006Context
CONTENT WARNING for extensive discussions of hypothetical/fictional murder, some of it quite unapologetic, not graphic but getting slightly moreso towards the end.
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If the person you cared about more than anyone else turned out to be a murderer, newly, recently,
Would you want to know?
Would you want them to tell you?
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the shortest, most uninteresting, and most practical answer should be, "no, you fucking idiot, cause then I have to testify against you or else be complicit".
but thats boring as hell, so lets move on.
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It all depends on the context, doesn't it?
Well, maybe not. Maybe you're sitting there thinking something like, "the person I care about most? of course I want to know, of course i want them to tell me, i want to know everything, i would support them no matter what, it doesn't change a thing, honestly its kinda hot, etc etc,"
but thats nearly as entirely boring as the other answer, another extreme on the scale and thus not worth exploring.
So lets pretend that it all depends on the context.
Who did they kill? Did they deserve to die? Was it in self-defense? Was it selfish, or for someone else's sake, or accidental, or just a thoughtless and bloodthirsty compulsion?
Do these things matter to you, or is murder just murder?
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Can you seperate the worth of human life into categories?
Perhaps someone is more worthy of death if they struck first in anger, or if they had already hurt others, or were going to keep hurting others. Maybe thats a worthy murder, and then you can justify why it isn't actually murder, when you think about it.
But are you going to stop and question why, exactly, the person you care about used so much force to defend themself? If, perhaps, they could have chosen a less lethal option?
Are you going to wonder whether it was a little more than just self-defense?
Now that the seed of doubt is planted, this little inkling of curiosity... how do you feel about that?
Maybe you don't think it's such a bad thing. Maybe you feel safer, knowing what they're capable of.
Or perhaps you can never sleep soundly next to them ever again.
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What if they struck out against somebody else who was already irredeemable? Someone who had hurt and hurt and hurt others. Someone who ought be removed from the world.
Does such a person exist?
Is that the right thing to do, or the wrong thing?
If it's wrong, do two wrongs perhaps make a right after all? Does a murderer deserve murder?
What does that make them? The person you care about?
What do you do when someone else comes knocking with vengeance on their mind?
Will you become a murderer too?
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What if it were careless, accidental, irresponsible but hardly premeditated? A murder of neglect, if you will.
Perhaps it could have, should have been avoided. If they just cared a little more. If they were in a little less of a rush. If they stopped and thought about it.
But for whatever reason, they didn't. And now someone has slipped and fallen down the flight of stairs, or been crumpled in the wreck of a car, or suffocated or drowned or electrocuted.
Indirect deaths. They could have been avoided, but weren't. Because the person you care about wasn't paying enough attention.
Do you forgive them? Can you tell them that you do?
Are you lying?
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What if there was no justification, and no accident... but there was a reason?
What if the person you care about is simply not who you thought they were? What if they were the one to lash out in anger, or jealousy, or pride, or hatred?
Perhaps the other person deserved it. Perhaps they were a bit of a cunt.
Perhaps not. But your dearest certainly thought so, enough to act on it. Enough to kill.
Will you change with them, twist your mind into the shape that allows this to become reasonable?
Will you do it willingly, by your own choice? Or will it happen out of fear, and grief, the first slow step into a broken kind of insanity and codependance?
Or... perhaps not. Perhaps you take a horrified half-step away from them, flinch away from their pleading hands and their babble of explanations. Perhaps this is the last time they see you.
Do you want to know that they became a murderer?
Could you have lived in ignorance of that, given the choice?
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What if it wasn't any of those?
What if one night your lover comes home, eyes wild, sobbing with mania or fear or something else?
As they step into the light, you see their hands are still a little dirtied. They are hiding something under their jacket, something that smells of iron and rot.
They sit next to you, and in a wild, whispered rush they tell you everything.
How it felt (good). How it happened (easily). Who it was (a stranger on the street, barely remembered).
How do you feel about it? Did you secretly suspect this? Did you live in fear of the day this came to pass... or in guilty anticipation of it?
Or is this an unbelievable, incomprehensible fantasy, if it were not for the evidence coating them and the crazed, genuine smile on their face?
Are you horrified? Why? Why not?
Do you wish they hadn't told you? That you could go back to living your life in glorious ignorance, never aware of the demon possessing the one person you can't bear to be parted from?
...Do you wish it was you, in whatever way you might interpret such a wish?
Whatever your feelings, it's too late now to go back. You know. You've been told. Things will never be the same again. You will never be able to know them as anything other than a murderer.
Do you hate them?
Do you love them?
Does it matter?