Week 26 - Kill

Kill

Matthew Ryan Fischer

There were times he could look at himself and there were times he had to turn his eyes. He could always see the blood, even when it wasn’t there. It was just a matter of whether or not he could stand to see it, to remember, to fully understand who he was and the things he had done. He could wash himself, and had done so countless times, and yet... And yet the blood never seemed to go away. Not fully anyway.

Alistair lived a simple life in a simple cottage in a simple part of the country. He was away from his fellow man, and yet close enough if he had some need. Farming and farms had never held any interest when he was a younger man, but now he was old and he wanted peace and quiet and to be away from the cities to the west. He wanted to be left alone, to live out his remaining days in peaceful solitude.

He made a life for himself, as well as he could. He learned to grow a few crops and raised a few animals. He could walk to the nearby villages if need be and trade what little he produced. Or he could offer other services. Alistair could hunt and he could butcher. Oh yes, he knew how to properly and effectively kill. As a boy he had been taught well, and worked for years with his father in the slaughter houses. All these years later, he had kept those skills sharp as necessary. He wasn’t fast anymore and he wasn’t as strong, but he was always cunning. Cunning and sharp as needed, and wasn’t afraid of the things in the woods, even as his advancing age. The men in the villages knew his ability and Alistair often found himself helping men half his age, even when they should have already known better. Alistair didn’t mind that. He didn’t judge another man by which set of skills he possessed. Alistair appreciated all men and all skills and knew they all served a purpose.

Besides, he liked feeling useful and liked learning what uses these others had themselves.

As a younger man, Alistair had been jealous of other men. Jealous of their talents, jealous of their station in life, jealous of anything and everything they had that he wanted. He was riddled with envy, paralyzed, unable to function and interact with his fellow man. He was an angry young man, full of resentments and broken by his spite. He could have easily succumbed to the bottle or the violence of the streets. Instead he found an equally dangerous path – he resolved to embrace his base desires and to take from them what he wanted.

A plan is an unfair description of his decisions, as he certainly didn’t think far enough ahead to plan his moves, but instead he acted on instincts. His emotion knew what he wanted and his body knew what to do to get it for him – his brain never figured much into the equation.

At first he was a thief. At night, in the dark, away from his father and few friends. He acted alone and on impulse. He took. It was simple, and while corrupt, he found he liked it. He wasn’t surprised by his sins as much as he was surprised at his lack of concern regarding his actions. He had been raised morally and adhered to the teachings of the church. He expected he would find himself filled with regret and remorse, but instead his indifference fueled him on.

Stealing from his fellow man did little to satisfy him though. He wanted what better men had. He wanted more than money. More than wealth. He wanted opportunity, he wanted success, he wanted fame and power and all the other things that men with no hope or occasion long for. Pennies and trinkets would never be enough. Thievery would never be enough.

Alistair didn’t have many skills, he hadn’t had much training or opportunity to become a better man, but he did have one set of abilities, tools from his father and from the work of his youth. Alistair knew how to butcher. He wasn’t afraid of blood or the stench of death. He could hunt and he could kill and was capable and willing to do that which other men were afraid of. Some men might have been his better, in more ways than one, but he had his ways which would make him more than equal.

To butcher a body was nothing. To take a life was dreadfully easy. Snuffing another human out of existence didn’t give him what was theirs. He was after their luck, their skill, their fated promise. He was after their perfect life and would make it his.

Alistair learned from the sin-eaters. He learned what it took to be inside another man, to weigh his soul and to cast out that which was left wanting. But he had no desire to free other men from their weaknesses. All he cared about was their glory. He learned to identify both, good and bad, sin and virtue, but unlike the other sin-eaters, Alistair spent his time finding the best inside the person and kept it for himself. He ate their souls and was all the better for it.

Alistair had found his secret to the better world, to the good life. And for years, he thrived.

But with it came the weight, a sorrow of sorts, and a wretched sort of madness. He began to despise his fellow man. They were soft, weak. Where once he had found things to envy and lust after, now all he could find was disgust.

Killing them was doing them a favor. They were worthless, lesser beings. But without any value, they had nothing to offer him. Everything he had learned, everything he had become, held no reason now. Now it was just killing to end the misery, but even that was no mercy. It was just vile and vitriol. He had been robbed again of his potential, his promise stolen, his fate destroyed. Everything was dark and in the gutter again.

Alistair could no longer stand to look at himself. All he could see was his own emptiness inside, his own failure and a human being. He wanted to dream again. He wanted to have something to aspire to again. But mostly he wanted out of his current miserable life.

He recanted. He changed. He had prayed and meditated and begged for forgiveness.

Alistair returned to the church, returned to the sin-eaters whose craft he had stolen and made his own. He wanted to start over, to be cleansed and absolved. His brothers took pity and gave him a chance at life.

Alistair changed his names. He changed his home. Many times. He wandered throughout Europe, east and west. Still unable to relate to his fellow man, he never stayed in one place very long. Plagued by his memories, haunted in his dreams, he had no peace, no freedoms for a new existence. He had a life back, but never the happiness he had always desired.

Despite being absolved for his sins, Alistair never truly felt forgiven. He went to churches over and over. Repented over and over. He fasted and abstained and learned a new set of skills through flagellation. He had taken so many souls, so many lives; he knew there was no hope of repairing his own. But he tried. Over and over, he tried.

He wrote his confessions. He wrote down his memories and recanted his desires and tried to atone for his sins. The act of putting on paper gave him a greater sense of purpose and absolution than the sin-eaters ever did, as if the act of writing it had actually made it real.

He wrote down his sins and finally felt free. His confessions in fictional form, a warning to others, a morality tale, an education. Alistair hid himself, hid his surname Doyle, and became a new man altogether.

Alistair wanted a quiet life. He wanted to be left alone. He wanted to grow old and be allowed to die, hopefully in peace.

But in too many ways, he had done too much. Peace was possibly too much to ever ask for.

So many different names and faces. So many sins. So many lives ruined. There were so many, he was certain he could never remember them all. But he could still remember far too many.

It was in the past. It was all behind him. That was what he wanted to believe.

Then came the knock on his door and the arrival of a young man calling himself Jonathan – named for one of the characters from Alistair’s writings. The boy seemed capable of seeing into Alistair’s soul. He was a dangerous sort. Anyone who was able to see and understand was dangerous, but the ones that wanted to know more were the most dangerous sorts of all.

Alistair knew this to be true, because at an early point in life, he himself had been that dangerous sort.

The blood on his hands never truly went away. No matter how many times he washed his hands, he could see them, stained, scarred. The blood never really went away, the past was never really forgotten, his sins never fully forgiven. It was then in that moment, gazing into the boy’s sunken and sinister eyes that Alistair realized all men must pay the price for their own sins. Whoever this boy was, Alistair’s own past had brought him here to pass judgment.

And Alistair was fairly certain how he would fare.