Confessions of a Murderer

Written by Jia Zhang

Forgive me Father, for I have sinned. It has been an incalculable number of years since my previous confession, and I deem this the most suitable occasion in which I should repent for my crimes and exonerate my guilt-ridden soul. Although, Father, I have justification to trust that I am unforgivable; my actions cannot be pardoned, cannot be absolved, and I warrant you stay voiceless, Father, as I dictate my confessions to you, for there is so much for me to impart to you. Your most deviant son has done much wrong these many years.

I have always been a very queer man, Father, never quite ordinary, never extraordinary, but just plain bizarre. Perhaps it was my taste for art that first gave people such a terrible notion of my personality. I have always loved paintings, Father, ever since I was a child. My father always said that I may have attributed this love from my mother; now there’s a saint worthy of God’s good name. My mother’s name was Veronica, appropriate for the type of woman she was. She would always smile; never frown, even when I ventured outside of father’s stone rules and regulations. Even when she was dejected, that smile never wavered from her porcelain features, though there was always this sharp melancholy in her azure orbs. I despised seeing that wretched smile on her face, because anything other than a happy mother I could not stand. (Ah, and that is perhaps the root of my peculiarity, Father.) Since I was a toddling infant of four, mother would take me to the Metropolitan to see the dazzling array of paintings, each embroidered with a gold or silver casing. For hours mother and I would sit on one of the soft, red benches and gaze at the story of the paintings—Botticelli’s La Primavera, Monet’s Water Lilies, Renoir’s The Luncheon of the Boating Party, Vermeer’s Woman with a Pearl Necklace, or Degas’s Ballet Rehearsal on the Set. Sometimes, we would make up grandiose tales of how each artist came up with their creations; mother’s tales were always the most spectacular.

She died of an invisible illness when I was only ten years of age (and very inappropriate is it not for a child to lose a mother at that age); and Father, I had loved my mother dearly, with such a crushing enormity that at times when I was older it became nearly incomprehensible. She was the only woman I truly ever loved, and could ever love, for she was the only woman who could ever love such an eccentricity as myself. She died on a Sunday, I recall, once again proper for the kind saint that she was and would always remain in my disconcerting psyche. The church was white, all adorned with white—white fabrics, white flowers (lilies, tulips, roses, the likes), white coffin—because my father considered it ludicrous that my virtuous mother should be surrounded by an ebony ribbon before her entombment. They played Tchaikovsky on violins at the preceding of her funeral; people wept for her death, wept for her widowed husband, and wept for her motherless son, but then they would return home to continue on with their dreary lives as if my mother had never existed. She meant nothing to them. I did not weep. Mother would not have liked to see me weep; she always considered me a strong and bold child, always reckless and often cruel, so up there in the sky mother would have been disappointed to see her obstinate son shed his impervious mask.

After mother died, father sent me off to boarding school. I always believed inside my charred heart that father hated me to a certain degree, and this was never the notion of an ill-fated, selfish child. My father did hate me; he despised me. He envied mother’s dotting affection for me, and the mountains of attention she lavished upon me—I was her only child, of course I would be her everything, and of course father hated that, for mother had meant everything to him. (Oh, but his love for her was incomparable to my love for her.) He was a very stubborn man, much like myself in certain aspects. But my father was never witty, or willful, lucky perhaps, but not intelligent in the least, so it makes me often wonder with a prevailing curiousity as to how he ever because a dominating tycoon, married to a saint, parent to a prodigy. Father was strict, but careless of everything else I took an attraction to. Father did not care what I did, what I may do, what I have done, just as long as I protected his face. I used his influence to influence as much as he did use his most clever and gifted son, for which mother wouldn’t want a child like me? Which father wouldn’t love a son like myself? Only my father, of course. I was a thing used for poisonous envy.

The boarding school years were dreadful bore; I spent much of my time reading, mostly old Russian classics—Chekhov, Tolstoy, but mostly Tolstoy—or I was simply playing chess with one of my dorm mates. I was a prized student at Chesterfield Academy, a thorny rose amongst a cluster of drooping dandelions that fluttered injudiciously amid the wind. I was the only hope within that tedious school of imbeciles, none had an original soul if their pitiful lives depended on it; but, nonetheless, I wore my jester’s mask to jest with those dismal goons, as was expected of me by my father and the rest of the world.

