I guess. I know now I don’t like this student life, or at least not at this age anymore. I sound old but I’m not, I just complain every single second about things that I have decided to be my life, so if you think about it, I should just shut up. And I do. I don’t really use my vocal chords as much as I did back home, although that is kind of obvious. After all, they are your family and you love them or at least I love mine. If you have issues with yours, well, sorry for that. But these other people, the truth is I don’t care for them at all. They could die out there, rammed by a bus, and I would honestly not give a shit. I would only worry for the next person, the next boring and predictable human male to stay in that room and talk about booze and pot, because apparently this is it for humanity.

  Well, that let’s a weight out, somehow. But still feel a bit lost. After all, my awakening today was too fast, too confusing and a little of a low blow. You never know when things are going to take a turn, one of those turns that changes your whole mindset for the day or even for more time. I hate it when it happens because change scares me and it scares me a lot more than I imagined it. I want it all the same over and over and over again and I’m not ashamed of confessing that. Because I don’t see anything over the hill. No green grass, no cute little houses, no beautiful people smiling at me and doggies coming to greet me. I don’t see anything.

 The future scares me and maybe my body had finally realized it. Maybe the war between my insides and my mind has begun and this, whatever it is that’s writing this, is in the middle of the fight. And I know there will be blood and pain all over, there will be losses and gains and my mind is going to spiral down a wormhole that I have made for myself. Because, if we are objective, no one else is guilty more than ourselves. If there’s something happening to us, we probably had it coming and we even knew that it was coming, even if we chose not to acknowledge and just pretend nothing was happening, as we often do.

 That roll of toilet paper is starting to look funny somehow. I guess it’s because it is. Such a funny thing to have around one’s house, when you think about it. It’s shape; it’s function, the one it is built and all the strategic marketing behind such a strange object. I don’t mean that to be funny or make some funny toilet jokes. I’m afraid I don’t know any of those so I cannot be funny that way. Actually, I have no idea if I’m funny in any way. Maybe I’m like the toilet paper, that’s just strange and everywhere and that’s me sometimes. There but not there at the same time, however always out of place, as if I was an extra and I always come in the scene a little too early or too late. I do feel like an extra sometimes and I believe we all do everyday, so I don’t really fell bad about it.

 I put on my socks again, as they slid out of my feet during the night. Maybe that’s the reason why I feel like I feel right now. But I doubt it. What do socks have to do with anything? I just want my feet to feel a bit warm in order for my body to stop trembling and for my belly to calm down. I know I have responsibilities and all that but I’m seriously thinking about staying in bed all day. The idea seems very alluring and a very great one, I must say… Fuck, there they go again with their music and their noise. I don’t care what time of the day it is; you just don’t shove your tastes down people’s throats. It says a lot about someone, music and how they behave with it and how they consume it or however you want to say it.

 My pillow was spared, mostly. I want to lay my head on it and just close my eyes because I start to feel a little dizzy again. I just want to rest and not have any of that annoying noise around me. I don’t want to feel more than the warmth of the bedspread and the smell that I leave in my pillow. That may sound a little bit self-centered, but I guess it is the only way to calm me down, to make me realize all of this is real and that I’m not imagining anything strange and crazy. Actually, I do want this all to be my imagination and I don’t mean this morning, I mean this whole part of my life. Because it doesn’t feel right and I’m just holding on, trying to make time pass day by day.

 All the blood I spilled this morning… It tells me it is real and that I still have to keep my ground, I still have to wait and endure for more time. I’m not a good person but I don’t think I’m bad either. I’m in between. When I woke up to a rush of blood coming out my noise, successfully avoiding everything to be tainted in red, I thought it was a punishment for something, I thought it was because I had done something wrong and now I was paying for it. Maybe through just the bleeding, maybe through something more. I don’t know that for sure and to be honest I don’t really want to know because my head is spinning. Although that awful music might have something to do with it… Sometimes I do hate people.

