text: I’m guessing no one ever really reads this, one or two cops probably read it as evidence, maybe if someone finds this before my body. Well if you’re unlucky enough to be reading this I have some bad news, there’s a body floating somewhere in the lake. I guess the best place to start would be who I am, then later I can explain why and how I got here. In 1994 two people in their early 20’s met at a Real Mccoy concert, they smoked some pot and talked about space aliens, Bryan was of the belief that space aliens not only existed, but had visited our planet Earth on numerous occasions, Amanda was of the belief that space aliens didn’t really matter, and that she’d rather ponder over the mysteries in Bryan’s pants. They made love under the stars, which is a very strange thing to do if you believe in space aliens, especially if you believe those aliens often research our planet with very strong telescopes, which of course, Bryan believed. Afterwards Amanda lit a cigarette and told Bryan that while she liked him a lot, she would have to skip town soon, she was a novelist on an adventure, and this little town in Texas was not where the universe was calling her. Amanda had always been a believer that the universe had a plan for each of us, which in retrospect made it particularly strange that she didn’t believe in space aliens. Bryan was of course saddened by the fact that this beautiful girl would be leaving soon, but he knew he was in no position to adventure with her, he’d just landed a new job at a company that built airplanes, and he’d been taking classes at the local university. Bryan’s life was in that little Texas town, and he was ready to settle down, he’d leave the adventuring for another day. I am not Bryan, and if you’re reading this before you find my body you should know I’m not Amanda either, while I do have her eyes and nose, there’s a rather distinct difference in what we have between our legs, presumably I got that from Bryan. I’ve never been a huge fan of overly suspenseful non fiction, so I’ll just tell you now, Amanda’s book was brilliant, Bryan became a spaceship engineer, and they never met again. Oh and they managed to create a fucking monster. My mother died when I was 15, which I found rather depressing, she’d finished her novel a few months before and was in the process of publishing, when a routine trip to the doctor’s ended badly. You’ve heard that story before, to sum it up quickly, there was a whole lot of crying, surgery, and chemo. After she died the publishing company sent me a very nice gift basket and a letter apologizing but mentioning that they would not be publishing my mother’s book, she was too unknown to publish post-mortem. Before she passed away my mother gave me an address, my father, she told me, lived in a small town in Texas, he built airplanes, liked the real Mccoy, but thought their album Space Invaders was a bit derivative, and spent most nights looking for space invaders of his own. I threw the address away of course, I hadn’t needed this man yet, and he clearly had better things to do than raise me. Unfortunately some social workers got a hold on the address and had different plans. A week after my mother’s funeral I was on a bus from Kentucky to Texas. In my defense, I had just gone through a very traumatic event, found out my father didn’t know I existed, and met twin babies that were my new half brothers, it was a stressful time, but I treated the last of my family like shit for the next three years. I should’ve helped with the babies, I should’ve gotten a job, or at the very least helped around the house, instead I spent every day getting high and doing nothing important. I ruined their marriage, my dad claimed it wasn’t my fault, and of course they both played their parts but I have a feeling it’s a lot easier to raise somebody else’s bastard if he isn’t selling pot to the neighbor’s kids. After the divorce my dad and I moved into a small apartment, he saw the twins most weekends, but I never really found much of a point in it. I graduated highschool and had good enough grades to get into a small university an hour from my father’s apartment. On the last day I spent in that apartment we shared a 6 pack and my dad told me the story of how he met my mother, it was short enough to include in my suicide note. We both apologized, I forgave him, it wasn’t his fault my mother never told him I existed, and he’d stayed by my side while I destroyed his life. “Where to next?” I asked him right before we went to bed. “I guess maybe it’s my turn for an adventure.” We saw each other a few times after that. College was fine for me, I followed in my father’s footsteps and went into the sciences, I spent five years in that place and managed to walk out with a degree in Computer Science. I had friends there, met girls, and finally did a little more with myself than just smoking weed. My fifth and final year at university was when I started to see the signs. It started like radio static, like