You look down at your hands. Blood drips to the floor from your fingertips. You are covered in it. His life slides away as you watch, the droplets pooling around your feet.
You have done it. You are a murderer. A killer. This is it now. This will be how you will forever be. There won’t be a chance for repentance. You’ll live with what you have done for the rest of whatever life you have left.
You tortured the man. You have no regrets.
This won’t keep you awake at night. You already have enough to do that. It won’t be his face staring up at you in the moment of his death, that won’t be it. He’ll be there, but it will be from another time. Another place.
Another face.
No one has a soul. You don’t believe in nonsense like that. You know you are just a set of synapses firing, nerves and impulses. That is all. There is no heaven to be barred from. No hell to be damned to for all time. You’re just an evolved animal, now with real power.
The man, lying broken on the ground next to you, deserved to die.
It wasn’t just for what he’d done in the past. It was for the things he was doing now. His actions caused this to pass. He hadn’t learned his lesson. Hadn’t tried to change. He had to be stopped.
That is your truth. Your verdict. You weighed up the good and bad and made the call.
You don’t grieve for him or anyone else. You don’t feel guilt.
They deserved their fate.
You already know the answer.
You just don’t want to face it.
There is only one ending you can envisage for yourself. You don’t see yourself lying on a beach in a foreign country, free and clear from the nightmares. No one will understand. You will be castigated. Burnt at the stake. Judged by the crowd and deemed a monster.
That will be your legacy.
The people you are destroying now are the most deserving. You know that. You know everything they did and didn’t do. You know all their dirty little secrets.
You enjoy seeing them in pain. This is justice. The ultimate penalty for the worst crimes.
You know they thought so little of people beneath them that they would never understand any other way.
This is what they deserve. All of them.
You are just carrying out what needs to be done.
You are right.
You are true.
You are not stopping until it’s over. Until your list is complete.