Stifled

Do not look at me with mindless eyes, I do not care what lurks in your emotions. How you deal with your control. I care not for the empathy you give on the street, for free, nor the thoughts you provoke. The way you run your life is not for me to judge, your beliefs are not in my jurisdiction. I see the eternal hate that blackens your mind, burns it to a crisp. Gives you reason to move on when you should have died out long ago. Because maybe the human spirit is more than I had anticipated. Maybe it’s more powerful than even I imagined. But I will tell you this. While I do not deny its existence, while I do admire the spirit of rambunctious, common humankind who wish to extend a hand in the direction of a friendly stranger, the fact remains that I cannot be trusted. And maybe I do speak with the expertly exploited forked tongue as the serpent does, saying one thing out of one side of my mouth and a completely different thought, simultaneously. Is it, after all, my fault because their hate stings me like a hive of bees and, like the insect, they die to put a dent in my armor? Where is the logic in their thoughts and actions? Where is their so called God, could He save them from a flame so bright that even I have to squint to see past it? Could He scoop them up with His Hand of Glory and take their souls in one fell swoop? Maybe … but things look bleak in this time of darkness. Slowly they are being exposed to the reality that they might actually have to fend for themselves in a world so dark and corrupt. Slowly they find themselves amongst the ruin and rubble they have caused to exist. And they stand knee deep in their own temptation, dared to partake of the foul, the pitiful. They question themselves, their existence, a divine right they believed they would someday attain. Maybe … maybe things are not as they believe them to be. Maybe the unanswered questions beg to be resolved but they haven’t the time nor effort to win this war. This war … the one that threatens them everyday, the one inside their heads, slowly coming to fruition as it manifests, granule by granule. And they scratch their heads, they stop in motion. All of them, for a momentary lapse in time, forget about their worldly concerns and concentrate on the agony that binds them to the nothingness. Through which some search for a meaning, while some obviously cannot understand this gift called life, before plunging head first into obscurity. The only thing they have ever known, come to greet them again. Hello darkness my old friend. So nice to see you once more. Your black lips curl now at me oddly, as if it were time to feed and I were the only prey in sight. Your vacant eyes stare at the hollow, nonrelenting, with the power to pierce through even my dreams and become such a cruel reality. The talons dig deep in my mind, through my lobes, through my brain, the only thing with which I can identify. I have been lead astray now, I have become the lost puppy. It is my turn just as it was theirs or will be theirs at one point or another. I am forced to find myself, to continuously justify what I do t myself with no remorse nor regret for anyone else. Yes this death has overtaken me but it will never defeat me. I know because I want to be defeated far too much. And they will not kill he who would go willingly into the abyss, to dive off the high rise they have set. Maybe because I am here for another reason entirely than that which I thought. I have formed the most elite group of men to ever step between the ropes. I have bound together the many forces of this world who alone, felt the emptiness that I knew. Who alone, felt the temptation that I knew but he who alone, could get little done. As I could. You see the strong minds have become the Warlocks, feasting on the ignorance and the insanity of incomplete minds. Awaiting the graveyard but never quite stepping foot in it, they have redefined all the conceptions, interpretations and transgressions that had once existed. The most powerful people who, alone could do no good, together rained down fury upon the unsuspecting. Sean Corvik, Joe Johnson, Scott Monroe, MacBeth, Exile. All with so many fatal flaws that they were almost ripped from life so very easily. Yet they remained and so did their pain. Yet through each other they found the common answer, they found the meaning behind the wall. They found that together, their individual goals could be met. That they would have their vengeance upon those who scorned and mocked them in their lives. For those who chose to spit at the hand that fed them and decided they could tread easy ground by making as name for themselves at the expense of the Royal Family … Only to realize that they were not the animal that these people were used to. That this was some hybrid of … something else. Something more powerful, more sinister. Something that cared not for the emotions of those around them for they knew that the ones around them would never care for their own. Would never give a second thought about the hurt that these people have known. The blood that they have spilled like crimson life as it poured from their bodies. As night in and night out, they would go out and they would scratch themselves up beyond repair, they would leech themselves of the very life given to them, they would hurt until nothing could possibly hurt any longer. They would let themselves know the fear that has spread all too quickly between us. And they would not do it for the average, stupid punk fan. They would not do it for a promoter, for money, for fame. They would do it for themselves and, eventually, each other. Yet times have changed now and the tables have turned. Now the mirrors have pushed inward to reflect upon themselves, now the plates shift under our surfaces for now … now something very catastrophic is going to occur. Now is the time for you all to fear. Up until now it was simply an afterthought but now, their nightmares slowly regenerate and come into view for their scared eyes t see. Before the idol they tremble, begging for forgiveness for their actions. As if the appearance of their so-called destiny was really going to make them question themselves and completely cease the destruction they have caused. The cards now come into view and we realize what we must do, but it is never what we truly do. For we are the ones who preach one life and lead another. We are the hypocrisy that has become so prevalent. What are we, truly? Some kind of monster? Do we breathe as a different breed? I was never one to care about the fate of another man until I realized that it would always affect me. That we as humans are chained to each other and forced to feel what one feels. As one is interconnected to all of mankind, making them feel the pain that one does feel. What infernal misjustice it is to put me through what they have been through? I have chosen my path though I do not remember it and I do not look back. Yet the more I see, the more I find that my decay was formed by others, not me, that half my path belongs to someone of another light. Let me out of this hell now, it does me no good. All I do anymore is burn with the judgement cast upon me, simply being told that come the day of judgement, I will cook in the flames of Hell because I have not lived my life by another’s standard. That I will be the one who will never achieve paradise because my core is too rotten for them. And to that I say, keep your fucking paradise. Because you will not enjoy it either. You will never feast upon the delicacies of a styrofoam Heaven, you will not drink from the waters of eternal decadence as a fool once put it. Before I had to drive him under, before I had to nail him to a cross and turn his eyes to the revelation. My own brother, I had to watch him wash away with the rising tide because he chose to be a fool, he chose to turn against me and take what I loved the most. You see, I had to destroy him because I would not let him rise above me, would not let bacteria rise to the heights of a God. For who would I to let him do that? Yet your eyes fall upon my broken body and your curled lips say that I am evil. Because I cannot control the way I am, because I am ripe with decay and no one would even bother saving me. To an extent they are right but truly, are they any better than I? Is there really anything they care about more than the destruction of another damned soul? They are nothing, their minds are easily swayed to the fruitful images of war and terrorism. They find that by instilling into another human being that you are his superior, you can have your word spoken upon the nimble tongue of everyone you see and everyone you do not. Because you think that you are the one who is meant to surpass the Lord almighty, you are the one who will set things straight once and for all when you do not even have the common sense to know you are destroying your own world, your own species. You are disrupting your own nature, you are leaving your destiny in frail and bony hands, ready to fall off their wrists. You are daring to stare in the eyes of mortality and neglect its wonder. Like you are some kind of God, like you do not take the throne of dirt like the rest of us. Like you will not feast upon the worms.

