Insolent Misue of Kindness

I am, at my core, a peace-loving man who desires nothing more than witnessing an end to violence.

So, it contradicted my self-image to plan to bludgeon a man to death with an axe handle. Nonetheless, I spent the evening of New Year’s Day, 2010, plotting the murder of a stranger I had grown to hate.

Who would have thought I, a nondescript middle-aged-plus man, owner of a small unprofitable business, would have been so seriously pursuing such a heinous act? But I was.

I wanted the motherfucker dead. I wanted his death to appear to be an accident. I wanted this “accident” to be fool-proof. I wanted this man’s death to be judged by all to be an unfortunate event with no human involvement.

I know, this is full of contradictions. The idea of bludgeoning the stranger while deliberately explaining to him--as he convulsed with every crushing blow--why I was doing it was at odds with my desire to leave no traces of homicide. The sensation of feeling and tasting the splatter of warm blood as I beat relentlessly on his skull with a hard-wood axe handle does not jibe with my desire to leave no evidence of foul play.

Just as importantly, though, I wanted this man to know he was being murdered and why. And I wanted him to suffer slowly in that knowledge, knowing there was no way to avoid his inevitable and quite painful demise. It was important to me that this bastard realize that, had he behaved differently to someone important to me, he never would have met me. He never would have incurred my wrath and my rage and my singular desire to beat him into a bloody, limp corpse.

In an ideal world, my message to him...that had he behaved with respect and had he not taken advantage of the kindnesses shown to him...would have spread like wildfire after his well-deserved death. But that would not be, because only he and I would be privvy to the fact that his death was caused by me in response to his infractions against goodness.

That was my plan, but it did not come to pass. My solutions to the problem of making the crushing blows delivered by an axe handle appear to be accidental never emerged. I've still never seen the man, never spoken to him. He does not even know I exist, as far as I know. Yet he still deserves to experience my solution to his insolent misuse of another human being's kindness.

[Is it real, or is it manufactured?]