I Can't Promise What I Can't Imagine
We walked, single file, through virginal landscapes that we could have been the only survivors in. In their houses they hid, and we didn’t miss them. The snow obscured the remnants of society, the ugliness and the proof that it existed. Blanketing shards of broken glass and human blood, no one could remember why they had replaced the panes with plywood now. No one seemed to need to know.
I read the words again and again. I want to tell them I am here, and now I know, too. I want to keep my hands away from fresh scabs that are never allowed to heal and my fingers out of the congealed snot that plasters the interior of each nostril. I can do none of these things. If you were to die, where would I hide the body? That would depend. Was it an accident?
Gacy was a kind man, but he was a sloppy killer. You have to be if you want to keep killing. Otherwise, how will they ever catch you, and who will ever remember your name? A successful killer is a killer no one cares about. There will be no biographies. There will be no prison nuptials with an eager stranger. There will be no discussion of the shaping of your monster by a panel of bereft parents and angry citizens. No one knows your name now, as even your victims have all gone.
His train is pulling away, from a weary city that let him down. Soon he will have nothing to prove he was there, except for a bad White Castle habit and an enormous phone bill. The imprint of open wings he left there surprises even the most cynical passerby. He will long for the wasted afternoons he used to spend in an obscenely enormous bed, as she will long for the way he chewed open-mawed and careless. He chose sleeping in piles of garbage and drinking his sadness away over you, anyway. The memories of him could dissolve in salty hot tears, or soften under powdery white flakes, until no trace of his presence remains. He was reluctant to go if it met losing her, and yet what choice did he have?
If you are true to yourself, sometimes the risk is everyone else.