You are a killer, a murderess, a cold blooded taker of life. The fact that the life you took is mostly a fictional construct doesn't alleviate your crime. Your murder of the Romantic (in me to be clear), was a premeditated act of cruelty that Genghis Khan would be proud of, and he was a monster. Granted you're a monster too, just not quite on the scale of Genghis, but to the guy you killed, the Romantic, that just doesn't matter. Dead is dead, no matter if you are murdered along with 5 thousand fellow citizens who skulls (along with yours) are going to make a lovely pyramid as a warning to others, or if you are killed in single combat in the Roman Coliseum. The Romantic, the guy you killed, is dead as dead can be, and he is no Jesus Christ there will be no resurrection. Perhaps he will be buried in the graveyard of relationships that the guy still alive (the Rationalist) carries around in his head, or maybe he will just lie where you left him to rot or be eaten away by the carrion circling over head. I've never heard a corpse ask how he got so cold, nor heard one complain about the accommodations of their final resting place.
Your murder plot (for I can only see it as such now) started over three years ago, you were bored (or so you said at one point), and you swanned into the Romantics life at a time in which is was undergoing another crisis of faith brought on by your predecessor. At the time, it was a crisis that he thought was going to also be fatal to him, he was not in a happy place, and things were looking bleak. Then he found you, or you found him, or you found each other. Either way, he did owe you a lot, you did him the favour of prolonging his life by three years. Though I doubt he would, if he were able, thank you now. Since he is as dead as dead can be, it has devolved upon me to pick up and move forward, to shift through the detritus of the time you spent killing him, and try to puzzle out why the fuck you did it. The good news, if there is to be any good news, is that he kept very, very detailed records. At least that is good news for me, for you, his killer, that might cause you a moment or two of panic. After all, you know the details of your killing of him, in fact since he is dead as dead can be, you are the only one who does. However, those records are like his mind jumbled, and it going to take the patience of Job to sort them out, luckily I posses just such patience. He didn't write everything that he should have down, and I am not a mind reader (especially of the Romantic), and while I have a pretty solid case, I don't know if all of it can be proven "beyond a reasonable doubt."
However, luckily for me, and I guess for him (maybe not so much for you) it doesn't have to be. This isn't a courtroom, there isn't some fellow in a black dress and a white wig sitting on the bench waiting to pass judgment on you for your crime. There aren't 12 bored citizens sitting in the uncomfortable chairs, doodling in their notebooks, and paying as little attention as possible to the litany of your (and his) sins. Let us not fool each other, you and I, his sins were just as great as yours. There are no innocents here, there were never going to be innocents here (well maybe one, but that's another story). His problem, which since he is as dead as dead can be, has now devolved into my problem is that he didn't listen to me. He never really did, he ignored me many, many times each one to his cost. Somehow he survived ignoring me all those times, until you came along, and killed him dead. I guess congratulations are in order, several people tried (some of them more than once), and you were not exactly the one I would have pegged to be doing the deed, but maybe that's why you succeeded. You weren't as high on the danger list as I should have put you, and so maybe I am partly culpable in his death as well. I let him, in regards to you, convince me you were different, you were the one that was going to wash away the pain of the multiple mistakes of his (our) past. You fooled him completely and that allowed him to lull me into a false sense of security, and for that failure I will be just as condemned as you are. So, let us not fool each other, You and I, let us stand in the dock together, and answer the charges against us. Let us plead guilty to the crime of the killing of the Romantic because, quite simply, we are.
My crime is one of inaction, an inability to notice the signs that were directly placed in front of me by you (and your other partner in crime, but again that is a different blog post) those signs were as simple to read as a child's book. And they were (are) obvious, you should know this for your own sake. Consider it a favour, me telling you that bit. Because if I can see them, with the limited access I have had, then others with far more access can see them too, and remark upon them. It doesn't take Philip Marlowe like detecting skills to see them, consider that while you are sitting there in your smug little world of thinking no one would ever suspect you of doing anything untoward. Lily white reputations are hard to maintain in this dirty, dirty world, and no one's is as white as they like to think, yours included. I think I have all the proof I need to lay this crime on your doorstep, I know I can prove my culpability, there are no real witnesses to the actual event, no video recordings or anything so concrete as to be considered the "smoking gun." There is just enough here for me to be convinced, and really I'm the only one who needs convincing. This is not a threat, I don't care to threaten, that isn't my job. My job is to take as much responsibility as I have for his death, try to sort through the various details of his death, and to point out to you that you are, in fact, a killer.
Your crime is one of action(s), you reeled him in by listening to his Baudelaire, his Arnold, and his Rimbaud, and "oohing" and "ahhing" over how clever it made him sound, and pretending it was having the effect on you that he wanted it to have. Maybe you were honest (at least in the beginning) I do not know, and now do not care. He clearly thought you were, which is why he silenced me completely. Maybe I fell for it too, maybe I wanted to believe the him believing you, and that I would be a lot less necessary to him for the remainder of his days. I didn't realize that his days were numbered as low as I thought. I figured he had a long, happy life in front of him, and so did he for that matter. He convinced me just as fully as he convinced himself, and thought he had convinced you. That is the tragedy of this event (if there has to be one), he convinced both the one person who could have saved him, and the one person that killed him of the same thing. That it was real, and it would last. That is why I am in the dock next to you. I am nearly as guilty of murder as you are.
You are no Lady MacBeth, there is no actual blood on your hands, you didn't kill him quick, but you did kill him clean. There is no blood smeared crime scene for people to come and gawk over, or pictures to be taken of, and placed on some detective's bulletin board. You strangled him, not literally of course, or I wouldn't be here to write down this little love story, but strangle him you did. You took away his supply of oxygen to his (overactive) brain and he died. There is a school of thought that would say that all of us die from a lack of oxygen to the brain, no matter if we are stabbed, shot, or beaten to death by clowns, a lack of oxygen to the brain is what kills us all. You, on the other hand, made sure of it by strangling him just as if you had wrapped your pretty little hands around his throat, compressed the carotid artery or the jugular vein and squeezed the life right out of him. It was (is) a particularly cruel way to kill a man. It certainly is an up close and very personal way to do it, but that is what makes it so cruel. Just shoot the next one in the heart and let him die quickly.This one, your killing of the Romantic, was not quick. You squeezed, and then you would seem to let up, saying something, doing something, that would give him just enough air (or hope, same thing I suppose) that he would think he would survive, but then you'd apply the pressure again, and eventually it became more than he could bear. Trust me, shooting the next one will be a mercy killing, because make no mistake there will be a next one. You are a killer and that is just what killers do, they kill.
I am even convinced that in those details records of his, when I am able to sort through them without soul crushing guilt, is the identity of your next victim. I think the Romantic knew it, and I even (fancifully perhaps) think it is what eventually struck the "death blow." I can't be for certain, and the records are a bit unclear, but they are lengthy, and I figure a clever man such as myself, especially since I no longer have to worry about the Romantic trying to convince me other wise, will be able to suss out your next victim. Because make no mistake sweetheart, that's what you create, victims. I am unable to decide, at the moment, if I will warn your next one or not. I suppose that if I figure out who it is in time, I might be obligated to, but then again I might not. I suppose that just depends, and on what it depends even I am not sure. And if I (the Rationalist) am not sure then, brother we are fucked, but you know that all ready, because after all you're a killer, and you have to be one step ahead of muppets like me don't you? I wish you luck.
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