On killing

[clupea-rufus.livejournal.com]

(automatic writing - took as long to write as it does to read, which always pleases me, especially when it is a new character)

My name is Daniel and I am a monster.

I killed for the first time a few minutes after I was born. I remember the sound of a woman crying and the soft arrhythmic shuffle of a heart stopping.

I killed for the second time two nights after my embrace. Her voice sounded like church bells and her blood tasted like a single violin; wailing and crackling as if on fire. I buried her body in an unmarked grave and sold her necklace to buy a new piano.

The third time I killed so that I could play my piano louder and faster for a few minutes. I can still hear the music I produced; a frenzied atonal piece depicting the the sound of the last drops of blood landing on my tongue as his heart stopped. I think the sacrifice was worth it.

The fourth time I killed was the first time I heard a string quartet. There were four layers of taste and sound, with eerie distant percussion that faded out a few seconds before the violin had repeated the primary motif for the sixth time. This is the first death that pained me.

The fifth time I killed it was my sister. Her eyes had grown hollow and the tone of her voice as she spoke had wavered from A to A flat. My blood re-tuned her, and now she sings perfectly again.

The sixth time I killed it was for my sister. She said she could not hear the Requiem that sings within every drop of blood and I wanted to show her what it sounded like. She said she heard a perfect cadence and I was envious for a moment.

The seventh time I killed was when I returned to the waking world after years of eclipse. I needed to fuel the performance that would soundtrack my time away but instead I erupted in frustration as I could not recollect the exact sounds I had encountered.

The eighth time I killed it was to channel a vision of what would become of my family. I heard strange digitised sounds; a pale diluted piano and the incessant beating of a heart rate monitor. The blood was slurred; a single sustained and distorted note that continued long after I finished drinking.

I also nearly killed my grandmother. Her voice wavered in vibrato and her face was creased in a simple recurring motif played with my left hand. Instead of killing her I held her life in suspension forever; a few drops of blood generating a single perfect note that can still be heard to this day. Each morning she polishes my piano, and each evening she lays out my clothes so that I will not waste a single minute of eternity.