I did not learn much at school (even if I did excel, might I add), and I habitually knew more of any academic subject than my be-spectacled, white-haired, wrinkled ancient professors. Despite my eternal infuriation at father for having sent me to Chesterfield, there is also a quarter of me that will be ad infinitum grateful that he did send me to that feeble excuse for an academy. It was in my very last semester at Chesterfield that I met the single professor who has ever moved me and taught me. He was terribly young when he arrived that brilliant January morn; the sun peeked cautiously through half-sheltered clouds of snow, and all the gardens and trees and rush was enveloped with a beautiful crystalline white, and he arrived at the dormitory on his own, with several overly large brown boxes and a few small suitcases. He was drenched in an exceedingly outsized white shirt (covered with a beige sweater vest), the sleeves reaching to the center of his rather tiny and frail hand. He was oddly pale, but there was a pinkness to his cheeks, and his hair was this platinum that was much more dazzling and ever so more fluorescent than the sun or the moon, and then there were his eyes, which were a magnificent sparkle of emerald, twin gems that were unsurpassed by whichever set brilliant stones, with the omission of my mother, of course (she was in a category all her own!). His frame was appallingly small, and he looked much younger than myself, despite being my senior by a good eight years, thirteen days, twenty one hours, five minutes, and thirty two seconds.

His name was Julian Lancaster. His two greatest loves had been writing and myself. We shared a passionate romance in the summer of 1937, before the outbreak of war in Europe, in which my sweet little lamb was forced to depart on a treacherous journey of a thousand miles to Paris in order to rescue his deluded sister. (She had been living in an asylum for nearly twelve odd years, I believe.) I never saw him again; the aeroplane he left upon crashed over the moorlands of old Britannia, care of a couple Luftwaf. Was there ever true love between us? No, I should think not. Jules loved me as an ideal of a prize, a marbled Pygmalion statue, whilst I loved him for being a gateway to a preciously sinful world; he was my muse, forever and ever more, after all he was the one who did entreat me to the art form of the written word. He moved me with his simplicity, and his utter innocence, the shy words of passion from his lips, and the way he looked so ever bright underneath the sun; and he was a great educationist (despite our lurid affair), for he taught me to open mine sheltered eyes to a whole dimension that I never new existed.

I raise my glass to you, my former love.

Now Father, I understand what you are thinking inside that unadulterated head of yours. I did not love Jules for a man. I had several women after him, one that was especially important to my extravagant tale, but I shall save that for later. Julian was my muse, the one to brush the veil from mine eyes ever so often; he was a valuable love, but if he had lived I would not have transformed the way I have, and thus I prefer him a brilliant treasure inside my memory box.

Imploring that I am, was, is and forever will be a very queer man, it is not subject to doubt that I did very queer things. After the Chesterfield years of my youth, and the crossover of my sweet Julian, I went on a mild-pilgrimage across Europe during the ages of the war, an expedition that had no religious backbone at all. I was in London for the bombings, in Paris for the invasion, I ran with the crowds of Fascists, drank with the societies of Nazis, done what I done, and thought nothing of it. My travels in Europe was a blessing, despite the times being such a havoc that ran through the streets of old Europe; I spent much of my days in Paris, and because of my father’s status, I was impartial to all the politic and warring occurrences—the war meant nothing to me but another episode for curious observation under a cynical microscope.

During my days in old Paris, I spent much of my time writing, publishing, exploring my vast environment (with a free reign on the riches my father gave me). The old Moulin Rouge was an establishment I visited nearly daily, but mostly weekly; and soon enough, I had become one of her most prominent patrons. (I believe, even today, my picture still exists somewhere in that old maison.) That is perhaps the unusual circumstance in which I met Jonelle. Now there was a woman! Fascinating, voluptuous, with flaming red hair, and eyes of pure sapphire stones. Her bosom was mighty, her skin a strange concoction of cashmere and silk. She was permanently frayed in black and red fabrics, and the colours suited her well; there was mole at the left corner of her cherry lips, a touch to her air of idiosyncrasy. She was a fine woman, my Jo, despite the conditions in which we met and in which we parted; she was a little over ten years my senior, but my attraction to her was endless. I did not love her for her beauty, or her snappy wit, nor did I love her for the boldness of our affair. My love for her was as Julian’s love for me—she was an ideal, lovable but unlovable, a pretty jewel to play with between your fingers. Unfortunately, our relationship ended poorly compared to Julian’s and mine.

