“I killed a monster. I didn’t murder anyone,” I said.
She gazed at me, her eyes full of sorrow. Shaking her head, she said:
“No. You can’t kill people. That’s wrong. It’s murder.”
“Would it have been right to let him walk away? Do what he did all over again?”
“We have laws—”
“No we don’t,” I interrupted. “We’re not a nation of laws. If there were laws, then maybe what I did was wrong, but there aren’t, not really. We got laws on paper, but they only affect you or me. They don’t apply to him and his ilk. Maybe I can’t justify what I did to a jury, or to you, but I don’t have to. I have to stand before my conscience.”
“And your conscience is okay with it? With blood on your hands?”
“Sometimes, blood stains,” I said, “but sometimes, blood cleanses too. And I’d rather be bloody, I’d rather be wrong and have done wrong, than to have lived with that doubt the rest of my life: What if he does it again?”
Tale Told 