Serial Killer

I watch television for a while, but I don’t take anything in. After an hour, maybe two, I switch the television off. A walk, I think, I should go for a walk. But I don’t go for a walk because it’s not safe out there. So instead I make a model aeroplane from scratch. It takes a few hours, a few hours in which I am so engrossed in making the model aeroplane that I forget I am a serial killer.

I wasn’t always a serial killer. In my pre-killing days, I was just an average Joe. Had a girlfriend (clingy), a social life (of sorts), a job (a bullshit one). I wasn’t happy, but average Joes aren’t meant to be happy. I wasn’t unhappy either to be fair. Just existing. That was the problem, of course. I didn’t want to just simply exist. I wanted more. A lot more.

So, I became a serial killer. I figured killing people is the way to go. And it was for a long time. Filled the existential hole so to speak. But the last three or four killings, if I am honest, weren’t really doing it for me. The truth is wanton murder, just like everything else in life, becomes samey. Those last three or four killings I was simply going through the motions. I didn’t even get a sexual thrill out of it. I didn’t even take any mementos away with me after those killings! That’s how apathetic I’d become about killing.

So here I am now, basically a prisoner in my own flat. Of course, I can leave whenever I want, but every time I decide to do so, something stops me, pulls me back. That something, I am pretty sure, is fear, fear cloaked in inertia. If I can overcome this, I’ll kill again, just to see if it really is the case that I am bored of killing. Because a part of me isn’t sure and I need that part of me to make up its mind, hence I need to kill again, maybe more than once. Which would have been all too easy for me, I am a serial killer after all, but now that I can’t leave the flat, it’s not easy at all.

From time to time, my mum will call. As per usual, all she wants to do is talk about herself, about how shitty her life is, how her kids don’t give a damn. I don’t try to gainsay her because it’s true, her kids don’t give a damn. I don’t try to convince her that her life isn’t shitty, it is. Probably shittier than mine and that’s saying something. What I do do is listen attentively and offer a so-called shoulder to cry on. That’s all I’ve ever done vis-à-vis my mum’s phone calls. Once, it is true, I tried to open up to her about my problems, but that didn’t go so well. My mum couldn’t understand why I was talking about myself, got quite cross with me in fact, accused me of being a congenital narcissist and all sorts. After that I never mentioned my problems to her again.

I get no visitors. That girlfriend I mentioned, well she dumped me as soon as I started on my killing spree. And my friendships dried up like the proverbial African watering hole a long time ago. I’m not on speaking terms with my brother and although I do still have a relationship with my sister, of sorts, it’s not the kind of relationship that involves visitations. Sometimes, like my mum, she’ll phone me to update me on all the things that have happened in her life since we last spoke, which always seem a lot like the things she updated me on the last time she phoned. Meaning my sister does the same things on repeat. Like all of us, I guess. The truth being there are no new things to do. I don’t have the heart to tell my sister this, so I pretend to be interested in her updates. Anyway, whether my interest is feigned or not makes no difference, she’s never going to visit me, that much is for sure. Which is fine by me. Last thing I need is to have to entertain my sister whilst I am battling agoraphobia.

Basically, I need all my energy to focus on getting out of this flat, which shouldn’t be hard, it is a bona fide shithole after all. And yet it is hard, far harder than killing people, I think, which is crazy. I mean killing people ought to be far harder than leaving the flat, I know that. Any normal person would think nothing about exiting the flat, just as they would find it impossible, or nigh on impossible, to murder a person purely to fill an existential hole. But I am not a normal person, clearly. I used to be a normal person, had all the trappings of normalcy, but I laid waste to those trappings in a fit of pique that resulted in the murder of an innocent human being. Okay, probably they weren’t innocent, I mean who is, right? But not so guilty that they deserved to have their life force snuffed out by yours truly. I get that. They didn’t deserve to die and it was clearly very selfish of me to indulge my inner Camus, as it were, by taking their life opportunistically¹.

I guess when it comes right down to it, I am a completely self-absorbed nutjob. Just as my mum is a self-absorbed nutjob, although as far as I know she hasn’t killed anyone. I mean my father did die in what I always thought were suspicious circumstances, but a lot of people wanted him dead, so that doesn’t mean anything. All the same, I wouldn’t bet against my mum being complicit in some way. Or my brother, another self-absorbed nutjob if ever there was one.

I get up off the sofa and walk over to the window. I see people milling about on the street below. No doubt these people are bored and have nothing better to do than mill about. They think that their boredom will be thwarted by going to the shops, buying shit indiscriminately, maybe having a bite out at some mid-market restaurant that specialises in chicken (always chicken). But their boredom won’t be thwarted. Suppressed maybe, for a time. If they’re lucky.

This is ridiculous, I think. All I need to do is grab my duffle, slip on a pair of loafers and leave the flat. Nothing could be simpler. I even imagine doing these things, as a kind of prelude to doing them. But I can’t do them. I just don’t have it in me right now. So I go to the toilet and take a shit, a satisfying one, and then I go have a lie down on the hammock, which as usual I find uncomfortably taut, although after rocking side to side for a bit I do eventually drift off to sleep.

