I’ve been dreaming of killing Daniel for many years now, and today was the day I finally did it. 

It’s strange, I thought it might be more cathartic than this, like somehow some great and burdening weight might be lifted from my shoulders when it was finally done. That Daniel, and all the pain he has caused me, the life that he has left me with, all of it, should be gone, wiped out, reset, surely must be some sort of relief, no? Maybe for all the others who felt like me, surely they’d be happy? Yes, I imagine they are. I wouldn’t think enough of them would consider ever killing him themselves, but presumably when the news reaches them, tomorrow, or maybe even the day after that, a great deal of them may breathe a sigh of relief, even let out a few tears of joy when learning of his end. I assume so anyway. 

My mother once told me that the term for ‘the day after tomorrow’ was overmorrow. I always liked that. I imagine this coming overmorrow will be one of celebration for many, for those unlucky enough to have known Daniel. So really, this knowledge that so many people will be happy with his death should please me, should be enough for me to know what I’ve done is right, but somehow it isn’t. Because the truth is, I didn’t kill Daniel for them. I killed him for me. I knew that it had to be done, and that I had to be the one to do it. This was our destiny, the two of us intertwined by inevitable tragedy. I never had a choice. So why do I feel so strange about it, empty even? Dare I use the word remorseful? No, that will do no good. It will only make this next part harder. Overmorrow approaches. 

Tomorrow is easy, in a way. I’m not needed at all. Daniel dies today, but he isn’t found until tomorrow. Sure, there’s lots of work to do tomorrow but I don’t need to do a single thing. If today was for me and Daniel, then tomorrow is for his neighbours who heard him crying in the night, it’s for his colleagues who wonder why he hasn’t come in for his shift, it’s for his girlfriend whose calls have gone unanswered. Then it’s for his landlord, who agrees to look inside the apartment when Daniel’s girlfriend begs him to, it’s for the ambulance crew who pronounce him dead at the scene, and finally it’s for the police who come to cordon off the place, and start to ask the same old questions. They will spend the rest of tomorrow asking his neighbours, his friends, his family all these questions. Yes, tomorrow is about Daniel and I in many ways, but we will not do so much as lift a finger, not that Daniel can anyway. They’ll ask why I did it, but they won’t actually ask me, not in person anyway. They’ll ask her too, when the times come, but she won’t be able to answer. 

She is Daniel’s mother, and that is who overmorrow concerns the most. That’s when I’m going to see her. Not to harm her in any way, though obviously I’ve done that already, unless she hated Daniel just as much as I did. Somehow, I doubt that. She’s a fine woman, and I take no pleasure in the fact that I’ve taken something from her, something she loved more than I could ever love something. To lose a child is a unique kind of suffering, the kind that defies description of any kind. To lose your only child must be worse, as if that were even possible. To lose a part of you, a part you made, that grew inside you, that you laboured through unimaginable pain to bring into the world, that you cradled, taught to walk, speak, and how to be human. To see them live, love, and interact. A project of a lifetime. To know that all you made, all you were, all you care about, is gone, taken, disregarded. And all that’s left is you to carry all of it. All that grief, of all those years it takes to make a person, for nothing. She will carry it, all of it, on her own, until the end of her own life. Not just the sorrow of losing a son, but the weight of that unfathomable word, a word that’s heavier than all things on this Earth stacked on top of each other. Why? 

