Poison Pen

Written By: Meghan Haydon

Dear Diary,

I have made a wonderful discovery today. To be successful at anything requires sacrifices: time, energy, patience, sanity. Growing up in a world of fantasy, I always knew that I was going to be a writer, and you did too. You have been my most loyal audience, listening to all that I have had to say since day one. You know that I have always been willing to do whatever it takes, albeit I never could have predicted that it would turn out this way. I will not attempt to justify my actions, but just know that they were committed in the name of research. We can never expect to improve without straying from the moral compass and venturing into the unknown. Controversy breeds progress. I'm sure the people of Alexandria were not exactly singing Herophilos's praise when he dissected the first human cadaver. Risks must be taken. You must be willing to be hated in order to be loved.

Something I often heard in my creative writing classes when having difficulty writing creatively is "write what you know." But how is one expected to possess the ability to describe, say, death without having died? Imagination, of course, but that is what sets me aside from the rest. I, unlike my cowardly peers, have taken a monumental risk. I, unlike my slothful competition, am willing to go to unimaginable lengths for the sake of my craft. You must be worried, I can tell. What have I done? I have always told you everything, sparing no details, but now I am hesitant to share this with you, I must admit. What will you, my one true friend, think of me? I don't even know what to think of myself at the moment. You have always been my most loyal companion, holding my darkest secrets like a titanium vault, and for that, I will confide in you once again--perhaps for the final time.

As you are well aware from my many previous entries, life has not been playing out quite the way I always imagined it would. It's funny how when you're young you feel so invincible and in control of your future, but when the future becomes the present, everything goes to shit. You are informed by your peers and your superiors that your work is average, mediocre at best. You are no modern-day Shakespeare. The piles of rejection letters accumulating in your desk drawer only solidify this. You had never failed at anything before, but then here you are, failing at the one thing you are good at. Average. You continue school in hopes of fixing whatever seems to be broken, but find that nothing is changing, only the increasing amount of debt you are in. You are drowning in it. So you drop out of the school of your dreams; the one you believed would hold all the answers, the one where you believed you might finally find love, the one where you believed you might finally find yourself. As a child, you filled your library with stories scribbled, illustrated, and stapled together all on your own, and you were praised for your "wild imagination." As a child, becoming a writer seemed entirely possible--unavoidable, even. As an adult, you found yourself bullshitting your way through everything. You could not have predicted things would turn out this way, just like you could not have predicted that drunk driver would run your sister off the road only weeks after getting her license. And now, here you are.

You are the one driving, inebriated by your own desperation and shame.

Today, I have made a wonderful discovery. I have been trying much too hard for much too long to write about things I have no knowledge concerning. Write what you know. This is a difficult task when you have hardly lived your life. What do I know that's worth sharing? What stories do I have that are worth telling? Until now, I had nothing to offer the world. But with my newfound knowledge, I shall dig a shallow grave for my failures and sweep those rejection letters beneath the topsoil. They will nourish my blossoming new career as the little critters eat away at them, just as they ate away at me for so many years. And these detritivores will consume other organic matter: plants, animal carcasses, human remains. They burrow and crawl and chew in unmarked graves. I can hear them, can you hear them too?

As you know, I have always had a fascination with the macabre, a connection to the darkness. I love to be disturbed. Plagues, wars, murders, genocides--I lust for the knowledge that others turn their ignorant cheek at. Perhaps I have become desensitized somehow, but the more unsettling, the more captivated I am. Growing up, I'm sure you can recall, I often wondered if there was something wrong with me because of this. Do I suffer from some sort of antisocial personality disorder? How could I? I feel empathy. Sometimes I believe I can feel the pain of others more intensely than they can--is that possible? I can feel the suffering of the world, feel it wrapping around my bones and coiling around my heart, constricting. Either way, I am no sociopath. I am an artist, a genius, an explorer. I am a cartographer, charting new waters. I am a uranographer, deciphering the stars. I am a conquistador, claiming new land, spreading my wealth of knowledge to those unbeknownst.

Shall I share with you what I have done now? I can sense you growing impatient, writhing with anticipation. I am beating around the bush, I admit, but I want to relish this confession.

Have you noticed I changed my pen today?

Today, my dearest Diary, I have done something awful. What's even worse is that I do not feel remorseful as I should. Quite the opposite, actually. I have been liberated. I feel rejuvenated.

I am Ponce de Leon sipping from the fountain of youth. I must remind you, I did not do this to satisfy some primal, carnal urge sequestered within myself all these years. No. It was strictly for research purposes. However, I must concede that I quite enjoyed myself. I have done something awful, but it has brought about a marvelous revelation.

Write what you know.

I visited Gloria Nelson's apartment around midnight. She lived across the hall. Apartment 319. She was smoking a cigarette, hacking up a lung. Again. I couldn't sleep. Again. She was surprised to see me, but granted me access to her sanctuary nevertheless. She believed we were friends, the fool. I was a wolf in sheep's clothing, infiltrating the Garden of Eden, seeking the tree of knowledge. I could taste it, both the good and the evil. We sat on the hand-me-down couch with miss-match cushions, talking about nothing. The studio apartment was more reminiscent of a seedy motel than a biblical paradise. The walls were yellowed from years of nicotine poisoning, the shag carpet looked as though it hadn't been vacuumed in ages (it hadn't), and there was a mysterious stain beside the coffee table. Coffee? Vomit? Bong water? Who knows. She had the personal hygiene of a sewer rat, and I'm sure her apartment would have smelled just like one too, were it not for the potency of her treasured menthol cigarettes and marijuana. They singed the nose hairs and masked any other possibly present odors. I remember feeling like something was crawling on me sitting on that couch that was most likely found abandoned in an alley.

