The Semantics of Murder

"The difference between a crime of evil and a crime of illness is the difference between a sin and a symptom."

I've never understood why people have an affinity for living. Why would you want to survive?
Survival, not death, is the real mystery. The instinct to cling on gasping and serve your time is a concept that is both underrated and under-explored. Even in the face of unending pain and inevitable death, humans beg for the chance to live in the world they've done nothing but complain about after having destroyed it. I've never understood the appeal.

Recently, I've had the pleasure of discussing the semantics of murder with Cavie and Akshar, and they've helped me realise what's so beautiful about murder. A particular method of murder, incidentally.

I am stunned by the intimacy of strangulation.

The act of stifling the life force of a person, somewhat absorbing them into you, gaining strength from their growing weakness and thriving off their futile willingness to survive... It's thoroughly engaging.
It has none of the distance of a gun shot or stab wound; none of the impersonality of a weapon. It is a passive way to kill, and an almost feminine way to die. The act of murder is a calculating decision. It is not acted out for the moment of death, but rather for the process of dying. It is an act of real and complete engagement, for it is intensely personal. This is how you kill when love meets hate, when you become so consumed by your victim that your body must become the weapon. It's an intense desire to crush the fragile windpipe and feel the warmth ebbing out of a body before it becomes inanimate in your arms.

And then, the quiet aftermath ensues.
Introspection. Time for both the killer and the victim to reflect on how they could both have avoided this outcome. Time to consider their flaws. It's a brazen opportunity for pure remorse as the victim experiences a final expiring embrace. Now can you see how little there is that separates love from hate?

You've watched the grand finale. There is a certain romance in dying in front of an audience. You wish for a beauty in death, not unlike Juliet or Cleopatra. But in reality, death is an ugly affair. Stay ugly.

All that's left is the rest of your life. Don't make a fool of yourself by trying to escape. Endure the purgatory of waiting and take the consequences without objection. This is the story of your life. You've spent a lifetime enduring the mundane plot with predictable twists, and you're about to experience the short-lived peak of another. This is why you live. This is why it has never occurred to you to end it all - your life is a vigorous and persistent search in the hopes that your story will end differently, and not merely confirm the absence of something essential and elusive.

When I imagine death, it is rich in its anticipation, but so utterly barren after delivery. It becomes very quickly anti-climatic to me. If I cannot fathom love, then I cannot experience the agony of loss. I do not feel your pain. I am only able to observe the gaping void within me where the stem of my humanity must have withered and died before it could blossom.