And as if that wasn’t bad enough, that will only be some of the weight she will carry. The rest will be the unbearable weight of all the things that could have been. Think about that, won’t you. Yes, the weight of why would be insufferable for any soul that walks among us, but at least it’s finite. She may wonder why her son is dead, and there may be lots of answers, but eventually they’ll run out. The weight of everything you could have been is infinite, for it is made of uncertainty, and weighs as much as eternity. Think of a standard deck of playing cards, and all its combinations. Only fifty-two cards, but the possible combinations that can be made from it is almost comical to contemplate. It’s approximately 8 x 10^67, not represented by a number but by an equation, thus giving you some idea of how incomprehensible it really is. And yet, it is from a combination of only fifty-two cards. That’s as many weeks as there are in a year, a single year! And each of those weeks is made from seven days, and each of those are made from twenty-four hours, and each of those from sixty minutes, each of those from sixty seconds, and so on, and so on. Daniel was young, barely in his late twenties. Imagine all the countless combinations of seconds, minutes, hours, days, months, years, decades, that he could have had. All the people he might meet, all the jobs he might work, all the songs he might listen to, all the films he might watch, all the drinks he might drink, all the food he might eat, all the women he might kiss, all the men he might hang out with, all the destinations he might travel to, and all the children he might have. Billions upon billions of combinations. She’ll have to carry them all the rest of her life.

My mother once told me a story of a shepherd boy, who went before the king of the land to answer a seemingly impossible question. The king asked, ‘How many seconds of time are there in eternity?’ The shepherd boy answered him, ‘There is a mountain made of diamond, which is two miles wide, two miles high, and two miles deep. Every hundred years a little bird comes and sharpens its beak on it, and when the whole mountain is worn away by this, then the first second of eternity will be over.’ 

Now let’s say that every combination of things possible inside a single day of Daniel’s life should be stacked upon each other, a billion billion possible ifs, arrangeable in as many ways as there are grains of sand on the beaches of Earth, then you might call this the first ounce of eternity that Daniel’s mother will be burdened to carry. So why then, did I kill her son? And if I had to, why do it when she was still alive, as if to condemn her to a life of carrying such an indescribable weight? Could I have waited until she had passed herself, could I have spared her this pain? Perhaps. But then wouldn’t that mean condemning many more to suffer with him still alive? I don’t think the answer would please anyone, if such a simple answer even existed. Either choice would mean suffering, either choice would mean remorse. 

So, you may ask, why is overmorrow about her? And how do I come into it? Well, she may find out tomorrow that her son is dead, but overmorrow is when she will see him, and will mark the beginning of the rest of her life. This happens to be when I will see her too. Not to cause her any more pain, for that is impossible, but to relieve a little of it if I can, for that may be possible. I’m going to see Daniel’s mother, and try to explain why I have done this to her. I won’t ask for forgiveness, I don’t deserve it. But I know I need to see her, to explain that it was something that had to be done, that I took no pleasure in it, and tell her that I’m sorry, that the fault is with me, and never, not even in a billion billion combinations of all possibilities, was any fault of this with her. That is what I will tell her, if she’ll listen. I will go to see her, as she will go to see him, and we will both say that we’re sorry, but only one of us will have cause to be. 

So what was Daniel like, you may ask. What was so bad about him that it was worth causing so much suffering? It’s difficult to explain. One thing you should know is that even if someone deserves to die, it doesn’t necessarily make them a bad person. Daniel, by all accounts, wasn’t a bad person, but that doesn’t mean he didn’t cause suffering, and that people won’t be pleased that he’s gone. That doesn’t make sense, does it? I know it doesn’t. Why would people want you dead if you’re not a bad person? It’s hard to explain. When I say that Daniel caused suffering, I don’t mean that he did so intentionally. I once had a boy in my class when I was a child who couldn’t quite grasp literary tenses, even when the rest of the class did. The teacher went over the was, is, will be, but still he couldn’t quite get it. Before long, the rest of the children in the class grew frustrated, and begged to move onto something else. Even the teacher was tired of explaining over, and over again. Of course, it wasn’t the child’s fault that he couldn’t grasp it, but his inability to do so inadvertently caused those around him to suffer. This child wasn’t Daniel before you ask, but it’s as good a comparison as any I can think of. The way Daniel caused suffering was inadvertent, but real. This had to do with the sort of person Daniel was, and the sort of person, despite seemingly infinite possibilities, that he could never be. 

