"You know what your problem is there honey, you ain't even alive. You got no concept of life, no method of livin it. You sleep your way through, think you're living but really you ain't even here. Not really. Cause you got no method. No means. You're what they call a somnambulist. You see, you walk in your sleep. You live from damned habit. From programmed lame reaction. You do nothing and are nothing but what your emotions and history let you be. You see I read a damn lot, I make time for it, and I especially consider life, mine own particularly. I read all I can on the subject, always have, and I realised from all that reading that I had to live a certain way to get the most from life. Others don't need it like I do, others can fill up on intellectualisms and from the attacking of reality. By choice they do it, quite amazing you see, they take away that feeling, you know, that dreaded awful feeling, in your bones and gut, that life ain't worth shit, they rid it by just deciding so, by intending it that way. I can't do it. I tried. Wouldn't sustain. It came and went. Gambling could hold me awhile, women even moreso, books do it nice, but it left always, it left me cold. Fleeting experiences and moments. I could not maintain the intensity, and without it I was constantly undermined by one, worthlessness, and two, boredom. It puzzled me like a bitch you see. Twofold again. One, how most others didn't see it, or feel it, and two, how the problem could be solved…I found the answer though, I did, reading again, the counter to the first part was that most people were just dumb as posts, and that their life interested them very little, I felt I always knew that anyhow, I clarified it though, read it true, now the second counter, to the question, it wasn't the common solution, others had come across it, they uh, they found it drastic you see, not me, no sir, you see honey, life is lived most intensely in the face of death. Heidegger said that. A German. Not a truer word ever spoken. Sartre, now he was a Frenchman, much influenced by Heidegger, he said he never felt any more alive than when Germany occupied France and he felt he might be killed at any moment. There was a Russian, Dostoyevsky, when put in front of a firing squad had the revelation that nothing, but nothing is boring. Said he'd rather live on a metre by half metre ledge set into a cliff face for all time rather than die. You believe that. What I found is that I'm that way. I live most in the face of dying. Those intellectuals they spent their lives trying to find other ways, more reasonable types and methods, there was a guy named Gurdjieff, he said that no man really lives until he's constantly aware that himself and every person he ever sees or knows or speaks to will die. Even that wasn't enough for me. So I set about creating conditions whereby my life was constantly under threat of being ended. And whereby others in my life could die just as easily. Took some time to set it that way.  But I tell you sister, since that day, since it, I ain't never felt it. That dread. Not once. No way. Not ever. I mean I could die tomorrow, I got people after me, all assortments, cops, gangsters, loansharks, revengers, I would not change it. No sir. No sir. I am always in immediate focus, all my energy, all the time"

She just stared at me some more. Didn't smile, didn't move. She spoke eventually, you're fucking crazy she said. I told her I'd considered that. That maybe I was just justifying my behaviours, legitimising, all the gambling, drinking, stealing, blackmailing, killing, maybe I just liked it, maybe it was all just a front. I didn't believe it though. Cause I disliked killing. It was vital and necessary, was important in and to the method. I disliked it though. The mess it made, all the cleaning up and backtracking it forced one to do just so as to keep your ass outta jail, real pain in the neck it was. Truly agitating. On the flip nothing made you feel more intense, nothing put you closer to your own death. Not a thing.

I was smiling after that. It was a detailed lecture. And she was quieter than she'd been all night. Her goose-bumped skin looking bluish in the beam. Veins like comet tails trailing across her body. Man is most free in moments of conquest I told her. She was wide eyed. Think about that you stupid little bitch. I ain't crazy I said. Too much logic in my thoughts. I've written it down and read it aloud. I may be some sort of agent of evil, or such, whatever evil is. I mean I approach it so objectively. Which is what I imagine Satan to do. It would seem entirely possible. I ain't saying it's true or such, but it could be.

In all my parading I'd failed to hear her husband get his sorry ass home. He must have walked it, I heard him fumbling about with the keys and door, stopped me in my tracks, told her if she made a noise I'd end her first. She obeyed just like a dog would. He hauled his fat self up the steps and I let him make his way to the lavatory and heard the piss begin to gush. The flush and suck of the toilet next. I made it quieter with stealth to the door just outside and snuck a peek at him considering himself in the mirror. That oversized fleshpot, that useless human excuse, I did it quick and ruthless, whipped in behind him, fastened his arm behind his back swift and then jerked it upward with might, bought him to the tips of his toes, I knew he was a righty so I shoved the gun to that temple, slight upward angle so as the police ate the suicide, didn't even get to see the look on his whopping face cause his bigass head got in the way. Just the squeeze of the trigger and the crack of the shot. The blood spray settling on the white tiles of the wall and floor reminding me of the fine mist of freckles sitting on her shoulders and pretty perfect nose. And when I went back she was still sitting there naked expecting me to hold up my end of the bargain. After all that.

I could see the fear fizzing in her. Hell I could almost smell it in the room. I had her now see. She was whimpering and cowering no matter what else she tried to display. It was the straight up motion of my speech, of my actions, I loomed up over her feeling like a giant, a king about to slay some peasant, grabbed a handful of hair and heaved her head face first into the couch, her ass up there like the sun at midday, undeniable, undefeatable, I asked her if she wanted this and I'm sure she mumbled yes, I told her that when I considered it mostly, in the darkest times, the loneliest ones, it seemed entirely possible, it really did. Why not I asked her. Why the hell not? Then I played out what I had planned from the get-go, and as was usual, when I was done, all the way done, I was pretty convinced, cause all that in the face of death jibe, all that philosophising, the sum of it, who knew, nah I just felt good and alive, and the simplest answer seemed the most likely.

END