A matter of Ego - by Mimi🥀🌬️

“I don’t think killing her was such a terrible idea.” He scoffed, adjusting himself in his chair as though they were discussing something as trivial as the weather. “To be honest,” he continued, “I can’t bring myself to admit that I’m wrong. Not about anything. In my eyes, I’ve always been right.” “I really don’t like it when people go against my wishes or try to make me believe something different from what I know about myself. There’s something inside me that gets unsettled whenever that happens. Something that pushes me to prove to them that they can’t just mess with me.” “When I want something, I go for it, and I must get it. Yeah. And I don’t care what you have to say right now. I don’t even think I need to justify my actions. She was warned.”Ayo leaned back in his chair, looking rather pleased with himself.“Young man, you seem not to understand the gravity of your offence. Let me remind you why we are here. You murdered a woman who was known to be your girlfriend’s best friend simply because you felt rejected. Was that the first time a woman had ever said no to you?” “No.” “Then why her?” “I don’t know. It really got under my skin, and I had to relieve her of her earthly responsibilities. I mean, she’d been struggling a lot.” He burst into laughter, the kind that sent a chill down the spine.“You know, we shouldn’t even be doing this, okay? I’m not the evil one here. She was. How can you not see that?” The interrogator stared at him for a moment before speaking. “Take me back to what happened that day.” “You didn’t tell me I was coming here for storytelling.” “Do as you’re told.” “I don’t do as I’m told.” “Young man, I need a full account of what happened. You can’t jump from one part of the story to another and expect me to put together a report from bits and pieces!” “Okay, I’ll say it all over again since you’re so slow. And yeah, because I choose to.” He shifted in his chair, cleared his throat, and began.“Before I started dating Amy, I already knew Ariel. Ariel was the kind of girl every guy would die for. The kind of girl you’d want to spend all your money on without thinking twice. “I really liked her, but I kept it to myself until I realised my friend liked her too. Then it became a game. “My friend Isaac is good-looking, although he thinks he’s the finest guy in town. Personally, I think he’s just average. Anyway, he suggested that we make a bet on who would get Ariel first. “I was skeptical about the whole thing, but then I thought to myself, I always get what I want, so why not see how this plays out?”He paused, a faint smile spreading across his face. “I didn’t know what Isaac was up to behind my back, but I knew it couldn’t be anything good.”“My first attempt at getting Ariel’s number was what started all this anger. I was with Isaac one evening when she walked past us with two of her friends, one of whom was Amy. I walked over, stopped her, and asked for her number, already pulling out my phone. She looked me up and down, then used her index finger to gently push my phone back against my chest. She said, ‘Even in my next life, I wouldn’t dream of shaking hands with you.’” He paused, his expression changing slightly.“Now, can you imagine that? I felt these cold shivers run down my spine. For some strange reason, I even felt like I was going to pee on myself. Yes… it was that humiliating. She pushed past me while her friends laughed, and then they walked away. I returned to Isaac, consumed by anger and hatred. I hated Ariel for humiliating me, and I hated myself for allowing her to do it. Isaac didn’t make things any better. He kept taunting me about what happened that day, reminding me of how badly she’d rejected me. So, I decided to work my way into getting one of her friends, Amy. My plan was to make Ariel jealous. But to my surprise, she didn’t seem bothered at all. If anything, she looked even prettier during those days. And it wasn’t as though I loved Amy. I was only using her to get back at Ariel, to make her feel what I felt, and—” “Just a minute.” The interrogator interrupted him, rubbing his temple. “Throughout this entire account, I still haven’t heard anything that explains why you brutally murdered an innocent woman. Get to that part. I have limited time.” “You were the one who asked me to give you the full details!” Ayo snapped, his eyes widening. “Allow me to speak. Don’t interrupt me again.”“Go on.” “Yeah, as I was saying, I didn’t love Amy. I only wanted to get back at Ariel.“Unfortunately for Ariel, she had no idea what she was getting herself into. Then, one day, news reached me that she was engaged.”He paused dramatically, as though the memory still offended him.“Do you know who she was engaged to?”The interrogator said nothing. “She was engaged to Isaac. Isaac! The very same Isaac I called my friend.”His voice grew louder.“I was furious. Absolutely furious. And I knew then that she had to go. I couldn’t keep playing this game with her anymore. I wasn’t going to let her get away with this.” He folded his arms, seemingly satisfied with his explanation.“So, that’s what happened.”The interrogator stared at him in disbelief.“I still haven’t heard how you killed her. That is what I’m interested in.”Ayo tilted his head and let out another strange laugh.“It seems you do like gothic stories, don’t you?”He chuckled to himself before continuing.“I murdered her on her wedding night.”For the first time since the interrogation began, the room fell completely silent.“She couldn’t marry my friend. Not after everything. And the fact that I didn’t get what I wanted? No. He wasn’t going to have her, either. She wasn’t going to stand there, living her happy little life, rubbing it in my face as though I meant nothing.” His voice trembled, but not with remorse.“So I decided to let her sleep peacefully.”He rose abruptly from his chair, his eyes glistening with tears. “Was that such a terrible thing to do? Was it? Tell me!”His voice echoed through the room. “WAS THAT SO BAD?!!”The interrogator remained seated, watching him carefully.“So, we’re dealing with an ego problem here?”Ayo froze. “Excuse me?” he asked, his voice suddenly quieter. “An ego so fragile that a woman’s rejection felt like an attack on your entire existence. An ego so desperate to prove itself that you would rather destroy another human being than accept that you cannot control her choices.” “Don’t you dare—” “No. You listen to me this time.” The interrogator leaned forward. “Ariel said no to you, Ayo. She did not humiliate you by refusing to belong to you. She exercised her right to choose. But you took that choice personally. You turned her rejection into an offence that, in your mind, deserved punishment.” Ayo shook his head, his lips trembling.“She made me feel worthless. I hate to be that way.”“No, Ayo. She made you feel what you already feared you were. And instead of confronting that feeling, you chose to silence the person who brought it to the surface.” For a moment, Ayo said nothing. Then, almost in a whisper, he asked, “So what was I supposed to do? Just let her go? Let Isaac win? Let everyone laugh at me?” The interrogator looked at him, and for the first time, his voice softened. “You were supposed to let her go. You were supposed to understand that rejection is not humiliation, that love is not ownership, and that another person’s freedom is not an insult to your existence. It never was and would never be” Ayo lowered himself back into his chair. “But I loved her,” he muttered. “No,” the interrogator replied. “You wanted her. You wanted to be chosen by her. You wanted to prove that you could get whatever you desired. But love would never have required Ariel to lose her life simply because she refused to give you what you wanted.” A tear slipped down Ayo’s cheek. This time, he did not wipe it away. For the first time that night, he had nothing to say. The man who had entered the room convinced that he had done nothing wrong sat before the interrogator, stripped of every excuse he had carefully constructed to protect himself. And yet, even in that silence, there was no way of knowing whether he was finally beginning to understand the weight of what he had done or whether he was simply mourning the one thing he could never reclaim: the power to rewrite a story in which he was not the hero. The interrogator gathered his papers and rose to leave. “Ayo?” He looked up. “You said Ariel was warned.” Ayo nodded faintly. The interrogator held his gaze. “Perhaps the question you should have asked yourself was this: who gave you the right to decide that her refusal was a crime punishable by death?” The door opened. And as the interrogator stepped out, Ayo remained alone with the silence, the truth, and the one question he had spent the entire night trying to escape. For the first time in his life, he wanted an answer he could not force anyone to give him.

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