Tortured. Grimacing. Contorted. Raw. Disfigured. Pale. Wrenched. Grotesque. All of these captured some ethos of Mr. Groff. But the best descriptor, the best impersonation of the energy that propelled his person, was in the works of Egon Schiele. Despite what the reader may imagine, he was not an ugly man. Not in the slightest. Instead, like in Self-portrait with his head down, The Family, and Pair embracing (all by Schiele), his anguished form reflected a primal vitality in his sinewy, stretched features. This vitality had not gone unnoticed by many, including Ms. Carti, who now stood facing him on the sidewalk of his Wyndham, Virginia home. She, a woman four years his junior, had met him through work as part of an endlessly boring negotiation between her factory, which produced medical equipment such as high-dose rate brachytherapy machines, which in particular Groff’s employer, the VCU Medical Center, where coincidentally he had also met his wife, Dr. Groff, was interested in attaining. Such bureaucratic deals which made up the majority of his working hours were one in a series of domesticating life events, including purchasing a two-story home in a “nice neighborhood that is safe for the children,” that had threatened to extract his youth from the matter of his being, for which he would receive limited compensation. This battle for some remnants of this vibrance was the impetus, whether he knew it or not, for Helena Carti’s presence.

“You poor thing,” she exclaimed, with the manner of a suburban part-time socialite who often makes remarks such as "Isn’t that just terrible?” and “If we could just come together as a country,” “having to go through all of this. It’s just awful.” Of course it was an act, but acting comes quite naturally to many of us who have spent our lives being an idea and begins to feel more truth than fiction. The sun glistened off the cloudy tears in her eyes and she was quite conscientious of several neighbors observing this scene. 

“Well,” Mr. Groff hesitated, “I truly appreciate all you’ve done to help. I can’t thank you enough.”

“Nonsense!” Helena practically shrieked, adamantly enforcing, “It was the least I could do.”

With that, she gently wrapped her arm around him in a half-hug embrace. Because after all, there is a delicate line to walk when comforting a man over his recently deceased spouse. 

“Helena…,” he whispered meekly. But she paid little attention, climbing into her nice but not flashy Honda CR-V, rolling down the window to utter a last goodbye, and cruising away.

Mr. Groff stood for a second, telling himself they would talk before long. 

As Thomas Groff turned around, he set his eyes on the culmination of the last eight years of his life. He and Samantha, his late wife, had begun dating not long after she, a new resident at VCU, had encountered Thomas enduring another beating from his boss, Eli Sullivan, a required part of life as an underling. Me! A full-grown, college-educated man! Samantha had noticed her future husband releasing pent up frustration on a nearby water cooler, which both amused and captivated her enough to introduce herself. However, it was the same mix of piteous and terrifying that had throttled Groff through time and space, almost against his will, to the sidewalk in front of his house. 

He began to tread towards his front door, noticing that the tulips looked slightly wilted and the grass had adopted a sickly yellow tone. The Robinsons don’t have this problem, their plants are fake. However, the neighbors cleared him of the normal social stigma—look at what he had gone through. 

Through the door, into the house. You’re okay, you’re okay. It was… no different. The monumental shift in dynamic one would expect was missing. Granted, he had been in the house since they passed, but seeing Helena drive away made it feel final. There were still remnants of them. Of course there were. Toby’s shoes still sat by the door, cast off haphazardly as he bolted in. His toys would still pop up where you least expected them: kitchen cabinets, behind the TV, buried in the garden. None escaped falling into his orbit. Maybe all parents think that. 

Suddenly, Mr. Groff felt a sharp pain and stumbled, clutching the table before collapsing next to it. Oh god am I dying now? No, no, no. Deep breaths, just take nice, deep breaths. It is OK. Breathe. Just breathe. Helena will call soon. He remained dizzy, clutching his head as he sat, back against the table leg, his long body shoved into an awkward contortion. Obviously their death had taken a toll on him, physically and mentally. 

Eventually he stood and lurched towards and up the stairs, his bony protrusions clutching the rail as if the loss of its tangible presence would send him spiraling into the depths of hell. He stumbled into the bathroom, wetting his face with cold tap water before daring to glance into his own ghostly reflection in the mirror. His eyes. They glittered of something he did not wish to hear, but yet he couldn’t tear himself away. When was she going to call? But eventually he did, completing the pilgrimage into the bedroom. The room where he had slept with his wife since the day they moved in, just weeks after their honeymoon. In between her stays at the hospital. Those nights, when Samantha and Toby lay in the VCU while he shared the bed with no one because she could see he was killing himself staying all night with them. At least she had friends there who he trusted to check in on her. You cry but who can you bl—. 

“Shut up!!!” Mr. Groff roared, but only the walls cowered.