For I have found my wrists now bound to this floor, forever wanting, forever needing yet forever unchanged. Forever denying your fate, your God, your innocence. Forever staring into the empty eyes of a reflection I knew but didn’t want to know. For everyday it reminded me of what I was, it took my porcelain mask and smashed it into millions of irreparable shards. It forced me to look within, to feel the hate that I have caused and have known. The hate binds to us all, really. Is that what you would like to hear? That it adheres to the innocent and causes them to do bad things, like Satan were controlling them and keeping them from their divine path? I don’t think so. I think those who hate, choose to hate. Those who kill, choose to kill. They are not held hostage, there is nothing threatening their emotional freedom. They may blame it on something else to alleviate responsibility but, surely, they understand on their own exactly what their fatal flaw is. That which will not go away no matter how much they try to thicken skin to impenetrable status. That flaw always stays, it remains the fly form inside, the one you can’t kill, the one you are too slow to touch. Its reality has become your fate, now, the fact that we will all fall to our own flaw, our own affinity, our own tendency to be just a little different from the next person. And like snowflakes we differ, as them we fall as if by some divine intervention. We are evil, yet we are victims of the hand of glory. Of some insane society that has chosen to push us away, to gather us in groups, to take away our freedoms from our will and give them to us on paper, restricted. They have brainwashed our minds, sculpted our souls from the clay and given us no reason to think we will rise to anything. And yet you … you choose to go where the wind blows you while I have found that by veering off course, you partake of the pleasures they deny you and the agony they do not want you to experience. The pain that sinks deep into the mind of the human psyche and constantly rocks our souls. I am tired, I am weak. My Family, the only ones I thought I could trust, have given me reason not to understand where my loyalty lies. They have shown me that no, there is no one in this world you can unconditionally trust because all people have their guidelines, their rules, their personas. Personas so apt to contradict and spark the flame that ignites into war. I thought I could trust despite all I have ever experienced, stabbed in the back by my best friend two times over. I speak these words with such an open mind and evolved tongue yet I cannot even take my own advice. I choose to think of myself outside this race yet I haven’t realized that I am one of them. I am not what they built, I am the creator, the most ignorant. Now I head into the distance, so many years of struggle bearing heavily on my shoulders as this burden must find its destination, its realization. And my back is broken, and the blood and sweat stain my eyes. I can’t see where I’m going because there’s no ground, there’s no sky. There are no walls, there is no end. Now I fight and I don’t even know why anymore. You have destroyed your world when I tried to liberate it. You have killed one another while I tried to save your souls. You have chosen to stare in the face of the Creator and furthermore spit in it. I am broken. I bear this weight the best I can but I am simply a man trying to live out his days in some semblance of peace and solitude. Only to realize that the bug always bites again, that I could never stay away from my obsession nor my addiction. I wanted to settle in, to become someone in a perfect world. Only to know that it will never happen. That dreams do not come true, that Hollywood is scripted. That the good guy doesn’t always win. I have found that despite how I feel, it does not change who I am. And I am .. a floundering individual who must pull himself out of this hole before he is allowed to die. I am … just another card in society’s hand, just another wooden doll attached to the sway of the marionette’s hand. That the words are stuffed into my mouth and thoughts into my brain. So I can live out the rest of my life with a sedative separating me from myself for as long as possible. So I can no longer see myself. So the mirror now cracks when it is forced to behold the majesty of my words. Now comes the time for me to rise to my feet.