Daniel, for as long as he could remember, was an unhappy person. I don’t think I need to explain what this means. Most people understand what it’s like to be unhappy. You might call this depression, others may call it simply suffering from existence. I think it’s a common misconception that being happy is our natural state. Indeed, so many people go to enormous efforts, including great financial and emotional stress, cut people out, bring people in, have children, give up children, buy those dainty little glass bowls to hold their house keys, in search of a “happy” life. I believe such people overlook the fact that life is first and foremost, about suffering. Ask any Buddhist, or Stoic, and they’ll tell you the same. From the first day of our lives, we come into the world screaming, and then are forced to endure all manner of things that we don’t enjoy. As children, these things include having a bed time, eating vegetables, going to school, and being disciplined. As adults, these things include staying up late, eating vegetables, going to work, and paying taxes. Very little changes. We are forced to go through life, do all manner of uncomfortable things that take up too much time, while being forced to reconcile the fact that we will in fact, sooner than we think, die. Existence is a wheel and we spend but a blink of eye on it before we fall off, the process repeating itself as a sort of never-ending loop. Makes us question what the point of it even is. And still, we go through all of this, and find there’s even more to endure. Heartbreak, fear, physical pain, losing loved ones, betrayal, illness, debt, feelings of inadequacy. Did I mention taxes? Honestly, name me another creature that pays to live on Earth. But anyway, we are faced with such temerity from life, and some people are foolish enough to believe that it should be happy. Naive. Only death and one more thing are guaranteed in life, and I believe you already know my feelings on the latter.

But don’t take this to be nihilistic, life does indeed have a meaning, despite what edgy twenty year old’s might tell you. Life’s meaning is just that, that it has meaning. Life isn’t meant to be happy, but it is meant to be meaningful. We are given numerous obstacles to encounter, and the measure of our existence is how we respond to them. To make meaning out of the madness, so to speak. Of course, there can be happiness in life, but it is not a promise. Suffering is, take it from me. So what makes Daniel’s life worth taking? He may not have been happy, but who is? Who is meant to be? The issue with Daniel is that he was given an opportunity to find meaning in his suffering, but chose not to. The alternative was too tantalizing to ignore. He gave up, it’s just that simple. And when people give up, there are two certainties; the first is that you are incapable of finding any meaning in your life, and therefore condemned to be miserable. The second, is that those around you will also be affected, and be at risk themselves of falling into despair. As a human being, it is your duty to avoid this, at any costs. You must not drag others down with you. Even so, it is unfortunately in our nature to do so. A drowning man will pull others down with him, and a miserable man will make those around him miserable. Daniel was this kind of man. 

You might find it strange, ironic even, that I should be so judgmental of others, given that I have killed someone, but please allow me to explain. Daniel was unhappy for the same reasons that many of us are, but he was unprepared to make it meaningful. He languished in his depression, took comfort in it, allowed it to define him instead of the other way round, and that is no kind of life at all. Those around him, his girlfriend, his friends, even his dear old mother, tried to help him through it, but to no avail. Some vices simulated happiness from time to time, but a man can’t take meaning in vices just like bees can’t take flight in a thunderstorm. Vices are there to make our life tolerable, not to make it meaningful. And so, like the teacher and the classmates of that child I told you about, they eventually resented him for it. Not that they would ever admit as much, but you must recall a time that you’d simply had enough of someone else’s problems, even if you love them very much. We simply have too much in our own lives to constantly worry about others. That’s not to say we blame them. But we resent them all the same. Our lives would simply be easier without them, and I don’t think that’s a bad thing to want, given how hard our lives are already. And that’s not to say it’s right to abandon people, but I think it’s okay to want to sometimes. Human, even. No one is really to blame. Some people are just like that, just like some people believe that life is meant to be happy. 

