Could it be the position of the moon, the way the rings of Saturn spin? Could it be the smell of the chemical in your sweat when you awake in a dark room with no motivation to stand? Itchy legs after every shower. The birds screaming at you to die before them so they can have peace. The spider in the corner of the kitchen who has not moved for three days. The fallacy of the hero; the man who saved the world yesterday showed signs of aggression and the saved world rejected his personality. The fact my aorta pumps thick red blood through my flesh yet I whimper at the sight of my liver. The hypocrisy of our fragility. The weight of a concept. The thought of her with another man is 1000 newtons. Another day full of clarity, gravity cant even grasp your stature, and you float into the clouds and smile, until the thick ball of impermanence weighs down your stomach and you fall to the soil. What makes me do a bad thing? I feel a certain way about the fact I have an explanation for everything I have ever done. I have an imagination to endure this life but not create it. I do not explain for forgiveness, do not mock my pride in thinking your whimsical morals could effect me deeply. Effect me the way they do, behind these bars, waiting for the chair, but you have no power over me other than what you choose to do with my physical self.
When we first started dating everything was perfect. Then I found out she was a liar. She had told me she had been alone for some time, concentrating on herself. Until one perfect afternoon the truth soured the sky. She was still speaking to her ex-boyfriend. Still fucking him. Still holding on until something new came along, something better. She was spineless. It made me sick, it made me weep, it made me punch my steering wheel so hard that the horn broke. Frustrated in traffic it would let out a wheeze and remind me of all that is wrong with everything. I forgave her and stayed with her because I was weak. Because I had already stolen too much from the lies. I was in debt to what was not real and the only way I could repay my greedy heart was to live this lie. A lie. It sits there, measly foundations, engulfing any free time for thought. I can lie too. I can lie. I can live like this, like Jesus. My pain can sit on the cross with barbed wire tightened around my temples. Blood rolling down my face as onlookers smile thinking he deserved it. Holes in my hands as I try and wash my face with clean water. As I try and see myself to find myself. Together we lived life and we had children. And in their eyes I could see the lies of their mother. Their cowardice eyes, innocent, stupid, full of love and all it’s needs. I went within and you mocked this world of mine. The world I now know to be real. Gravity proves it. The weight of concepts. I carry around a village and they can all see through you. They can see through this world who pretends it is not what it is. Who hides its violence. Who is cunning. Who leaves a man feeling seven feet beneath the soil. Not only does it force you to submission, it laughs with its foot on your throat, and others laugh at you too, behind their blinding veils of pride, not realising their neck is next. Every breath you take in, gravity follows you like water. Every outbreath requires more effort. And I tried and failed around those who did not try and succeeded. Amongst men who failed but did not try. And as I, a trier, an alien, my failure also received mockery. And she laughed with them, my lying bride. The joke surrounded me. I searched to see the back of my head, I longed for the beast that hid its eyes behind my hair, and my dreams told me the truth. She is laughing at you. He is laughing at you. They are laughing at you together.
I stood, chopping wood, hitting it hard without fear it would land somewhere wrong. Repetition created precision and boredom. I wished for a log to act differently. To not split like the atom beneath my force. To stand up for itself. To show something. And I went down, hoping to miss and hit my foot, hoping to fail at this act and create a change, but I did not, I split the wood perfectly in two and as I did I heard her come home. And I hit hard and grunted and sweat fell from my brow onto the predictable flesh of fire. I heard her keys land on the bench. Through the back window I caught her eyes and she pretended not to see mine. She looked into my eyes and she pretended not to see them. She turned her back. I walked inside and I lodged the axe into her spine. The noise she made I can still hear, the first truth ushered from that mouth. She twitched and convulsed on our kitchen floor and I held her and smiled. As she died fear and shock moved through her eyes like passing trains. Her hands would grasp then let go. She held on to me, her safety, and I watched her realise I was the one who killed her. Her expressions were refreshing, everything she did in her dying moments were real. I had finally met her just as she left. From then I had the strength within me to not feel remorse. I had the will to act accordingly. Of course, if a fresh set of eyes walked into the room and saw my wife in a pool of her own blood, laying dead in my arms, the fragility and shock of the human psyche would not be able to listen to rational thought. The kitchen floor was changed. There was something poetic about it. The place where we cooked our food, where our bodies became the collective mass of all eaten. I did not want to get caught yet I could not bring myself to clean the floor. The story was thickened into it. This story was not a fable, it was right there, too beautiful to remove, patterns and reality in chunks of haemoglobin. Ah my truth, how much I love you.
