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By Root 435 0

several times to make sure the deed is done? I have considered everything. I will leave nothing to chance. The Audiers’ cat will be my guinea pig. I will plunge the dagger in his back as practice. I don’t want Jean Luze to have to worry about anything. Suspicion will initially fall on him. I will stage things so that the police shift their investigation and conclude that it was suicide. Invoking her upcoming departure, I will ask Félicia to inscribe a moving note on the bottom of that family photo taken on the day of Jean-Claude’s baptism, something along these lines: “Adieu, Claire, I leave you here with everything I love.” The police will not see through this because their plate is full: the police only care about politics.

After killing Félicia, I will put the dagger in her hand. They will say: “She committed suicide because she couldn’t bear to leave the country, poor Madame Luze!”

The cat is dead. I followed it, lured it with fresh fish, raised my hand high and struck. From my window, I look upon its dead body. It collapsed in the yard beneath my window. Its legs are already stiff. Its lips, curled in an awful grin, reveal sharp white teeth. “Good riddance!” Augustine will exclaim when she sees it. And Mme Audier will mourn it in good form, lamenting the demise of this sly and deceitful animal she never thought to feed in its lifetime.

Before it dropped dead, the cat looked at me. This is what I can’t forget: its eyes. Pathetic! A cat! Nothing but a cat! And yet I’m gnawed by remorse. Is it because in my eyes it was innocent?

The thought of crime haunts me. It is eating away at me. I feel as weak as a convalescent. What am I waiting for? Sleep has fled from me. I think of Jane. I think about her little one and I want to scream.

I am ready; Félicia is alone in her room. I am going to go in. In the meantime, I practice killing her in my head.

My teeth chatter. I bite my fist. I’m nauseous, sick to my stomach. My mind is blank. No, no! I mustn’t admit that I will never have the courage to kill Félicia. I will die instead of her. It is time for me to put an end to these desperate struggles. I’m burning up. Is it fever? So much the better! Come, delirium. It will give me a taste of death in life. I am used to burying myself all on my own. These plunges into the void are comforting. I hope they will spare me from reality’s torments. Thanks to them, I’ve become familiar with the idea of death. It doesn’t frighten me. I have my very own coat of mail, my own shell and insulation: my imagination.

Blood hammers my temples. Hammer blows raining on metal, my head bursts, blood runs down my face. There is some on my sheets, my shirt, on the floor, everywhere. No, it’s not true. I’m the one seeing red. From anger. I’m angry with myself. I overestimated myself and seeing my cowardice makes me sick.

I am nothing but a heap of mutilated flesh. I’m the one dying, murdered. The dagger buried somewhere in my body. I don’t know where exactly. Ah! The hemorrhage of despair! Oh, to disappear! If only I could disappear without leaving a trace. It’s impossible. One doesn’t disappear that way. I exist. I am free, face-to-face with myself. I must act and this time I must not fail. Will I be up to it? Yes. My pride is intact. It will back me. The moon smiling in the sky scoffs at me. Its serenity reminds me of Félicia’s. Flashes from the past! The long and tedious unreeling of the sad film of my life …

Contradictory feelings claw at each other within me. I am seething with them. My heart is in shreds. What can be done without passion? The lukewarm are like reptiles: they crawl on all fours or drag themselves about. I don’t envy them. I’d rather croak standing. Who says suicide is an act of cowardice? That’s just an easy excuse to resign ourselves to living with our disgust, filthy puppets that we are with a hole in our stomachs to be filled three times a day! At last, like some vigilante, I’ve accosted life. I imagine grabbing it by the collar. I am deciding my own fate. I juggle my own existence! I’m drunk! I clench my fist tightly.