There's no denying the primal course of action when we're finally backed into that corner - so look me in the eyes, and don't you dare turn away. I have fought for you. Fought and tried to contain the bile that now runs through these charcoal veins of mine. I would chase lions, smash apart the Imperial Legions of Rome, rip Genghis Khan's limbs from his quivering body. But I cannot fight myself. If you can see the scars on my forearms, then why not the throbbing in my neck, or the way I have held myself back from moment to moment to moment?

Please. Don't turn away. Just a few more minutes.

Remember how I confided in you on our first days here, surrounded by cowering recruits and war-beaten veterans? I am broken. It is simply the way I am wired to function. I never have, and never will, see the people around me for who they are. All I sense is the marble smoothness of their skin, the viscous lifeblood inside recycling the impurities of life. The vulnerability of an open throat. And I came so close with you, I swear, touching at the thoughts behind your eyes with the tips of my fingers. I came so close.

Yet even with you, when you sleep, when your eyes break contact with mine, I study the fragility of your life. I've crafted 13 different ways in which I could break you; some start with your body, others with your mind. All of them end in agony – for both of us, I imagine. I have them written down in my books and I've played them out in my head, heard the crunching of your tendons in glorified surround-sound nightmares. I've recorded every wince you make and locked the footage away in the failing recesses of my brain.

Not every soldier has been worn down by the youthful monstrosities enfolding our camp. The very first time I enjoyed your company, how quickly it became clear to me that the force of gravity is the last thing holding you down. Your movements trail on the dimmed side of unassuming. Your feet rarely leave the ground. Chains unnoticed by many tie you to your duty and leave oozing welts in your arms and legs. Don't worry, the clinking usually gets lost on the wind. Usually.

My chains are a lot lighter - but there are so many links and I forge more with every day that passes. They hang off my wrists, unsettlingly close to dropping away into the dirt. Every morning the sunlight brings hope of a revolution, a change, until the light flashes off these cuffs and blinds me once more to the turning world. That doesn't necessarily make them a burden though.

Ah, and now the wheels are turning inside, aren't they? Yes, inventory guard duty is a very secluded role. Yes, only one soldier is required to fulfil the task. And yes - I'm standing between you and the door.

It's a very small room all of a sudden.

The weapon that has appeared in my hand is nothing special. A standard-issue revolver, from a standard-issue manufacturer. The name of the gun is irrelevant, but I promise you its purpose will be pointedly irreverent. No deity would find comfort in the single hollow-point round chambered inside, and no church bells will ring upon its homecoming within the flesh. As I am broken, so too are you.

I still find it fascinating, mesmerising almost, that you were so willing to cross the razor-strewn No Man's Land lying between my lips and my heart, that you were all too willing to fashion your chains alongside mine. I'm going to leave you paralysed. I'm going to destroy you over and over again and I only need this one fated bullet.

What will happen after this is inconsequential and certainly not for me to decide. Perhaps you will grope your way unknowing through the fog to come, or perhaps the pain will obliterate your senses. Unable to see, hear, smell, touch, feel. To know the existence I have endured a million times over.

And here it is, at last. The simplest and most total, kindest yet suitably callous, most effective, most demonic, heavenly way to break you: It is to break me.

The bullet isn't meant for you.