Week 4
I don't know where I should start this story - my girlfriend or the murder.
Let's start with the murder. It's what you're here for, anyway, why you bought me this pint, because I mentioned that I killed a man. And the only reason why I'm going to tell you is because this pint isn't my first. But so be it! So be it. You're more curious than anyone I've ever met and I know you won't call the cops. Why bother, anyway, you can't prove it. Ha!
I won't tell you why, even though that's the most interesting question to a normal person, isn't it? Well, I've thought a lot about killing since I practiced the art myself, and I tell you, there are only a few different reasons why anyone decides to commit murder. Money, jealousy, sexual perversion, maybe one or two others I've forgotten - the point is that you can pick any reason you like and convince yourself of it, whatever your little mind comes up with it's going to be something banal.
But here's how I did it. I took Lars out hunting, in the dead of winter, I said I'd lend him a rifle because his was stopped up somehow. I told him I had new ones I was borrowing from my uncle, and they were out in his cabin a long walk away, which is where the deer blinds were, anyway... I'm not sure why he believed that. Maybe he sensed his death was coming and wasn't inclined to fight it. He was depressed all the time, I almost just waited for him to commit suicide.
There was no cabin and there was no uncle, but there was an axe inside my coat. He never fought very well, even when he was in his youth - no, we weren't young men when I did it - so he was easy to kill. I backed him up against a birch tree, or maybe it was an aspen - no, I think birch - and did the deed.
First I had the problem of burying him. This was, of course, a terrible time of year to do it. But I felt I couldn't wait until spring. I went back to my house, with the hair standing on the back of my neck, out of fear of being caught with blood on my jacket - but I lived alone and more or less in the forest, who would see me? Besides, we had started out early, it was barely six AM, and you don't know how cold it was in the mornings where I'm from. Nobody would have dreamed of being out.
I got coal and a drill, and a second jacket. I burnt the ground I wanted to dig in and used the drill - I knew this was miles away from anyone who would hear it - to break up the top layer, because it's soft under the surface, see? I almost didn't manage it and was near tears when I did.
So I buried Lars. Kicked a lot of snow over him, it still looked disturbed, but I knew...and this turned out to be right, by the way...that no one would look for a man with no relatives and no real friends who was constantly complaining about how he wanted to kill himself. At least, not very hard.
So why I did I bother to bury him, if the site of the murder would have been so obvious, should anyone stumble across it?
I don't know.
I got the bloody snow hidden under the fresh, and the axe clean, and everything, and then I noticed there was blood on the birch tree, near the base. I scrubbed and scrubbed, and even went back - it was late afternoon by then - for cleaning supplies. And I tried so hard it was sunset before I stopped. It just wouldn't come off, and for some reason I couldn't scrape off the bark. I figured then that I could cut down the tree and dig up the stump - remember that the blood was close to the base, lower than where your axe would go.
So I tried to cut it down, but the axe was blunt from cutting Lars. And there wasn't any more coal, and I was broke from buying a new jacket and a drill. So I couldn't get it sharpened, or buy a new one. I piled up snow around the base and tried to forget about it, and then tried and failed to get home before dark. I think I made some tea. But I still had that feeling, that awful feeling, and my hair was standing up on the back of my neck - it really was, no metaphor.
But I wasn't afraid of being caught anymore, I had relaxed somewhat about all that while I was doing my business, and it was worth it to kill Lars, anyway.
And then in a flash I understood why.
My girlfriend, many years ago, when I was a young man, had died of cancer. It was bone cancer, the most painful kind, and towards the end she was never lucid because of the painkillers, which didn't even work. I saw the pain in her eyes, and the shaking, and sometimes she'd even scream. And one day I was sitting next to her, next to the hospital bed she had set up at home where she was planning to die. And she looked at me with total clarity in her eyes, and she told me: "You will never suffer like this. You will never feel this pain."
And I want to tell you how she said that and what she meant before you say a single word. It wasn't, what, resentment that I couldn't understand her, or something. It was a prophecy. One meant with the deepest kind of love. No, not a prophecy, a spell. And I wasn't afraid of dying anymore, and I was deeply comforted, because I knew - I knew - that from that moment forth I would never so much as break my leg. And when my time came, it would be peaceful.
There, sitting at home, thinking of Lars, I realized what that strange feeling was. It was her prophecy lifting. From that moment on I was not safe. Not from anything. I had sinned too much, and I could, in the future, suffer any pain in the world.
I walked around terrified for a few weeks. And my fear eased, eventually. It's hard to be afraid of something for weeks on end, if you're not an anxious person. But I still thought of it often, and I still knew.
No one looked for Lars. Or, they did it by the ocean, which wasn't too far away back where I lived. Lars had wanted to kill himself there. I wasn't even close to a suspect.
And so my life went on. Cursed, or...not cursed. Simply not blessed. I imagine it felt something like what the angels felt when they were cast out of heaven.
I went back there in the spring, to where Lars met his death. And where the blood had been on the birch tree were new sprouts, green and fragile, and all over his grave were flowers, and ferns. And I felt forgiven. But not by her, or by God. I still had that feeling on me, the...blessedlessness. I still have it now.
You know, my girlfriend asked me to kill her, several times, while she was in that much pain. I didn't have the heart to do it.
Fine. I'll tell you why I killed him. Because the pills didn't work and because he had no family and because I was his only friend. I didn't want him to suffer anymore.