Imperfection

[WP] You live in a perfect world. No one knows what a crime is and everyone lives in peace. You kill a person. The world collapses and nobody knows how to deal with it. Pressed by the governments of other countries, the president of your country starts sending inexperienced people to hunt you.

*****

Maybe a part of me wishes it was for a noble cause; a cause that would make me an interesting anti-hero in this situation. But it really wasn’t. I did not end a man’s life to upset the world order which I – I admit – already considered was nothing more than excessively perfect – thus imperfect.

I didn’t commit the first crime to start a revolution or introduce others in the world to the dark side that was probably repressed within their subconscious until they did not know that bad thoughts, emotions and actions existed. This was not something done to liberate people from those mental shackles and allow them embrace the other half of their consciousness.

This was simply a vendetta against my next-door neighbour, Lambert. I didn’t know when those feelings of hatred arose. Maybe from when he shovelled the snow on his driveway into my compound two winters ago. Or when I found out he’d been peeing in my lawn. Or when he kept on letting his dog poop on my porch.

Anyway, it came to a head when…crikey, I can’t even remember the particular event that ticked me off. The memory of the final straw now paled in the sight of the action I took. I don’t know how I did it, or how it came to mind, but it just felt like what I wanted, no needed to do. To get rid of this strange new feeling in my chest. This feeling that somehow did not like the existence of Lambert.

Was there a word for not liking someone? For not being…right? I had no idea.

What I knew was that I walked up to Lambert while he was picking up the morning paper, and then I beat his skull to a pulp with a hammer, splattering blood all over my clothes. I had no idea how I felt about it. Disgust, fear, guilt – those feelings had no names at the time. They probably weren’t even in existence, so I just felt relief.

I walked back to my house and put the clothes I had worn in the washing machine, before I took a bath and went to sleep. By the time I woke up, there were news channel vans outside my house everywhere, and I was on the news.

For ending a man’s life.

Killing wasn’t a word at the time. Everyone wanted to speak to me, and yet there was no police. Law Enforcement did not exist at that time, because everyone knew what to do, and no i=one was capable of acting outside the law. But whatever emotions could register, the blood all over Lambert’s porch and driveway was an indication that there was a dangerous man out there who was capable of evil thoughts.

The uproar it created was crazy, and yet I remained in my house, not running. I realised that there was nothing and no one to run from. I had achieved, at least to an extent, the status of a higher life form than man. But the repercussions were greater than I expected.

The uproar reached the International Community, and major world governments met to decide my fate while I stayed at home, watching TV and avoiding the stares of curious neighbours who were finally beginning to feel the emotion fear.

And then one day, when the five men in black entered my house, I knew they had made their decision.

“How much did they say they would pay you, if you would…end me?”

“10,000 dollars, each. You have to understand…”

“That what? Understand what exactly? That you’re here to do to me what I did to my neighbour?”

“The money…we want it,” one of the men said. “You’re the one who did that thing,” he said, holding his own hammer. They all held hammers, but their hands were shaky, and they were sweating profusely.

I picked up the hammer. These people were not like me. The monetary compensation made them feel like they could do it, like they would be able to stimulate the parts of their brain that would allow them take another’s life. But they couldn’t. I could, and I was going to test out whether it was just because it was Lambert, or whether I really had the capacity for cold-blooded murder.

I didn’t stop swing that hammer till they couldn’t move. Till their brains were splattered all over the carpet. And still, I felt nothing.

I smiled.

And then I laughed.

“This world…I’m really the only one with this capacity for behaviours outside what is normal?” I asked myself.

What was…normal? The word I was looking for was right, but because ‘wrong’ did not exist, then right did not either. I was just different. Better.

“I’ll control everything. I’ll take over this city, the country, and then the world. And nobody can stand in my way. Nobody.”

*****

It was quite difficult to imagine a world where nobody knew what it was to commit a crime, or do wrong, but maybe my efforts were steered in the right direction?

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