Dear Victim,
Hi! It’s the “Toxic Avenger” here. If you’re receiving this, and you’re all caught up on your podcasts, one thing is clear: you’ve been poisoned! What is less clear is the letter itself, the existence and certainly the true nature of which have not been made public. Don’t worry! It’s just some accompaniment, talking you through the process of being my victim. (But also it’s much more.)
And as this is the last process you will ever go through in your entire life, it is important that you not make it more complicated than it already is. Take this time to make yourself comfortable. Granted I hadn’t really factored that in. A weakness on my part is that my prior research doesn’t go beyond my immediate needs, such as the fact that you work from home, have no camera system on your property, and are quite fond of Krispy Kreme donuts. So let us bear with each other!
Once you’re comfortable, you probably have a lot of questions. Questions like “Who are you?” or “How long will this take?” or “What did I do to deserve this?”. This is to be expected. Not that I can answer these in the detail that would satisfy you, but I can try to the best of my ability, in a way that won’t spoil my fun.
For instance, it’s not in my best interest to reveal much about my identity. But you seem like a perceptive enough person (up to a point, anyway) and can make some inferences by what I provide here. My masculine-seeming penmanship and my masculine-seeming syntax might stand out. Strange considering that poison is not the typical method for male killers. Wow, sexist much? Kidding! Allow me to clarify.
Some people murder out compulsion. Some people murder out of a cocktail of rage and momentary lapse of judgment. I can’t say I relate very much to either type. I am attracted to mayhem. Mayhem is a calling. But mayhem calls all sorts of people and does not hold consistently to simplistic gender preconceptions. Some male killers prefer irrational, physically taxing homicide. No judgment here! But I have a different taste. The best mayhem for me is more, shall we say, thoughtful, intellectual even. I love a good plan, with many moving parts and challenges. I find it stimulates the mind and gives me a sense of purpose, a goal to be reached. Did you not feel this in your own life?
Not that poison was my natural choice! This was clear enough early in the process that found me facing down memories of high school chemistry long ago repressed. But out of this humbling work, a thing of beauty arose, perfectly bespoke to my ambitions, and which you have presently ingested. It is slow-acting enough to give us our time together and severe enough to bring about the irreversible conclusion.
I am overstating the toil somewhat. I actually came to appreciate the artistic quality of science. We meet after a few rounds of trial and error. Some rough drafts, you could say—emphasis on rough. Pity my first victim, who died within seconds. Surely with not enough time for him to finish the first paragraph of my letter, which I worked very hard on—too hard in retrospect. The second victim did not lose her life, but she did lose her mind, and is confined to a psych ward where she doesn’t read anything at all! I believe with you, victim, things will be different, and better.
Speaking of which, going by the pace in which I practice-read this letter, you are advised to place it in an upright and elevated position so as to prevent it from being obscured by the profuse vomit that is soon to be coming out of you. A nightstand maybe, or some piano I hadn’t noticed?
Now that we’re on the subject, I hope you will take a moment to appreciate the fine accents I’ve brought to the vomiting experience. I haven’t made it more bearable or less disgusting; rather I’ve given vomiting a grandeur that I’m pretty is about equal to its force. You should detect a variation in consistency, by which the chunky and the acidic give way to the slimy and globulous. The same goes for the color scheme. Streaked prominently within the standard bilious beige and yellow are opalescent green and an almost velvety purple. Whether this ends up being pleasing to the eye is a matter of taste, but few could deny its beauty given the evidence of how greatly you suffered for it.
And on that note, a final clarification. You must be wondering why your life has been brought to this point. A fair question considering the unnecessary confusion surrounding it. “Toxic Avenger” brings with it certain implications about your victimology, namely that you’ve committed a wrong that I’m taking it upon myself to correct. But here’s a fun fact: I didn’t come up with the name! That was the doing of the New York Post, in all its wisdom, and which no one in the FBI, in all their cowardice, saw reason to push back on. In fact I think they adopted it for their own weird reasons. What a pointless smear upon your character! Be assured, victim, that you did absolutely nothing to provoke me. The vengeful are a different breed. They look upon everyone else as being lazy and without purpose. Personally I don’t see myself as being either, only that I am motivated by an entirely contrary urge, which neither the vengeful nor law enforcement or the media have been able to grasp.
Crime, like anything else in life, is a collaborative endeavor with its own variety of give-and-take. The criminal makes a connection with his victim of which he may not always be conscious. For me it is hyper-conscious. For all the ways poisoning is compatible with my needs and style, there is still a regrettable distance about it. It comes off cold and intimacy-averse. It’s a wide gap between intellect and emotion, and this letter is meant to be a bridge. Though maybe a better term would be a bond.
Right now, seeing as by this point you will have been reduced to agony at dissolving from the inside out, the feeling of being grossly imposed upon might be pretty strong. But I should hope, in whatever time you have left, that you might consider a different point of view. That in the wider scope of things—in human nature, in the law of the universe, in raw existence itself—there are things that will make less sense to you than the present situation, that “victim” may be removed from the circumstantial vocabulary in favor of “friend,” and that you will find some solace that however brief our friendship may be experienced for you, it will endure for me even as I go out in search of others. To me you are more than a worker at-home, more than donut-lover, more than a victim.
Yours in eternal friendship,
The Toxic “Avenger”