The Vile Anima

Trigger Warning: Gore, Death & Suicide

My consciousness retrieves itself from a slow forlorn blur. My mind’s eye is dim and indistinct, and I feel a deep terror and trepidation pierce my heart. Where am I?

I’m cold; the blue and bitter winter-winds of an industrialising London casting frigid rays of numbness over my stiff and impotent carcass; cold waves which pierce through the flesh and into the vestiges of my soul.

My cheeks are pricked by the passionless-breath of the night; icy fingers guiding their hands through my deadened cadaver, making the existence of an unknown sickly and partly-dried ooze-like substance apparent. It coats my body in it’s entirety, entrapping the seams between my eyelids - fusing them together; it’s a wool blanket of unknown and alien matter. I feel strangely acquainted with it. It’s unknown to me now, but I recognize it. Like a long unseen friend, it beckons me with glittering teeth and a cloying smile. Somewhere deep in my soul - where primal and animalistic things lurk - I welcome her embrace; friends rekindled once more.

I realise, after a moment, that I sit upon a leather armchair, of a once quality nature; the ever present drag of time has since beaten the thing’s supple leather into a calloused and injured fray, and eaten away at the chair’s wooden skeleton. The armchair has just enough strength to hold up my figure, which lays flaccid and feeble in its less-than-tender embrace.

Sudden gusts of frigid air rush from an open window nearby, the loud noise adding to the tension pounding in my skull. A reproachable swarm of flies to my left buzz with activity - their consistent pestering becomes a pounding war-drum of annoyance within my head.

The sickly substance continues to crawl its slim tendrils across my frame. Its smell and taste permeate the air - corrupting and distorting it with an aura of permanence; it smells and tastes of a distinct metal tang. Like rust - yet with a wet texture, and very slightly acidic.

The sickly sludge was once warm - faint traces of a bygone heat emanating weakly from the liquid - but it has since become bitterly cold; it has now been left in the open winter’s chill. It floats slowly over my body, dissolving into my clothes and covering me in a thick gruel.

My heart hitches just a tad, and my soul dejects just a little. My breath grows faint and non-uniform, as I slowly realise what it is.

It’s blood.

Why am I covered in blood?

Why am I not more hysterical?

Any normal person would be invigorated upon waking up covered in blood; screaming and thrashing in pure shock and quite reasonable horror. I, contrary to regularity, remain firm - in as much the same comfort as I was before I realised what the crimson humor, which covered me like a silken robe, was. Why wasn’t I more distraught? Why wasn’t I treating this as an abnormality? Why wasn’t I raving like a loon, fresh of a high and the ecstasy of wrongdoing?

The certainty that I wasn’t disturbed sickened me to my core; why wasn’t I appalled? What deplorable thing must I be, to not be?

I attempt to open my eyes. It was a failed venture; my body is weak and frayed; burdened and fatigued; exhausted, limp and dead in every physical way. My eyes are shut. 

I attempt to lift my arms. I have just enough vigour within myself to lift my left arm, yet my right remains limp. Something is latched to my right hand, its dense weight keeping it locked to the side of the armchair. I decide to ignore it. My left hand comes to my eyes. One after the other my hand cleans my eyelids of the blood which binds them together; thick batches of sky-crimson life-essence plucked from my corneas. I have to blink a few times to relieve my irises of the residual red-hue, yet what I see after I do so makes me regret ever venturing to retrieve my eyesight in the first place. 

Blood. So much blood. A vacant apartment room which bubbles and pools with blood. It covers the wooden floorboards, a centimetre in height. It covers the floor like the snow covers the ground after a snow storm; it’s everywhere, slashed on the brick walls; dripping from the ceiling which hangs darkly above me, and extending it’s carmine hand past the lower slit of the entrance to the room, into the hallway that must be through it. It’s a repugnant sight, yet somehow not the worst to be found within the claustrophobic confines of the compact and squalid apartment I find myself within.

A few metres to my left, moulding in the open air of the room, the only visible structure within the room aside from the armchair and I: is the brutalised corpse of a young man. My eyes near water, as I’m left staring at the sight; cold sweat running down my body and blending with the blood that covers me. I ought to scream, yet the electric current which runs down my spine tells me distinctly not to. I’ve been enthralled by a rather primal and animalistic reaction; fight or flight, yet left too enervated to do either, I do neither; forced to stare, as that same primal and animalistic reaction gorges it’s eyes upon the handiwork of evil incarnate. No human could do such a thing.