My mother told me a quote once, she knows a lot of quotes. She’s a teacher, the teacher from that story I told you (a twist, ha ha). “When you’re born in a burning house, you think the whole world is on fire. But it’s not.” I wish Daniel had heard that quote when he was alive. Maybe it would’ve stuck with him, the way it sticks with me now. Some of us come from broken places and expect the world to be the same, but this is not the case. The world is full of suffering yes, but that doesn’t mean it’s burning. We can burn, and we can get burned, but the world is not on fire. One man’s joy can be another man’s woe, just as one man’s murder can be another man’s mercy. And that is why I killed Daniel. Mercy. A mercy to him, and a mercy to those he loved. Daniel could not see past the flames on his own door, and believed the world was no more than a bonfire. He saw no meaning in the suffering, and for that he suffered without meaning. What kind of life is that, I ask you. What is the point of a life which sees no point? And you may be thinking, but Daniel was young. He could’ve moved past this, he could’ve changed, become someone else, come to accept life for what it was and choose to find the meaning in it. Maybe not have a happy life, but certainly have a meaningful one. Maybe. Maybe. Maybe. But we don’t live in the future, we live in the now. Right now is all there ever is. There is no yesterday, no tomorrow, no overmorrow in which to get things right. It is only the now, a now with a miserable man whose life is sinking like an unseaworthy vessel, who is drowning and pulling down everyone around him who is trying to help. They had to be spared. Daniel had to be put out of his misery. And that is why I decided to kill him. 

Of course, it wasn’t easy. The decision to do it, that is, not the act itself. The act itself was perhaps the easiest. But the decision took me many years to make, and believe me when I tell you that I considered everything before I did it. You may have come to a different conclusion, and that’s okay. But I am me, and I decided that Daniel’s life was no longer worth living. He even agreed with me in the end. But what of his mother? Yes, I admit that was the hardest part of all this. I dwelt longer on her than I did on him, to tell you the truth. What I have done to her is perhaps more terrible than anything else, and I understand that. Life may be suffering, and she may find meaning in it eventually, but to be the reason for it, to subject someone to it deliberately, is perhaps unforgivable. That is why I will go to her, when she goes to see her son, to speak to her. I will not ask for forgiveness, even if she is willing to give it, I have no use for it. What I have done to her is terrible, and I intend to suffer as much as I can for it. But I will speak to her all the same, and offer the only thing that I can: an apology. I will tell her that I am sorry for killing her son, and that is all that I will say. I will not tell her that I believed her son’s existence was cancer, and that before long it would infect everyone around him. She doesn’t need to know that. These thoughts are just for you and me, and I’ve had a lot of time since the killing to think about it. So I’m getting this out now, so I don’t tell her. But why? To convince you? No. To convince me? Maybe. I thought so much that what I’ve done would be the right thing to do, so why do I feel the same? Where is the catharsis that I was promised? Is this my punishment for doing what I did? Do I have to carry the paradoxical weight of emptiness with me, the way that Daniel’s mother will carry the weight of questioning grief? Perhaps. And perhaps that’s fair. But my god, I don’t want to feel this way. I thought at least something might change when it was over. Perhaps it’s too soon to know, maybe this will wash away with time and I’ll finally feel better about all of it. Maybe. I’ll let you know if I ever feel better. 

You may be wondering why I’ve focused so much on Daniel’s mother, and not his partner. Christine, her name is, and she’s a nice enough girl. She never did any harm, but unlike his mother, her love is not unconditional. That may sound unfair. Relationships don’t always start strong, but some of them blossom into a connection that lasts a lifetime. Maybe the future was brighter than what I assumed, but like I said, there is only the now, and in that now these two were little more than lonely animals, grasping to each other, trying to weather the storm. There is no shame in humans doing this, many of them do and end up finding some happiness, regardless of whether they’re meant to be together. Let’s say, hypothetically, that a man and a woman are shipwrecked together on a desert island for a year. Can you really tell me that the first thought that crossed your mind wasn’t that they’d eventually get it on? That after a year, you might be rescuing three people instead of just two? You thought it, because I thought it, and everyone thinks it. Even if there was no baby, if the man and woman went home to their respective partners (provided they stuck around), can we really say with any certainty that there wouldn’t at least be some suspicion? Of course not. Because it’s natural. All humans seek companionship for the same reason, not because we’re horny, but because some innate part of us is desperate not to be alone, especially in this commotion we call life. A desert island is just the state of the world laid bare. Your first instinct would always be: how do I avoid loneliness? And that’s okay, like I said it’s perfectly natural. But that doesn’t make it right. Give a starving man poison, and he’ll gladly eat it. But that doesn’t mean it won’t kill him in the end. 

