My narcissistic patient stared at the abstract painting on the wall to the left. He had something negative to say about it each time he came. But, today he was completely silent, and instead looked down at the floor.

“I feel… empty doctor,” he said.

“How come?” I said.

“Because I’m only human,” he said, ”comes with all the disabilities and shortcomings.”

“How long have you felt this way?”

“Two weeks now, ever since the event.”

He was silent after that. He wanted me to ask him about the event. Give him my attention, a thing he relishes in. A part of me didn’t want to do it. I think a part of me hates him. Fortunately I can keep that part hidden.

“What event?”

“You won’t understand it. Even you’ll call me crazy unless you understand where I come from,” he took a deep breath. “I always sleep on my back, my face pointing directly at my ceiling. There, smashed up into a spot of blood and twisted legs, lies a small black. He’s been there for a few months now, left on the ceiling ever since I killed him. I never bothered to clean it up.”

“Each night I saw that spider, and I just couldn’t bring myself to care about it. I mean it’s just a spider—an insect. Yet, a part of me felt that it was hypocritical of me not to care. I mean here lies a dead thing, something which had a mother and a father, and a life, but which now does nothing. It just serves as something for me to look at. An object of apathy.”

“I thought then, what if it were a human? What if it was a human that had been smashed into a wall and left as a corpse to be stared at. Any reasonable person would find the sight completely disgusting. But what is the real difference between the spider and the human?”

“I mean don’t get me wrong doctor. Whilst they were living, of course there was differences. That is, whilst they were living. But what is the difference now that they are dead? Nothing. They’re equally as smart, competent, sapient, sentient, capable of emotional expression. They’re both corpses.”

“So I realized something then. I shouldn’t feel any different from a dead spider and a dead human. It was a complete misconception in our society which I felt I had a need to speak about. I speak with art. In my effort to create such art, I grabbed a baby from a hospital and smashed its head into the wall with a spider corpse.”

“And I took a picture. Oh! At that moment the picture was so emotionally poignant. It said so much, a true masterpiece, yet ever since I feel like a part in my chest has disappeared. It started out as a haze, yet now it’s much heavier and the picture looks only like gore.”