I dream I am a bat. For a while I hang upside down with all the other bats in the colony, but then I get restless and I fly away using my onboard echolocation system to navigate my way through the dreamscape, which manifests as a crepuscular forest. It’s strange being a bat and doing batlike things, such as biting the heads off small rodents and shitting mid-flight. Strange in a way that somehow reminds me of something, but I can’t think what. Eventually, I tire of being a bat. Even in my dreams, I think, boredom inserts itself. I feel so bored, or so powerless in the face of boredom, that I wake up. I immediately forget my dream about being a bat, which is a shame because I always wondered what it was like to be a bat, but the boredom is still there. As it always is.

With some difficulty, I manoeuvre myself off the hammock and then I pace around the flat as I mull over my predicament. Which, entirely predictably, does me no good whatsoever. So I stop doing that and plonk myself down on the butterbean beanbag in front of the telly. I find nothing, absolutely nothing, of any interest to watch. It’s no good, I think, I have to get out of here. Not only do I have to get out of here for its own sake, but I also have to get out of here so I can murder again. Not because I see murdering someone as the answer to all my problems, but because I need to know if I am in fact bored of murdering. If it turns out that I am, I will raise the white flag, as they say, and face the music, as I think they also say. But if it turns out I am not bored of murdering, which is possible, however remotely, then maybe, just maybe, I can move on with my life. Put things behind me, as it were, and who knows, I might even be able to rekindle some old friendships, find myself a lover to share the good times with, and the bad (because I am not so naïve as to think there won’t be bad times, even in a hypothetical future in which I have moved on with my so-called life).

So, it’s clear enough. I need to get the fuck out of my flat. Pronto. I fling off my thermals and get into a suit, a black one with creases in all the right places. I put on a pair of Ray-Bans, tuck a machete down my trousers, breathe deeply, turn the doorknob, open the door ajar, peek through the crack, see someone (a dishevelled woman I think, or it could be a man) shuffling along the corridor, slam the door the fuck shut. Shit, I think, that was close. What the hell was I even thinking?

I might as well face it, I ain’t gonna be able to leave the flat anytime soon. I need to reconsider my options. I repair to the toilet, which is where I do most of my thinking, and perch myself on the edge of the bath. After however long, I realise there are no other options. Either I leave this flat or I die in it. There is no middle way here. Either I go out and kill one more time to determine once and for all whether I am bored of murderous psychopathic violence or I stay here and ruminate about whether I should kill one more time in an endless loop that will only cease when I do. Fine, that settles it, I say, I am leaving the flat. And in all seriousness I am about to leave the flat, I really am, but then my mum phones. I consider not answering, just as I always do when my mum phones, and then I answer her call anyway, just as I always do. I say hi, how are you and my mum says not good as it happens. I sigh to myself and absorb her drone like the dutiful son I am (I suppose). When she’s finished her diatribe or jeremiad, she pauses for breath. I am about to say something, no idea what, but then she starts up again. Half an hour later, she’s still going strong. No sign of abatement whatsoever. So I interject. I say I’m sorry, but I have to go. Go? she says. Go, I confirm. Fuck you, she says, then she hangs up the phone, which is just like her. I put the phone in my breast pocket and I make as if to leave the flat, but of course, after my mother’s verbal onslaught I am completely incapable of such a thing. So I do the only thing I can think to do in the circumstances.

After I’ve done my business in the toilet, which takes a while, I am in a quandary as to what to do next. Think, I exhort myself, think goddammit! But it’s no good, I literally can’t think of a single thing to do. Or rather I can think of things, but they immediately strike me as not worth the effort. Things such as making a sandwich or playing a video game or dusting the antiques my grandma left me in her will (much to brother’s annoyance). Boredom, like a toxic gas, is asphyxiating me, I realise. Pretty soon I will be dead from boredom. The coroner will not diagnose boredom, of course, but it will be the cause all right.

But it doesn’t kill me. Not immediately anyway. So I might as well just grin and bear it, I think. No doubt this is not the first time I have come to this realisation, but it feels important, important in the liberating sense of important. I feel so relieved in fact that I make myself a sandwich (ham on rye, a lick of English mustard, a dollop of sauerkraut, a sprinkling of ketamine) and settle down to building a terrarium out of various odds and ends I find in the attic². It comes out really well. So well that I post a photo of it on a subreddit for terrarium enthusiasts I’ve been monitoring for some time. I put the terrarium on the windowsill by the other terrariums and then I go for a little jog around the flat. If I am going to be cooped up here, I need to make sure I exercise. If I don’t, all sorts of health-related issues might break to the surface and I could do without that quite frankly. After a few dozen circuits, I take a break. I’m covered in sweat, so I get out of my suit and wipe myself down with a tea towel. I put on a onesie and go sit in my meditation box. I strap myself in and I sit there in the half-lotus position for a long time, long enough anyway for my consciousness to evert itself into a state so ineffable it is literally impossible for the author of this story to render into words.

