Impersonal Murders
Hundreds of years ago, killing was an intimate affair. Under few circumstances could there be an unnatural death without struggle, without touch.
It is not an easy thing to kill a person. It is represented so often as one bullet and in pace requiescat. One bullet in the chest, stomach, sometimes in the shoulder, you have time enough to croak out, "It was…it was…" and silence. Not so. Why else is the discrepancy between the numbers killed and wounded so large? And yet, today these numbers, such mayhem, may be incurred casually; it requires less dedication to effect. And so messy.
The best of the old ways is the best of the new day: poison. The only way to kill by deception. For centuries murder has been robbed of its poetry. Our blunt instruments, our lengths of rope, our axes and pointed miscellanae, vehicles and trains for running down with and pushing in front of, our balletic defenestrations were all usurped by a dreamless, broken-tongued weight of lead. Some, those with romantic hearts, clung to the old ways; most were not so sentimental. Killing was taken from the soldier and the lover and given to the common man.
Bullets, even when flown out of vehicles moving at high speeds, have a tendency of lodging where they’ve been sent. Once removed, it may be evident where they originated. What is more, while not requiring a familiar striking distance, they must needs be delivered to their resting place by one who is proximate.
Poison requires no such exposure. Our new poison is a vodoun spell. It is a mystery. It is a bloodhound, once given the scent. The scent is your genetic material. Its source: samples of your hair follicles, nail clippings and blood conveniently provided to our government by the parents or guardians of every child born. Murder will know you by these. It will find you.
If you cross them, you may have a stroke, a heart attack, an organ failure, contract a disease you’d ensured against, have an allergic reaction, any number of things. Misfortune may befall you.