His Name Was Jeff

They were too late upon reaching him. Blood was splattered on the steel floor as the culprit rose over the image of the broken corpse, drooling guiltless in the pool of his own delusion. The skull was cracked from the inside, its silence telling the story of its own tragedy. Beside the pair, a metal weight rested on the floor as if dropped there on a moment's notice, neglected, as it rolled off a distance, clunking continuously. This must have been the instrument. The long awaited bane.

His killer was hurled down to the floor all of a sudden as the warden bent over his body. He traced a finger on the golden hair as if to check if they too had life cut out of the strands. Nothing moved, no one breathed a sound. For the first time the dead man knew the absence of hunger.

The body was once beautiful. Even then as it grew more lifeless the light didn't wane; he was as golden as he ever was. At the same instant, he stopped being human and drifted into something altogether alien. From godless, he learned how to pray, to be in peace amidst the clamor that surrounded his history. They wanted him to perish, but if perishing paid their dues he wouldn't have been there in the first place. They thought he should be locked up in some asylum; others wanted him well under.

Now dead, they would come to wonder if justice had been served. They would claim that dying a thousand times could have hardly sufficed. And yet, it was bizarre to have ended here, by the hands of someone who had nothing to do with it. Whoever it was, he managed to make it quick; painless, even, if you compare it to his inventory of ghastly rituals. If it was to end this way, why not relinquish the chance to those who loved those he killed and then defiled? Didn't he deserve that above everyone else?

But he loved them too, in his unique and overwhelming way. And it was that love that brought him here, in the darkness, in a complete halt.