Now, Father, this is where tragedy sets in—this is the raison d'être for my sins. I suspect whores will always remain whores, despite whatever new and fantastic circumstance they find themselves in; I gave Jonelle a brilliant novel existence, bestowed upon her gifts and opportunities which she had never before touched in that house of red walls and red sheets. Her betrayal was extraordinary, and it was magnified so much more strongly because I had cared for her—not just simply as a wondrous lover. After returning to our flat in central Paris, I found Jo nude and pink amidst some crimson bed sheets with one of my many literary associates. I was furiously infuriated, raging, absolutely frightful with anger. How dare she betray me!—that was what I thought—after all I had provided her! (I guess you truly can’t teach an old whore new tricks.)

This becomes the centerpiece of my tragically long epic poem. I do not clearly remember what had happened that evening; a fog enveloped me when I saw them rampaging beneath the sheets together, and when that heavy camouflage of gray mist lifted from mine eyes, I was washing something horrifically red and putrid from my hands. My lavish flat was meticulously immaculate; there was not a thread of dust upon the floor, the bed was painstakingly folded, the dishes all rinsed and cleaned, no foul clothes lolling on the ground, all the laundry washed and dried—everything in my elegant Paris flat was perfect. Except for the crimson upon my hands.

Here is where much theory and hypothesis came into work; the whereabouts of Jonelle and her covetous lover faded into the warring obscurity. I never troubled myself to inform the Nazi regime at the time of their evanescence, so as far as history is concerned, both individuals never existed. But I can speculate what happened, hypothesize to where they are nowadays (being worm’s food, I should think), but it wouldn’t change anything about anyone, for their meager subsistence meant naught to anyone. And besides, I much prefer Jo like Jules, a precious toy stone inside my reminiscent treasure case.

I returned to America after the disastrous Paris chapter a very morphed and mutant man. I became barely recognizable (mentally, characteristically, emotionally, but not physically) to all those who knew me before my departure. Many wanted to see me become my father’s son, but the road he sought for me to tread was much too tepid and arid for me. I stayed a writer; I published novellas; I wrote in magazines, newspapers; I wrote for movies; I wrote for songs. I used words where I can, where I could. My characters became my most faithful companions, my most trusted fellows. It was perhaps then that I found myself spiraling dizzily into a hazy cavern of insanity.

I placed myself inside a well of isolation; I closed the door on the world, and focused only on the voices inside of my brain, that often chatted away, aimlessly chaotic and perplexing. Writing came to devour me unequivocally, for the Word was the only remedy that could repress the monster that was rooted within me. Death had grasped my throat with its bony hand a long time ago, and this suffocation had become perpetual and conjunctive to my being. My mother’s passing haunted me excruciatingly, Julian’s demise became an incessant knock at the corner of my brain, and the mystery of Jonelle’s disappearance was ever so troubling for my consciousness; soon, I had become a scavenger of the world.

I had many affairs—all of them sexual, none emotional—and I found myself lost within that delicious touch of the flesh, that bravura portal of escapism. Those licentious days of my life had ravaged me; I lapsed into a waking coma much of the time (care of either my own insanity, or the sweet illusive morphine provided by my many lovers), and lost track of the ephemeral days and nights—I was a specter of my former youthful self, completely forlorn inside my inner labyrinth. That is when the accumulation of everything accelerated. I began to have nights that I barely remember, days where I simply drifted, a bird amongst the wind; persistently, I found myself drowned inside a womb of putrid, copper liquid (speaking only figuratively, of course). My hands were constantly stained with blood. What could I have done for my mind to reject all those avid memories? The thought often terrified me; I was not merely afraid of what I had done, but more anxious of the thing that I had transformed into. Staring at myself within a golden-framed mirror, that manifestation inside the reflection was often contorted and malformed, as if I was standing inside a Fun House. But that relentless curiousity of mine refused to leave that imperceptible notion alone—I wanted to know of the missing chess pieces of my memories.

Picture this, Father, a man, a writer, flourished with fear and curiousity, attempting to locate the episodes of his life, omitted by his own psyche. This man, Father, went on an epic expedition through his own history in order to puzzle together a dangerous image. What did he find at the end of the yellow brick road? An absolutely grotesque story, Father, and you should find it fascinating.

