Within these walls...04:16 Sep 21 2008
Times Read: 1,212
Lying on the sopping pavement a hand extends to the man and helps him to his feet. He is alone and his clothes are torn and dirty as the rain washes down his face.
“Who are you?” he asks.
How do I explain it when I know he won’t know?
I say to him, “I am the brother of the seven seas. I am the gravity of the tides and the darkest night’s guiding light. I am the one who allows the infection’s hot fever to twist your mind; to change the visions that you see. All of what you believe to be real is merely the fantasy I have given you.”
He drops his head into his palms and I can feel his struggle to not weep and not cry, for these emotions do not belong. His hands fall to his sides and with a deep breath to resolve his will he closes his eyes and raises his face to the sky to meet the cold and poisoned rain that falls over him.
I take his hand once more and open his palm towards me. I say to him, “Take this pill. It is the only one you will need. Swallow it down with the rain and your tears. Your pain has been great, but soon it will all be washed away.”
With a deep sigh his eyes meet mine, “Why?” he asks, “Why must it be this way?”
I don’t respond with words. Words would not help him now, not when he is already this far gone. I close his fingers around the pill in his hand. His rough, cracked and stained skin, his swollen knuckles, his resistance to what he can no longer avoid stops him from making a closed fist. He opens his fingers and looks down at the pill, magically, still dry.
He looks back up at me; his gaze greeted with a nod of acknowledgement and encouragement. He lifts his hand to his mouth. The white pill falls in past his blue and bleeding lips. He trembles as he tilts his head back again, upward to the crying skies with his mouth open to take in the rain.
And he swallows.
He turns away and staggers back toward the alley.
I shout to him through the sound of the rain slapping the pavement at my feet and thunderclaps above, “You can’t walk away! You can’t escape! There is no leaving this behind!”
Slowly he turns, head hung low, but with a fixed and angry glare from his sunken eyes. He walks back towards me. His steps weakened. His bare feet slowly dragging through the puddles.
“Tell me,” he demands, “I must know. It was real, wasn’t it? Please tell me it was real.
Tell me… was it love?”
“Love?” I ask back at him with a tone of incredulous disbelief. I laugh out loud at his folly. “Who could love you? You sorry sack of shit! You’re pathetic. You honestly thought it was anything more than your own infatuation?”
With a quivering lip and lacking the strength to take another step, he grasps at my shirt to help him stay on his feet; to help him maintain any sense of dignity. He asks, “But… the feelings. It felt real. I felt it!”
“For you maybe,” I replied, “you’re the one that could love the dog that bites at your ankle, or the snake that twists around your neck until you choke. You’re so desperate for what you don’t have - what no one is willing to give you. And why? Because you think it will make you worth something? You think if you love enough that snake will love you back and stop squeezing the life from you? You let your desires blind you from seeing yourself as you are: A worthless piece of crap, cast-away from society. Feelings? Fuck your feelings. Your feelings brought you here and left you wallowing in shit and filth. Maybe that is where you belong, but I have to bring you back.”
He begged, dropping to his knees, still clutching at my clothing, “How… tell me… how can I make it back now?”
I shoved him off. He collapsed on his back, gasping for breath.
I stepped forward and knelt on his chest to look him in the eyes.
“First... you must die…”
COMMENTS
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MysticMoon
17:39 Sep 23 2008
oh wow!!
if this was written for me i would be crying.. beautiful
BlackTea
17:48 Sep 23 2008
Thank you for writing this birra. It is what echoes in the halls of my mind daily and needs be seen like this to fully appreciate, even if another wrote them they speak to me. And they were written so very artfully, again thank you.
Joli
17:59 Sep 23 2008
Beautiful. I love that you ended the piece with a plea for a promise.
Joli
07:28 Sep 29 2008
I just read this again tonight. It somehow hit with even more impact. You blow me away, my friend.
birra
14:23 Sep 29 2008
And yet I typoed the title...
...I am so LAME.