Intro.
So there we begin with Colin Davies. Davies the completely batshit insane! Did I make him do it? That is what Ferguson was just about to get to. She was just about to say that I was once an angel. She was correct; I don’t like it, but why lie? It was not my greatest of moments! Halos? Harps? 71 different versions of the missionary position? Yeah, fuck that, it is not for me.
The strangest thing about Colin is that he was also correct. Ferguson was about to break what should never be broken. Would it have led to the end of the worlds? I really do not know. It may have done, but would I have wanted to stop it? That is for you to decide! That, my human friends, is the game. His legal team argued that he was crazy and that the angel he thought he was hearing was me! So, Colin, via his team, claimed I made him do it. Don’t they know that I have better things to do?
So, onwards and upwards. Portside ready! You can ignore Colin in the corner of the stage; he is just sticking around, so you do not forget his crimes. A mental reminder of things. When we get to the end, I shall list them all! All the suspects shall be here before you, and then you can decide.
Let’s hop, skip, and jump backwards in time and meet Jonathan. Jonathan is a simple soul with nothing more complex than a thirst for murder and love.
He watched with a keen eye as the man left the pub. This was his next target, and he could already feel the excitement building deep within. Jonathan was not complicated; he liked to kill, so he would kill. It was that simple. But this one was different. It was personal. The voice inside his head often encouraged him.
No, I don’t
And, that voice he called his devil, his shadow, or maybe, had he read, or seen, Dexter, his dark passenger. He was aware that he might just be crazy and could have been entirely insane, but what if the voice was really there? What if the voice was something else?
Am I any less real than you?
As he watched the man stumble from the pub. He ignored the voice’s question and let it guide him and plan his next move.
We could burn him!
“No, we’ve done that,” Jonathan answered with a mutter. He could feel the excitement in the pit of his stomach. Like a car going over a hill, the butterflies started to whirl.
A drowning?
“It’s cold! I’d freeze as well.”
You make the mistake of thinking that I care.
And, so it continued as Johnathan watched the man stagger from lamppost to lamppost. Jonathan argued with his inner mind. He would often argue with the voice. If he wanted a tea, the voice would want a coffee. If he wanted toast, the voice wanted a sandwich. It was a daily argument, but it kept him sane in a manner of speaking. Jonathan saw nobody else; he would interact with very few people. So the voice kept him company and stopped him from going any crazier. More crazed would not have really changed Jonathan much, but it may have gotten him caught. Being caught was not something he contemplated because he trusted the voice to keep him safe. He and the voice bickered and argued like an old married couple, but they needed one another.
The word flashed with a bright light, not lightning; this was the briefest flicker of strip light illuminating the world. It was just a flash of brilliance on an otherwise black night. Jonathon approached the man with the grace of a ballet dancer. Not a squeak or pop could be heard as he walked at pace towards his target. He wanted this man. More than anything, he wanted him.
Go, go, go. He is ours now!
This time Jonathan ignored the voice. Had he spoken aloud, the man could have heard him; they were much closer now, which would have spoiled his hunt. The hunt was half the thrill, and he did not want to end it early. He wanted this one for himself; this one was everything to him. He enjoyed the game, and he loved the chase. The thrill of the kill was incredible; couple it with a good stalking beforehand, and it was…
Better than sex?
No, well, yes, maybe. Jonathan didn’t know, as he was still a virgin. He could not even begin to imagine how sex could ever have been better!
Well, you could change that at any time!
He could, he supposed, but the twisted morality of a murderer took control. The strange chastity of criminality. He could justify the murders; he enjoyed them, but rape? The thought itself disgusted him, and the idea repulsed him.
But still, you think it.
No, you think it, Jonathan thought to both himself, and the voice.
You could tie him up and fuck him in the arse! He could be yours! We could sodomise him together!
“Stop!” Jonathan exclaimed, and the man he had been stalking turned around quick as a flash. The man could see two Jonathans standing and wobbling before him. This was not because of Jonathan’s inner voice or some magical insight; it was simply because of the alcohol. Had he been sober, he may have lived; the man had no chance as he was drunk. The Jonathans lurched forwards and, holding a knuckle duster in his right hand, brought it towards the man’s face. The metal of the duster connected with the face of the man. Metal meets skin and flesh and says hello to the bone. The man’s teeth fractured with the connection, and shards of white teardrops fell from his mouth and rained down onto the ground with the red liquid that followed. Jonathan had a moment of regret. He felt that moment of wanting and pain that may have accompanied awful news. He quickly pushed it to one side. Discarding it as rubbish. It was a thought and emotion that he did not, at that moment, need.
Holy fuck, that was awesome!
“But it was not what we planned,” Jonathan said as he planted another fist onto the keeled over man’s head. His emotions returned to normal as the man fell to the floor. Jonathan was powerful; a lack of human interaction had led to him working out; he worked out a lot! The man’s face crumpled into the ground like a slice of toast falling butter side up.
No, like a sandwich.