Now has come the time to prove superiority.

And a simple sin causes me so much grief. And a sour grape from the most luxurious wine, the bitter berry, ever so slightly stings my tongue as I partake. As if by only a hinting glance, it cascades over my palate as my receptors pick it up. And it goes into my system and gives me a slight twinge of life. My slender fingers wrap around the chalice, tapping against the base of it, my silver eyes glowing, staring up at the space before me. Knowing not what it is to hold. The granite table is so very massive beneath my frame, the velvet red robe practically falling off my body. My hood remains over my head … I cannot bear to look at myself any longer. Yet I know not why the man invited me here, to this place. This … Golgotha straight out of a Tool video. Nonetheless my fingers rap, no ticking second hand of the clock to bid me company this day. Leery eyes shift over the table as my head bows down slightly, not letting my hair get in the way of my vision. I solemnly look down, awaiting the future, quite obviously really, my depression having completely marred what was supposed to be my mask, distorted my reality, teased my perception. I have nothing, I am nothing. I choose not to show my face because … they do not need to see me any longer. I remember hearing their taunts, I can never forget their taunts. They rebound off my head, everyday. From childhood to now, their little witticisms have found a special place in my heart. They have bore a deep hole in my black, beating membrane but I still hold them near and dear. Keep your friends close, keep your enemies closer, as the old adage goes. And that is what I fully intend to do. For you see, I am something that they never expected. I am something they can never have, no matter how much they wish for me, the desire to be all powerful, to subdue the opposite sex into their frame of mind, to be able to flaunt the riches of the world because somehow, that fulfills them. In some way, that is what satisfies them, material possessions of a material world. Yet this greed should never be used to satisfy, never allowed to complete someone for indeed it cannot. I never found myself happy with any amount of money in my pocket, I have never lusted over some foolish man’s gold, indeed I only took the gold to exploit their flaw. They deserved it, they did … having it ripped out of their dying hands as they watch themselves suffocate on their own greed, the very foolish desires that force them to live and procreate. The very treasure chests they have opened have released the demons they feared most. All because of some Creator, all for being the powerful, the mighty, the superior. And for what? What do they get when they take their place in the ground? Nothing, they get nothing. And now as I sit here tonight, I have come to find myself once more. The fingers of my opposite hand wrap around this old feather pen. I scrawl out my thoughts on a scripture; this is what he told me to do. For this night I seek enlightenment, some semblance of truth, some answer. He told me if I would put my transgressions, my inaccuracies, my weaknesses on this paper … I could keep them there, confined, to free myself of my sin, my anger, my loathing. Yet without it, somehow I feel it is becoming a better part of me and I would not be able to survive without it. But to experiment, to see if I could truly leech emotions … he told me I could do it so here I sit, my face flickering thanks to the bend and sway of the candles in this Monastery room.