voices were talking very far away and while the noise was carried to me, the words were lost on the journey. I ignored it for a while, nothing more than stress and partying too much.I went to the doctor after the first time I made out a full sentence; “Rape that girl, make her bleed.” A minor case of paranoid schizophrenia, Thiothixene, one pill a day, and weekly therapy, that’s what they told me it would cost to get the voices to shut up. It worked for another year, and I managed to graduate and get a job validating software, a job anyone could do just fine after a lobotomy. I didn’t make many friends after college, I spent two years at the same job and went out with my coworkers only a handful of times. There was one girl at work I was obsessed with, Jolene, a gorgeous woman only a year my senior. Jolene worked in our accounting department, she was smart, funny, and cute. Oh and I’m using the past tense because her body is wrapped in a blanket in the trunk of my car. I didn’t mean to kill her, neither did the voices, at least I don’t think they did, but Jolene stumbled upon my secret and she wanted to leave and she was going to leave and tell everyone and the voices said if I didn’t stop her she would tell them and she wanted to leave so I took the bottle in my hand and I wasn’t thinking but I hit her with the bottle but I hit her too hard. I didn’t want to hurt her. She kept breathing for a while, I watched her chest rise and fall for a few minutes, but she was leaking. Blood dripped from her head and her blond hair slowly stained crimson as it clumped together. I wanted to call an ambulance, I wanted to save her, but they told me not to, they said if we did we’d be locked up tortured there, hurt, raped, beat, killed for what we did. I tried to reason with them, “But if she lives they can’t be that mad at me, they’ll help they won’t hurt me!” Then there was a booming laughter drowning in the static of my brain, the volume turned as high as it could go. The voice screamed to me, cackling all the while, “No one will care about this girl, but for what’s on your computer they’ll kill you.” What is on my computer was put there by someone else, someone using my hands to press the keys, but another person all together. I wasn’t the one making the decision and I didn’t even know it was there until tonight, honest. Well some of it I knew about, the adults, that was the secret she found out, the reason I hit her, but the other stuff I swear was news to me. I know it was all wrong. I knew it all along, but I guess I just thought no one would really be hurt, it was just for me. But Jolene had been hurt, she was terrified when she saw herself on my computer, fully nude and bent in a submissive position, an intimate photo taken by a lover long ago and still backed up to his Google account. She asked me how I’d gotten it and I lied, told her he’d sent it to me unprompted and for no reason. Of course she didn’t believe me, maybe if I’d been a better liar she’d still be breathing. And that’s when the radio static demanded I “Stop her! Before she sees everyone else!” Then there was an argument, a bottle, a leaky head, and a slow rhythmic breathing fading away. I stole her nudes, and others, and set up hidden cameras, it was wrong but I couldn’t stop myself, but this, this was so much worse, but it wasn’t me, the voices did it, not me. Now some poor girl lay dead in my trunk because of them, all because of the voices that never shut up. The voices weren’t content ruining my life alone, they had to drag everyone else down with me. I am the outlet, I cause all of this suffering. I am proof God either doesn’t exist, or is the world’s biggest asshole, a real loving God would have killed me the day I was born. My mother would’ve finished her book years earlier, she’d die happy as a published author, my father would be happily married, Jolene would walk into work tomorrow, and the twins, the things the voices made me do to them. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. They’re screaming at me even now. They want me to stop, to make myself throw up. “Cut up the body, hide it here. Run! Escape!” They won’t stop yelling things like this to me, it makes me think they’ll die with me.The thought of them dying is all that keeps me moving now. I’m nearly paralyzed with fear but I’ll keep going I can still bring some good to the world, if only by stopping my own evil. I’m sorry, I’m scared, I don’t want to die, but I’ll die for you, for the good of all of you. I finished the bottle of Thiothixene and washed it down with some bourbon, nice stuff from Kentucky, from home, from a time before the voices, before I was afraid, before I was a monster. I’m leaving the notebook here on the dock, thank you for reading this. If there’s a God in heaven I’ll tell him off for all of you. For now I think I’ll go float into the lake for one last swim. The stars are beautiful tonight, I’ll look out towards them and watch for space aliens. Goodnight. I’m so sorry.