No, toast. Hitting the ground butter side up. Splomp. The man lay on the floor, alcohol or the violence having knocked him out, and he started to snort blood bubbles. Bubbles of his blood formed from the exposed nostril. Blood mixing with snot, forming a bubble and then popping in the cool night air. The voice was a little more panicked now. Rushing the moment. Jonathan would have argued, but they both wanted the same thing in the end, and he had learned to trust in the voice.
Quick! Get it into the car. We need to move.
“I know, I know,” Jonathan said as he picked the body up and threw it over his shoulder. He did it with the same ease a greengrocer may throw a bag of potatoes or a butcher the corpse of a pig. He crossed the street and kept one eye out for any other people. The silence of the late evening night protected him. The shadows of the moonlight held him close and surrounded him as he made his way to the car. The street was empty save for him, his voice, and his victim.
Jonathan opened the boot of the car, and the light clicked on. When the light glittered, the world around him filled with a bright whiteness. Just for the slightest of moments, the world changed. It was a stolen kiss of a view, but he saw rows of lights and beds. Like that, it was gone, but now he was in the car. Driving the car, not a blackout, he had experienced a whiteout.
Where does he go?
“Who the fuck was that?” Jonathan fumbled the wheel as he asked; this was a new voice. The car swerved to the side, but he steadied it. He regained control of both himself, and the car. He had grown used to the first voice, but this one was different, and it was not asking or speaking to him; it seemed to be talking to itself.
Or to someone else?
Back to the known, the voice he had grown to both love and hate, “How many of you are in there?” Jonathan asked. Like many questions asked over the years, it was something that he really did not want to hear the answer to. But still, like many, he could not help but ask.
I don’t think we will ever know.
“Will you fucking stop that!” Jonathan screamed, not at the voice but at nothing but the car interior. It was yet another new voice. Where one had become two, two had become four.
It wasn’t fucking me!
The original voice shouted back; it startled Jonathon. “Then who?” he screamed and smashed his head forward and into the steering wheel. “The fuck!” he continued and rammed the wheel some more with his head. The wheel’s rubber bounced his head back like a ball from a bat. It would hurt in the morning, but it was doing no visible damage for now, “Is it?” he concluded with one final smash.
I don’t know, but it worries me.
“It, it fucking worries you?” Jonathan barked back in surprise. “It fucking worries you. Jesus cocking Christ, how do you think it makes me feel?” With that, he jammed his head into the wheel one last time. The black rubber cushioned the blow, and he felt nothing as his head ricocheted back and into the seat. Just a painless nothing.
When did you learn to drive anyway?
“That is a good question,” Jonathan said, suddenly lost in his own world, and then rammed his foot down upon the brake pedal. The car jolted to a halt, and with it, the whole world stopped as well. He leant his head to one side as he thought. Forehead scrunching as ideas flashed like the lights of the world had done. The movement from outside the window had ground to a halt. Birds floated motionlessly, trees stood without swaying, and the grass only pointed skywards.
You know the truth, don’t you?
“I couldn’t drive. I walked, no I ran,” Jonathan said. I ran with him on my shoulders. A tear started to form in the corner of his eye as he processed the thoughts that ran, or drove, through his mind. “I took him from outside the pub; that part was true.”
That part was genuine. You hungered after him for a long time.
“Why?”
You were in love. Or, I suppose, you thought you were.
“Was it love?”
Only you can know, my friend.
Jonathan pushed the back of his hand to his eyes and rubbed the tears away. As he pushed and brushed them away, the world outside the car fell away like old wallpaper falling from a wall, and it was replaced with a barn in a field. Jonathan stood outside the barn; he looked without thinking of the car. “This is where it happened, isn’t it?”
This is where it happened.
“I don’t want to go in there.”
Oh, but I think you must.
The world shifted again without warning, and Jonathan found himself standing inside the barn. The man he had attacked and captured lay on the floor, bloodied and beaten. Jonathan fell to the floor beside the body. Tears flowed freely down his face, and he sobbed as he spoke. “Why did I do it?” The tears fell from his cheeks onto the body; they mixed with the blood.
He turned you down. He mocked you for being in love. He called you a fucking faggot.
“I’d have forgiven him,” Jonathan sobbed. He held the body’s hand as the tears built into a teardrop powered rainfall. The sky above him filled with water, and rain dropped in sync with the tears. A storm of the imagination brewed as Jonathan’s sorrow escaped him. The tears of rain and the winds of regret gathered in this world. “I’d killed before, or was that just fantasy?”
Many times.
“So why him?” Jonathan pleaded as he held the hand of the man close to his chest and heart. He pulled the body forwards and towards him and cradled it. The barn ripped apart in the storm that had arrived from nowhere. Wood splintered from the walls and shattered into the falling roof. It all fell away, but none of it touched Jonathan as he sat crying.
Because you loved him. I think it is time to go now, my friend.
“I’m not leaving him. Leave me alone.” Jonathan grabbed the body ever tighter. Lifting the torso, the dead man’s head lay below his jaw. Jonathan leant forward and kissed the man on the forehead.
Okay, my friend, we will stay. The hospital ward was closed, and the nurse and doctor looked at Jonathan in the bed. They know what he is and has done, but he looks peaceful and harmless. “Where does he go?” the nurse asked as she checked the restraints. “I don’t think we will ever know,” the doctor replied.
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