Member-only story
Ego Death Forensics
The detective pressed the killer again, this time with veins bulging in his forehead.
“I know what you did, and I KNOW you will admit it!”
The young man did not look up from the cold, steel table. He had been shackled there at the wrists for what felt like a week. Perhaps only 12 hours had gone by. He pondered the circumstances. He was skirting the lines of culpability like an ice skater at the Olympics. One lost edge, and…
“Do you know the punishment here in California, when you are found guilty of ego death?”
The young man contemplated what it meant to criminalize suicide. Or for that matter, suicide of the psychological self. Ego death. God, it felt good to be dead.
“Why’d you do it?” He spat out his cigarette as the words flew across the room and tore a chunk from the concrete.
“Why do anything?”
The detective was so bewildered, that for a moment he forgot how goddamn angry he had been.
“Johnson!”
A burly, sure-footed man stepped into the room. He was built like a forklift.
“He’s a radical. Keeps talking about his oneness with the world. Won’t say a damn thing worth a dime in court.”