I offered to make her a drink.

"What's your poison?"

"Surprise me," she said.

So I fixed her a dirty martini with two olives and a deadly little twist. When I handed her the drink, she asked me where mine was. "Oh, I don't drink," I told her, "but I know you do." She just laughed, so trusting, so unsuspecting. She seemed delighted to have been seen, understood, judgement free.

I took my seat back on the couch, folding my hands in my lap to hide my sweaty palms and trembling fingers. I watched intently as she took her first sip, holding my breath, waiting.

Waiting. She continued babbling on about nothing of my interest. Like how her sister was getting divorced again because her deadbeat husband number three knocked up the nanny and blah blah blah. When there was finally silence, I knew it had worked.

"Gloria?" I asked. She just smiled at me, an intoxicated, unconscious, unknowing smile.

Her chin sunk to her chest, glass tipping like a scale in her slackening hand. I smiled at her in return and calmly made my way to the kitchen, grabbing a large knife from the drawer. I returned to my catatonic "friend" on the couch. I took the glass from her hand and set it on the cluttered table. God forbid I be the cause of yet another stain on that horrific shag carpet. You could hide a body in there.

I grabbed her hands and pulled her to her feet, guiding her--well, more like dragging her--slowly and clumsily to the bathroom, and laid her in the tub. She didn't have a single clue about what was going on or what awaited her, and she didn't seem to care. I removed her clothes and set them aside to be placed in her hamper.

Write what you know.

I paused for a moment, gripping the kitchen knife in my shaking right hand. I tried to steady myself. I was nervous, dreadfully nervous. My heart was pounding in my ears, or maybe it was her's. She wasn't dead, not yet, but she didn't move, didn't speak, didn't even have her eyes open. She just laid there, lifeless, her breathing shallow and paced. She may as well have been gone already.

The power I felt in that moment was unlike anything I had ever experienced before. In that moment, I was invincible. She was every man I never had the strength or courage to stand up to, every degrading and misogynistic remark, every rejection letter, every pitiful eye. She was my key, my lamb. She was the sacrifice I had to make--I had no choice.

Write what you know.

When I plunged the eight inch kitchen blade into the chest of Gloria Nelson, I was reborn, as she will be too. I remember the way her eyes shot open, the shock they held as her mouth fell agape, but there was no noise. None other than the dull crack and thud of the knife hitting her sternum. She looked almost relieved, once the initial shock wore off, like I had done for her what she never had the courage to do for herself. In a panic, however, as I had never stabbed anyone before and didn't know whether or not she would scream, I retracted the knife and slammed it into her abdomen. Repeatedly. I couldn't control it! I was frenzied in my action, driven by a force greater than myself. I was Moses, parting the red sea.

Are you impressed, my dear friend? I knew you would be. How could I ever have doubted you? You should have seen me, Diary. I was like a goddess of mercy, an angel of death.

Her eyes remained open the entire time, and I stared directly into them. I saw the very moment they extinguished. I should have been horrified, but I wasn't. Rather, I was overcome with the curiosity of a child learning what death is for the first time. I thought it would have ended there, when her life ended. Gloria Nelson was dead, but my experiment was not yet finished.

Write what you know.

I splayed open her chest like a frog in a high school biology class. I was Herophilos, she was my cadaver, apartment 319 our Alexandria. I dislodged one of her rib bones and wrapped it in a hand towel for later. I removed her stagnant heart, marveling at the tension of the musculature. I was reminded of the ancient Egyptians and how they would weigh the heart of the dead during the burial process. The organ was placed on one side of the scale, a feather on the other. If the two did not balance out, the deceased and their heavy heart would be condemned to an eternity of nonexistence. Gloria's engorged heart most certainly weighed more than a feather. I continued to remove her organs, one by one, placing them into a bucket I had found under the sink and smothering them with an obscene amount of salt.

I spent the remainder of the night cleaning up my mess.

When I returned home, the early morning sun was already sifting in through the parted blinds of my apartment. It was a miracle I did not encounter anyone in the hallway, no over-achieving early morning joggers or early-rising dog walkers. I was wholly alone.

Within the comfort of my own space, I unveiled the rib bone from its hand towel sheath, and I whittled it into a narrow point, much like a quill. And with crimson ink, I bleed my confession into your pages. I hope you don't mind.

With her heavy heart and blackened lungs, my neighbor in apartment 319 has faded into oblivion. I have made sure of that. And now, my dearest Diary, I will write what I know--I know so much now!

I am no sociopath, there is nothing wrong with me, I am simply allowing myself to be.

Humanity by nature is a depraved species, though we love to pretend that is not so. We find excitement in perturbation. This is why we watch horror movies, read thriller novels, jump out of planes. We crave the things that bring us closer to death--it fascinates us, the uncertainty of what awaits us at the end. Is there an afterlife, or are we all condemned to the same nonexistence of our dearly departed Gloria?

Today, I have made a wonderful sacrifice for the sake of all those depraved individuals who are too weak to do what I have done. To experience death is to finally understand life. I have not faced death myself, but I have seen it, I have witnessed it, I have caused it. And for me, that is enough, simply to know.

Meghan Haydon is a writer based in Southern California. She is finishing up her BA in creative writing from the University of Washington. Her work is forthcoming in Barzakh Magazine, Bacchanalia Magazine, and Flash Phantoms Magazine. She is currently working on her first novel.