The Psychopath

By Max Wightwick

 

Blood pours along the cracks in the kitchen, diffusing a crimson pool which expands and girths. In disbelief, I gawk at whom I have savaged, wondering how our elementary argument escalated so. Minutes ago, we were happy together, dancing to melodies, and devoid of hostilities; then we quarrelled over an inconsequence; however, when did we begin to wrangle, brawl, and, in the end, fight with such wrathful enmity?

When did I reach for the knife, serrated but yesterday, and lunge at her? It might have been in the midst of me strangling her, or when I had constricted her neck so much that her pearly complexion had empurpled. The more I retrograde back to the events preceding her assault, the less coherent and orientated my mind is.

 

What all the more muddles me, is the stylus gyring the song “Only You” ad nauseam.

What I know, for certain, is that, after the blade cleft her neck, she ruined groundward, where she was concussed from her occiput reverberating against the tiles in the kitchen. Her poor soul is yet to perish…yet to sink into what shall be paradise after purgatory. I estimate, from her bleeding aplenty, and the location whereof I lacerated her, that she has five minutes, or thereabouts, left.

The pool has amassed a river that now snakes along the enamelled floor, glistering bright as a hateful remembrance of what and whom I have imperilled. At random, her throat musters strength to bellow out some inanity, which is garbled by the sluice within her mouth.

 

“He..lp…calllll…somebody!” Is what I decipher her to be imploring of me, but why would I do so? If I were to, I might even hazard myself with the law. A surge of angst convulses through my bones, as I am in no mood for risking imprisonment.

My legs quiver as her blood nears my ebon boots, and my vision is meddled by hallucinatory red - one that is vindictive. Like a primitive beast driven by its instincts, I am intent upon eradicating all traces that may incriminate me. The victim must be erased.

My feet wade through the fiery mire enveloping them. Her veins are weeping evermore, when, with their current plight, they ought to be sparing and stoic.

Standing over her, glimmers of memories refract off my heinous self. A nostalgia is awakened in me, invoking a compassion that has me keen for whom thrashes, as of a swine in the abattoir. Etherealised in a dream, I behold filmic slides pass over my vision: they depict our marriage, our primal kiss under a starry web in the thick of spring, and peaceful days when we would idle at home together.

These, however, are subverted by an obsidian rancour, begrudging her for all the annoyances that she impinged upon me. Instances such as when we argued over finances, or distanced from the grief of her two miscarriages, are detrimental to me dumbing my violence. This merciful foible is countervailed yet more by an arbitrary desire, one of sanguineous lust, originating from my darkest regions. I am craving the sensation of having dominance over another.

Repressing - no - expunging my ability to have mercy, I lavish in my animalism. Besides, with doom prevailing over her, would mercy not be for me to euthanize her?

Being approximate to her, I can distinguish what her swirling larynx is saying,“Call for a medic, anybody that may save me!” At intervals, she retches vermeil mucus, desperate to not be suicided by asphyxiation.

If these are the sole, trite petitions that she can deliver, when death enshadows her every breath, like a gossamer mist, then I equivocate over her meriting existence. As a sequent test, and wishing to be further gratified, I explain an ultimatum for her survival,“If you want to live, you must beg and beg - show me how abject your throes make you feel.”

Fed by a false hope, a smile beams across her tremulant face, which is dampened by the infernal ocean mystifying her features. How ignorant she is of her unalterable situation. In reality, nothing can be done to reverse, or heal her severance which cools with gore. She is wedded to fate.

Lifting her hands in the air, as if summoning a godly orison, she waves them in frenzy. More unintelligible phrases ensue, after being released from her mouth, which overbrims with blood. I scream at her to try harder, for my patience is slimming.

Her words must be fathomable, I tell her, if I am to requite her from the scythe that sways above her head, as the pendulum in a clock. Beneath those irremovable stains, I can see her pale whiter and whiter, as she is swooning under.

Grimacing at how I am yet to be done with her, I spy the knife, still as sharp as beforehand, imbrued with her vitality. I forswear the purport of there being hope for her, by grasping the knife. I glide it upward, and dash it back down with a speed twofold rapider than whilst it whorled in the atmosphere.

Upon the blade penetrating her breast plate, a thud booms, and a crack snaps as osseous fragments jolt up at me. A piteous moan is all that she can rally from how I agonise her. There is now a small cavity in her chest, which, from how joyous I am, I decide to exalt off the pleasure of excavating her, tearing her ribs in twain.

As I exert the utmost puissance, widening the cavity to a visceral gorge, I laugh and laugh and laugh. A retaliative plaint incites lava to erupt from her, spewing inglorious founts of molten blood. I elude being maculated by this eruption, and resume my torment once the plaint has silenced. In the meantime, she coughs and chokes on her own pathetic sobs, with her eyes dilating in reels of epilepsy. These moments are exquisite for both of us, but our definition of such an adjective varies. Where she regards this scene as abhorrent and excruciating, I see it as sublime and blithe.

As she has no use for her tongue, I sever it, occasioning it to writhe as a maggot, rolling in its own juices as a dog in its faeces. In spite of having denuded her of speech, she fumbles, mumbles, and wails with ardour for me to souse what pain emblazes throughout her. If she had but exercised this amount of zeal, when the ultimatum had been staked, then she may still be alive. I jest - I would never have reprieved her. She was foredoomed from the start.

When pondering how best to subdue her floundering person, a sadistic urge emerges, impelling me to harrow out her heart. Powerless over this fancy, I abide. After lapping up what iron oozes from a taste of her hearty fruit, I yell at her inert face, where she spits and spumes at me.

Her eyes gutter as a blue flame when gusted by a tempest, and, after a sensuous trice, they are encased in a film of sombre horror. She is rigid, soaked in her own blood. I pelt her for a terminal thrill. Before I forever leave her, I careen toward her cheek, where I grace her with a lovesome, remorseless kiss. My debt to her is eternal, and I am grateful. She has unburdened me by opening the gates wherein I may rest monotony, normalcy, and conformity. Having metamorphosed, as an errant chrysalis, she has enrapt me to the heights of the netherest sin.

“Adieu, ma belle!” exclaim I in earnest, as I take strides which hereupon estrange me from guilt, blame, and how innocent she was. In truth, she has endued me with plumbless hunger: one which I shall famish from, lest it be sated with successive murders.

The stylus, still gyring, is the final sound that I hear as I slink outside.

 

Max Wightwick from South West London works as a video editor. Their truest passion lies in literature and writing.