I suppose I would call it a gift; the ability to see the physical manifestation of toxicity in a person. The best way I can describe it is as though the person is a rotting body floating through water and the more internally rotten they are, the thicker the toxicity they exude. A drunk man in a dishevelled but expensive suit yelling racial and sexist slurs at the homeless woman in the street is almost obscured by his shroud. A young child that views the world with curiosity is mostly free of the shroud – but the toxicity that flows through the child’s mother is absorbed by him when she pulls the boy away from a gay couple that walks down the street.
Arguably, people whose shrouds you can see a mile away are less dangerous than the more hidden ones. I’d heard rumours that the happy, smiling girl serving soup at the homeless shelter was so insecure and hated herself to such an extreme, that she treated her boyfriend with distrust and disdain. This in turn caused him to become a recluse to prove his loyalty to her, or so the gossips said. Her toxic shroud was smaller than the racist man’s, but much more potent.
I had always wondered what my own shroud would look like, as I harboured no resentment toward different races; I respected religious beliefs and I had no qualms about the various sexualities and gender identities. I figured that by being socially aware, polite and by contributing to society it would keep my own toxicity down. I suppose that’s why I referred to my ability as a gift. It helped me to see the traits in other people that I could control in myself. I was able to actively seek out and find healthy and good people to surround myself with and stay away from the rotten ones. I sought out people that acted without selfish instinct; who, like me, made themselves better than everyone else.
That’s not to say I considered myself perfect; I believed true perfection could not exist in humanity. We are inherently flawed creatures by design. I had that fact drilled into me by my parents when I was young; I would never be perfect no matter what I did and once I grew up and saw humanity through this gift, that belief was confirmed. True perfection was a farce; I had convinced myself of that. Still, I had to be as perfect as I could be. I didn’t want to be shrouded like the rest of humanity; even if I was the only one who would ever know. I had to be better. I had never spoken about my gift to anyone; that would have put me straight into a psych ward. However, after I met her, the perfect self I had created was pulled into question.
It was as clichéd a meeting as you could get. An elderly woman stumbled on a curb and fell. Shroud obscured people walked by; a teenager laughed openly as his cigarette smoke mingled with his own noxiousness. I offered the woman a hand up. I had to hold my breath as her toxicity was some of the most potent I had experienced. As she stood up, I noticed another hand guiding her by her shoulders. The elderly lady ripped her hand from mine once she was stable and scowled before offering her thanks to God for sparing her hips. She pushed past me without a second glance. I wasn’t surprised. What had surprised me was the other person that had helped her to her feet.
She was a young woman around my age. It wasn’t her physicality that took my breath away; it would be a waste to describe something so meaningless. No, it was the simple fact that she was pure. Never had I seen anyone other than an infant without a hint of a shroud. I remember cracking a rude joke at the expense of the old lady; it was against my rules, but I had wanted a reaction. She laughed and defended the lady. Not even the slightest wisp of toxicity. I was instantly enamoured, and I asked her to have coffee with me.
We became a couple not long after. We talked; we laughed; we shared our life stories. She claimed I was exactly the type of person she had always looked for and I said the same. We never fought; she didn’t like fighting. The sex we had was indescribable. The sex I had had with other people was always tainted. Just imagine fucking someone while getting enveloped with shrouds of toxins and seeing it get thicker with every degrading thought in their head. No, sex with her was pure. There was no depravity, no inequitable expectations, or demeaning thoughts. It was everything I wanted from my partner. She was everything I wanted.
I’m not sure when I began to question her perfection or my own perceived state of her perfection. I thought at the time that it was perhaps the envy we all feel, or the insecurity in comparison to others. I began to question myself. If she was this perfect; to the point of having no shroud of toxicity and she claimed to love me, did that in turn make me perfect? I started to obsess over that idea. I craved more and more to see my own shroud. I wanted to know. Was I on her level of perfection? If I wasn’t perfect then what was it that made her so much better than me? I did exactly what she wanted; I WAS exactly what she wanted, and she was supposed to be my perfect partner.
I began to resent her pure nature. I dreaded walking down the street with her; I breathed in the toxic shrouds of other people while she walked unphased and unchanged. I watched as she dropped money into the homeless woman’s cup at the same time as a sickly man. She was unaffected; still pure and flawless but his shroud instantly increased. I remember thinking; did he place the money there to make himself feel better? Was she so perfect that not a single selfish thought crossed her mind?
It frustrated me more and more as time went on. I began trying to push her buttons, to get some sort of reaction. I needed to see her toxicity; it had to be there. If I wasn’t perfect, then she couldn’t be. Everyone else spewed shrouds everyday so why didn’t she? No matter how much I tried nothing happened. Her perfection was ruining our relationship. I soon realised I couldn’t be with someone who made me feel like I was as toxic as the other people. I was better than them, but she was making me the worst version of myself.
She suggested that work was stressing me out and took me on a surprise holiday. Typical of her to always notice and attempt to fix other’s problems. On our last night there I took her to the end of an empty pier, and I told her about my gift. It was my final test. Surely, she would walk away and call me crazy. She would judge me; even I would judge someone who told me that, but she just regarded me for a moment with an unreadable expression, before she kissed me.
It was a strange feeling to bury a knife into a body. There was much less resistance than I expected. I could never describe the look on her face; but I will never forget it. I pushed her backward off the pier and as her body sunk below the water; the light of the moon illuminated what I had been seeking. There was her shroud. Blood red and billowing around her in the water. It spread out further and further from her body; it was so dense that I could barely see her through it. She was no more perfect than me. I finally saw her shroud, and I realised that it was just for me. If I couldn’t have perfection, then no one could. If I couldn’t be perfect, then no one could.
*
‘You claim that to be the truth?’ The psychiatrist finally asked, leaning forward as he subconsciously stroked at his moustache. He had been doing that the entire time I had been talking. It irritated me.
‘You don’t believe me?’ I asked. He tapped his pen against his clipboard.
‘I believe you suffer from severe delusions, and that may impact on your ability to give us the truth.’ He said slowly before looking at the investigator seated beside him. ‘You came here of your own free will and confessed to an alleged murder. We need to know the real story.’
‘Isn’t that a sign of a good storyteller though?’ I rebutted and began tapping my finger on my leg in the same rhythm as his pen against the board. ‘That’s the fun part of a story. Trying to figure out what is fact and what is fiction.’
The investigator visibly ground her teeth and let out a sigh. The psychiatrist stopped the tapping of his pen. I steadied my tapping finger. Payback for irritating me with the beard.
‘We have yet to find a woman by the name that you previously gave, and your descriptions of her physical details have been inadequate to profile her.’ The investigator said.
‘I told you where I left her body.’
‘We have checked that stretch of beach multiple times and deep-sea crews have searched the surrounding ocean. There is still no sign of a body.’
‘The fish must have eaten well then.’ I said, giving the investigator a sardonic smile as she shifted uncomfortably. The clink of the cuffs around my wrists echoed in the tense room as I spread my hands. ‘Toxin free.’
