I've done
murder.
I think that this might have been a continuation of a dream that I'd had a few nights ago, but perhaps not. I'd shot a man, I'd shot him for a reason which eludes me, but I remember that even though he was not a nice man, what he'd done to me was probably not so grave as to deserve murder.
I'd shot him in a Subway, an empty restaurant, I'd gone there to get a sandwich and he was sitting in a table by the window. My rage got the better of me, and I pulled out a gun and shot him in the head at point-blank range. I felt nothing when I did this other than rational "Okay, now that I've done this, how do I make sure I don't get caught?" I thought it might be a good idea to confuse the issue of how this man actually died, so I took a knife and made four deep cuts on his torso.
At that point, an acquaintance of mine from work (who I have a slight distaste for) walked in, saw what I'd just done. He seemed reasonably willing to help me in my predicament. We discussed moving the body from the restaurant to one of our cars, then finding a place to bury him where he wouldn't be found for a while, but the logistics of managing this without being seen and cleaning up the blood and brains that splattered the glaring white walls of the Subway brought that idea to a swift end.
In the end, we decided to leave the body where it lie. Getting rid of the gun, yes, I just wiped the damn thing off and left it in one of the trash bins by the door ("No, thank you!") My friend and I attempted to erase any evidence of our presence there (have you ever heard that the average murderer makes 25 mistakes, and the best of them will catch only five of these?), and split.
Guilt, remorse, did not hit me until days later. I remember realizing what happened like remembering a bad dream (which apparently, I was), freaking out not that I had done such a horrible thing, but that I had thought that I could get away with it. I remembered while I was driving around town, past the Subway, I wanted to look into the windows to see if the lifeless body still lay there, slumped over a half-eaten sandwich but I couldn't make myself look. I wanted to get a newspaper to see if there was a headline "Student Found Dead in Restaurant" but never got to do it, once again I was too scared. Once the body was discovered, it was only a matter of time until they found something I'd left behind...
Then it finally hit me that I'd actually killed a man in cold blood. That I'd gone against everything that I believe in and violated the one common thread...that it was wrong to end another life, for any reason. I was sick with guilt, and I woke up, for those few moments believing that all of this was real. Realizing it was impossible, I could breathe again. Relief.