Slowly, he opened his door and reached inside, shuffling his hand past legal documents and a death certificate, before he finally reached a small metal chest with a bronze-plated keyhole. The key had not left his side in… too long to count. Inserting it into the lock, he opened the lid, revealing a vial with a brilliant blue glow. To those who have never seen cesium-137 chloride, it can be hard to imagine. Not sky blue, or sea blue, or jeans blue. Harsh, shrill blue. It transfixed Mr. Groff in the marvel of its majesty. This vial, less than a pound, was the key to it all. Everything was here. The perfect crime.

It started during the aforementioned negotiation between Mr. Groff, who was in charge of attaining VCU hospital equipment, and Ms. Carti, the head of a medical equipment production facility. He seemed… different to her and to him she was… new. His heavy emotional and physical presence mixed with her novelty; she could loosen the chains of domesticity. He had never cheated before, but he justified it as people do. 

He couldn’t stop. A drug flowing through his veins, awakening a fire of potency. He and Samantha had only been married for three years, but the time began to rush and halt as he felt the current pulling him under, suffocating him. Cheating wasn’t enough. He needed more and further, because deep within Helena’s soul there was the answer, the missing piece. But what to do? How to get what he so clearly needed?

In the end, moving towards the realization of his dream became its own sustaining force. Something about the fulfillment of a perfectly orchestrated plan, the beating of the rest of the world as you stand triumphant, above all of them. It is a heroic act, simply by virtue of contesting the odds.

She said she would call. That blue powder.

Suggesting murder is no light task. The risk is great and the pay-off, adjusted for the probability of eventual success, slim. But he could no more stop himself than he could stop the sun’s race across the sky each day. He brought it up to Helena slowly, in whispers. She was surprisingly receptive, although this could be as much for the financial potential.

As they began to plot, he mentioned term life insurance as a possibility to his wife. They were young and she was initially unreceptive, but as he repeatedly mentioned that she was, as an oncologist now, their principal breadwinner, he won her over. Healthy, young, and buying a measly twenty-year plan, for $1 million coverage they had only paid $19 per month. A steal. Not that this was easy for him. He spent many of his lonely nights with their faces painted across his mind. In hindsight, his dilapidated appearance—he had always seemed wrought, but not quite so skeletal—was in large part from the emotional toll of his slow and methodical act, which sowed the seeds of madness. But whether because of his moral weakness or his addiction, he could not stop. The poison of freedom mixed with the nectar of her spirit to create an irresistible cocktail. Groff saw his actions as we now see them, knew them to be condemnable, but only wished that he could capture the vigor in his heart, for if he could only infuse others with it, they would finally understand. (Not that others knew and condemned him, but he engaged in the common behavior of imagining and disparaging unknown detractors.)

What happens if she doesn’t call? The glow, it draws you in.

Why Toby? Unfortunately he was a necessary casualty. They could not escape and live, finally out of it all, with him. And they did plan to escape. Riding the winds of their grand victory over society, they could go anywhere. And it would be soon. With $1 million, anything is within reach. The wealthier among us may know that $1 million doesn’t go far, and in some deep corner of their minds, Mr. Groff and Ms. Carti also knew this, living amongst the affluent of the Richmond suburbs. However, some mysterious property of tremendous and concentrated wealth captivates the mind and dismisses reason.

She’s not going to ca—. Of course she will!

Once one decides on murdering their own family to run away to a fantastic location with a mistress on their spouse’s life insurance, the question is how. The success of the plan, as mentioned before, meant as much as the outcome. A quick reading of crime history concludes that many “perfect crimes” have gone awry. Leopold and Loeb come to mind, who plotted the “perfect crime” based on their superior intellect but proceeded to accidentally leave a pair of glasses at the scene, a pair that was one of three in the city. But Groff had thought himself to be different, and he realized two things: 1. Patience is key, 2. The best liars stay close to the truth. This second adage is endlessly valuable in the world of becoming a deceptive individual, because small lies, similar to real occurrences but changing or excluding one significant point, can much more easily be concealed than snow-balling masses of mistruth. They did die of cancer (but…). Any conventional means of murder are very difficult to get away with. Suspicion will always arise when suddenly your family perishes in some cruel accident. This is where patience came in. And admittedly, Groff could not have accomplished this without his sun that sustained him, Helena.    

She must be in traffic. Amazing how so little powder can achieve such a tremendous thing.

Working on the production of medical equipment gave her access to some unconventional materials, virtually unattainable to general citizens, among them was cesium-137. Frequently used for calibrating radiation-detection equipment, produced in nuclear fission, and most importantly used in radiation therapy devices, it is extremely radioactive, with one of its decay products emitting gamma rays, whose terrifically high energy waves can ionize and disrupt DNA, laying the roots for uncontrolled cell replication and ultimately cancer. But one must be careful. Research is slim on the health effects of cesium-137 chloride (the compound that is used to medical imaging), but the consensus was clear that consumption of a gram of the substance would be quickly lethal. To develop a cancer over years… that would require micrograms at a time, by he and Helena’s loose estimates. But driven by the impossibility of their task, they began to work, measuring out varying amounts and deciding how to best deliver them. This also posed a unique challenge, because simply handling cesium-137 is a tremendous safety hazard. Gloves, hazmat suits, SCBAs — all donned after hours in the research branch of Helena’s facility. Ultimately they decided that they should measure out a few ‘appropriate’ doses, each in its own secure vial, along with the master vial with the remaining compound.