“It had never been this way before. I felt fulfilled, if for a momentary lapse in time. I felt like I was someone to another person, that perhaps I could shine a little light in their world and ignore my own bleak crust. I thought maybe that I had come to the end of my search and there was no more color to behold, I had found what would keep me happy for the rest of my existence. I had crawled from the cemetery, clawed at the dirt around my hole and swore I would rise. And I did rise. Yet my fall … my fall I did not expect.”

I carefully look at the room and all the stones around me. I hear the whirring noise of … simply silence. I have requested to be let in my room, not to be disturbed. I have requested to be closed off from those I had the ability to hurt for surely I could not make them bleed upon sacred ground. I could not let them feel pain in this holy terrain. So I keep quietly, to myself, letting my brain pour directly into the ink. Sighing, I reach out with my left hand and grasp the hood, pulling it back, letting my blue and black locks fall just below my chin, a glazed look overcoming my eyes. It has been weeks since I have used … the bittersweet taste of the man made artificial mind enhancer. For now … I did not need it for I hurt enough. Already the signs were showing, I was going through withdrawal. Bloodshot eyes, quickly perspiring palms, shortness of breath. I even had trouble grasping the pen. I am shaky yet resolved now, the tip gliding over the pages. Wondering exactly what I was doing here. Wondering where I could ever go to escape the madness. Now this place seemingly emanated with the aura of the divine, like it was going to hold me aloft, forgive my so-called sins and take me away to paradise. Yet I look not for their paradise because it is not what I want. It is not what I crave. I stand on another level entirely, it takes so much to fill me up. To fill the holes in my heart that will never repair. Shaky, my fingers run through my hair in an attempt to calm myself, letting my mood soften. I run my fingers down the nape of my neck and to the two circular scars on the side of my neck. There will always be memories to remind me. Ever since Scott Monroe fed off the Nectar of the Gods, things just haven’t been the same. Now there is a piece of Arcane in both of us. Yet … there is a piece of him within us all, deep down where most do not want to admit his presence. Yet Arcane is no God. He does not exist solely because you think he does. He exists because each of us needs an inner balance of this love and hate. It is simply which one we tap into more that we convey more. I am not at fault, I am simply trying to live what remains of my life, the charred fallout of what once could be a glorious thing. Brought down by the hand of fate as it slowly wraps around my body with each passing day, agonizingly inching closer and closer to my breathing. Yet right when death comes and I see the red surrounding me, it constricts and I fall, just to be picked back up again. Just to repeat the cycle we have grown so used to that we do not give it a second thought. We know it is there, though, we feel its presence as if it stalks over our shoulders at every passing turn because, let’s face it, it does.

“I remember walking into a confessional once. I was actually a very religious individual but, after getting out of a relationship with someone else, just a young kid, I wanted guidance. So I walked into the booth and I looked out at the spot separating me from this man of the cloth. I sat in my little corner, he asked me what was wrong. He called me his son. It may not seem like much but to me, I just wanted to be accepted, if only under the word of someone else. I told him … that I had lost my temper with my girlfriend, I had hit her. I had to endure her yelling for hours and was finally tired of it. So I let her have it. She started crying and ran to the bedroom. I had been crying ever since. And this man tells me that God will forgive me … if I can first forgive myself and if I could apologize to her. I was a wreck. I had been strung out for several days and didn’t know what to do with myself anymore. I started freaking out, I associated my insecurities with the God I was worshipping and all of a sudden I was looking at Him as the reason for my pain and suffering. It is not that I did not blame myself for my actions but let’s face it, some things drive a man to do things he would not normally do. Am I really to blame for retaliating when being pushed to the edge? I was only doing what I could and ever word this preacher spoke wore on my nerves more and more. How could God let all this happen to me if He cared about me? How could the Father stand by and watch one of his young children be slain on the rotten streets he has created and paved with filth and malpractice? Where was He when the blade was pressed so firmly against my skin? When I was begging for closure to a life that had lasted fifteen fucking years? Why should someone feel the need to take their own lives when they’re still but a simple fetus? I didn’t find it fair to me and at that point … I exploded with anti-Semitism the likes of which this man had never heard. I quietly took my leave but I would never forget how helplessness made me feel. It was like I was trapped in a corner with no way out. I tried to reach out for help, tried to be everything a model human would be. Until I realized the world does not care about your morals, your ideas, your hypotheses. It does not care about values, about sincerity or benevolence. It cares about success and winning, subsequently trampling over your fellow man. I couldn’t take it anymore. I lashed out and became the man I am today.”

