My First Killing by Agathe Chave-Lucas (22, France)

I killed her one night, when nobody else was around. I cannot remember if the moon and stars were gleaming above our heads, maybe, maybe not. I did not look at the sky when I killed her. I was so focused on my task that the world became a blur. 

The only clear thing I can remember is that it was dark and that except for her tears it was silent. A thick, pasty silence that enveloped us like a blanket.



​I was scared. I knew what I had to do, but I was scared. It was my first killing, my first murder. I didn’t know what it would do to me.  

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She was small; she was plain; she was weak. She was not adapted to the reality of our world. Killing her would be a mercy. 

That was what I told myself.


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Every night before sleep, she cried in her bed, muffling her sobs in her pillow, wringing her hair, biting her too-full, too-babyish lips. She hit her mattress until her fists and feet felt tender, raw, like open wounds, like her. 

She often thought of dying, too, of sinking deep, deep beneath the earth, of making the pain disappear. 
I was only helping her by shortening her suffering. 

That was what I told myself.

​

I did a quick job of it, dispatched her with one neat, clean blow. One moment she was there; one moment she was gone. Just like that. 

I felt better afterwards, lighter somehow. 

I had done my job and now I was free. 

*

I killed the weakling, the nine-year-old, sniveling, runny-nosed girl I had once been and became someone else. A liar. A hypocrite. A copy of my tormentors. 

For years, I felt no regret. But now, more than a decade later, I wonder. Have I turned into a monster just like the ones who once crushed me? ​​