Compensation

  I woke up suddenly, as if an electric charge had traveled through my body. But there was nothing electric there with me. Only he was there, breathing softly, very close to me. It was still very late at night as it was pitch black outside and the only object producing light was my cellphone, on the nightstand just behind me. I sat down on the bed, trying not to move too much. I went through my cellphone and erase every notification, in order to make the light go away. I saw some pictures of us together and then decided it was better to go back to the world of dreams. I left the cellphone facing down and just slid down the covers and hugged him softly. His body moved a bit but he didn’t do more. I fell asleep some minutes later, hugging him a little tighter.

In the morning, I realized I had maybe slept too much as the sun was rather intense on the outside. He had been kind enough not to pull up the blinds in the room. He was not there with me and I couldn’t hear him in the bathroom. A bit reluctantly, I went to the living room and the kitchen, and he wasn’t there. Apparently, he had taken everything and just left. I felt abandoned, even if we weren’t really a couple and he wasn’t living with me. We had been going out so often, I just assumed he would say something before leaving like a whirlwind. As I was already in the kitchen, I decided to make some breakfast. As I cooked, I couldn’t get him off my head. That was probably the reason why the eggs almost burned and I poured orange juice on the floor.

 Trying to leave last night in the past, I decided to work. Normally, that would make my mind so busy, I wouldn’t have time to think of anything else. It did work, as I had to grade several papers on Stanley Kubrick’s films. Some students had obviously not seen the movie they had chosen, as they repeated words and sentences often and used words, you know the kind, that make anyone sound smart but do no really mean anything. Some other works were better or at least not as offensive. I surprisingly took an hour and a half doing that and when I was done, he was there again, on my brain. Why couldn’t I just let him go?

 The rest of the day was about me trying not to think too much about it all and succeeding for a small amount of time, then my head would go back to the same thoughts all over again. I decided to watch a movie and order pizza and beer. I would not let him run my Sunday. But when they rang from downstairs some time later, it wasn’t the delivery guy nor the one that had left me alone on the bed, it was someone I hadn’t seen in a while. And I say “someone” because right then I didn’t know him very well and just recalled him from high school. I had no idea how he had gotten my address, as I didn’t speak to anyone from high school. But there he was, knocking on my door some minutes later.

 I remembered him as one of the few people that didn’t make me want to kill myself in high school. The rest were snobbish little rats, but he was all right, not a great person but not a bad one either. His cousin, a guy who had gone to the same high school with us, was a successful artist although I didn’t remember what it was he did exactly. Singing or something like that. I told him to sit down on my sofa and offered him some orange juice, as I had nothing else to drink. However, he said he wasn’t thirsty and that he had come only to deliver a message. “How mysterious!”, I thought. I mean, I didn’t really knew him but he had never struck me as the kind of guy that had any mystery in him but here he was.

 He had a backpack from where he took a envelope from. He gave it to me and I took it, as it was a bomb. The situation was not normal, at all, and I didn’t want to further spoil the only day I was really free from any commitments. He just told me to open it and read it, talking in a very hush voice, as if someone was hearing or as if he was afraid of talking too much or too loud. I opened the envelope and took out the letter inside. It was from his cousin, who apologized for stealing one of my ideas. I had no idea what it was all about and the letter didn’t really explain. He said he was sorry, very sorry, and that he just wanted to make things right for everyone involved. So he had included something else, for me to be compensated for what he had done.

 Inside the envelope, there was another paper. I had not seen in before. It was a check for several thousands of dollars and it had the signature of the deliveryman’s cousin. Then my patient just disappeared. I asked him what kind of joke this was and why they had to do it on Sunday, when I just wanted to be left alone. The poor guy, who had turned some shade of green, tried to speak and to explain himself but he couldn’t. That made me so angry, so I told him to please stand up and leave my apartment at once. I pressed the envelope, all papers inside, to his chest and told him to take all of that and go away. The doorman downstairs rang: it was my pizza, finally.

