The Man Who Killed His Conscience

There once was a man, who, tired and downtrodden by his Conscience waiting for him when he got home, hatched a plan to kill it. He was not a bad man, but after years of coming in to round after round of questioning over his actions and decisions, decided his Conscience was not something he wanted. One day, just when his Conscience was in full swing and distracted, berating him over an insignificance earlier in the day, the man put both hands around its’ neck and choked the words and air from its’ throat.



At first the man felt guilty of the act but once his Conscience was completely dead, he felt nothing. This pleased the man and he congratulated himself on a clever idea, well executed. His Conscience lay pale and deflated on the kitchen floor; so the man scooped it in his arms, and put it in an old chest in his basement. As he closed the lid the man noticed his Conscience did not resemble him as it had in life.

His first few days without his Conscience around flew past- he had forgotten all about it, without it there to remind him of its existence. The man went to parties, drank and ate too much and was free and fleeting with his affections. There was no guilt, no remorse, and nobody and nothing to challenge any decision he made.  It is easy for a person to quieten their Conscience; with drink, drugs, or simply laziness and ignorance, but to be completely absent of one is a very rare thing indeed.


The man found days slipping into weeks, weeks into months, and nothing bothered him anymore. He didn’t really have any friends, when they had raised issue with his behaviour he merely shrugged them off – he couldn’t see what was wrong, he just acted as his body compelled him. A creature of desire. Pure, unrestrained, impulse. His time spent alone was trance like, his head empty, so the man preferred to act entirely on urge, never pausing for a second. His house deteriorated into a grubby pit, and his body began to fatten.


One day the man went to the opera, he had stolen a rich woman’s coat some days previously and there were tickets to one inside it. Not that he had seen it as stealing. She didn’t need the coat, she was rich. Besides, he wanted it and the 5 minutes he had spent drunkenly swishing home in it had amused him until he threw it in the river, emptied of its contents. Having never been particularly blessed with facial hair the man was rather proud of the coarse, short hairs growing on his chin. Had he the thought to look in a mirror properly however, he would have noticed they grew down his back, too.


He arrived at the opera, took his seat and sat bored through what seemed like hours of noise. All these singers and people frolicking about on stage meant nothing to him, he could not understand their music, it was alien. He certainly hadn’t noticed the empty seat next him, or that people were recoiling from his stench. At the interval he’d gone to the bar and was very frustrated to find his fingers and hands were shortened and thick, and holding a drink was very hard work. However dwelling on things was not a part of his character and before he’d managed a sip he was bundled over by two policemen.


“That’s him, that’s him!” A man shouted.


It was the husband of the rich woman he’d taken the coat and tickets from. The husband’s face was wet and he was very worked up. At the police station some officers explained that he was under arrest for murder. The rich lady hadn’t given her coat up freely and the man had pushed her into the street, she’d been hit by a car and died a few days later. It hadn’t even crossed his mind after he’d swanned off in her lovely coat. Very frustrated with this fat, stubby, smelly, hairy little man’s lack of empathy and understanding, the policemen put him in his cell.


In the morning the policemen went to open the cell, there was all manner of noise and banging coming from it. On opening the door they were knocked aback by the odour of excrement, and then physically by a fattened pig charging past them, snorting its fat head off. The man was nowhere to be seen; quite a mystery! The police captured the pig and it was sent to a farm to roll around in muck for the rest of days, for after all it was no better than a beast, and beasts are happy in muck.











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