Brittle Bones
Summary: Nitrim records a history of an event that has since disappeared into history…the time he first killed a man.
Date: 07 June 2013
Related: None
Nitrim 

February 12, 3010 — Location Unknown


February 12, 3010
Recording initiated…
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Recording in progress…you may now speak.

…Ten hours ago I killed a man for the first time.

A long pause is filled with the sound of shaky cigarette smoking

It wasn't my fault.

I'm sure a lot of murderers say that, don't they? That it wasn't their fault and that the situation spoke for itself. I call it murder because intentional or not that's the fucking definition isn't it?

Why am I doing this? This is fuc—

—I have to get this out.

Another pause

Let's try this again. I've been…a mutilated wreck for the last ten hours, not because I've just seen my first dead body. I've seen plenty. This one was mine though. Justified or not I ripped the soul out of another human being and sent them to wherever. This is no major feat. Humanity has a long, tired history of perfecting the art of killing themselves, but you never expect to have to do it. We're at peace, the Hostile are gone, and we have our problems…but I'm no fucking knight like my brothers and sisters. I'm me.

I guess this was going to happen someday, right? Is that how this works? Eventually? HOW the bloody hell am I supposed to justify this sort of thing as a passing experience.

It was…deeply personal.

Maybe I should get to the story.

I was in Obsidia. I wasn't supposed to be out but I was because I'd run out of the good stuff. I needed to meet my contact, and normally I don't do this sort of thing personally, but I've been feening for it and I'm an impulsive idiot. I like to take things into my own hands. I'm not some child that needs to have his dirty work done for him. Believe me. I SEE what he has in his eyes when I tell him to go out and get me more. He thinks I'm sick and that it's his ass if he doesn't do as I please. I'm not an addict. It just calms me. It's calming me right now. It brings me closer to myself.

The apartment was down a hard-looking street and it was raining outside. Steam was all over the place and when the downpour didn't make it hard to see, the steam made it worse. My dealer's always home, he's done well for himself and no one in his neighborhood gives him any trouble because he's powerful. It's that alley, you know, the one with the mold and the garbage and that horrible smell you can't get out of your nostrils. There's a fucking million of them in town.

The guy I killed came out of nowhere and my bodyguard was probably a block away because I'd told him to back of. He was in a black cloak, or it looked black, but the moment he came at me with the knife I reacted.

I waved him arm towards him and the bricks around me crunched like a ten-ton universe was dropped on them. The wave of rubble before me branched out as if some kind of buzz-saw or a shark's fin was making in, and his body flew back against the wall. Posters for that bloody Jane Wrye movie were head-to-toe on the wall, but the wave of force formed a circular…I don't know…area of destruction that just erupted in a spray of blood and shattered brick. He held there for a second, and I'm pretty sure he didn't even know what hit him, and then he fell face down into a puddle of water.

Another long pause commences to the sound of nameless items clacking off of a table of some sort and the flick of a lighter. Another cigarette is being lit.

I don't know why I did it, probably because the knife fell way away from him, but when I saw the bubbles in the water I panicked. The bastard tried to kill me, but the last thing I wanted was to get arrested for murdering a man. I rolled him over out of the water and his face was covered in broken, bloody skin from how hard I hit him. He could barely open his eyes. I didn't know if they were damaged or not, they just looked dark.

He was having trouble breathing. I…knew he wasn't going to survive by gurgling sound when he breathed and the amount of blood coming out of his lips. I'd done some serious organ damage.

Gods damn me to hell.

The sound of soft sobbing can be heard in the background

I asked him why.

I NEEDED TO KNOW WHY. I mean was my fucking dealer trying to kill me??? Was it an assassination??? You know, for a second I thought maybe this was something that I needed to understand and that I'm not at fault. People try to kill nobles and it's against the law, assassination is worse but…no.

He was hungry.

I reached out to his mind and tried to catch his surface emotions. Oh gods…I could feel him dying. I should have been mad at him, law of the jungle and all, but he was scared. He'd just spent his last money to buy Red Eye from my dealer, and his wife and child were at home waiting for him. He'd promised them that he would bring back dinner, and he was out of his damned mind and did something drastic.

I don't know. Maybe he'd done it before? Maybe doing this saved another life someday, or maybe it was justice, but we both know that's me making excuses. I'll never know one way or another. I could lie to myself and say whatever I needed to, but a ragged animal in a cage was starved and stupid.

His mind was…desperate, sad, understanding. He seemed angry at me for what I'd done to him. He didn't understand just what I'd done to him, but I think he knew that he was dying.

When he tried to cry…he started to cough up blood. I felt something dark, like icy hands, clawing at my mind and threatening to take me with his dying mind. It was like being a kid again, running out of the dark basement. I pulled back.

…and then he was gone.

My bodyguard told me to leave him, and that filth were found dead in alleyways all of the time.

A long pause once more accentuated by the sound of sniffling

He had Red Eye. It…survived the attack, you know how those bottles are. They're steel bottles and…I came home and did his stuff.

He sold his money for this shit and let his family go hungry…and I killed him and took his shit. I can't look at myself anymore tonight.

Of all the things I am, there's this sick thing inside of me that feels closer to the world now that this has happened; that maybe this moment is what's going to make me stronger and harder like a Khournas should be. I'm a liar. I don't know what I'm doing here anymore…

…why the fuck am I doi—

Recording stopped unexpectedly…
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Delete recording? Are you sure? Y/N
Y
Logfile erased. February 12, 3010

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