Whatever you might think, you’re no better than anyone else. Even if you were, that doesn’t give you the right to kill people. Especially it doesn’t give you the right to do it the way you do. It was bad enough the way we killed that boy, but the stuff you do just isn’t right. I mean, you stopped to read those articles, didn’t you? They were about you, so you just had to read them. Do you remember the one about the girl you tied by her ankles over a bucket of ammonia and let her hang there until she didn’t have the strength to hold her head up? Or what about the girl you cut into pieces and laminated? I keep those articles to remind me of who you really are, so if the time comes that I have to use that gun, I’ll be sure of myself.
But, in all deepest-of-deep honesty, I don’t want you to die. I don’t even want you to get caught. Part of me wants you to stop, but then the smaller, stronger part doesn’t. It’s sick. I see all these girls wandering around the city, all done-up and proud, and any of them could be next. I should feel bad for them. I should feel bad for their moms and dads and grammas, but I just don’t care. I look at them and my mind flashes images of gazelles standing at the edge of a drying pond. They’re all the same. They do everything they can to look a little bit better than the other girls, but in the end they all look exactly the same. They even have the same personalities. I bet they have the same dildos.
What pisses me off about it is that I don’t want to go to all that trouble just to look the same as everyone else. And I don’t know why I should, when all they have to do is stop trying to be so fucking different and we’d all be so much happier. Some people really are different, some people are clever, some people are beautiful, some people are talented. I’m not any of those things. And I’m okay with that. But I’m so fucking sick of everyone feeling like they’re entitled to being special. Like every person in the world can be smart and pretty and a great painter. Bullshit. You’re all just as boring and plain as I am, and it’s because of all of you idiots out there trying to sell yourselves that people with real intelligence and beauty don’t get any recognition anymore.
Like Jack, for instance. Say what you want about my ex, but he’s smart. He’s pretentious, selfish and cruel but at least he’s honest. He doesn’t try to impress people, he could care less if anyone likes him. I asked him once if he thought it was a good idea to treat his sister so bad when she’s the one who paid his way through school and he actually told me that he could do whatever he wanted to his sister because she was ugly. She’s not ugly, by the way, she’s just got one of those faces that doesn’t leave an impression. But Jack said, he totally, right out loud said to me: “My sister doesn’t care if I treat her like shit because she likes to be seen with me. If she doesn’t tell anybody I’m her brother, people might think that her shabby, repulsive ass can get a hot date. She’s superficial. That’s one of her only redeeming qualities.”
I really didn’t know what to think. It seemed like I should say something to stand up for her, but if what he said is true, no one’s really getting hurt. Okay, I take that back, they’re probably both getting hurt. But it’s by their own choice. I mean, If you’re an adult and you choose to be a masochist, that’s your decision to make, isn’t it? I can’t be held responsible for choosing not to save people who want to be hurt. And if someone walks around, pretending to be someone they’re not, starving themselves to fit a stereotype and wearing shoes that they can hardly walk in, and that person happens to get their teeth shattered and their throat slit because of it, how is that my fault? Too bad for those dead girls. Too bad for all the people who get murdered or raped or whatever. Its not me. That’s what matters. I wish it wasn’t like that, but it is. Do you think the gazelles get a little thrill when they see another gazelle go down? I mean, who would know if they did?
Anyway, As I’ve already told you, I’m not Bonnie Parker, and I just won’t join your mutilation marathon. So quit asking. But keep writing. If I'm finally losing my sanity, I don't want to go it alone.
-Ingrid
end eighth letter
next letter
previous letter
the mercy killings
return to the last car