Legacy
After my own near-death experience at Basil’s hands, everything changed. I started to give due care and attention to what I would leave behind for the next generation.
When I woke up on my office floor, the day after Basil had slit my throat, I couldn’t believe I was alive.
I was not, however, filled with joie de vivre after not having succumbed to my wounds and perished.
Instead, a great anxiety consumed me. As my wounds healed, my mood didn’t lift.
It was my dark night of the soul. I kept the piece of paper with my scrawled sentence on it and, one evening not long after, it gave me the answer.
I needed to be known. I needed to tell my story. That very day, I began writing this book. As part of my journey, I’ve given a lot of thought to how I want to be remembered, and I’ll pass this learning on to you here, in my final meditations.
Whoever you are right now, today will soon be gone. Once you fulfill your potential as a serial killer, you will leave behind this world of jobs and public transport, poor healthcare and women who say no. You will be more than everyone around you.
However, it’s important that when you embark on your career as a serial killer, you shape your legacy from day one.
How do you want to be remembered? What do you want the headlines to say?
What will they call your Netflix documentary?
Providing that you have devoted yourself fully to the advice in this guide, you will become an infamous serial killer and, despite our efforts, the nature of your fame will be decided by others, and this can be difficult to stomach.
Once a legacy is formed, the real version of you becomes irrelevant.
To repeat: once a legacy is formed, the real version of you becomes irrelevant.
However unimpressive, average or outright disappointing you are right now, it won’t matter. A legacy transcends this reality. You can be a spotty virgin from a Welsh sheep farm and, providing you follow my advice, you will become the most fascinating creature in any room.
My own legacy, I have sought to shape with this book.
As I intend to continue to get away with murder for the rest of my days, I have found a way to shape my living legacy.
Should I be caught—which I won’t be—the man behind the mask will not matter.
All that will matter is the art and the legacy I have built for myself within these pages.
I have no doubt that once this book receives the attention it deserves, men will line up pretending to be me.
Men will revere me; they’ll think of me when they fuck.
They’ll wear T-shirts with my name on. They’ll talk about me down the pub.
Providing that you shape your legacy as well as I have shaped mine, it doesn’t matter who the man behind the mask is.
If you’re so disappointing that they can’t wrap their little minds around it, they’ll simply refuse to believe that the police have caught the right guy.
Either way, the fan mail will come, women will fall at your shackled feet, and Trevor McDonald and Piers Morgan will fight for your attention.
God, I hope Sir Trev is still alive and kicking when you’re reading this.
I’ll say it again: once you have created your legacy, the real you ceases to matter.
You could be anybody—a toothless bricklayer from Peckham, a skirt-wearing Glaswegian with moobs, an illegal immigrant with a dozen kids and zero prospects.
No matter how disappointing you may be in real life, you’ll be like God in the eyes of the world.
Better than God. No one believes in that loser anymore. Everyone will know that you exist.
With that notion, I leave you.
You, my beautiful reader, have been wonderful.
Denver Brady, SK.