the man who killed me

You know how you always hear about the people who are haunted by those they've murdered?

It doesn't work that way.  It's actually the opposite.

When you wrap the rope around someone's neck, you aren't only tying off their air but tying yourself to them.  Think of a celebrity who has been killed and you'll know their killer.  Think of the store clerk shot by the robber.  Think of the children cut up by their classmate.  The slain become slaves, tethered to their torturers, yanked by the neck and forced to follow the ones in control of the rope.  Your killer will stay with you like a footprint in your soul.

When I died, a piece of him went straight to hell with me.  A voice trapped in my ear, a memory locked in my mind, a touch tucked under my skin, forever bubbling up and seeping through every pore and part of me.  Killing me over and over.  Breaking and mending and shattering and tending.  My eternal punishment.  An inescapable escalation of pain and humility, scarred along my body, navigating the wounds to find an impossible solution.  The bruising, the petechiae, the shattered glass of innocence lodged into my chest and arms.

He did so much harm and still does.  Time has tackled the worst of it but he still manages to come through clearly on certain days.  The rope is slacked, never severed, and I can still feel its pull.  He still manages to sting.  Yet he is untouchable.  I was rendered a ghost of bone but he is the indelible demon, intangible and translucent.  God-like, deaf and unwavering in decision and deed.  Stealing my life while robust in his own.  Ending me over and over, my sinew, soul and spirit crumbling forever under the weight of his hand, his tongue, his indifference.

Sometimes my hell is presented as a two-way mirror.  I sit and watch, locked down and languid, my eyes pried open as he grooms himself for hurting, corrupting the clean, bashing his brethren, seducing saints, all the while enjoying the spoils of the world.  He combs the teeth from his hair, washes the blood from his skin.  He fingers the strings of his guitar, floating up a melody of melancholy, a soundtrack to my suffering.  I see him wag his tongue and smile his small-toothed smile.  Through the glass, I can see what he's done to me, to others.  I can see him.

But he only sees himself.