Personal Narrative: My First Murder

I awaken in the middle of the night, and the significance of my actions just hours before hit me full force, though it feels like a lifetime ago that it happened. My first murder, the very thing that had so repulsed me upon my meeting with Zaroff just four days prior. The man was a psychopathic and homicidal bedlamite. He was the predator, and I, his quarry. His game of hunting men was considered only sport to him, whilst I held the belief that this manslaughter was senseless. Now, here I lay, with his blood-soaked, decomposing cadaver at the foot of his (now my own) feather bed. Why is this so hard for me to comprehend? I have seen the atrocities of war, with fighting in the French ditches and even the front line of battle and have seen the prospects of nearly inevitable death while hunting monstrous beasts in exotic locales. Murder is no mystery to a man like myself, for I have seen it myself so many times. This man was one who hunted perceived troglodytes and “scum of the earth,” when in actuality they were as human as I. I did the world a favor by ridding it of this barbarous and callous perpetrator. But then again, perhaps this act of merciless killing
The eyes of a ruthless Cossack who destroyed the lives of so many. Was his legacy to become my own? I cannot rightly say that I value the life of all of my fellow men, for it is as clear as day what I have done to the man before me. I have not changed, for I care not about the casualty. He deserved what he received, at least that is what I tell myself. I will not become like him, I tell myself intently. His malignity was shaped through nonchalance, so I myself must come to learn and accept the fragility of life. Suddenly, there is a knock upon the chamber door, a distinct rapping. It is soft at first, like the hand of a child. But it grows in volume. When I come to this realization, I gradually opened the stone