Desire Reverie

Dear me, my name is Luther. And this is the first and last entry in my mandated journal assigned to me by my psychiatrist. I’m also going to burn it right afterward because it’s evidence I killed my psychiatrist. Why bother writing it in the first place then? Well, I was always told it’s a good method to process your emotions, and perhaps it will help me work out what to do after I’ve inevitably ruined any chance I had of redemption. 

Let’s start with the basics, why did I kill my psychiatrist? Well, he’s an annoying asshole, that’s for sure. But really, there wasn’t some grand reasoning behind this choice. He happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time, leaving it easy for me to take advantage of the situation. The fact that I never liked him was just a bonus. Make no mistake, this wasn’t a crime of accident or passion. I was already planning on killing someone. The victim didn’t matter. 

Truth be told, there wasn’t a single person that ever mattered to me. That’s why I was in therapy in the first place. The terms “psychopath” or “sociopath” probably best describe my situation, but that’s apparently not a formal diagnosis. Even if it was, I couldn’t be diagnosed with the closest disorder to it because I was too young. What a pain in the ass. They really want to make things as difficult as possible.

Perhaps the only person I felt any semblance of pity for was my mother, who was cursed with the child from hell. I never knew my father, and whenever I asked her she told me she never wanted to talk about it. She dropped out of college after “something” happened to her, and that something was probably me. Ruining lives before I exited the womb, a new record. Anyway, she entered me into therapy after they noticed I wasn’t socializing well with the other children in preschool. I went to a lot of different doctors early on, but they always gave up on me after a few appointments. 

The breaking point was when I met my current one, Dr. Dante. He was considered more “professional” than the previous ones, and cost a lot more as well. By this point, I was pretty jaded about the whole process, so I ignored most of his advice. But there was one session when he said something that resonated with me. 

“You’re sick of being here, aren’t you?” 

I responded yes because nothing he could do would ever make a difference. Then he told me he could only help me if I wanted the help in the first place. I asked him what would happen when I decided I wanted the help. 

“You’ll finally be normal.”

That’s when it occurred to me that I wasn’t the only one who didn’t care. These doctors never seriously wanted to help me, they just viewed me as a problem that needed to be solved. Only they were able to mask it and pretend they cared. So I would do the same. I would pretend I wanted help, that I got the help, and that I didn’t need more help. 

And it worked.

Suddenly life got so much easier. My mom stopped crying herself to sleep at night and smiled more. Dr. Dante got off my case and most of our later sessions were just simple check-ins. The kids at school started talking to me and wanted to be friends with me. The solution was so easy it almost made me laugh at how simple it was. 

And so life became boring and uneventful. At one point I grew up, then graduated from elementary to middle and then high school. There were setbacks now and then, moments where I couldn’t keep up the mask, but as far as I’m aware no one was ever suspicious of my true nature. All I had to do was pretend for the rest of my life and blend in with the crowd. I’ve already mastered how to do that, so there shouldn’t be more problems, right?

Unfortunately, it seems God had other plans. See, the one thing about pretending constantly to be someone you’re not is that you eventually want to become that person. When I became a teenager, my mask turned from a convenience to a burden. Isn’t it strange, how despite the fact I was unable to form emotional bonds with others, I now wanted to? Doesn’t that seem like a contradiction to my very being? Either way, it was the truth of the situation. For the first time in forever, I wanted to be like everyone else. 

Now, did I try to ask anyone for help with this? That would be the reasonable thing to do, so of course I didn’t. Instead, I made a checklist. This checklist was filled with anything I could think of that gives normal people a purpose. The plan was to go through the list until I found something that could make me feel anything, some other emotion that wasn’t boredom, annoyance, or nothingness. 

Most of the items were positive accomplishments, such as “running for student council president,” and “joining the football team,” and “volunteering at the animal shelter.” But when those brought up null results, I went for more risky ideas, like “gambling,” “drugs,” and “sex.” Those things I had to be more secretive about as if someone catching me would ruin the reputation I’d spent my entire life crafting. But it didn’t matter anyway, as all the ideas I could think of wouldn’t work. 

The more ideas fell through, the more desperate I was for them to work. It came to the point where I would try anything, and I mean anything, that I haven’t tried before.

That was when I thought: “What if I try to kill someone?”

Don’t misunderstand. I knew that killing someone was a ticket to jail. I’m not insane enough to not know the consequences of my actions. But when everything else wouldn’t work, it made me wonder if perhaps the things that could make me happy were different from other people. Even when this thought entered my mind, though, I dismissed it, thinking there were probably other things I wasn’t thinking of that I missed. But the more the clock ticked onwards, with each item that was crossed off the list, it went from a passing thought to an inescapable urge. 

What finally convinced me to give it a try was when someone in my class asked me out to the movies. I never liked movies, nor did I like dates, but decided what the hell maybe this would work. I don’t even remember the woman’s name and the movie was just some B-tier slasher with mixed reviews. But as the villain killed off each main cast member, picking them off one by one, I noticed something. 

He looked happy.

People say that everyone is a good person deep inside, but I believe that’s a load of bullshit. After all, if I were truly a good person, doing good things would make me happy. Maybe I was born evil, someone who could only find happiness in the suffering of others. Maybe, like the villain in the movie, the only thing that gives me pleasure is the screams of the damned. So it was time to test that theory.

