One-Shot Wishful Thinking

Obviously meant as fiction, not a personal essay or anything.



Sometimes, I just want to kill someone.

Well, okay. I don’t just want to kill someone. It’s not that hard; if that’s all I wanted, I could do it, no problem. People die easily if you do it right. And there’s so many ways to kill. I’d know. I research these things in my spare time. For obvious reasons, I can’t do my own research, but I can read and watch and listen to information on these things, no problem.

But that doesn’t compare to actually doing it. There must be a rush, or there wouldn’t be any serial killers. I bet they feel empty, and they can only fill that void with a happiness they can get from killing. Everything about it—the preparation, the act, the light disappearing from your victim’s eyes, if you’ll pardon the cliché, hiding your actions, running from the law—it all sounds so exciting, doesn’t it? I could use a little excitement. My life might not be empty, but it’s pretty boring. The same thing every day, just trying to earn my paycheck and make sure all of my finances are in order and eating and sleeping and keeping the people around me happy.

I could pull it off, no problem. Since it’s me, I can just knock on someone’s door and I’ll probably be let in, as long as I don’t have a funny expression on my face. I probably wouldn’t, since I’m good at hiding these things – a couple of years in customer service, you know, you’ve got to pick up on some skills – but if killing is as emotionally charged as I think it would be, maybe not. I’ve never done it, so I might not be able to help it. And hiding my true feelings goes against the whole point of killing, doesn’t it? When could I really reveal myself?

There’s so many ways, too. Poison, I know of all their effects, but I couldn’t tell you where to find any. I could get guns, probably, but they’re too loud and I wouldn’t know the first things about shooting them. If I did, I think I’d go for the head. The back of the skull’s supposed to explode outward, and wouldn’t that be awesome? Hard to clean up, though. But I think I’d go for a knife. Using one should be pretty instinctive, and I know just where all sorts of vulnerable major arteries are. That’s messy, too. Anything not messy wouldn’t be as interesting.

So even if I could use poison, I wouldn’t. Poison’s what you use when you want to kill them to achieve something. I’ve got no goals that need someone to die, except I want to kill. And I want it to be personal.

But that’s the problem. I want it personal, messy, and maybe even leave a scene behind, you know, so someone can find it. There’d be that thrill of reading about myself in the newspaper. I’d like that.

The only problem is that it’d probably ruin my life. I’d have to drop everything, leave everyone, probably suffer a lot more than I deserve just because I wanted some fun. It’s not worth it. I want to kill and be able to get away with it. Not too different from anyone else, I suppose. I’m not willing to take my chances, but sometimes I wish I was, because it’s the same thing that keeps me from having any fun at all.

I guess I’ll become a doctor instead.

I really like this, and I'll explain why.

The way you've described murder like a sort of self-induced high is really effective; it made me start wondering about what killers feel. And although it's kinda depraved, I like the fact that the character in this isn't afraid to 'admit' that he wants to murder.

And also, the last bit, the bit about being a doctor. I thought that that was a nice touch; it's sort of a reminder that doctors involve death, and indirectly kill people sometimes due to their decisions.

If there was one thing I'd target though, it would be to join the fantasy about killing with the bite of reality at the end; it just seems quite disjointed and clunky to me. But that's just my opinion. Well done, this is good.