One I dug out from the buried archive! I wrote this little short horror monologue in 2016.
Less than a 1000 words – a five-minute read. Enjoy!
Aly
Are you ready? Are you recording this? Good, I will tell you everything then, just as we agreed. You can decide if I am insane or evil once you have my confession but until then, please don’t interrupt.
Now, I like the traditional ways. Old fashioned? Well, yes you could call it that. Ceremonial knives, contracts in blood. I suppose I ought to be moving on with the times; emails and Skype. It feels wrong. Maybe I’ll just go minimalist. Verbal agreements and a gun? Oh it’s tricky being what I am.
You see, so few people really believe in souls and demons any more. In a way that is so incredibly liberating. So good for business.
Yes, I know you believe only in the physical mind. The brain. A rather squishy organ you can hold in your hand and marvel at in a “this was old George. Old George!” kind of way. You can’t hold a soul like that … well you can’t. What officer, you want to know more about what a soul is? What do you think this is, soul 101 for the modern man? Read your Jung if you are after some spirituality in today’s world. More to the point, take a squint at Leibniz; the concept of a monad was not so far wrong! For simplicity let’s just say it’s that thing which is ‘us beyond death’. Us when we were babes, us when we became adults, parents, old farts. Us before we were born into this world. All of our ‘us-es’
Oh, yes of course I have a soul too. But mine is quite a bit different to yours.
Whilst demons have hundreds of different words for souls, your languages are too limited to really describe it. Humans can’t even see them. A soul is not very big you know. Fits in the palm of your hand and it can be squashed down to almost, absolutely almost, nothing at all. And it’s all folds within folds within folds, all the way down to the next plane of existence. So small but way bigger than a body. You carry it around in your heart, did you know that?
Well anyway, where was I in this confession? Found standing over the body of Mr Hicks I most certainly was. Horrible little squirt he was and he had sold his soul for me to kill his wife. I mean! You see, when people stop believing that they actually have a soul it becomes such an easy commodity to trade in. No more offering riches and endless young women … thankfully. Well, you do know that there is a financial crisis going on? People who don’t believe don’t take care, can’t be bothered with the small print. They just assume I’m some kind of madman and I mean to see them again at the end of a long, long life and that they’ll die a natural death. Yes, take my soul if you kill my wife (I haven’t really got one, Ha-Ha!). So I killed his wife then went back and killed him. When I got to the end of my game I sucked out his soul while his heart still shivered in my hands. He really should have checked the small print.
Why did I kill him like that? Why not? It was something I found in his kitchen. I mean, he was horrible. Horrible! And Mrs Hicks was so pure. Do you know that she didn’t even beg for her life? Even when I told her why I was there – and I could see she believed me – she asked me to spare him. Him! Dear Lord! Well, I ended her quietly and without pain. Her beautiful soul swept free.
What, you couldn’t find a cause of death? Just write ‘demon’ on the old certificate then. She died from my touch and my will.
So I didn’t need that tin opener to kill him? No, of course not. It’s just … style. Maybe a little justice for dear old Mrs Hicks. Demons don’t have regrets, but one could not enjoy such an episode. I felt a lot better after opening up that idiot man. My he screamed. Squeemed and squeemed. Ha! Here, let me rearrange these photographs for you so you know for certain the order in which I removed his … bits.
So there it is. My confession. Do you think I will be convicted? Did it help you evaluate my state of mind? Do you understand me better?
More importantly, are you still sure I am a rather common psychopathic serial killer? Or are you shut in this room with something … darker?
I know you don’t believe that people have souls. It was still very heroic to do a deal for my confession. Perhaps somewhat short-sighted, though. Now, shall we consider the small print on your contract?
Ooops. My handcuffs have just fallen off. See?