Who knows how long I stay like that. But what I can say is that when I do finally come round I have grown a beard, a ragged one with a russet hue. I rush to the toilet and shave it off immediately (whilst urinating, naturally). Once my face is restored to its depilated best I take a shower. It feels good to be standing under a spout of hot water and I take my time cleansing myself. Eventually, however, I get bored of doing that. So I step out of the shower and allow myself to drip dry (not being one for towels). Once I am dry, I go and riffle through the mound of clothes next to my bed and after much faffing, I eventually settle on a burgundy cotton shirt (creased), mauve chinos (seen better days) and a damask cravat (because why not). The very clothes I am wearing when, for the first time in 28 years, I set the first tentative foot out into the corridor, a foot that probes the air like the proboscis of an inquisitive elephant.

Within five minutes I am out on the boulevard. Striding purposively, in fact, along it, as if I have an imminent assignation with someone of importance. Which of course I don’t. How could I? A guy doesn’t exactly emerge from a 28-year hiatus in his social existence with a list of people to meet and greet . But it doesn’t matter, I think. I’ve served my time in solitary confinement, paid my dues to society. I’m a free man now. And that is why I am striding purposively.

I sell my flat and invest most of the proceeds in short-dated GBP-hedged Costa Rican bonds. I use the rest of the money to fund an AI start-up specialising in deep-fake employees. I have no idea what I am doing, but that doesn’t seem to matter. Wealthy people queue up to invest and although it grieves me to have my equity diluted, my business gorges on their capital and shits out gold. Meaning it pullulates across the world like an out-of-control coronavirus. Network effects ramify to the point where my business basically controls 80% of the global workforce via SaaS-led licensing agreements that throw off cash on repeat. The next logical step, of course, is an IPO. At which point, I cash in my chips and wish the Board all the very best for the future.

I am now a wealthy man and if I want to I can live a life of sybaritic leisure. Which I do. For a while. But as I’d always expected, not even extreme wealth can ward off the encroachment of boredom, which wraps around me in a python-like embrace.

I wander aimlessly from one upmarket hotel to another trying to figure out what to do next with my life. But one day, whilst sipping a cocktail (that tastes of root beer for some reason), I realise it’s futile, that there is nothing to do next with my life, nothing of any interest anyway, which amounts to the same thing.

I descend into a deep depression, during which I lose all contact with so-called consensus reality.

When I come round, I am surprised to find myself back in the meditation box. What the? I think. As soon as my bafflement has subsided and I’ve reconciled myself to the incontrovertible fact of the matter, which takes as long as it takes, I unstrap myself from the meditation box, hotfoot it to the toilet and do my business as efficiently as possible. After which, I sigh and make a series of haunting whale-like sounds. I am about to jump back into my depression, head first as it were, but then I realise that life in my flat isn’t so bad. So, okay, I am alone, and yes, I do have a disfiguring scar on my conscience. But, you know, worse things happen. I mean they do, right?

So, yes, I did totally imagine becoming a billionaire. And the AI start-up was a pure mirage. But there’s nothing stopping me from launching an AI start-up for real. Just because I imagined doing it, doesn’t mean I can’t actually do it. I mean, maybe it’s even helpful that I imagined it first.

Turns out, it is more than helpful. Long story short, I create another unicorn from my flat, never having to leave once (which is remarkably easy when your entire workforce is comprised of deepfake employees). But this time around, I don’t do an IPO. Instead, I tap into private credit and keep myself whole. I use the cash infusion to pay myself a so-called special dividend and finance the next phase of the company’s development. Within a few years I have cornered the market in genomic therapeutics. How? Simple. By patenting the world’s very first AI capable of curing all known (and unknown) diseases and extending the human lifespan indefinitely. That’s how. Of course, the price point is important too, which I set at just a little above the cost of a can of Coke per month, which I adjudge (correctly) to be the sweet spot. It doesn’t take me long to hit six billion subscribers, all of whom will live disease-free for eternity.

Of course, this does make me fabulously wealthy again, I can’t deny it . And I do rather enjoy the accolades that pour in from leaders around the world. And I can’t resist going on my favourite podcasts to bask in the ethereal glow of my stupendous achievement. But the wealth is meaningless. I am never (let’s face it) going to leave my flat, which remains as insalubrious as it’s always been, and so all I really need money for is to keep me supplied with terrarium parts, notwithstanding life’s essentials, which I have couriered by drone to my balcony (not sure I mentioned my flat has a balcony, so now you know). Furthermore, the accolades are as ephemeral as they are insincere. And my podcast heroes are, if I am honest, a bit of a letdown, conversationally speaking.

But the fact remains, I have saved six billion lives. And that, I think, more than makes up for my murderous indiscretions.