Defiance

Chapter 2

I used to be a serial killer. When I was still alive I used to think of it as the deepest darkest secret of my life, now it's just a hidden truth. I regret the days I was alive because i didn't deserve them, not after I killed so many of them. It feels so good to be able to say was and not am. The "am" that haunted me for months, stuck between uncertainty, assurance and self-doubt of my own being. It feels so good to be free from it but now it's replaced by a throbbing ache in my heart, it doesn't go away and I think this is worse. We never know how wrong our decisions are unless we make them and there's no way to go back.

This time, it's a jolt and I'm back to the first murder I committed. I hate this, but I know I have to face it. I have no choice.

I'm sitting on the dining table, gorging into my favorite cereal with the news playing in the background. I'm flipping through my chemistry textbook disinterestedly and suddenly there it is.

"A 53-year-old man named Henry Black has apparently been found murdered in downtown Chicago. Reports suggest that..." The clear feminine voice continues speaking but I'm too engrossed by the man in the picture.

My eyes drift up to the screen and I see the face of a thin man with bronze skin meticulously stretched over his high cheekbones. His eyes appear joyous and jubilant, while eyeing him I see my burrows scrunch up in concentration. I know him so I try to remember the last time I saw him.

I watch my eyes widen as terror overtakes me and I dash upstairs. I flick open my laptop and search for the photo. And there it is - in my mail sent by an anonymous personality.

The pictures show me stabbing the same guy in the news. In the same street corner in which they'd found him murdered.

I see as I run my hand through my hair, my eyes wild. I thought it was just a joke, a silly prank played by some freshman with no other job. I manage to calm myself down despite how disturbed I felt. After I make the signs of nervousness disappear from my face and mind. Just a prank? Now it feels like I was just convincing myself from lies to erase the guilt.

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I stand on the sidewalk next to a road; I see the life around me move at a superhuman speed, I'm at my funeral.

Its two days after I had died.

I decide to witness the ceremony in bits and pieces, seeing people I'd never known weeping and offering their condolences to my mother who just stood nodding her head to signify their existence. My mom giving the eulogy in a voice which represents her defeat, some other faces I vaguely committed to memory appear as well. The priest recites a verse as I am brought deeper into the depths of the earth.

But as I am being lowered I witness a slightly feminine hand which was lowering me, it catches my eye it for seemed vaguely familiar. My eyes travel up to her face. Messy, unkempt hair, dark circles, visible blue veins in her face to depicting her starvation but her eyes burn brightly. Her face isn't that a gravedigger would have. Underneath the dirt is a fresh face I recognize amazingly well. Nobody would notice her, nobody would care. But I still couldn't seem to comprehend what she was doing here, what she could possibly do.

I see Michelle as she takes to running.

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If I had to describe the relationship between me and Michelle, acquaintances was the only word I could find which would fit what we had. It's hard to tell. Maybe fuck buddies? She was clearly using me, there's no hiding that. You know what? I'll get back to that later.

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Back to the vision, I see her standing in front of my best friend, eyes set on Jason. I think it would be an understatement to use the word sad or upset or even melancholy to describe him, he was looked shattered, like every piece of him has been torn apart, never to be rebuilt. Those eyes were bare of any tears but the kaleidoscope they formed within themselves would make up for an entire ocean of them. It was something I never expected from him.