I stopped for a moment, taking a drink of water, parching my dry throat and popping the bones in my wrist, rolling it around. I so much felt like lying down so it was further motivation to spew my transgressions and downfalls in this paper. In this cryptic scripture. After I am done, I can keep it, I can destroy it, whatever road I may take. But it will be there and trapped inside, my weakness. If not to simply come a little bit closer to finding out who I am. My silver eyes with dilated pupils scan over the paper yet read not a word. My fingers run over the texture of the page, feeling its contents as if braille, drawing them out, finding a center, a compromise. Yet none can ever be reached. I flip the page and begin on the next, stopping only to dip the pen in the small jar of ink before me. The candles keep their steady rhythm as I stop to think, scratching my chin for a short period of time.

“I try to make people see there is good in me, yet none realize. So I grew tired of trying to please them, trying to live under the guidance of an entity I had never seen before. I have burned down churches, I have blasted the name of God as it stands today. I have permanently crippled people, they will never be able to walk again. I have ruined peoples’ lives forever after trying to help them. They couldn’t accept that, they wouldn’t understand why someone who looks, dresses and decorates himself as strangely as I could possibly have what it takes to help them. They waited for their angels in togas and wings, I suppose, they went off to find exactly what makes them tick. They wanted their devils and their saviours, everything so cut and dry like what they were taught. Some would say their saviour came in the form of me and they blew me off as if I had never existed. Could they tell the difference between right and wrong, could they discern between help and hurt? I just no longer wasted my time with them. It had now become my duty to hurt me, my very right to take away from them what they had taken from me. Every ounce of my being, they had morphed every ounce of my caring, of my love and replaced it with smoldering fallout of what once was. All reduced to rubble because of the flame, I am a broken man because of the flame, I am broken because this is what they chose me to be.”

I sigh heavily. It has already begun. This … transformation. You see, I am an impatient man. I cannot stand idly by and watch as my world falls apart. What I do now, surrounding myself with that which I hate, detaching myself from the sin, I am further isolating and defining my emotions. I am adding jagged edges, I am straightening the lines that have been blurred for so long. I am becoming stronger by realizing, just a little bit more as the days go by, just who I am. I am finding my weaknesses and strengths all over again. Writing has always been a release for me yet I never knew it could truly bring about my finest moments. I am very emotionally worn after having to poison Scott Monroe. I do not know how he is. Yet as I tried to make myself not care if he was hurt, I do care. Some things just do not disappear all that easily. Some wounds … require time to heal. And now as I try to shut the wound, it remains open, throbbing, oozing, causing me pain around every bend, so much so that I cannot sleep at night. For while I want to be the machine, I am nothing more than an empty shell with a conscience. That is our weakness, after all. Caring enough to expose ourselves to the most dangerous elements this world have to offer, some of which give you an impossible amount of time to defend yourself before you realize your vulnerability has succumbed to the machine. That they have wired themselves directly in your system as a way to hurt you, to make you feel like an outcast, barely able to mutter a word beneath the ground in which they pull you. And everytime you fight to remove yourself, you fight for their own amusement. Everytime you struggle against the resistance and think you have come a step closer to doing the unimaginable, they pull you back in, just a little bit more, letting you enjoy only your breaths. The day you give all your thanks to the fact that you can still breathe is the day they have you, tied in whips and chains, dragged to the hereafter with no remorse, no regret. They love to hear you cry, they love to taste you bleed. For it to trickle down their palate and understand that they have you. Because it gets them off, they take pleasure in the crucifixion of another damned soul. Only this time, for the last time, I will resist against my restraints and try … try to become something else. I will leave my past behind, I will leave my future in wait and I will correct the mess that my present has become. For how do you operate when everything you know is a lie? How do you walk through the day knowing that what you had put your faith into had all turned into some big hoax perpetrated by … them … ? You don’t do anything; I didn’t. So I find out that Exile has planted my daughter and my wife. I was never married and I never had a child. So alone I am, once more, walking this path of deceit, tasting the harsh rays of the Sun as it beats down my back with no remorse, no regret. I shoulder this burden now, certainly, but what happens when I grow tired and am no longer mentally nor physically able to do such a thing? It cannot last forever. The moment you drop your burden, it falls on you. The moment you leave it behind it comes back to haunt you. Or you can lessen the blow by lessening the burden; such a thing would last much longer and not take such a toll. Yet I have not found out how, does my burden lessen any by killing Exile? Does it lessen any by putting my life on the line to get the better of Scott Monroe? Such is the conundrum because if one thing fails, I cannot go back and try them again. I will die. Such is the gamble, the risk …

