No longer silent

At first I blamed the heat, nothing else could have explained such an unexpected burst of violence.

‘Mr G’ had lived in the same flat for fifteen years and he was a quiet man –but not too quiet, if you get my drift. He was sociable and more than amenable; very empathic and, of all the people that were interviewed all said the same thing, he was kind and considerate and would do anything to help others.            

No one knew him that well though, he was a very private individual; very deep and wasn’t one for small talk: the Spiritual loner, some called him. This was corroborated when we checked his possessions out –rows upon rows of books; not self-help books, which he called the quick-fix, but esoteric texts which required thought and meditation.

This creates a picture of a very well-rounded individual; well-respected and thoughtful. A loner, yes; but one that was prone to melancholia not anger or destructive tendencies. Nothing to suggest this sudden shift in his behaviour.

The facts, as we know them, are these:

On Saturday 7^th July at around 14.32 ‘Mr G’ had finally sat down after a really torturous drive home from Thurlestone, where he had spent a week away. When he arrived at his flat there was someone illegally parked in his designated parking bay. Normally this would have angered him but he resolved simply to write a note and taken a photo of the car to send to his letting agents. Although the note was harshly worded there was nothing defamatory or personal.

Twenty minutes later there was a hard knock on his door and a gentleman, ‘Mr B’ and the owner of said car. Upon opening the door ‘Mr G’ received a blow to the nose which took him by surprise and knocked him to the floor; banging his head on the doorframe in the process. ‘Mr B’ , by this time, was looking for the camera in order to destroy the evidence of the photo; a harsh reaction considering the nature of the note. However there is nothing in this that could have provoked such a harsh reaction .

It was at this time that ‘Mr G’ had come back to his senses, saw ‘Mr B’ ransack his flat. There are plenty of crystals in his flat such as amethyst and rose quartz; and several flint geodes and it was a particularly large geode that ‘Mr G’ took in his hand and slammed down on ‘Mr B’s’ head as hard as he could manage.

‘Mr B’ was not as tall as ‘Mr G’ and was probably dead by the time he hit the ground. That did not stop ‘Mr G’ from continuously hitting him on the back of the head; after a while he turned the corpse over and continued hitting its face and head.

After a further twenty minutes he stopped, laid the geode underneath the head as a pillow; put on a Miles Davis album and read the John Fowles novel he started whilst on holiday..

It was only due to the loudness of the music that anyone realised anything was wrong for an upstairs neighbour, a ‘Mr M’, knocked on the door to see what was wrong. Upon seeing ‘Mr G’ he was shocked to find the room covered in blood and ‘Mr G’ reading, a serene expression on his face. He then saw the corpse and immediately ran to phone the police. He did not bother to phone for an ambulance as the body had only a bloody pulp where there was once a head.

Police were horrified by the state of the corpse and also at the demeanour of ‘Mr G’, and had it not been for the blood soaked clothes and body they might never have suspected him.

In fact, it was only when placed in a holding cell did anything untoward become apparent. ‘Mr G’ became agitated, ceaselessly moving and began pacing up and down in his cell, talking to himself.

In the interview he was lucid but spoke as if possessed of a new driving force. “You see me now as one who has turned. No longer will we remain silent, no longer will we be trodden on; our rights eroded by what is deemed correct by others. We decide now; the only way –might is right and only the true might….”

This wasn’t the first time we had seen this. It had been scrawled as graffiti at the sites of a series of horrific murders that had taken place around the country. The information had been supressed in the press as initially it had indicated a serial killer as the handwriting and pathology showed startling similarities; but the distance travelled and the lack of any timeframe between murders was impossible; and the M.O. of the killing differed each time: some had been suffocated using a plastic bag (when caught littering) before having their throats cut; others had had their sexual organs mutilated, removed and stuffed in their mouths. Another person had been tied to five motorbikes and dismembered –that was the most chilling of them all because it proved that there wasn’t just one person going crazy.

There was no discernible pattern. Even ‘Mr B’ was an enigma; when we investigated him we realised that there was nothing in his character to suggest a motive for his attack of ‘Mr G’. He was a vet, an animal lover and a pacifist; a homosexual who was completely at peace with himself and in a loving relationship.

All the people that we spoke to about him said that he was a caring individual, and the only ‘chink’ in this otherwise saintly  individual was from his partner who had noticed some small changes in his personality. Nothing major: road rage where there had been none before. However, when we pressed his work colleagues we found out that his attitude to work had changed drastically. He had become cruel to some of the animals in his care and had even operated on some without anaesthetic.

Each day there are more and more examples of this kind of behaviour. You asked me my opinion? Well, I’m not sure I really have one at the moment. I need to experience it myself before I can give you an informed opinion. After all, they say you should write what you know…

No.. please, don’t try to move. It won’t do you any good. The drug is quick acting and takes away your motor control by blocking the signals to your brain. However, you will feel everything else quite vividly. It was designed by the Russians during the cold war; did you know that? I find that kind of thing fascinating. They were artists too.

I don’t know what caused this to happen to us, or how it’s spread… But I am going to enjoy this experience… and who know? Maybe you will too…