I don’t want to sound pessimistic about relationships; after all, there are many that do in fact work, that are not bound by the desperation of our loneliness and are in fact strengthened by a foundation of love. But these, I’ve found, are rare. Most, and I really do mean most, are based first on attraction, and second on convenience. We may not always love people, but we can feel comfortable and interpret this as love. This, for me, is a different kind of suffering. A silent suffering. A suffering of the soul, because you’re feeding it poison in the form of lies. What greater sin is there than to lie to yourself? To lie to yourself and say that it’s the truth. This isn’t poison, this is food. This isn’t comfort, this is love. I do feel for Christine, she’s a lovely girl, and she deserves better. But sometimes you have to be cruel to be kind. 

I’m sorry if you don’t feel the same way, but you haven’t had time to think as I have. I’ve had so much time to think since he died. More time than I could ever dream of. More time than I ever knew existed. And yet, despite feeling it all, every elongated second, time still passes by. What’s that expression my mother taught me? The days are long but the years are short. Man, I feel that now. Every day is a century to me now, but how the days roll by so quickly. It’s already overmorrow, and by that I meant it’s today. Because there is no overmorrow, not really, just like there’s no yesterday and no tomorrow. It is only now, but now then was when I started talking, and now is the day I go to see Daniel’s mother. How did it come so fast? How did hot become cold so fast? 

It’s so cold here, you’d expect as much from a morgue but damn if it isn’t the coldest I’ve ever felt. Along these corridors I can almost hear them, the voices of the dead, like whispers in the dark. Some of them are scared, and some of them are angry. Almost all of them are asking the same question: did my life mean anything? A lot of them will be answered, if they hang on for long enough. Some will be kept waiting, and eventually they will simply fade away, like footprints on the beach.

They cannot stay forever, but for as long as they do, they’ll ask just that. Many will have family members who come to see them, to kiss their cold foreheads and bid them farewell. And they’ll give them an answer. Maybe not in words, but certainly in their eyes, in the delicate tenderness of their kiss, in the bitter salt of their tears. But they will answer, and the dead shall know. Many of them will leave this place with some sort of comfort, to know that indeed their life meant something, not just to them but to those around them. And their grief will tell them that they were loved, that they are missed, and that somehow the world is a little smaller without them in it. Daniel will get no such comfort. Even if his mother tells him all those things, his life will still feel in vain, but his death will somehow not. 

She’s here now, his mother, his wonderful mother. I can feel her. As soon as she arrived. She’s waiting in the hallway and I can see her breath it’s so cold. So miserably cold. Why do they make her wait? Surely there’s nothing more to be done. Why prolong it? I can’t tell you why, any time I’ve asked them they haven’t answered. But any minute now she’ll come through, and they’ll show her her son, lying cold and naked on a slab. And what might she do? What might she say? The thought of it is killing me. She will likely tell her son that she loves him, and then I will tell her that I’m sorry. 

