I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to kill you.

The first thing that came into my mind. Strange that, isn’t it? Strange because it was a lie. There was blood on my hands, on the bed sheets, on the floor, on them. I was caught, open, naked. Yet I still lied.

I’m sorry. I didn’t mean it.

I planned it. Planned it for so long. It kept me alive, those plans, figuring out everything that would happen, anything that might go wrong. What to do if something went wrong. In bed, when I ate, in my lessons, in the pain and terror, even in my dreams, I planned it. I never planned to think that.

I’m sorry.

Was I? No. I wasn’t happy, either. I didn’t feel the expected euphoria, the triumph or the power. The only emotion was quiet and still, existing softly inside me, like a subliminal message or a whispering voice from the other side of the room. Relief. It didn’t do anything, it just was there. Small, insubstantial, yet there. Relieved. Relieved at what? It was over? That’s a joke. It had only just begun. That I’d killing them already? No, I wasn’t dreading the killing. The complete opposite, in fact. Relief they were dead? Possibly.

I didn’t mean it.

To kill you? To be the one to kill you? To be born to you? To commit patricide and matricide? To feel relieved? To not feel happy? To stand here, in this life, with your blood all over me, and feel empty?

It was too easy. You were both huge, powerful, alive. Terrifying, horrifying, controlling, powerful. So powerful. You’d never been beaten before, and here I was, with a simple, ordinary knife in your throats and your blood on my hands.

Maybe I didn’t mean it to be easy. A punishment on me, or validation for you? You didn’t deserve to go out like that? Another lie. You deserved hell and torment and torture and all the pain that had ever existed. Still, it seemed like a waste. An insult.

Perhaps I was just going through the motions, the expectations. That’s what people would have expected me to think, right? That I was sorry and didn’t mean to do it? That was correct and fairytale and stereotypical and right. Right? Nothing about this was right. Well, actually, if you take a look at humanity and the universe, you’ll see that this is actually more right than if I’d loved my parents. Sad, isn’t it, that killing your parents is more right than loving them? Or maybe ironic. People wouldn’t bat an eyelid if I said I’d killed them, but if I’d loved them? Sheer disbelief.

Killed. Not murdered, but killed. It wasn’t murder. Murder suggests they were victims, innocent, that I was the cruel killer in the wrong. Well, maybe I was, but it wasn’t murder. Now, what I did afterwards, with all those others, that was murder. That was me taking the innocent lives of helpless people. Definite murder. But my parents? A killing. Or perhaps a culling. For the good of the universe.

Or for the good of me.

I don’t regret it. There’s no guilt. I don’t feel remorse or sorrow or contrition. If I look at the memory, which I seldom do, it’s with pride and satisfaction. I save the other emotions for those others I’ve murdered, like that sweet girl who sold me the flowers or that young boy who played with a sheep’s lung as a ball in the mud. That red-haired girl who loved me, that black-haired one who’d hated me, that blonde-haired maiden who hadn’t even known me. I don’t remember them all, it would be too much. And, if I’m completely honest, I can’t be bothered. They’re dead already, and my brain’s too cluttered up to add them to it. However, I do know my murder list is in the hundreds. Perhaps more. I did destroy one or two towns and villages.

It didn’t start with the killing. It started when dear father shot his semen into dear mother and planted a sperm in her ovaries, creating me. It started when I was born, strong and powerful, and completely useless to them except as a power source. It started in those years of pain and abuse, of training and knowledge that one day they’d kill me and steal my power, the power they carefully built up. It started when they underestimated me, when their arrogance blinded them to the danger that was their son. Their slave.

In fact, the only thing that started that night was my victim list. And the beginning of blood on my hands.

The only thing that ended wasn’t innocence – I doubt I’d ever been innocent. Or my childhood, as I was never a child. The thing that ended was a nine-year-old boy who was controlled by his parents. And I became Michael, the ageless, heart-less, infamous spy, thieve, murderer and betrayer. A job I adored and, if I am being honest, still do. It took in a lost boy of only nine years with no experience but a complete knowledge of how the universe worked and what life was like, and made someone who, in his own way, was even more powerful than his parents.

But there’s still blood on my hands.

No matter what I do, who I save, how much I try, my hands will still be scarlet. Blood will always slide down the palm, pooling in the centre, flowing bumpily over the knuckles to drip slowly off the ends of the fingers.

I will always have blood on my hands.

And I will never care. That’s the worst thing, I think. That defines me. The others, I have blood on my body, corpse-stink in my nose, screams in my ear. The blood on my hands is saved for them, who don’t deserve even that. The killing that defined me, and always will.

Their blood, the blood that runs through my veins and arteries and capillaries, it will always be on my hands.

And I will never, ever care.

I suppose I always plan things, then change my mind. Or maybe, when I’m planning something, tell myself I’m going to do one thing, when really deep down inside I know I’m going to do another. I wonder if I was born with the ability to feel guilt. I know regret, and remorse. But I can’t remember guilt. It’s scary really. Like I’m incomplete.

I’m going to betray Lucinda.

And Kacei, Fiona, Christina, Satinka. Maybe dear Amelia too. It wouldn’t be the first time I’d destroyed someone I loved. I’ll betray them all, and watch their blood and screams and stink join the rest.

I wonder if I’ll feel guilt then.