Validation

Everyday, lying there in a cold sweat, the same revelation would pass casually through his mind. His disassociate stare was un-wavering, panning solemnly across the doorway of his room. This was his oblivion; he had no more then this fruitless empire of sloth-esque manner. The daunting reminder that would creep into his head was of his certain death, a death he couldn’t care less about. He didn’t care about dying because he didn’t care about living. In the absence of purpose there is nothing but wishful thinking to die. The same position everyday, the same disgust for the world and a tart case of insomnia. When the essence of humanity can wander in and out of your life, and you see the inane “necessities”others “require”, you can almost appreciate living as a cruel joke or chemistry experiment gone awry. Semen to fertilize, babies to young men, adulthood to death. The routine and consequences are inevitable, the dissonance in his eyes showed that.

Had he ever lived or been happy or cared about anything? A sideways grimace forms on his face, his sweaty, pale face. The past can never die and the future keeps pressing on, this thought amuses him. Suicide? What’s the point, he’s not selfish and he isn’t crying out for attention (not that anyone would care). He’s transgressed from a butterfly into an apparition of a gray, bony mess on his bed. If you were to speculate exactly how he came to be, you would realize it was a shear waste of time to hear excuses of whose fault it is, because it was anyone’s but his.

That ominous grin is still displaced on his vile face, it begins to form into a scowl, he recalls once feeling trifle avarice for something. He tries to remember, it was something he lived for, something bleak. Retribution? Vanity? Human contact? Maybe, it really doesn’t matter anymore, the shit faced smile has returned. A spark, he knows what to do tonight. Ah, superbia, purpose regained! With an acedial groan he stretches his atrophied body over the length of his bed. He glances around his room and notices how long it had been since he moved. He moves towards an end of his bed and puts his feet into the cushion of cheap carpet. He stands into a full, completely gruesome posture and stretches out his decayed limbs. The feeling of mobility, the pulsing acidic sensation of agility lost.

Disdained by his movement, the desire to return to a paradise lost in his somnolence, his purpose begged him to strive on. The bleak light of the restroom tinted the shower stall a pale gruesome shade of something urinal. He felt for the showerhead; ignited, it bled an even paler urine-esque fluid over his skin. Kneeling, he began to think of blood. He felt the floor; he spoke to it, “My sovereign touch to a wintry face, the squirming pursuit for a breath in the eclipse of hope”. Grinning again, a small glimmer of life and chaos reborn. He stood to finish his business.

In the closet, the hidden past disclosed behind a cheap glass sliding door. He looked on past his reflection, into his foreshadowed evening, into a memory, into a dream? A cold sweat again, he broke free of the trance and moved the door open. A small fishing tackle box sat dead center; he knelt down to examine its insides. A scalpel, a small flashlight, two pairs of gloves (surgical and hardware), a small handsaw, and duct tape. The check list is complete; his car keys are still sitting on top of his fold-up table. Now he will wait.

His truck bed was equipped with bolted iron loops and rough leather straps, his tool box was ready for slicing and he was ready for their cries. The sun was falling, and his prayers for the night’s shade were finalizing.

He drove along the less busy streets, he parked in a small alley, another smile crept as he imagined how cliché his tactic was of picking up a whore and dissecting her disease, but not tonight, tonight he was after himself. The prey was more of a fighter, the prey could bite back.

80 minutes later

He strung his wrists through the makeshift fasteners in his truck bed, still standing over his fighting body he observed the struggle and smiled. He took a heavy tarp and draped it over the enslaved man. He still writhed under the blanket but the smile faded without direct sight of his torment. Car keys jammed into ignition, his excitement was almost overwhelming, boiling inside him. And to the drive of his life… He recalls the beginning; a narration of his explanation develops in his mind:

“As I sat in my portable desolation of a living lie, and spilled the acid over my arm, a sensation coupled with revelation drew upon me. Like a drill bit spinning through my veins, it came in subliminal darkness. My existence, in a constant search to live has been strikingly futile for no reason other then my looking in the wrong place. The world as a complex, entwined barb of balance and disarray is expectant of us to fail at all we do because our driving focus to achieve self-understanding and resolution in our soul purpose is not met. The expansion of my mind in that deafening pain, the skin pealing and turning to bubbling arson, the speculation growing stronger with the pain. There is no life without death, no love without hate, no satisfaction without disapproval. To be whole, to be an entirety means I must no longer search for life, but live for death. Happiness out of sorrow can only pursue, that is the pinnacle of man’s existence” his self-visualized voice drained out into the screams his created, the only scream he soon will manifest.

In the middle of a field, he stopped and set free that sardonic grin. The time had come, again, to be whole. Desire and meaning fulfilled as he tore away the tarp over him, the man that he saw, trying so hard just to be free he knew alone was all he could be without this man’s sacrifice to him - to the mortal god he embodied.

Now to execute; out came the box, first in frenzy - with the gloves on - he began to strangle the man. With the other hand a scalpel, he worked like a surgeon without a purpose. Every time he cut into the man, the soft blade diving into bare flesh and pulling back the crimson stain, every time the man bled he separated himself further from society. He was no longer a person; he was an animal, an unlovable, disgusting, exiled soul in his own oblivion. A cast out only because he threw himself away, he released everyone from him, striving to be alone, no more pain to anyone but himself, no more should he cause pain to the one’s he loved. A tear formed, spilled and fell into his sub-conscious. The man ravaged by a small blade, our man worsened with the flashback, he pulled out the man’s wallet. Exhuming the carcass with the wallet in hand, a badge of protection and courage fastened in his front pocket. This man was a cop and brother to a very wealthy and powerful businessman.

On the man’s side a holstered police issue nine millimeter glock, our man pulls it out, walks toward the center of the field and in total appreciation for the stars gleaming over him, the moon caressing the ground with soft comfort, the breeze flowing over him like the sweetest touch of a linger hand. His finger, absorbing the feel of the trigger, eyes fixed to the bolt action of the grand gun, barrel in mouth and sorrow fleeting. No more. He picked at the trigger with the slightest touch and nothing. He pushed, forcing his finger deeper into the trigger, to the point of touching the backside to the gun. Another click, gun in mouth and nothing. He turned it around, still on his knees, pulling back the bolt action a 9mm round lodged but immovable. He dumped the magazine; he released the bullet and sat in helplessness with a functional bullet in his palm. The shot never fired, the fate sprang irony. The story ends and leaves you in breathless anticipation of an ending, he doesn’t die and he never feels and like so many other’s he pleads for release yet drains out into our human fear of loneliness. There is no balance when all there exists is imbalance.