Oh my god. Here she is, I thought that I was ready for this moment but I’m wrong. I thought with all the time I’ve had to think about it that I’d be more prepared. But instead I am silent, as still and lifeless as one of the many bodies inside these walls. She walks this way, close to me now, and I think she’s going to look straight at me, that our eyes will meet and suddenly our two sorrows will clash and combine, but she doesn’t. She merely looks past me, like I’m not even there. Now time seems to be speeding up a bit, for she’s already at the door. She’s at the door of the room where her son is waiting for her, and I’m still here in the corridor, watching her go. Paralyzed. Speechless. I know what must be done but now the time has come I don’t know if I have the strength. All that thinking, all that reasoning, undone by the sad look in her eyes. What have I done? What have I actually done? Was this a mistake? Can I do it over? No, I can’t. There is only the now. Only the horrible, miserable, endless now. I do the only thing that I can. I follow her into the room. She’s so quiet. I don’t know why but I didn’t expect her to be so quiet. I expected tears, a tremble in the knees maybe, even a snivel. But nothing. It’s somehow even worse. If silence was a person and in the room with us now, he’d speak for us all. The mortician pulls the sheet back from the body, and I’m expecting her to gasp, but she doesn’t. Instead she swallows, and breathes deeply. She stands there for a moment longer, just looking at him. Looking at her boy. The mortician leaves the room, and it’s just us left, both of us looking at Daniel’s cold cadaver on the slab. The silence is deafening, and I can hear her heartbeat now, thumping slowly in her chest. She bends down, looking at the pale face before her, probably thinking about when he was a baby, a boy, a young man. All three of those people were very happy. This man in front of her is almost a stranger. She leans closer still, and plants a single, tender kiss on his frozen brow. In that moment I want to explode, evaporate and disappear. I don’t care how I go, so long as it’s violent and completely. I don’t want any trace of me left. I’d cry if I could. But all I can do is stand here, watching her whisper to her son, her sweet boy. And now the time has come. If I don’t do it now, I’m afraid I never will. She’s looking straight at him, at me, so I take a deep breath, and say what I have to say. 

‘I’m so sorry Mum. I’m sorry I couldn’t find another way out. I’m sorry I’ve done this to you. Please know that it wasn’t your fault. Never your fault. I love you so much, and I’m sorry I wasn’t stronger for you. I think I might’ve made a mistake. I thought that death would take away the pain of life but it just keeps going, for you as well as for me. If I could do it over I would. I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m sorry.’ 

It’s like she hears me, but I know she can’t. But what she says next, it’s like she’s trying to comfort me. 

‘It’s okay my dear boy. It’s okay. It’s okay.’ 

Please. I don’t want to be here anymore. She touches me but I can’t feel it. Can’t feel anything. 

‘It’s okay. I love you my dear.’ 

I can’t take it any more. I want to scream and shout, and run around. I want to kick things, want to scratch at my eyes and face and bleed and cry. But I can’t. I’ve robbed those pleasures from myself. I’ve made a horrible mistake and I need to make it right. I want to crawl back inside my body and wake up in her arms. Wake up and be her boy again. But I can’t, for there is only now. 

Then my mother, my wonderful mother, who I’ve inflicted all this grief on, says one final thing, and I know my time here is coming to an end.

‘It wasn’t your fault.’ she tells me. ‘When you’re born in a burning house, you think the whole world is on fire. But it’s not. My darling boy. It wasn’t your fault.’ I told you she had told me that, but she’s actually telling me now. Time is a wheel, but it doesn’t always go forward. I wish I’d heard that when I was still alive. 

There’s nothing more that I can do now, overmorrow has come and gone, and pretty soon she will be too. As for me, I hope I go as quickly as possible, to get away from all this regret. I just can’t stand it anymore. I thought for so long that I was right and what I did was necessary, but now I’m not so sure. All it took was one look at my mother for everything to be undone. Ask yourself how long your logic holds together when looking at the face of the person you love the most after breaking their heart. Maybe you will feel like me. Maybe you won’t. Who knows. That’s your business and this is mine. But what I will tell you is it’s never easy, no matter how much you tell yourself that it is. 

Starting the fire is easy, sure, but you can never account for where the flames will spread, and how deeply they will burn. And so, I leave you now, for I sense my time of passing is near. It sort of speeds up at the end, but it means you feel it all at once. All the years, all the hurt, all the regret. I hope it ends soon so I can stop thinking about her, about me, and how maybe I wasn’t as right as I thought I was. I hope that I can drift away, like smoke from a burning house.