Now, I know I said before that the victim didn’t matter, but that wasn’t entirely true. I wanted it to be someone who didn’t know me, so the police would be less likely to tie the crime back to me. I also wanted it to be someone society wouldn’t miss, someone with no emotional bonds or ties. Not out of sympathy for their families, but because, again, it would make things a lot easier for me. After narrowing down the suspects, I decided only one person met all the qualifications: the homeless man I passed on my way to school.

With that settled, I needed to work out the method next. Guns were too loud and too easy to make into a political talking point. Strangling would have given him a chance to struggle, and I didn’t want to take that risk. Poison would get the job done quickly, but the most effective ones were way too expensive for my budget. Eventually, I decided it was best to keep things simple: a knife to the back.

Finally, I needed a location and plan, but this one I settled on pretty quickly. I didn’t know much about that homeless man, but what little I did know was that he was a drug addict. So all I needed to do was slip him a note that I had access to illegal substances and lure him into the back alleyway. Only an idiot or addict would follow a stranger to a place like that. After the deed was done, I’d just dump his body in the trash and no one would suspect a thing. 

I decided the day of reckoning would be October 3rd. It was a completely ordinary day like any other. I made breakfast for myself and my mother. Then I went off to school and attended my classes. After that, I went to my weekly therapy appointment and spewed him the same old stories and lies about how fine I was. Really, the only annoying thing about that day was that Dr. Dante seemed more insistent and worried than usual.

“You sure there is nothing wrong? You’ve seemed a bit distant lately. Remember, if you need anything you can always rely on me.”

So I just told him I was fine and he begrudgingly obliged. Now that I think about it, he seemed a bit troubled from the beginning. Perhaps if I paid more attention to his behavior I wouldn’t be in this situation. But around 7 pm I decided to put my plan into action. I placed the note into the homeless man’s hat, told him to meet me at the specific area, and waited patiently. Finally, I heard footsteps coming from behind and smirked. It was about time he showed up.

Only it wasn’t who I thought it was. 

“What do you think you’re doing?!” Dr. Dante said. “Are you out of your goddamn mind?!”

My smile faded. Apparently, he suspected something was up the moment this idea formed in my brain. I don’t know how he managed to find out who I was targeting or chase the homeless man off, but I had more pressing matters to focus on at the time.

“You’ve been doing so well! What happened?! Do you have any idea how worried your mother would be if she found out about this? You would sacrifice all that? All for some cheap thrill?!”

I glared at Dr. Dante in silence. Of course he would pull this now. Just when I thought I figured everything out, he comes in and tries to lecture me. What a pain.

“You’re lucky I didn’t inform the police of this. Unfortunately, I care too much for your well-being to get them involved.”

Such a bad liar. He could at least try to sound a little convincing. Though admittedly, just for a moment, it kinda was. Almost enough to wonder if this whole plan was a lost cause anyway. I mean, I didn’t know for sure it would work, and it admittedly was a leap in logic. I was even considering following him back to his office and forgetting about this whole ordeal. 

He turned around. “Come on. Let’s get you home. We have way too much to discuss to stay in this place.”

Unfortunately, he made three crucial mistakes. The first was not contacting the police. Even if he was worried about my well-being, not contacting them and confronting me on his own was just a recipe for disaster. The second was turning his back on someone who was armed. I really don’t know what he was thinking with this one. Has he never read a book in his life? But the third and final nail in the coffin was what he muttered next. 

“I can’t believe I thought you were finally normal.”

Then the slaughter began.

I thrust my knife into the center of his spine, right between the lungs and the heart. He stumbled and coughed out his insides. Just as quickly as it entered, I pulled it out with as much force I could have mustered, and he fell to the ground. Blood splattered onto my shirt, and I thought it was lucky I decided to wear black today, but the smell would take forever to wash out. But a second later I felt something grab onto my ankle, and I realized he was still alive. That wouldn’t do, so I stomped on his fingers, bent down, and got to work. 

Focusing on the left side of his chest, I made another carving, this one only about half as deep. But I wasn’t done there. I needed a way to shut him up forever. Placing my empty palm over his breast, and using it to center myself, I made a circle. As the angle increased, his heartbeat decreased. It went from 45 degrees to 90 degrees to 180 degrees, and finally, I had the full shape. Ripping his skin off, I was able to see his insides, and thought it looked darker than the poster up in my biology class. His lungs had entirely collapsed, and his intestines slowly slid out. But somehow, against all odds, his heart was still beating.

So I ripped it out of his body. Then it stopped. His movements, his breathing, everything stopped. The air around me was frozen, and I couldn’t even hear my own breathing. I wondered for a second if I died too, because my vision briefly blacked out, and my other senses were at a standstill. But as soon as I looked down and saw his bloody heart in my hands, I came to a terrible, horrible, and dreadful realization. 

I still felt nothing. I just committed one of the most unforgivable crimes imaginable. I tore a man’s heart out of his body. And yet, I still felt absolutely nothing. No matter what I try, I will always feel nothing.

So please tell me, dear me. 

What the fuck do I do now?