 I told him, again, to leave. He tried to speak but he just couldn’t and gave up. He left almost running and I saw him all the way to the elevator. When the door opened, he crossed paths with the man delivering my pizza, to whom I smiled and thanked deeply. I gave him a small tip and close the door, in order to enjoy my afternoon. But as I saw the movie and ate my pizza, I had that check and the letter on my brain. What the hell was that about? What did that man’s cousin wanted to give me money? Was it to bribe me? No, I didn’t even remembered his name… Maybe it was just a stupid joke, some kind of prank based on a dare they had done to one of the other idiots they knew well.

 The rest of my Sunday was pretty good. I drank several beers and watched movies I hadn’t seen in a long while. At night, I ordered another pizza, not caring at all about my body. I loved the taste of pizza and beer and if I had to pay with a belly in my future, I really didn’t care. No one had ever looked at me looking for a swimsuit model. Well, to be honest no one really looked at me… Well, except him. Again with him on my mind and with that stupid envelope. As I waited for the second pizza, I browsed through the local channels on the TV in order to check out the news. I stopped when I saw a familiar face: it was the guy’s cousin. And the news said he was dead. Apparently he wasn’t a singer but a filmmaker and he had died in a car crash in France.

 The news was shocking but it was even more shocking that his cousin, instead of being in France or at least mourning him, had decided to pay him a visit with a check. On the other hand, I realized I had never seen a picture by that man. And I should know, being a teacher to future filmmakers. Maybe one of my students had mentioned him once but I just couldn’t remember. I decided to look for him online. Must of it was about his tragic death, apparently a very shocking scene to witness, but I also found his filmography and had no idea what to look for. The buzzer interrupted my thoughts. Five minutes later, I had a slice of pizza on one hand and an open beer can in front of me.

 I stopped reading about the poor guy and decided to let it go for the day. Granted, it was something very strange but there was nothing I could do now. I started watching another movie when the doorman called again and told me I had some mail. I told him I would pick it up in the morning but he said something had just been delivered and that it was probably urgent, at least judging by the expression on the mail guy’s face. That was weird enough to go downstairs and grab my mail. Most of it was junk and a couple of bills but the letter that had just arrived was another unmarked envelope. I went back home and read it there. This wasn’t from the cousin but from the delivery guy.

 In the letter, he explained who he was, thinking I wouldn’t remember. He said we had been brief friends for a time when we were really young. I didn’t recall that. He also explained that the first movie that his cousin had made was base on a short story I wrote in English class. He actually copied it and made a movie version of it. He wrote that he had always felt bad for that and had begged his cousin to acknowledge that what they had done was wrong. Months before his death, he convinced him and the cousin wrote him a check to compensate. He was sorry for everything and apologized more. The check was, again, inside the envelope.

 I took him on my hands and, only doubting for a second, I tore it apart into little pieces and through it all to the garbage. I didn’t need the past to compensate for something I didn’t even recalled. I grabbed a slice of pizza and ate, a bit more angry than usual, and then my phone rang. It was him. He wanted to come up and chat. I couldn’t stop smiling and, hours later, I had to ask him to stay and never leave.

Family's end

   The bridge crossed the gorge in all its extension. The father stopped the car at one end and head out. He inhaled the fresh air and walked near the railing of the bridge. There was a big net like structure to prevent people from falling but the view was just outstanding. There was a small river below but mainly trees, a big green mat of big and small trees that covered the valley below. The mother joined him with two small kids, which seemed to have just woken up. They held their mother’s hands and were rubbing their eyes with their free hands.

 The family stood there for several minutes, without saying a word. Even the children were silent. Then, a burst of light and smoke appeared far away, clearly visible from the bridge. The father inhaled and exhaled without saying anything, only tightening his hand in his pocket. Then he went back to the car. Mother and children followed. The engine started and they crossed the bridge fast into the highway beyond. They travelled without making a single stop. None of them complained or said anything. They were a family but it really didn’t seem like they were. The kids kept to themselves, not even playing with one another and just looking through the window or looking straight, apparently distracted with the flying dust or the sounds of the car.