She could be at the police right now. But why?

Even then, he still had to wait. As a rule, one does not attempt life insurance fraud weeks after buying a policy, so he waited. Nearly two and a half years after purchasing the life insurance policy (amounting to over six years from his marriage), he and Helena decided it was ‘safe’ to proceed. During this time period, his lust for power in being liberated from civil society did not wane but instead was stoked by the delay. 

When it was time to begin, the details had long emerged. Although cesium chloride dissolves readily in water, contaminating a water supply, it was decided, was too risky. Instead, the minuscule flakes, hardly visible even in their blue shimmer, would be mixed into food. And this was the first and last time a lactose intolerance would come in handy for Mr. Groff. Adding it to the milk itself wasn’t right. No. But dissolving it in milk that is then baked into a desert. Brilliant. This would not only (largely) protect Groff from poisoning, but also distribute the intensity of the dose. So strangely, Thomas Groff developed an affinity for an occasional cake or pudding, but the months between this habit developing and any signs of illness spared him from suspicion.

The last question: how do you know if they will fall ill? As it turns out, while the severity of cancer is random, the odds of developing cancer increase with radiation dose. Months and years of gamma radiation through their food… to him falling ill seemed certain. It is worth noting that around this time Mr. Groff began to develop a perversion of the mind, and came to almost believe that their sickness was not, could not, be from him. This defense may have protected him but ensured his gradual fall from reality, only innocuous in its attribution to the circumstance of his wife and child.

Wherewherewhereisisshesheshewherewhere… but that blue light. 

Around five months into the plan, Toby began to feel ill. Acute lymphoblastic leukemia, stage II. The doctors were concerned but thought improvement was more than possible. Hearing this made Mr. Groff break down in the office, shaking, convulsing in his own grief and shame and knowledge of the inevitability of his son’s condition worsening because he still could not stop. 

Nearly three months later, Samantha was also found to have cancer. Pancreatic, stage IB. Pancreatic is particularly ugly, and even at this stage, patients often have only two years. Samantha didn’t have that long. Groff found himself trapped in a waking dream, the vortex constantly closing in. But he still could not stop.

They’regonenowandthatbitchhasabandonedyou. No, no, no, no.

This case of course was of tremendous interest to medical professionals. A mother and son developing cancer months apart? It sparked a substantial investigation, which Carti and Groff had expected. For a short while the powder stayed with her. In the end, the most probable explanation was determined to be some genetic predisposition. No, her parents hadn’t had cancer, but that uncle had. The radon tests weren’t abnormal, and the slightly above average radiation in the household was strange but not obviously significant.

In their treatment of Toby and Samantha, the hospital tried various therapies, and this was the source of a morbidly perfect piece of fate, so much so that it seemed preordained. At one point in the cancer regimen, Samantha was treated with a high-dose rate brachytherapy machine, the same device that was purchased by the VCU via the negotiations of Mr. Thomas Groff with Ms. Helena Carti, and the same model of machine that the killing powder came from.

Thisemptyhouseandit’sallyourfaultjusttheglownow.

Toby lasted twenty-one months. Samantha made it about fifty days longer. The doctors couldn’t understand it. The cancer wasn’t exactly progressing fast. Just strangely. Tomorrow would be Thomas and Samantha’s eight-year anniversary. The funerals would be this week. How can you bury your entire life in an afternoon? He wouldn’t have to if Helena would call him. They were going to leave tonight. Everything was settled, they had the money.

Where?Where?Where?OhfuckwhatdoIdonow?

Mr. Groff sat there, still sitting back to the bed, almost curling around the vial. It was so blue. It had become the enchanted symbol for all that he had done. Again his vision became blurry, the—

He came to.

Whaa… still nothing. 

It had all vanished. The dream. He lay against the soft but itchy carpet that adorned many homes in the sprawling suburbia, which he had been fleeing for some wild land. There it lay. Still shining blue. 

Alonenow.

He had been gripped by the paranoia that so frequently can take control in minutes, reducing reason to some impalpable notion. 

And so it all became clear.

The vial. It had always been the key.

Butshecouldstillcall...

He slowly removed the airtight seal. The blue glimmer animated the powder, giving it depth. It sat in his hand, heavier than he remembered.

Nopleaseno.

Suddenly he was seizing the vial, turning it—

nonono

Almost immediately he vomited, hands clenching, now truly pale and tortured and disfigured. 

And as the evening light streamed in and his phone buzzed he lay silent. The trinity was complete. The perfect crime.