Yesterday, my aunt died. It inspired me to write this story. That's all I'll say. Enjoy

To Be a Psychopath

I wish I was a psychopath. To feel no emotion, or at least not remorse; that would be great. After all, what is the point of remorse, and sympathy? Nothing. It is bad enough having to worry about yourself, but with those stupid emotions, you have to share in everyone else’s misery. It is simply no fair.

That is why I have been training myself against emotion.  The way I do this is I simply tell myself that nothing really matters. Nothing has any real meaning behind it, that is just what your body tells you as a survival mechanism. Everything just simply is. I mean what really does matter? Life? Why does that matter? No matter what we do with our lives, we are all simply going to die someday. Anything we do is to stay alive and to enhance our lives, but if life does not matter, then nothing matters. So why have emotion? There is no reason.

Unfortunately, it is not quite that simple. Emotions are buried into the very core of your being. So to fully eradicate them, you must continuously tell yourself that nothing has any meaning. You must then imagine scenarios that should create a large emotional response, and then tell yourself it does not matter, and keep telling yourself that, until you truly believe it. This is how I have overcome my fear of dying. If my death does not really matter, then why should I be worried about it? There is no reason.

This is all very well, but the thing is, you can never really know how you will respond to something until it actually happens. You can tell yourself all you want that you truly believe nothing really matters, but the only way to know you truly believe that is to put yourself in a real emotional situation.

That is why I am here. I am right outside a Marathon gas station, peering through the window at the woman sitting behind the counter. She is my target. I feel the heavy silver revolver in my pocket, and check to make sure it is loaded one last time. I am about to test if I have truly rid myself of emotion. I start to walk up to the small building, and as I get closer the adrenaline takes me and a fall into what is close to a sprint. I get to the building, fling open the door, and shove myself inside. The woman barely glances up from her People Magazine, when I raise the heavy gun, point it at her head, and pull the trigger.

I was not in there long enough to see what I had done. All I really made out was the red spatter of blood on the wall behind her. I ran down a side street nearby, then cut into a neighborhood. I could hear police sirens in the distance. I did it. I killed someone.

When I got home, I did not try to dispose of the weapon, or change out of my black clothes. I just sat on the couch, and flipped on the TV. After watching a low budget Western film, I went up to bed.

I was doing well so far, I thought. I had not yet thrown up, or broken down crying. I had not lost my appetite, as I scarfed down a large bag of Doritos over the duration of the western. Perhaps I had truly trained myself out of emotion.

I sat in my car across the street from the cemetery, where the service was being held. I watched as the close friends and family members of the deceased weeped. I watched as those who did not know her as well looked solemn. Then I watched as her four year old son was held in his father’s arms. He was too young to understand the concept of death.

“I want Mommy,” he probably complained. “Where’s Mommy?”

Then his father would say,”Mommy isn’t here anymore, bud.”

“But I want her,” he would say, not understanding how his mother could be there at one moment but gone another.

“Well she’s gone. She went away, to a nice place... to heaven,” his father would say, trying to blink back the tears in order to not frighten the child.

“Why did she leave?”

“Well.... God needed her. So He brought her to Heaven. But don’t you worry. She will always be right here, looking out for you.”

“But I want her now!”

His father just hugs the motherless child, while the two cry. One missing his mommy, the other missing his wife.

I watched this, and imagined these words, and felt nothing. No emotion, no sympathy for the boy who would never again feel the warmth or love of his mother’s hugs.

I felt nothing, because nothing mattered. That’s what I told myself, and I believed it, truly. So if nothing mattered, then what was the point of living? There was none.

I felt the heavy revolver in my pocket.

Nothing mattered.

I took the gun, shoved it in my mouth and pulled the trigger.