Written around September/November 2007.
I turned the gun over in my hands, feeling the smooth surface glide across my skin. The silvery moonlight streaming through the window next to me caught the metal, and it glinted, as though winking at me; urging me on.
The weapon felt strange to me, cold and unnatural. The sense of power it gave me was frightening: I could kill someone, right now. I was going to kill someone.
Is this what I had amounted to? Killing an innocent stranger, playing with someone’s life… in order to keep my own?
I lifted my head to the door in front of me. Reaching out slightly trembling fingers, I touched the glossy wood, feeling dazed. This all felt like a dream - no, a nightmare. This was all a terrible, terrible nightmare, and I was going to wake up soon. I kept repeating that mantra over and over in my mind, hoping to have it anchor me to sanity… only to find I was drifting further and further away.
Finally, I opened the - surprisingly - unlocked door, watching it swing into the room.
I gazed about the small space, taking in the magazines strewn across the coffee table, the dirty cups and plates scattered about, the pictures lining the walls, the bookcase stuffed with thick books. Everything looked so ordinary, so unimportant. So why was I drinking in every detail and committing it to memory like I was?
I slowly padded across the floor, taking care to touch a few objects. The police needed evidence. Oh yes, it wasn’t enough that I had to kill someone – or be killed – I also had to turn myself in afterwards. That thought didn’t frighten me as much as it probably should’ve. I felt so detached from everything… this was a nightmare. It had to be. The world as I had known it was crashing down around my ears and nothing I could do could stop it.
I had thought about dying a lot these past few days, more than I had ever considered it before. The thought of dying, being wiped out, just like that, like a rubber erasing a mistake in one quick motion… That thought terrified me beyond belief.
I pictured my mother and father’s faces when they heard the news – your daughter, your perfect daughter, brutally murdered – and I couldn’t possibly bear inflicting another tragedy like that upon them.
So did I think that having their daughter murder someone was better than having her be dead herself? Obviously I did, or I wouldn’t be here now, outside a stranger’s bedroom, one hand on the icy cold door handle, the other slowly lifting the gun, preparing myself... I’d be in completely different place.
Opening the bedroom door, I stepped inside. The room was flooded with a milky blue light from the cars, lampposts and blinking signs outside. The curtains weren’t drawn, and I vaguely wondered why not. How could this person sleep with the lights flashing and the car horns blaring all night? I wouldn’t be able to bear it.
I shook my head, turning back to the task in hand. The person – even though I knew it, I refused to name him in my head; that would be making it personal, and I wouldn’t be able to do this if it were made personal – was lying under the covers, breathing softly, in a state of deep sleep. His face was turned away from me, so all I could see was the back of his head, the tight curls that were his hair. That suited me just fine.
Lifting my gun, I put a trembling finger on the trigger… aimed… and fired twice, in quick succession.
And at that moment, that split-second as the noise of the shots rang through the room and seemed to hang quivering in the air, I felt my new persona settle over me like a shawl.
Laura Ashley Hipton: murderer.
~REVerse