As that primal and animalistic reaction forces me to stare, I note the man’s condition. His throat has been ripped out from the Adam’s apple, fly larvae fermenting within. His bones were broken all throughout; bludgeoned with a brick, as evidenced by a partially destroyed one painted with dark red blood a few inches from his scalp. His jaw is detached and hangs limply; there are numerous stab wounds; it’s a scene of savage brutality.

In his eyes I see a shocked and scared countenance. 

What would do this? No human would. This is brutality, the savage instinct of an uncivilised and prehistoric mankind called upon, in a world where such a mien is all but unnecessary. This is evil, painted out and written down, nothing but. What person could pour such a cup of reproachable action - such a cup of foul-hearted wickedness - from the cup of their soul? What kind of soul would do such a thing in the first place?

My heart stirs and ignites, as I’m overcome by grief for this man. I spot a small golden thing on his right ring finger…

No human could do this. This lacks the things that make us human; compassion, and empathy; feeling and emotion; they are all devoid in this heinous scene. Animals create such a butchery; not men. Animals carve up each other in this way; mangling and twisting; they do so with not so much another thought. Animals have no conscience, and so, they slay each other with no repercussions. So, what human would do such a similar thing and still be able to claim to be human? What human would rekindle their prehistoric animal nature of wickedness to cast such a fate on their fellow man? What wolf in the skin of men would ever do this?

As I ask and despair, I have my answer. Clutched in the palm of my right hand - the thing which constricted it so heavily before - was a knife, covered in viscous red blood. The blood slithered down the blade’s edge, dripping silent drops of scarlet sap-of-life from the blade’s tip. Every pellet of blood which splashes against the floor reverberates in my head; a small echo of shock and alarm.

The shock of my discovery ignites my being with short term strength, and I lunge the thing against the wall before I can stop myself. No I say to myself. The knife clangs without elegance, and then falls into the river of blood; then submerged by it. This cannot be my working; I have no recollection of taking a life - how could I have then taken one? Bludgeoning a corpse. Laying out another to die. I don’t see myself doing it, not in my faintest dreams, nor in the ringing synapses of my memory. Yet that foul beast-like part of me - the one in my head to which I dread - the small and greatly evil thing that permeates my being, only laughs in glee.

This couldn’t be true. There was no way. There had to be another explanation. 

Yet, why did I wake up in a small, dim, filthy apartment room, with a dead body; holding a knife, and with no damage to my own being? No. This was a setup. It had to be. Had to.

I scry the body once more. It makes me want to vomit: the thought that this inhuman image could be my working, my contribution. That this all could be my mangled machination. That this all could be my disfigured design. That this all could be my clawed creation. 

Yet, somewhere deep in my soul, where animalistic and primal things lurk, I felt great, immense, pride. Like one part of myself was telling the other “Look what I did!”, with one great grin. Like a toddler showing off their art piece to their parents. 

“My masterpiece,” whispered my great animalistic anima.

I would’ve vomited, if not for me being too delicate to do so.

I spot something on the body: fingerprints. The body’s covered in dried and partly-dried blood, and the real killer’s fingerprints have smudged into the carcass. I can prove I’m not the killer. I can prove this is all just strange thinking; perhaps generated by a stressed mind! Maybe this is the reason why I haven’t been so shocked at the sight of blood; this is how my mind copes. Perhaps I made amends by blaming myself.

I fling myself onto the floor, now submerged in the sanguine ocean around the chair. Dredging through the cherry red pool, I make my way towards the body, a great effort despite the short distance, because of my degenerated body. Finally reaching him, I prop myself onto his legs, finally taking a needed respite.

I dip my hand into the vermillion vastness around the body, raising a blood-soaked palm from the great pond; the red viscousness latching onto my hand like a great web. I let the blood run for a few seconds, allowing it to float off my hand, back into the great sea and down the cuff of my shirt. Then, once just the right amount of blood is present in my grasp, I squeeze my fingers onto the body, next to a particularly well-preserved set of fingerprints.

No! They match. They match perfectly. How? How is that possible? I dip my hand into the refuscent refuse, letting the blood pool in my hand, and then tense my fingers into the skin of the young married man’s body. The fingerprints are still the same.

Why? Why are they the same? I strike the body repeatedly. Over and over, my mind and rationality blotted out by a red angry mist in my head. No. There has to be a rational reason. Perhaps someone engineered the situation to frame me? Perhaps I was kidnapped, and the killer will return to this room to kill me in the same way? 

Then why would I have the knife? If I did kill this man, why would I not remember it? Why would I even murder someone? 

It cannot be me. No way! The evidence might be damning, but there’s too much to question. I couldn’t have… 

No…

“I killed him.” whispered the voice in my head; the evil of my soul, the animalistic urge of uncivilised man which is contained within my vessel.

