i.
they were sprawled out like two lovers (they are two lovers - they were two lovers) -- their hands just barely brushing against each other and his palm was cold and smattered with the red gore of her blood.

on the camcorder's screen everything is filtered reality but the presence of death ripens this moment and makes it sheer, unadulterated truth and this is the most beautiful thing i've ever seen. tears claw at my eyes but i blink them away.

their hair billowed from underneath them and snared together like a net of the love they'd shared and i looked down at them with a sneer growing on my face and a hatred clouding over my heart, and i thought, "this is it. this is why i kill."

my hand bared down on the knife blade it held until my palm was red-hot with pain and the accident of my blood was rolling down my arm and dripping off my elbow. there was a steady pressure in the crotch of my pants. heat clung to me like a second skin -- battery acid pooled in my veins and my jaw was thick with tension.

it wasn't until their veins had spilled out all their contents to the sticky kitchen tile that i left the house and stepped out into my new home -- under the cover of eternal darkness where even the stars and the moon offered no solace, only the cold shrill screams of banshees and death-rattles.

---

ii.
they were not my first kill. years ago, when youthfulness was on my side and there was still some wide-eyed innocence shaping my eyes, i had begun killing canaries and cats and dogs and whatever else happened to stroll my way.

at first it'd been a product of boredom. something to pass the time. i did not pursue it in an enthusiastic fashion but rather apathetically and i garnered no pleasure from it. i didn't take trophies and i didn't jack off afterwords, but rather crawled back into the hole of my parents' house and waited for some other poor creature to stumble its way onto my driveway.

i was in junior high when it became a talent -- a half-formed, humorous sort of talent, that is, not the artform that'd i'd make it in the future. this was my artistic license, i'd told myself, rearranging a cats' limbs into a caricature of its last few moments -- capturing forever the frozen horror in its glassy green eyes as the knife sawed across its neck and blood vomitted out of its tiny little jugular vein. it was beautiful the way it limply fell across the concrete like a forgotten rag doll.

---

iii.
my knife became my paintbrush and the couple were my first real canvases.

i painted a horrorscape of my life across their flesh and ingrained my soul onto their organs and the contrast of blood against lifeless blue skin is just gorgeous and i think even van goh would have to approve of my work. picasso, too. all of the greats would gawk and stare and wonder but a true artist -- much like a magician -- never reveals his secrets.

---

iv.
i'm ten and poking mrs. gardener's dead cat with a stick.

and then i cut its bloated little tummy open and rip out its stomach and intestines.

a minute ago i'd been bashing its head in with a brick.

when mrs. gardener walks out of her house and looks upon me with horror, i smile and say, "doesn't she look great?"

there's a moment of silence and mrs. gardener clasps her hand to her mouth and gasps. i think she was agreeing in her own little contradicting way. she'd always been so argumentative.

"i think she was run over by a car," i tell her matter-of-factly, my swiss army knife dug deep into the cat's innards. the old gray-haired bat wags her head at me in an exaggerated nod and slips back into the comfort of her house to call her husband home from work. their cat's dead and festering in the middle of the road. please hurry and come pick her up, please.

i smile after her and amble carelessly into my back yard. innocence never tasted so sweet.

---

v.

she looks at me with adoration brimming in her eyes and i hold tight to her -- as if she's a memory that's too keen to fade and i press her into me and try as hard as i can to push her into my heart. she's already embedded there forever and the image of her youthful beauty is carved into the backs of my eyelids and i especially savor the way her pussy tastes and smells and the tiny sounds that spill from her sweetheart mouth when i'm fucking her soft and smooth.

candlelight looks good against her skin, i'd found out one night.

i loved her so much.

she broke up with me on a wednesday night and then moved to oklahoma with her parents.

i never saw her again -- except fleetingly in the faces of other women and it turned my blood bitter and my heart collapsed around me.

and she ruined me.

---

vi.
my breath is catching in my throat and my lungs are deflating quicker than they can inflate -- my mouth is dry from vacuuming up the sweat-filled air and a gnat skirts across my drenched skin.

i have not been running.

i walk quietly behind the two -- a man of about twenty (a boy really) with dark brown hair and what i suppose are even darker eyes and his girlfriend. i know she's his by the way they look at each other and it makes my stomach shrivel and roll a bit in disgust. she's pretty with blonde hair and there's a wave in it about midway -- it ends just above her ass, a heart-shaped thing that sits up high and her hips move smoothly with each of her confident, graceful steps.

they are blissfully unaware of the monster (that's what they call me) that stalks behind them, but even then i'm not yet a monster.

i think violent things but violence is the most passionate form of art.

there's a camcorder in my pocket.

i follow them home and then i kill them.

i kill them and then i tape them bleeding out on their kitchen floor and dying, dying, dying and there are bruises growing on the girl's throat from where my hands had wrapped around her tiny neck and i thought of jacking myself off then, i thought of raping her -- of fucking her and cumming in her and claiming her, but i didn't want to ruin the glory of this for the camera.

i tape their death and then i leave but i don't leave them behind -- never. and they stay with me and we're just a part of one another, a sick twisted happy family and i love it and all its dysfunction. this is unconditional love and pride and glory and i revel in it.

and this -- this is my one true love. she's never had a sweeter name than murder.