Whirrrr. Zzzz. Can you hear me? Whizzzzzzz. I will begin again. Crrr. Click. Click. I think you will have to suffer another recitation. Whirrr. Zzzz. Another one. I will give… Whirr… another rendition. A thespian always rehearses.

  All my life, I wanted to be innocent. Do you know what that means? Innocent? I don’t. Never have. Never will. I understand that innocence has associations: Purity, Hearts, Souls, Cherubs, Youth... Light, Heaven, God. But I never had that. All I had was the opposite of innocence.

  I am already repeating myself. I always do. Repeating this same old tired line. I want to be innocent. Why can’t I learn how to be? I am guilty of never being innocent. If there is justice, someone would’ve already hanged me. But they haven’t. This is how the world is. A bunch of crooks, and I’m the worst of them.

  I already said that, didn’t I? Before, I mean. This is how I said it all, before I had to start anew. Anew. Rejuvenating. Like a scarab beetle. Whirr. Zzz. Click. Click.

  This is a tape recording. I made another one. But I lost it. That was my last tape. There are no others. Somehow, I found another tape. This tape. It will not be my last tape, because I will never let it go. I will never stop repenting. Word for word. Truth for truth. Tooth for tooth.

  I remember murdering the first victim, or victims, when I was sleepwalking. How many years now? Countless to me. But it was a decade and half ago. When I was eleven. Just a child. But I was not innocent, you see, since I shot the neighbour and his wife. The snug revolver, my weapon of choice, as far as sleepers may choose, blew the man’s brains out. Then the screaming wife, or so I hear.

  And when I was supposed to be innocently indulging dreams and fancy, too. Believe me, I got right out of bed, walked across the house, and shot the neighbours. A man. A wife. Only middle aged, the two of them. Nothing woke me. Still, I dreamt of castles and dragons and man-sized mice. I always had vivid dreams, and nothing pulled me away from those images in sleep. Not the world. Not even murder. Not even my red right hand.

  Can you believe it? I did not. Not at first. Then the police came. Handcuffed. Confiscated everything. I heard my parents crying. Why? Why? How could a little boy do this? I did not know then. I do not know now. Only the strange idylls of half-conscious dreaming moved me back then. Even now, I am a thrall to dreams. Dreams come from some inner depth. That unseen, sleeping realm of realms, where only the true spirit of myself may haunt my psyche.

  Despite my youth, despite the recklessness of pure violence, despite the insanity of my crime, the judge sent me away for merely sleepwalking. Sleepwalking. Now can you believe it? I never pissed the bed, never raised my voice, never muttered a curse, nor showed any of the many faces, or masques, wrath may don. But they sent me to the deepest pit of hell. For sleepwalking. Goodbye, youth. Goodbye, innocence. I was guilty. Guiltier than Pontius Pilate. Or the Pharisees. Or Jesus.

  This is what you heard before. In your dreams. I know. For when I close my eyes, deep down in this dark hole, I wake to be inside your own body. Indeed, I am an eidolon behind the meniscus, that glass dome, of your right eye.

  And you are dreaming, I know, as all somnambulists must. But you are walking through the night, pace by pace. And I see through the opened eyelid, through the lens of your eye; as the shrouds and tenebrae dance around. Will-o-wisps. Will-o-wisps. Will you wisp away, during this dream? No. I am inside your eye. Inside your head. And this is the last recording I’ll ever give, for this is the full confession of my powers.

  You walk out of your bedroom. The sheets, pallid like corpse flesh, drape in motleys of mess behind you. Chaos woke you, didn’t it? But you are still dreaming. Maybe you dream of the unseen fathoms of the ocean, or the bands of stars beyond all human experience. But you walk out. Out into the corridor. Towards the parents’ room. They are snoring. Always snoring and farting and mumbling in their unsure dreams of other things.

  You already have it. The pistol. It sits snug in the hollow of your hand. A mark, a stigma. A barrel hangs by your thigh. A little void on the end of its flute of metal. You walk into the room of snores, that primal scene, then raise the revolver. Oh god, I am seeing it, as you are dreaming of the worlds of darkness and the terrible monsters inside, and, oh God, I see the death of innocence. It comes. Like the deluge that sent the world into disarray. And only the screaming wasps come. Wailing maelstroms of unweal.

