He Said It Was Self-Defense

Andrew Smith was the kind of man who remembered the shape of your handshake but not your name.

He wore cheap cologne and smiled too long. He never raised his voice—only leaned closer, lowering it, until people felt like confessing things they didn’t need to confess.

He met Caleb in a Telegram group called “Crypto Veterans.” Caleb had a soft laugh, a bad webcam, and a dream of turning mining profits into a cabin in Idaho. Andrew said he’d done the same, years ago. He said he’d help.

He lied, of course. That’s what he did.

It started as a trade: small coin, big promises. But Andrew noticed something in Caleb’s messages—a fear. Not of losing money, but of being taken. He mentioned his ex-business partner, a man who’d “burned him once.” The way he spoke about that man was tender, like the way soldiers talk about wounds that still itch.

Andrew sharpened it.

He began sending screenshots—fake wallet transactions, edited chat logs, enough to make it look like Caleb’s partner had stolen his coins and mocked him for it. He sent them at night, timing each one between Caleb’s typing pauses. He wanted Caleb sleep-deprived, spiraling, paranoid.

When he sent them, he did it with the calm deliberation of someone performing a rite. He watched Caleb’s typing indicator with the clinical devotion of an astronomer watching a single star flicker, timing each message to land precisely within the thin, twitching windows between Caleb’s pauses.

Those pauses were his metronome—one second too long, and the seed of doubt would sprout; three seconds and the weed of obsession would take root. He timed the pings to fall like small knocks at the edge of sleep, the kind that open the mind’s doors without waking reason. Each notification was a charm cast toward exhaustion; each edited log a sigil meant to reroute trust into suspicion.

When the message finally came—

“I’m gonna confront him tomorrow.”

—Andrew didn’t reply. He let the silence do the rest.

By morning, Caleb’s partner was dead.

The police called it self-defense. A “misunderstanding.” The man had come at him, they said. Caleb had no record, no motive anyone could see. The story held.

And Andrew Smith smiled for the first time in weeks.

He moved the coins the next day. Clean wallet, tumbling service, new seed phrase memorized in a single sitting. He did it in the dark, whispering each 12-word phrase like a prayer. When the screen finally flashed Transfer Complete, he felt something—

—not joy, not guilt—

just the raw, perfect quiet of completion.

He deleted the Telegram app. Bought a new phone. Even sent flowers to Caleb’s hearing. “Stay strong, brother,” the note read. Signed: A.S.

That night, he dreamed of the man he’d framed. Not as a ghost or bleeding corpse, but sitting at a desk, typing, staring back at him through a screen that wouldn’t turn off. When he woke up, he was already holding his phone, thumb hovering over the wallet balance.

It had gone up 4%.

He smiled again.

Weeks later, Caleb hung himself in county jail. The note said nothing about guilt. Just:

“I can’t find the wallet.”

Andrew printed that line and kept it folded in his pocket, not as a trophy but as something to touch when the noise in his head got too loud. He liked the texture of it. The smudged pen. The finality.

By then, he was already telling a new story—to a new investor, in a new chat. A different name this time. A different mark.

Andrew Smith doesn’t exist anymore, not really. He deletes himself with every new wallet, every new face, every new coin. But somewhere in the blockchain, timestamped and permanent, are the fingerprints of every lie he ever told.

They hum beneath the surface—unchangeable, irreversible, perfect.

Every transaction complete.

Every murder verified.

And if you look closely enough, the confirmation hash still resolves to one name.

Andrew. Smith.