My Crimes

Most of what people call crimes are nothing at all. I won't bother with them. Of course I've, uh, "committed" them. So what. Theft is just petty. Property is a mere convenience, and a matter for lawyers and politicians. In other words, nothing. In the cost-benefit analysis of whether or not I should steal, the idea of moral guilt never enters into the consideration. What an amusing idea. How childish. It's just a question of whether the brutality and ignorance of society as a whole might be brought against me, to punish me for what it imagines is my wrongdoing. I do have to take this into account. Because punishment is just a gradation of torture, and I prefer to be the one who does the torturing.

No, the crimes, the real crimes, that I agree are heinous, are those against persons. I am aware of their magnitude. I just don't care. Before I get into specifics, allow me to observe that it is, all of it, about emotion. However cold and rational I, or you, appear to be, it's just ice over the river. I do it because it pleases me, and it excites me, and it relieves a stress that would otherwise be turned against myself. You must have noticed it by now. Someone has to suffer. I want it to be you, rather than me. Is that cowardice? Some would say so. Selfish? Manifestly. But such conceits are moralistic and social in their origin, and I don't care about that, any more than I'd care about voodoo dolls or the lip plates of savages. We make our own way, or we are slaves. Even that isn't it though. It isn't what I do in relation to you -- it's what I do, because it pleases me.

Yes, it is emotional. If my crimes, and they are crimes, violate you to the deepest part of your soul, well, it pleases me to do so. Is that sick? Yes, I think so. But it's not me who is sick. Or rather, my sickness is just part of a universal disease that always ends in death. It's called life. I smile. I am, you see, a sort of cure. That I add a bit more pain to the sum of anguish in the world -- it is a small cost, all things told, and it pleases me for some reason.

True, my tone is inconsistent. It is emotion and it isn't. Pain is good and bad. Crime is not crime. But it's because I'm not bound up in meanings. That's what I mean when I say emotional. It is what ever it happens to be. After I've relieved myself, in semen and blood, in cyanotic skintones and the round mouth of horror or the dead grimace of pain -- after that personal ecstasy for myself and agony for her or him, then I feel some other emotion. Calm, say, or revulsion. It hardly matters.

I don't feel as if I'm communicating it though. I won't detail my practices. Just to say that the bodies are not found, and wouldn't be recognized as human if they were, mostly. Ah, here it is. I do it because people matter. Their pain and horror and despair matter. The words hardly convey my real meaning. Pain. Such a small word. Why do people matter? I've given it a lot of thought. I think they are mirrors in which I can see myself. I like that.

Children? They are my favorite.

I am a monster. Of course I am. I like the fact. I will die someday, although I will never be caught. You are too stupid. But death will catch me, transforming me into its victim. After that? I know there is a God, and I know there is a hell. How can that frighten me? I know that I will be judged, as I myself judge. That's probably a big part of why I do what I do. Preparation. Don't you see? God is like me.


J