  Squeeze. Squeeze. Like a baby coming out. The hammer comes down. Banging away: Vulcan at his anvil. Pounding, hammering, shooting. Battery! Battery! Let loose the cannonade! And then, in the deathly mist that rises, I see the blood and wounds and gore. The mess of innocence. Guilt sinks into the flesh, deeper than any bullet ever will.

  And when I am trapped inside your eyes, inside the theatre of your mind, remember that I am dreaming this with you. This world of obscenities. A court without a just man. No judge, no jury. Only the madness of criminal minds begetting criminal minds. And more power creating more power, as dictates and legislatures send more wailing souls into the mouth of Tartarus.

  And I think your parents are screaming. Even in death. For their mangled bodies slump along the blood-drenched bed; those sheets, as pale as a ghost, now drink in the wine of Dionysus. And the wounds gape like screaming maws. They open. Open. More high notes. Shrill. And I am dreaming this right now, just as I am asleep, speaking these words, on a tape that will not be my last, for I will remember this all. I will remember this all. Down in the blackest pit of Tartarus. Where only the souls of sinners linger.

  You do hear me, don’t you? I know. I am in your head. In a way, you were always bound to be guilty. As I was. As I am now bound to be guilty. No innocence in youth. No innocence in sleeping. Only dreams of purity, of stars and seas beyond, of everything going right. But nothing ever does. I know. Because this is the millionth time I have said it. I am not born to be innocent. And neither are you.

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  Whizz. Whirrrr. Zzzzz. Click. Click. Click. Zzz. Whizzz. Whirrr. Click. Click. Click.

  Whizz. I think you can hear me, still. Can you hear me? All my life… Whizz. Whirr. Zzz. All my life, I wanted to be innocent. Whizz. Whirr. Click. Click.

  I know you have heard it before. I will give you… Whirrr. Zzzzz. Another rendition. All thespians have to. Whirrr. Whizzz. Click. Click. Click.

  I am inside the belly of the beast, that is to say, inside your mind. Is it a surprise that Tartarus is the seat of your soul? You were my mother, my father, my pistol, my hand, my finger. All at the very same time. Time is not what it used to be. For, here in my damnation, I believe that you cast time to the wind. And it has only run like a waterfall, over my ears, down into the nothingness of dream-wells.

  The dream-wells were here, filled with blood. That is how I killed you. You and mother. You and father. I took their lives, as I took your life. And then I turned the pistol onto myself. The barrel sat snugly beneath the hollow of the jaw-bottom. I do not know if my teeth, my real adult teeth, the canine and the molars, had set in yet. No. I was still too young.

  And when the shot came. It was clash. It was clangour. Lightning. Thunder. A barrage. A cannonade. Then, as I slipped out of that corporeal substance, that body of mine, I slipped through the air. And I went down into the nothingness of the dream-wells, where only the blood sat like stagnant waters.

  So, that is where you are hearing me from. I do not know how I got this dictaphone, if it is one, and not merely some figment of fancy. The vermilion, so dark it becomes sable, drowns me. It covers me. Shades me. Shrouds my vision. It is a mantle; it changes me. I forgot how you looked, both you and father, and both you and mother. Only the horrible images of your dead bodies were there, blown to bits, gory. Skull fragments, pulsating blood, opened wounds. A

  I am here, listening, seeing, being you, becoming you. Not only you. Because what is really you? Your self-conceptions? Your dreams? Your pain? Pleasure? I do not know. If there is a theatre in your mind, I am inside it, dancing and playing as you.

  Sure, Shakespeare played his own characters. And I am sure that Shakespeare’s own characters played him. There is no layer beyond the play, but there are layers to the play. Is that what makes sense to you? You in the audience, or you as play, or you as character, or you as player, or you as the origin.

  Since I am becoming you, do not think that I am merely you. For I am everything about you, or everything a part of you. Every infinitesimal part, every infinity, every infinity of infinity. Yes, you hear these words, and know I am part of it all, as you are all part of me. We are intertwined, indirectly and vaguely, as all things must become intertwined. From body and mind. From pleasure and pain. From fear, love, hate, attraction, wrath, kindness.