 Night arrived and the car finally stopped by a roadside hotel. They paid for one room with twin beds, one for the children and the other one for the adults. But none of them really slept. They seemed to be on alert, waiting for something to happen. Every time a car drove into the hotel parking lot and the lights lit their room, they moved, opening their eyes again and shaking softly.  That was during the night and during breakfast and a nearby diner things weren’t less strange. A perky waitress tried to cheer up the kids, given them pancakes with faces on it, but the kids seemed not impressed and even worried. After they left, she told everyone that would listen about the weird family that had come in early, with a lot of money.

 Because the waitress had seen the father’s wallet and the several bills inside it. He even gave her a big tip but all with that weird face, between worry and boredom. The family kept on travelling by road until they reached the border with another country. The father and mother acted then, hugging and smiling as the immigration agents checked their passports. The mother even bought the kids some chips and candy and the kids laughed and ran. They all behave like a normal family until the immigration officer let them pass. An hour later, the car was as silent as it had always been. The terrain they were crossing at that point was desert with only a few plants to see and even a couple of rocks every few kilometers.

 That night, they didn’t stop driving. The father didn’t seem to be tired at all, just going on and on, his legs moving normally and just looking ahead, with a strange look in his face. They finally reached a big city and parked inside a shopping mall. Going inside, they suddenly separated. Each kid, mother and father took different directions and explored the place. The father went to an electronics store and checked out several computers, TV’s and sound systems. In spite of the money he had, he only bought a tablet computer. The mother, meanwhile, was in a department store trying out clothes and shoes. She made the saleswoman bring her so many pairs of shoes but finally settled for one pair she had seen from the beginning. She also bought a flowery dress and went out of the store already wearing it. The little girl went playing to the arcade and his brother entered a pet store and sat down in front of the many aquariums and fish bowls in one end of the store.

 They reunited several hours later. None of them had eaten anything but when meeting they went straight to the car and restarted their journey which happened to be a short one. They paid a room for each in a hotel and stayed there for a week until the secret service and other agencies got to them. They were arrested and send back to the country they had fled. There, a hearing was held to read the crimes they were being charged for but none of them seemed to be interested in the matter. They accused them to plan a terrorist attack and bomb a power plant that served millions of people in a large region of the country. Days later, they were presented with a lawyer and the father only told him to ask him about his story in front of the jury and the media.

 He did exactly that some weeks later and the father started telling his story. According to him, they were all a family. He knew it didn’t seem like it but it was true. He told everyone his family had been living a quiet life in a ranch not far from the bridge they had crossed to escape. They were happy and didn’t harm everyone. True, with no other relatives nearby and believing in homeschooling, they hadn’t really made many acquaintances. One night, he claims, their home was raided by men claiming to be the military, saying they suspected the home was used as a laboratory to make drugs. They apparently arrested them and took them to a military facility were they were tortured. Not only the two adults, but also the children.

 The father stopped his story there and asked if his wife could tell the rest. The judge agreed and the woman stepped up to her seat, not even looking at her husband as he grabbed a seat with their lawyer. She told them they noticed the place was underground, as they never saw any sunlight when being kept down there. She looked at the judge and told him they began another round of tortures, much more medical and even scientific. She had no idea how to explain it but she assured that they had been probed and tested several times. It was then when they all began to feel detached, not a family anymore.

 The hearing was stopped them because of the time and rescheduled for a later date, the week next to that one. During that pose, something happened that made the media really pay attention to the case and stop saying they were all acting because their adoration of terrorism had made them insane. The children were held in a facility for abandoned youth. They were being watched at all times but it was too late when, one night, the cop that was in charge of them arrived in the room and realized the little boy, maybe seven years of age, had committed suicide. His sister was three beds away, asleep or so he thought. The boy had planned it all because he knew he wasn’t going to be normal ever again.

