I Thought My Soul Was Mauve, But It's Actually Deep Maroon

The worst thing about killing people is, in fact, the people.

I get asked this a lot in my workshops and, for the sake of the cliché, have to answer blood. Or the screaming. Or—if I'm in Nevada, where vegans are fucking everywhere—the dull pain of a part of my soul untethered.

The tears feel very real as I recount the mauve tints of my soul turn black—as black as coal, or eyeliner, or the night sky, or the straps of the Prada bag I stole from my ninety-eight-year-old victim. I recount the first time it happened—six-year-old me with a knife stuck in one eye and another stuck inside the cleaning lady. I had vomited everywhere, and from the puke arose a blackened wisp. (Now I don't puke, just cough it out. Less gross that way.)

Which is bullshit because that's the best part.

Why do I take pleasure in murder, then? Why do I wake at five in the morning and drag a serrated dagger into a day that hasn't woken itself up, just so I can catch them off-guard and defenceless and in their pajamas?

I do it for you. You demand retribution, I present its victims.

(Breathe now. Don't get worked up. First rule of the workshop says, don't get stressed in the face of a potential predator.)

I sat beside you in class that day, when your quiet rage first worked itself to the surface. You were behind your desk, eyes squinting but focused on the text you had to read aloud. Your fingers lightly trembled at the edges of the paper, and a part of the whole thing was damn near illegible from where you fisted it. You even drew blood on your lips.

You stumbled over a word at the end—who can't pronounce vulnerable, for fuck's sake—and someone snickered from the adjacent row. Your sharp breath was of an astronaut unmoored from his spaceship and drifting aimlessly in a void that would never end with an oxygen supply that would. You looked lost, ashamed, conflicted. But I forgive you, because later that night, you looked angry.

And then, you called for me.

Now, I won't lie and tell you I did not consider ignoring you. You do look extremely fragile—bangs in your eyes and a gaze that never meets and lips that are always chapped in a face that's too soft. Your anger screamed but when I finally came, you remained silent for the most arduous of hours.

"I want him to die a slow, public, utterly humiliating death. I want him solving a question on the board and the chalk dust to get into his eyes and him to stumble backward into the chair that refuses to seat him. I want his head to crack open against the desk and his..."

You surprised me. I have taught Hitler and Stalin and Yzma, and a meek senior had taken me by surprise. I was glad I hadn't shot you on spot and taken away with the white kitten that looked more like a rat through the grinder. You were not just angry. You were vengeful.

You were perfect.

It is unlike me to slip into nostalgia, but you deserve it. Remember the essay contest? The one you lost? You had worked so hard, and it had all been for nothing.

I sat with the judges that day, to see how you do without me to aid you.

I guess I wanted you to prove yourself.

The prompt for the contest was 'The Core Virtue of All My Decisions' (leave it to academic institutions to reduce souls to words—honesty and compassion and optimism), and I saw you roll your eyes. You then proceeded to word-vomit a litany of self-righteous phrases that had been simmered in a pot of "compassion drives the world" and "kind words can make someone's day" and bullshit as such.

Anyway, you lost. And I strangled compassion with her own braid while she refused to do much more than scream, then rushed to answer your rage. I arrived bloody and extremely proud and you were already there.

"She is not smart, she's just loud." You were pacing your room with balled fists and a throbbing vein at the temple. "They knew her and so it was decided before it ever began."

Yes. Yes. You were never going to win. You never will. You think thrice before you speak, then think another ten. You watch as they answer before you and grab opportunities meant for you and you smile because you're so fucking docile. You're a lamb for slaughter and they beat their drums around you ("shy", "introvert", "not good enough") and you take it because the core value that drives your decision is compassion of all things. Sit and watch the blade rise to your neck and the silence guide it across.

You came with a particularly impressive plan that day ("I want her to be chained to a chair, writing until her fingers turn purple and her eyes unfocused. I want her to be pushed to her limits so she knows she has one. I want her to shatter like a light-bulb does because it can only glow for so long before it gets more fire than light."), and so we became best friends. A legacy awaited you and my hand was on your lower back, guiding you to a future where you bowed to no-one. Where you were loud.

Then you decided to fire me with a crossbow. In the middle of a lecture.

Human bodies are so weak. They hunch from laughter, they tremble from tears. Rage fuels you to take a leap into the chasm but as you're falling, the opposing wind rips away your breath and death screeches into your ears before you even hit the bottom.

Your betrayal was expected—the vengeance got too heavy and the heartbeat too slow—but your choice of weapon stung the most. Come near me, my dear, and face what made you. Don't stand at the top of the stairs, aiming your crossbow at me, if you cannot see where the arrow protrudes from my skin and ribbons of red fall down my torso. Peer through the gaping hole and into the other side.

Weep.

Remorse.

Regret.

You are doing quite well now, I must say—the rage has dimmed and the heart no longer bleeds when prodded. On days when the world seems to sing, you even find yourself tracing their names in the yearbook. You were quiet. You were so shy you couldn't even maintain their gaze. No wonder you were never heard. It's different now. You're different now.

It's just so fucking funny though.

You sit at the cubicle in the office. You sit on the porch. You sit at the dining table at your in-laws' house and pretend not to notice the biggest slice of cake go to their son. You attend your daughter's performance at school, but watch her run to her best friend first. You lie in bed and attempt to look pleased and almost look it, but then you start smiling too wide because you don't know when to just stop.

You and I—we have always been one, even when I was everything you wanted and all that you abhorred. Your nose wrinkles in horror when you look at me, but don't you get it? It is you; it has always been you. When your favourite vase breaks and your kid has her hands behind her back, we breathe through the galloping heartbeats together. We massage the palms that crave the sting of a blow and try to hide the hunger for violence. We watch the lamp beside the bed, next to our husband's head, and try to control the itching fingertips that reach to hold it. We ignore the invite of blood, a skull cracking open, glass shards buried into skin and sweet, sweet freedom.

You birthed me from muffled sobs and wet pillowcases and cardboard cutters against soft skin. I am your saviour, your god, the truth buried in the marrow of your bones. You're nothing without me, and I forsake you.

This story was never about you. It was about me and my hatred for people because you all alike despise being repressed but cut off your limbs to fit the wagon. The road is rocky and uncemented and your stumps of a leg and an arm hurt but you smile. You believe at the end will be salvation. But God doesn't take in hypocrites.

Now a seventeen-year-old girl haunts the basements of my abandoned workshops. She's an echo of the one I lost, the one I gave up. She stumbles during races and finishes last and snaps at her mother who no longer feels so much, who lost something—someone—vital ages ago. She keeps her head down during lunch and forgets to raise it afterwards.

I am sitting beside her in class. She is focused on a novel. A piece of balled-up paper hits her head. Her fingers tremble on the pages of the book and the text is damn near illegible where she fists it. I smile.

And then I wait.