A Collection of Skeletons

There once was a man who killed his friends and lovers and kept their bones for company. Everyone he ever developed trust with was slain via an unbeknownst-to-them their to-be final dinner. He would poison the wine so as not to be all obvious and violent about it and to keep the integrity of their physical being beautifully intact. The man would take the body, strip the body of organs and skin, and clean and preserve the bones for his keeping somewhere deep and hidden in the confines of his massive mansion so as not to be discovered.  

While this man was developing his collection of skeletons, he would almost always be seeking out new friends to make so he could keep adding to it. He loved his friends this much where he wanted to ensure a peaceful and nonviolent demise for them and to keep their countenance preserved on their memory forever. After all, they had been his friends, and that meant that they were of an exceptional class of person and deserving of the easiest deaths and the most adored commemoration.  

When hosting their final dinner and entertaining their to-be finalized moments on Earth, this man would firstly inform them of a dinner to be held at his home in his finest dining hall plated with mirrors and dimly lit with candles and served with the best nourishment. He would tell them that he had always enjoyed their company, and that they had always been a good friend of his, and that he held them to the highest esteem. With this knowledge, before they ate their first bite, he would raise a toast between the two of them and declare, “To being a great friend.” The unsuspecting friend would take a sip of wine upon after raising and clinking their glasses and would slosh down the delicious wine, only to meet their end. 

One day, the man went into the first room he had started decorating with the skeletal remains of his good friends. In this death scene, he had arranged the skeletons intact as a group of people playing a game of cards together. Sometimes he liked to rearrange their physical positions, change the game of cards they were playing from Poker to Blackjack or to some other game, or just sit and stare at his darkest creativity manifestations and meditate on how he came to be the way he was. He didn’t think it wrong that he possessed some degree of insanity, and he didn’t think it wrong what he was doing, but he knew that it was by other people’s expectations. However, the past path that took him to his current present was embedded with so much torture, pain, and abuse that he only think it justified his behavior now. Knowing what he had been through leading up to his decision to execute those closest to him in company gave him the justification to absolutely treat them the best and only then to end their lives.  

There was a definitive before and after to the way he kept company and the way he used to let people walk away from him so easily and freely. This epiphany that people could so lightly take in their experiences with him and then so easily discard him out of their lives while he still wanted to be in theirs was to become the ultimate entertainer, and then to kill them before they had the chance to walk away if they chose.  

After the love of his life left him for another, he decided that nobody would ever leave him again after he had treated them so well. 

This decision to make great friends of others knowing that they were the best people to be friends of his, and then to take their lives came to him like a lightning bolt of a thought. He had already enough money for an entertainer’s house – a mansion. He already had a charismatic way with others. But then after the affair he had enough anger in him to break him in an insane way.  

He had money to travel also; people would disappear out of the world by his hand, and nobody ever knew because he could make friends anywhere and with anyone at any time. This was how he was so successful in developing his collection of skeletons and how he was able to get away with it without a trace of investigation or any thoughts of suspicion of him ever to be had.  

He would mysteriously arrive in another foreign place every month, lay the groundwork for a foundation of trust, kinship, and love, and invite them back to his dwelling and then when the time was right, he would cause them slain.  

Whenever he was about to embark on a search for a new friend, he would always take the time to think about his origins as a supremely angry person and the knowledge that fate had taken a beloved from him once and never would again. He thought it important to honor and think about his beginnings, about the before and the after, and about the road he was on. Though it be paved in the bones of others, it never would be paved with his pains again. Although vengeance was selfish and dark and damaging and torturous of its own way, it was the only guidance he had after being hurt so deeply by his once lover. Blinded by hatred and a newfound animosity, he never would again fall so deeply only to look a fool, and he never would let another love of his feel any pain or regret in knowing him, but also would not let them suffer the detached interest of another or to spend a moment in boredom, despair, or disinterest. Being a great friend meant being an ultimate entertainer and being an ultimate murderer to ensure the friend would not suffer a moment of boredom, nor despair. There was nobody like him anywhere, and lesser humans didn’t deserve to steal away company with his friends. They were his friends and they only deserved the best and to end their time happily and without pain. 

The man left the room after thinking on its origins again and returned to the room not yet holding a death scene of his slain loves. He was plotting his next getaway to collect another friend. A country he had never been to before. He had already bought the travel ticket and was already this practiced at his task in attempting to fulfill vengeance that he needed no outline – it was now second-nature.