 When the trial resumed, the girl was put on the stand. She didn’t cry when asked about her brother’s death. Actually, she seemed no to feel anything. It was as if she was made of stone. She told the jury she had been with her parents when they decided to escape the facility they had been held in. Somehow, they were all faster, stronger and much more intelligent than when they were abducted from their home. Something had been done to them that had rendered them better but less of a family. They used these abilities to kill several people and escape. In a matter of minutes, they used the militaries weaponry to make a large bomb and they activated it with a remote control. The facility happened to be beneath a power plant and they had not known they had destroyed it too. They just wanted revenge.

 But as the days passed, they realized revenge served no one. Something else had been done to them, much worse than any of the tortures. Somehow, in their minds, they didn’t feel any love or care for any of their relatives. It was, they described it, as looking at someone they had never seen in their life but no one else was there to help them so they united. It didn't mattered who they were as long as they weren't doing mean things to them. They felt there was something, but not enough to make them a family again. The father stated they had stayed in that hotel for a wheel in order for the police and others to finally catch them. Escaping was not their plan all along.

 People were divided on their opinions about the case. The owners of the power plant demanded justice to be done for the deaths of several of its workers and the military were rumored to release a statement soon. But none of those things were necessary not mattered. One morning, all remaining suspects, about to be convicted for the death penalty, were dead. The father had cut his throat with a cutter he stole from one of the guards. The mother took several pills she grabbed from the purse of a woman in the court room and the girl drowned herself in a tub.

 No one ever knew anything about them. Where they had come from or what had really happened to them, nor where they had gotten all the money the police had found with them in the hotel.But it wasn’t important. They had been killed by guilt, by pain, because they realized their lives would never be the same without their family united.

Murderer

   I stepped in the boat and sat inside. It was not a big space and it all smell like fish but, given the circumstances, I didn’t thought I should say or do anything about those two things. Little things, might I add, compared to the situation at hand. Onboard came the man that had been pointing at me with his gun all along but then the other one, the one that seemed less likely to shoot at any given opportunity, told him to step out of there and let him do it. There was no one else that could help me and it was too dark too distinguish anything more than the water, the boat and the armed man that had stepped out and disappeared.

 The man I was with had turned the engine and we were traveling fast. The sea was calm and there seemed to be no fishing boats or ferries that could see us. It was almost as if it was meant to be that way and, of course for me, that wasn’t so good.

 After what seemed liked an hour of journey into the open sea, the man stopped the engine and looked straight at my eyes. It was unsettling, as he was one of those people with very bright eyes that make you feel uncomfortable when you look directly at them. I had always wondered if they knew they made people feel that uneasy.

-       Did you really do it?

 There it was. It had been obvious; from the moment they had kidnapped me in my home that he wanted to ask that question so bad. Right then, he seemed eager to know the truth behind all of this, probably the truth about why he was with me right in the middle of the ocean, where no one will ever hear us talk or say the most amazing of truths. I could almost tell he was sweating, the stains beneath his armpits growing, his upper lip trembling at my sight.

-       What is that I apparently did?

 The man snored a bit, smile and kind of laughing. He was nervous. It was so obvious: his hand trembled when he wiped off his sweat and his smile wasn’t the one of a man that feels safe or sure about anything anymore. Maybe, after all, the wrong man had stepped in the boat with me.

-       We were hired.

-       I assumed as much

-       You killed a family.

-       Yes.

 The man seemed to tremble once more, due to my “confession”. To be honest, I’ve never really hidden anything about what I’ve done. I’ve made my peace with it all, specially then, when I seemed so close to death. Why lie to him when he was obviously so eager to know the truth, so eager to think he knew or that he understood what his task was all about.

-       And you say it like that? So… So cool and casual? Are you crazy?

-     I’m not mentally unstable, although the fact that I’ve killed makes me very likely to have one of those fancy disorders every murderer seems to have these days.

-       How many more?