I began an inquiry into all the people I knew, know, the ones whom I had affairs with, and those who knew me casually. I studied my own past goings and leavings throughout a year, and finally, I started piecing together a most sickeningly gruesome reality. I was a thing surrounded by death, solved and unsolved, accidental and intentional, but all of it remaining a mystery to the detectives; Death was my enduring fervent lover, whom I could not escape from, despite my failing attempts. I was the subject of every kind of investigation by the police, but I left no traces, no marks, no nothing of anything that could reveal something, even to myself. It was soon that I began to discover the monstrous acts that I had committed, Father, acts that I dare not pour from my lips to hear them in the air.

I implore you Father, the end of my most extravagant narrative—I came to unearth my last act of great immorality, the murder of a beautiful young woman named Celeste. She was barely the age of twenty and thirty days when I met her on my travels; she was the waitress of a small tavern called The Devil’s Bar (fitting, is it not, for my last). Her hair was a dark, hazel brown, rich and full of body, wavy like the many layers of ocean; her eyes were twin jewels of blazing storm, magnificent and magnetic; her skin a peachy silk, absolutely flawless, with no scars or blemishes—my dear Celeste was the most beautiful thing I had ever seen, a living Madonna from a Botticelli painting; she was all ovals—oval face, and eyes, and lips. My heart swelled with adoration for her beauty; she oddly reminded me of an aberrant version of my saintly mother. We engaged in a one-night of passionate romance, or vicarious sexual adventure; but once again, I found myself dancing to a mad macabre symphony, lost within a dross coma that ripped the air from my lungs, and hungrily ate at the crevices of my mind. I awoke to the smell of burning copper, and a putrid scent entered my nose, intensifying that bleeding pounding between the halves of my brain.

When the veil was lifted from before me, I saw a ghastly vision that made my stomach churn in disgust—lying on the bed, completely nude and bare was my Celeste. She was covered in a velvety crimson liquid, staining her neck and her bosom all hues of red. Her mouth was partially open, and her lips were a frightful shade of blue, and her skin was much too ashen and white; and her lovely orbs were dull and inert, holding not a thread of emotion. The specter of her spirit had withered from her corpse hours ago; she was nothing but just a pleasant looking doll now. The scream was caught within my throat, as the torrent of violent memories came crashing into my mind—like my dear Celeste, I had taken the lives of many, indulged in their beauty, which were all too often so reflective of my mother’s beauty, and then I did such great cruelty to their bodies, till they were no more than mere soulless manikins.

Now do you understand, Father, why I am so deplorable? I have killed and tortured even more, now with an absolutely conscious notion of it all—it became an apathetic hobby that I exercised with a hefty amount of gratification. Is it a disease, this dross coma that invades my mentality when I drink in some beauty’s life elixir? I always think that I do right by my actions; each of those lovely toys shared too much resemblance to my oh so saintly mother, and she belonged up in the heavens, so I had lost her long ago, and I wanted to keep those lovely toys of her reflection inside my memory box.

I am full of guilt that I should satisfy that hungry beast within me with physical metaphors of my mother, to gratify that starvation within me for flesh. I am full of guilt to why I do this, but shall I ever stop…no, I should think not. There is too much beauty within that crimson liquor, too much magnificence within the dying ember of the eyes, and I feel such a love for that incomprehensible emotion that fills me when I see that ambiguous apparition fade from their bodies. And next to my beloved mother, Father, this is the only thing I have ever loved so dearly.

Shall you give me my penitence, Father? You’re too silent. Are you frightened now at your deviant son? Do not worry, Father, I shall do nothing with you. Have you found me unforgivable? Evil? Hah! That word amuses me…for saying I am evil would be saying all of Man’s is intrinsically evil. Still silent, Father? I hope I haven’t frightened you too much. But it does not matter, either way, if you should provide with me my penitence or not, for I have things to do Father, and people to see, and I do hope you keep to your oath. This is our little secret.

Father? Are you listening Father? Oh dear, I really hope I haven’t terrified you too much. Are you trembling with trepidation, Father? I feel the wood shaking. Father? Are you quite all right, Father?

…I construe that this is the conclusion of my confessions. This implementation of admission has brought me much serenity—I can finally go on with my activities. It was good to chronicle my most ornate tragedy. So, thank you, Father. I shall return, but not so immediately. I hope you have time to convalesce from my story telling; there will be much more for you to hear soon.

Father? No penitence? I expected as much. Well, good day then.

fin