Scott: Show and Tell: Seven Reasons by Dave

I’ve spent the better part of the morning pondering the subject and I can only think of seven reasons to kill you.  I promised myself I wouldn’t do it unless I could get at least ten.  No one is flawless, I know that.  I’m certainly not flawless.  You’re certainly not flawless.  I can think of seven reason that justify ending your existence.  Seven isn’t enough though.  There’s certainly a lot more than seven or even ten reasons to let you live but in this case that doesn’t matter.  You don’t let someone out of jail just because there’s a lot f laws they haven’t broken.  They don’t even wait until you’ve broken ten laws to put you away.  Frankly, I think I’m being generous.  People have been killed for a lot less.  Who know how many billions of people over the years have been killed for simply being from the wrong country, or the wrong race, or supported the wrong dictator.  One reason each.  Billions of them.  Now I’m sure a lot of those people deserved to die just as much as you do but it doesn’t count because they weren’t killed for all those reasons.  They were killed for just being Jews, Germans, Indians, or nationalist.  It would certainly be unjust to kill you for only a single reason.  I have seven.  Seven really good reasons.  But I still need ten.  That was the rule I made and I’m going to keep it.

            I could get more specific but it would feel like I was cheating.  You lied to your parents about us for a full year.  You also lied to a lot of your friends.  Then you told me that they all knew and were okay with it which was a lie.  You told me your brothers were protective so I shouldn’t be too affectionate around your family.  You wouldn’t let me put my arms around you at concerts because you said you liked to dance.  You told me you didn’t talk to a lot of your friends from high school to avoid them ever meeting me.  You lied almost daily for fourteen months about our relationship.  You probably told every single person you know at least one lie about us.  The official story you’re telling your family now is that we’re casually seeing each other but you’re still dating other people.  You’ve also told me several times that you want to spend the rest of your life with me.  I’m still sketchy on whether or not this is a lie or it just makes everything you tell everyone else more of a lie.  There’s at least ten very blatant and brutal lies tangled up I this mess but I still only count the situation as one reason to kill you.  It wouldn’t be fair to kill you over one relationship.  Who knows, maybe you’re an excellent girlfriend and a fantastic potential wife but you just really screwed it up with me.  One botched romance is hardly justification for mortal termination, no matter how many lies it spawned.

            No, if I’m going to kill you it’s going to be honestly.  No stretching the terms to match the definitions.  I’m also not going to use any reasons that are universally applicable.  None of this, “I’m going to kill you because you’re going to die someday anyway.”  That’s stupid.  Everyone is going to die.  That’s not a decent reason to kill anyone.

            I know if I think about this too hard I’ll just invent the other three reasons just to get on with it.  And that’s just not right.  If any man thinks hard enough about any subject he can make up an answer and convince himself it’s true.  Ask any man who claims to believe in a god.  They won’t agree with me but they’ll prove my point.  I don’t want to do that.  I mean, the thought has occurred to me that perhaps you don’t actually deserve to die.  Or maybe you do but I shouldn’t be the one who does it.  Perhaps I don’t have ten reasons but someone else does.  If you shouldn’t die or if I shouldn’t kill you I’d feel terrible if I went ahead and did it anyway and then realized afterwards that I shouldn’t have.  No one needs more regrets.

            So I’ll keep my list and if I think of three more reasons I let you know.  However, I did decide that five reasons would be enough to leave you and never speak to you again.  Because you’ll never see my list or even know that it’s been written you won’t know exactly why I won’t be there when you get home from work.  I’m not sure if you’ll initially realize your own guilt in this matter but as you look around for a shoulder to cry on or someone to comfort you after your heartbreak I’m sure it will start to sink in that you have no true friends, an unloving family, no trusting co-workers, and no neighbors that will even tolerate you.  And, hopefully, you’ll realize you have no one to blame but yourself.

            Also, although reason number four alone isn’t enough to condemn you, it is atrocious enough that I’m going to clean out the fridge on my way out.  Probably the ice chest too.  People like you don’t deserve pork chops.