 I couldn’t contain a smirk when he asked this. Not only because I knew it would make him tremble again, but also because people were always like that, wanting the morbid little details of how I had done something or the other. It was so typical of every single person in the world to apparently feel disgusted and scared but deep down, been utterly interested in what I had to say about all the corpses I’ve created. They sometimes seem even more interested that I was when I did what I did.

-       I don’t know. I’d rather not count.

-       The people that hired told me you raped their…

-       No. That’s not true.

 The man appeared to want to leap over me but he contained himself. Apparently he thought that I was denying the truth and that made him even more frustrated and confused but the truth was, and still is, that I never raped anyone. I’ve heard the stories, on the news and so on. They said I was ruthless but then they began to say I raped people and that’s just incorrect. If I had any more feelings I would be hurt.

-       They said…

-       You trust too much on your clients. Never thought for a second they could be lying?

-       I talked with them and…

-     Oh yes, because people are incapable of lying when they hire a hitman. Is that what you are because you seem pretty bad at this?

 There. Shaking like a leaf. I know he’s scared of me, thinking I’m some kind of animal, a beast that has to be put down. But the fun thing is that he knows or feels he cannot contain me for long and, most curiously, he seems to think I’m not guilty of this all. Because, why else would he be asking all these questions? Then again, it might be only that he’s fucking scared and he’s just stalling, avoiding the killing.

-       Are you going to kill me anytime soon?

-       Shut up.

-       It was you who began the interrogation.

 The man seemed to be thinking. I bet he was trying to decide what to do next. Maybe he thought that I might be more valuable dead than alive. The police were looking for me, that’s for sure, and I had a reward sign on my head. Apparently he wasn’t as stupid as he looked, thinking of the best way to profit properly from this assignment. He could even surrender me to the police and collect the money all by himself, leaving the other idiot to mend for himself, thinking I was dead.

-       You killed many people.

-       I know.

-       And you don’t regret it?

-       No. Why should I?

-       You’re not sorry? Not even for one of those murders?

 I looked at him carefully, trying to decide what to say. There was something more in all of this, something that had eluded me from the start. The moment they had taken me from my home it had been all about the other guy, the tall one. He had threatened me, put a bag on my head, and pointed the gun straight to my heart. This guy I was with had only driven us to the dock and then had decided to kill me, at the very last minute. And then, it became clear.

-       Don’t tell me that I killed your wife or brother?

 The man went crazy when I said those words. He threw himself at me and started punching me all over: on the face, the chest, the stomach and the head. My hands were still tight behind my back so there wasn’t much I could do except moving violently, in order not only to drive him away but also to make the boat turn sideways to escape swimming. He couldn’t chase me through the ocean.

 But nothing of the sort happened. He just stopped beating the fuck outta me and decided to breath heavily, as far as he could from me. It hurt; I’m not going to say it didn’t. But there was no damage that he could do that would really hurt me. I was beyond all of that at that point. He could have stabbed me and I wouldn’t have cared at all. My lips were cracked, bleeding and all my body was numb from his punches but I wasn’t bad enough to look at him from my corners and smile.

-       Predictable.

-       Shut up…

-    You know, even if you do kill me, nothing is going to bring anyone back? It won’t happen.

-       Shut up!

-       The dead are done. Believe me, I know.

 Then, the guy pulled out the gun and pointed at me. He no longer trembled but he was still sweaty and his eyes were wide open, as if he wanted to be sure of what he was doing. I cleaned my face a bit from my blood without breaking the link between our eyes. Maybe he was going to kill me, maybe this was it for me but it didn’t matter. He was one more of my victims and that was enough for me. So I laughed.

 The bullet pierced right through my brain, coming out the other end and falling in the water. The man pushed my body to the water and left. He knew my body was going to be found and that everyone would know a murderer was now dead. And no one would be interested in knowing who killed me because I deserved it. But, in the end, I knew that just before the end he had been mine and that was all worth it.