Accepted Murder

Chapter 7

Michael Zander was sick in more ways than one. And, while the ways could link themselves to one another, it wasn’t easy for one to decipher between the many. 

Ever since he’d been a child, Michael Zander had suffered from a mental illness that not only caused uncontrollable anger, but hallucinations, hearing things that weren’t really there, and, moments of blindness where he blacks out until he finishes what he started, or intended to start. While that doesn’t make sense now, after hearing his story, things may clear up a bit.

When he turned five years old, the anger problems had begun. His parents attempted taking him to the doctors, attempted multiple medicinal cures, though, to no avail as none of them seemed to work for the toddler, and the doctors? Well, they gave up on him by the time he turned six. Most of them proclaimed that the boy was simply going through a phase, and nothing could really help him, they just had to ride it out. 

And ride it out they did. 

When the boy turned eight years old, the symptoms of his illness seemed to have disappeared; much to his parents’ relief. Though, unknown to his family, friends, doctors and peers, the disease did not fade. The boy had simply learned how to hide his symptoms, and in a way, control his anger. He figured bubbling it up until he couldn’t handle it anymore was his best option; because, even little kids know when they’re hurting their family. 

This solution lasted nearly ten years, only to fall apart just days after his eighteenth birthday and his first month of college. See, he’d, as most teenage boys do, had a crush. Maria Alans. She’d been the most beautiful girl he’d laid eyes on in his short life, and couldn’t think of any other girl he’d have preferred being with, preferred sharing his life with. So, naturally, he had to have her. But, much to his chagrin, Maria had a fiancé. 

A fiancé that he had to get rid of. 

One could guess and say that that was the moment, the moment he first saw the two kiss after the proposal, that the disease started taking the grip on him. one would assume that is was that moment, Michael Zander was no longer the man he tried to be, but the man he was destined to be; and his destiny was not something one would want to argue with. See, it was in that moment that Michael had first thought of murder as a way to get what he wanted.

He denied himself for days, imagining, though, multiple ways to kill the man that Maria had invested her into. He could see the blood of the man in every crevice of every room, he’d dream of it every night, he’d even, though he’d deny it, thought he felt the blood running through his fingers one time during class. But the fact of the matter is, no matter how hard you try to fight yourself off, destiny can only be avoided for a short time. Or so said the voices that kept telling him to do it. 

So, while he was walking through the campus one night in August, he’d seen him: Maria’s fiancé. He was alone, sitting on a bench, reading a book beneath one of the bright streetlights that flickered every now and then, as if in a bad horror film. And, a bad horror film it was. 

The voices whispered in his minds ear, pleading with him, begging him to just take something, anything, and stab it through the man’s heart. They murmured the temptation, they told him the end result, and they promised that he would get his beautiful Maria. They swore that if that man were dead before midnight, Maria would be his before New Year’s. 

And so, he walked up to the man, almost as if in a daze. He’d asked him to follow him, he had a present for Maria that he wanted him to give her, as he wouldn’t see her for a few days. He was going out of town, and who better to give it to her than her fiancé? The man stood without a second thought, not even worried that it would be one of his last actions.