Is it normal to want to murder arbitrary people?
For the past year or so I've been getting these hints of something deeper and darker living just below my normal sphere of consciousness. When I'm alone, death is the only thing I think about. Death, the great equalizer, that which we all must experience at one point, and that which is the unknown. No man can escape this fate, but there are those who choose to harness this as a power. More and more I find myself thinking of killing things, killing people. I can spend hours planing out scenarios, planing out how I would do it, questioning my ability but by no means questioning my desire, on some level, perhaps my most basic level, to take someone else's life.
I think its a fairly apt comparison to say that I find myself thinking a lot like Dexter Morgan, and if I were to kill someone, it would be someone that the world would be better without, and I'll admit that that power to decide who lives and who dies is tantalizing. Only God should have that power, but all evidence to the contrary of God's existence, why not claim that power for ourselves?
To dominate, to inspire fear and to release pure unbridled rage, or to go the higher route and control every aspect of ending a life, that kind of power is maddening, but it is intoxicating. I know that these thoughts and feelings are often attributed to serious threats to society, but for obvious reasons, I hold back. I have never targeted a real person before, and I question my ability to ever go through with these fantasies. I hear from a lot of people, though, that this desire for the forbidden power is not uncommon, that more people than one might think want the same thing I do, and we all know at least one person that the world would never miss.
Is it true though. Are thoughts and feelings like this, the cool and calculated taking of a human life, common?