Paris, 1927 –
“I am 19 years old. My name is Mohammed Firo – I chose it at the age of thirteen. I do not know my real name, or if I even had one. A Muslim first name and a Christian last name because it was the only name that didn’t sound completely boring. I’ve been killing people all my life and living off the money I steal from them. The mafia even pays me to kill sometimes. Unfortunately for you, they paid me to kill you.”
This one wasn’t interesting enough but it wasn’t too boring. Okay, I’ll go with that.
Every time I killed someone, I liked to introduce myself. If they seem interesting enough, I would like to run a little conversation with them. None of them were interesting enough, though. They were only frightened.
I waited in the back alley for the man in the red coat to walk in. He was the target for the night. The fat man came and I said, showing him my two faced hammer, “I am 19 years old. My name is Mohammed Firo – I chose it at the age of thirteen. I do not know my real name, or if I even had one. A Muslim first name and a Christian last name because it was the only name that didn’t sound completely boring. I’ve been killing people all my life and living off the money I steal from them. The mafia even pays me to kill sometimes. Unfortunately for you, they paid me to kill you. Let’s talk.”
The happiness of rum on his face vanished almost instantaneously.
Oh this face, I loved it. I’ve seen it so many times but I still can’t get enough of it. How they all are reduced to wrinkles carved with fear and their voices become shrill and unbearably annoying. I want to skin his face out and put in a frame. It’s beautiful what the survival human instincts make us do.
But this fat man didn’t even introduce himself. I like submissive prey like this one. I can toy around with them easily. First I crushed his right elbow with my hammer. Then his left, then his right knee and finally his left knee. He screamed like a girl and I had to do something about his voice, it was pathetic. I shoved the face of my hammer in his mouth and jumped on it. The hammer slid smoothly, crushed his tongue, a couple of teeth and whatever else there was. I stuck a knife in his throat just to be sure.
That was the highlight of my day. Just another boring day. I left the man there and got paid for the job right after.
You see, I need to live an interesting life everyday. Everything bores me. I am not a cynic, I have seen what the common man sees, and I found no interest in it. I want the blood inside me to boil with desire, to scream at me, to be on the bloody edge every second of my life. Being able to give death to someone’s life while they beg for it was a great pass time. What a man can do in order to live is always unpredictable, aah, it is so satisfying to see someone wriggle and writhe in pain.
You see, my life has been a search, yes, for something interesting, something that will keep my heart beating faster by the second – quite romantic if you think of it.
I came back to the garage. I wiped the blood off the hammer. I laid in bed for a minute or two and then fell asleep.
(2010) –
And then I woke up.
Shit, that dream again.
I’m Gustav. I’m a 19 year old boy living in Bangalore and I’m having this dream of a Mohammed Firo all the time. It feels like I’m inside his mind. I see what he sees, I hear what he hears and I feel what he feels.
And it’s not a pretty space. He’s a murderer. He kills people in the goriest ways possible. I was in his mind when he shot a man dead and then plucked out his eyeball with a fork, bit into it and spat it back out.
I don’t know why there are scratches all over the wall paper in my room and my nails bleed a lot. If you’re reading this, please help me.
My psychologist doesn’t pick my calls any more.