I took her to the shed and cut her up into small pieces. I put her head on the handle end of a shovel and she watched me peacefully dissect her.
“This is your heart,” I said as I held her heart. “It never loved me, did it. Where is my name?”
The children were a matter of circumstance. An unfortunate collateral paid for their mothers wrong doing. I had will in spades. I had strength in notions and imagination. But I could not bring myself to see their eyes once realised. As the three walked in the door. I killed them in merciful order. The most sensitive one first so he did not have to know. The strongest one second so he did not have time for rebellion. And the nicest one last, in a fantastical whimpering hope that she would change my mind and we could live together some place new. She did not. I buried them all that night as my wife watched on the end of the shovel. I kissed her as she was ready to be thrown in last, that is when she opened her eyes. I must say, this is not a fable, only visit our mothers void of colour for the remainder of their lives to understand that, only mention it to anyone who has ever set eyes upon me and watch their insides wish to come outside. But yes, she opened her eyes, as I stood there covered in sweat and blood looking over her cut up body laying beside our lifeless children as if they were all asleep on Christmas eve, safe from the troubles of tomorrow.
“Camilla?” I asked her.
She did not answer me. Her brown eyes stay open, staring into what I'm too ashamed to look at myself. I put my hand on her face and gently closed her eye lids. I kissed her cold lips and brushed the long strands of hair that covered her perfectly shaped eyebrows. Her eyes reopened.
“You did this!” I shouted.
She remained silent.
Her silence summoned the devil within me. I grabbed her head and with my thumbs squeezed her eyes towards her brain. I felt them turn to jelly. There was hardly any blood left in her skull yet small red tears fell down her cheek romantically. Her battered eyes still found a way to look at me.
“Please,” I begged. “Please talk to me. I can not handle this, please. Just say something, anything, please.”
She remained silent.
“Do you not understand that this is all your fault!?”
I continued to reply to her silence.
“Do not put this on me. You think because I did not have the strength to endure being alone, that I was too afraid of living a truth that I committed to your lies?”
“No, Camilla! No! You do not get to look down upon me, severed from your body with lifeless eyes full of judgement. This is a consequence for all you have made me endure. You pushed me and you pushed me. This is me pushing back. You didn’t think I had it in me did you? No, or maybe you did, that is why you always lied. That is why isn’t it? Speak to me!!!”
I fell to my knees in tears as I heard steps approach me. The police officer standing stood alone as his female partner, who was a family friend, bent over and vomited on my freshly mowed grass. I turned to the officer, “Shoot me, please.”
“Stay right there Boy!” he shouted.
I took my wife’s head off the handle of the shovel and held it as the police watched on. I fell back onto the corpses of those I loved. This is real, I thought. I always wanted real. Now seventeen torches and twenty two guns point on me as I wish to sleep. I can deal with those little lies, give me back my little lies. The police didn’t kill me, just hauled me up out of there and followed the process of this judicial system. And I sit amongst a world who still puts food in my stomach. A world that still gives me a pen and a piece of paper to write on. And the other day an officer smiled at me. And I ask myself, what makes someone do a bad thing? Is it to see the grace in forgiveness when you do not deserve it? Is it to be punished by God to ensure he is real? Is it to be seen by God, even as red? Is it to be touched by God, even as a push? As the falling angel my freedom announces itself as a rattle of keys on the hip pocket of a stranger. Death is promised. You were me all along and now I am you.
