Flash Fiction

Pin It

Posting here in case there's some content filter on Flashy Fiction that blocking it.

Contains offensive language and horrific violence. Please do not read if you're young, sensitive, or impressionable.


Life is what you make of it.

Bullshit. You can't make life.

but you can make decisions. You can make choices. It's not the same thing.

The first few times I killed I didn't get that. I thought the action was the thing. I was making my mark. I was claiming my name. I was staking out my space. I was the guy who blew three guys heads off on the third Sundays of three months in a row.

Hegel taught me that. The dialectic of the bitch my teacher called it. You got a man and you got a bitch. A man thinks he's the big stuff. He can boss his bitch around. But his bitch is the one actually doing things in the world. His bitch is the one making a mark.

And I wanted to be that bitch.

So I started making marks.

But Hegel was wrong. Hegel's a dumbass. Hegel's a bitch.

'Cause after you kill someone, there's no mark. The world doesn't know and doesn't care. A handful of people. Maybe a few hundred. Maybe a few thousand. That's a lot, but it's not the world.

You can't make a mark on the world. It's a lie.

But you can make a mark on yourself. You're the only thing you can mark.

At first when I realized that, I was all pissed off and crying like a little girl. I thought I'd wasted everything. Blown every chance I had.

But then I realized. I had done that. I had made a mark on myself.

The moment I decided to make pull that trigger, I marked myself. I didn't mark the world as being one person smaller. I didn't mark the guy as being dead. I marked myself as a guy who could decide to take someone's life.

I had defined myself. I had looked at the options and created my own. I had created myself. You can't create the world. You can't create things in the world; you can only rearrange them. But you can create yourself.

So don't worry. Just open your mouth wide while I turn on the drill. This won't mark you. It'll mark me.

It won't end your life.

It will define mine.