3/9/17

Gravitational Waves
By Joseph J. Patchen


I killed the mayor today. I killed him in the bright early morning of a press breakfast with other lawmakers looking on.

I shot him once in face. I aimed directly for the tip of his nose, right in the middle of his face, and he was dead before he hit the floor. His security was so smug, so lax and the city board so dulled, I simply slipped out the door before anyone took notice.

Out on the street I heard a commotion behind me and in front of me, not to mention to each side of me. Out in the street people were everywhere in constant motion with a rainbow of emotions and thoughts and duties. None had to do with the murder yet all of it was to do with life in the face of death.

And that is where I find myself. I find myself dead in the middle of the day in a mass of humanity. I find myself dead in the middle of the day in the rush for lunch, in a rush for gas, in a rush for provisions and no one seems to care about the other.

And no one seems to care about gunshots or the mayor.

My, my my luck.

Winter is coming and I dread the cold. I shudder at the thought of its saturation and grip. I cringe at the thought of the ice and the snow. The difficulty of mobility; the heavy coats, the layers and layers collecting sweat and the blankets stacked higher and higher rendering life stagnant.
It’s time to move on.

Over the commotion and the race for survival I begin to hear the tones; the bells and sirens rhythmically connect in my mind. A child walks through me holding the hand of his young mother. He has to be six or seven.

A child walked right through me as if I wasn’t there. He didn’t see me and he won’t feel me yet I savor a warm soothing burning in my gut.

I open my eyes and a sweet violin fills my skull. All around me is quiet; the birds, the breeze, the traffic…gone.

And so are the two priests I murder now as we speak all as the dusk falls. Their throats slit so easy. Their resistance and fight is so weak. These passive men believed words and logic could alter their fates.

Never in time do words hold their meaning. Never in time does logic reign.

Their remains are so easy to conceal. They were short. They were thin. They were old. They won’t be found for some time. They will give amateur sleuths and armchair detectives much to discuss in the years ahead and their lesson on history will be meaningless.

I hope their passing soothes my insomnia.

But it has not. It never does. It’s not supposed to.

My lack of sleep has nothing to do with guilt. I dismembered my wife without hesitation. I scattered some of her remains in the 1920s and others back in the 1840s.

I cut my mistress’ still pounding heart from her breast and it tasted as sweet as I thought it would. I felt ever so fine, as much as I do now in the mid-summer breeze that is meandering and tickling the shoreline.

Small towns are my favorite. The pace is measured. The pace is slower. The people are more trusting. Technology seems less important as nature is in its purest and most rhythmic embrace.

Murmurs and wisps of words, it’s always the same; it’s the only constant cramming my brain. Each night and each day tiny rumbles and small noises skitter across my brow flooding me with the stench of sin. Over and over, they call to me with rancor and with hate even slurring their speech though dead eyes, dried throats and seeping wounds until they manifest their clacking skeletal teeth shouting ’Kill! Kill! Kill!”

I ride the gravitational waves, the melodic riffs, sliding between the moments, mastering alone what great minds have only dreamt about. I slip in between the dimensions of time travelling from place to place riding the slide of space be it to the past, to the present and well into the future as the only true traveler, as the only true explorer thus bringing me closest to true immortality.

I believe with each trip that I can never die. I believe with each trip I can never be captured. I can always erase what has come before or what will become later. I am here. I am there. I cannot be stopped.

I pile the bodies from all walks of life, from all eras, anonymous to each other, unknown to those living, with no fear of leaving a pattern; no fear of ever leaving a signature; no fear of any bodily clue.

Terrans have always satisfied my hunger through their sluggishness. The opportunity always allowing me to stay several steps ahead of my never ending desire for suicide.

It’s never about the heavens or the seas. It’s the space in between.

I ride the gravitational waves to solely to hold my death at bay. I ride the gravitational waves to offer sacrifices to the demon of finality.


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