  Light and darkness. Do you not think those are intertwined? Like a body is intertwined with its nerves, and the idea that there is a body, or nerves. Thoughts, passion, feelings, blood, marrow, bone, spit. You sense me, an eidolon upon your eyes, upon your tongue, upon your heart. I swim through veins, I dance inside your ears, I kiss your lips, when you kiss others. The bullet was the only thing that severed the connections, that cut out the tendons, that buried the bodies in the dream-wells.

  Because, inside this dream-well, there is only me talking. How do you not know that this speech I have given, or the one before, was just another play? But you must think there is something more to life than me. Something more to life than hearing another voice. Something more to hearing a voice than life. And whatever lay within, without. I am the realisation we are one, the murder, the murderer, the bullet, the body, the wound, the screams, the blood, the son, the father, the mother, the victim, the original sin.

  For it was the first sin for me to say this all, to say that there is really no difference between what is deemed evil, and what is deemed good. I am not strong here, down in this well of darkness, this City of Dis, but I believe that you are strong for hearing me. You are my god. In your infinite spanning goodness, with your shadows that border on myriads of light, you hear me. Still, it must be hard to hear from me. I am not a good person.

  I committed foul deeds. Crimes are foul; they spoil the fruits of life, making life worse and worse. Do you know why? Because the fruit of wisdom, that Eden I dream of, was never supposed to be spoiled. It was supposed to be eaten. Enticing, as it was. You know that. The fruit was supposed to spoil Eve and, by extension, Adam. But I think the fruit was never supposed to be spoiled by any Eve, any Adam, any Seth, any son of sin.

  But the fruit of my life was you. My father. My mother. My kith, and kin. And I only found to spoil them. Like a worm that burrows into an apple, I bored my way into your skulls. Killing what made me. Athena, the Goddess of War, emerged from Zeus’ head. But nothing came out of your head, father, except blood and bile and humours.

  Kill, devour, destroy, rot. I am a murrain, am I not? That is what a son of sin must be. A plague, a locust, a rust. No orchard, no field, no crop. None could stop my wrath. Reap what you sow, as the saying goes, so you must reap death, as death is what is sown by life. Once you kissed mother, I was kissing her too; once you kissed father, I kissed the cold lips of death, too.

  The pain was brief. But damnation of anguish, guilt, and unweal? Now, that is forever. Why else would I be in the dream-well? Where I can only dream of blood, death, screams, darkness, and only imagine the idea that there is more to life than blood, death, screams, darkness. I am tainted. I am a prisoner. Neither a martyr, a saint, nor a philistine. I am merely a voice in the darkness, and you have chosen to hear me.

  The dream-wells, they came from you, too. They are the burrowed holes inside your skulls, the blood-red marks, the stigma. I live there now, inside my own crime. I drown in guilt. I am born inside this cavern of gore. My caterwauling may never cease. A neonate must scream at the world it is hurled into. Why would I consent to being born, or being a killer, or being a sinner? Mother, father, you hearing this, do not stop hearing me cry. But the crying ceases, for another encore. Whirrrrrrrr. Zz. Zz. Zz. You hear it again, like the hum of a bee’s drone. Whirr. Zz. Zz. Zz. Yes, I am the spawn inside its cell. Larva squirm in the wounds. Zz. Zzz. Zzzzz. A river, bloody, foaming. Whirr. To hell with life cycles, the only cycle is that of death. Zz. Zzzzz. Click. Click. Begin again, where it all began, in the wounds of Christ, in the miscarriages of God, in the death of Mother Mary. Zz. Zzzzzz. Click. Click. Click. Whirrrrrrr. Zzzz.

  The cycle continues. I must speak again. Whirrrr. Zzzz. Can you hear me? Whizzzzzzz. I will begin again. Crrr. Click. Click. Suffer another recitation. Whirrr. Zzzz. Another one. I will give… Whirr… give one final act. The play is not done. This one is about death. Whirrr. Zzzzz. But you have heard it all before. Whirr. Zz. Click. Click. Click.