“I couldn’t have. I don’t remember.” I whisper back to my benign beast.

“But you do remember.” he smiles, showing a great maw of crooked teeth.

I dismiss the apparition of my head. No, I don’t remember and he was just a product of the trauma of being in this room. I don’t have one memory, one vague notion, of ever taking this man’s life. I never will.

I look to the moon, which is in the centre of the window to my right. It calls on me; a great rust-coloured lamp, round and circular, hanging in the sky; illuminating me and the room. It talks to me, and it talks to the evil within me. My foul soul responds, in an illegible conversation. By its end, something within me is illuminated. I look back down at the small natatorium of blood which I bask in.

I do remember.

I remember following this man, corrupt evil possessing me and my actions. I wasn’t myself. I wasn’t myself when I took the man from an unsuspecting corner. I wasn’t myself when I locked him in this room and gagged him. I wasn’t myself when I began beating on him with the brick, nor was I myself when I began stabbing at him with the knife. I wasn’t myself. Yet, I did it.

The primitive instinct of a bygone archaic world of men might’ve taken hold of me - clouded my thoughts and passed over me as the moon is now being passed over by a great large cloud - but it was still me. I did it. Nobody else did; my hands did the work, my mind conjured the image. My tarnished soul placed both into action, to create the blood-tinted gore in front of me. Why?

Why him? Why did I even feel the need to take a life?

My wretched knife hand had no answer - my evil accomplice had no laugh. My mind was empty, and so was I. I couldn’t trace a motive in my mind, nor could I trace a trauma as to provide drive to my forsaken actions. This was an unsuspecting evil; one that lurked and struck in a flash. One rooted in the pit of my soul; my actions the fruit of this folly, and sin; I have fallen into the chasm of sinister evil, and in such an irredeemable way.

I am that deplorable creature. I am the inhuman monster, evil made into flesh, that could take another human’s life. I have taken this man’s life, and yet probably more still. My accursed acquaintance hasn’t told me the full truth, but I can feel it. I can feel the immorality of dozens of unjust murders at my hand. I can smell and taste the carnage - feel the rage inherent in each. The evil inherent in me drove my hand whilst I unsuspectingly went about my days; this is his magnum opus.

He slipped up. My immoral soul slipped up, leading to my moral soul finding out. I have woken up in fullness to my own wretched actions, and suffer the consequence of the truth. I cannot allow myself to continue. I am duty bound; by what little morality and honour I have left after these grisly proceedings. I have two options; prison, which will eventually lead to my death, or I can take my own life, here and now.

I prefer the latter. It’s in my control; no chance for my dark compatriot to overtake myself once more. Thereby, no chance for me to continue the carnage unwittingly; hurt other people out of a lack of control over my own body. 

I crawl over to the knife. It’s a small distance away, yet I place maximum effort into reaching it. I cannot allow my other self to overtake me once more. I cannot allow him to stop me from doing this. I need to do this; I am a murderer, and if I don’t stop my dark desires here and now, there’s no telling if I’ll ever retrieve the sanity to do so later on.

Finally reaching the knife, I roll over. I’m drenched in blood, as the cochineal pool below me soaks every part of my body. I lift the knife up with what remains of my energy, lifting up and striking down. I pierce my flesh just slightly, yet the blade tilts away, and all I’m left with is just a minor cut.

I have to stop myself; I need to end the spree. I have accepted I am a killer; I now need to stop the problem. I know inside that the dim light of my soul will never be lightened, so I need to do this. I need to stop myself from harming other people. This is the only way to stop my problem; for my abominable appetite for murder and gore will never otherwise be satisfied.

I take in a sharp breath, and press the blade downward once more. The blade slices into my abdomen, shearing its way through my organs. I lay myself limply.

It is done.

In my final moments, as I add to the pool of blood which already surrounds me, I shed tears of remorse. What horrors I have committed; what evils I have smote upon the world. It would have been better if I had never been born. Yet, I was, and look at what I’ve done.

I beg for forgiveness from my victims. From the man on the floor rotting, and all the other innocent souls I’ve stolen. It’s a forgiveness I don’t deserve, but I hope that in these final moments they recognize possibly my only good deed; killing myself. Stopping myself before more could be slaughtered. In this, I hope for the grace and mercy I didn’t pass onto others. I hope they can forgive me, in these twilight moments.

I feel my life drain; a process I’ve seen on the faces of others so many times. I feel my soul flicker and wain, departing my flesh. Where my soul will go I do not know.

I feel the coldness of the universe pierce me. I feel darkness overtake me.

I have reaped what I have sown.