“The walls always seem like they’re closing in and everyone is coming to get me. Even now I feel so paranoid, in a Holy temple … it is all I know. Because everytime I let someone in … they let themselves out and they leave so much damage doing so. I would never think of turning on anyone who did not absolutely deserve it, yet … brothers should never fight. Monroe remains my brother, which is so much more than I can say for Exile who has dedicated his life to destroying me. I feel so much vengeance, so much hatred yet so much helplessness. Like there is nothing I can do. It is pretty obvious considering I saved Scott from the flaming EWCL logo and left Exile to die. I should have made sure he was consumed by the flame, I should have seen to it that I would never have to deal with him again. But what will that get me? The memory remains, the fact that with Exile dead, no matter what he did, I would still mourn because of all the unanswered questions. I would still mourn because of what he was in the beginning, not what he represented in the end. In a few days I have to fight one of his lackeys. Truthfully I do not know how I am going to handle that. There is so much pent up frustration that needs to be released, so much venting that needs to break out of its confines and raise total hell upon Logan, a simple underling of Exile’s ego. Again it would prove nothing but it is my primal instinct, my need to destroy when I go long periods of time without doing so. It all goes back to eliminating something before it surely eliminates me. I know of no other way, I no longer know trust if a Family built on a foundation thicker than blood can be separated by a rift as a result of a petty ego clash. Separate my hate from my love? My trust from my distance? My loyalty from my affinity to betray? I … “

A knock comes at the door, startling me, forcing me to look up very quickly. My eyes dart to the door as I silently give the person permission to enter. A monk, bald per usual and donned in a red robe, slinks in and bows his head to me. In one hand he holds the Book of Sin and Lies (Obviously the Bible). He nods to me and takes a seat in the chair next to mine. I can sense that every look he makes in my direction, from the tattoos, the piercings, the dyed hair, the marks of war … is meant to judge me by what I choose to adorn myself with or what has happened to me. Obviously he says nothing about my looks and instead turns his head to my scripture.

Monk - I see you have written many things.

Corvik – In a sense, yes, I suppose I have …

Monk – You are very unhappy with who you are.

Corvik – I wish I could know who I was long enough to be unhappy with him.

Monk – You know I cannot tell you who you are. I do not know you.

Corvik – Then why did you let me come here?

Monk – Because you are a brother just as everyone is. I live this lifestyle because there is no outside threat. Here, people trust their fellow man. We are brethren. I cannot tell you which way to go Sean, I can only tell you that there are people out there who wish to hurt you. You must remember your faith in yourself and in God to pull through and show them the way. Not out of force but out of choice.

Corvik – I cannot change them.

Monk – It is not about changing them. It is simply about showing them their self-destructive ways and telling them that it needs to stop.

Corvik – Which is still pushing ideas into their heads. I can’t have faith in God because I don’t believe one exists. Every word spoken on that paper is one of truth and every word represents why I gave up on God a long time ago.

The monk nods, looking toward the floor.

Monk – We must all find our own paths, Sean, we must all discover ourselves and make our own trails on which no one else can tread. Some choose to blaze their trails with hate because it is so much simpler to utilize than love and kindness. Yet those who blaze it out of benevolence soon realize that their destination brings prosperity to their souls and to their strength.

Corvik – Even if I did choose to go back on my trail, I could not.

Monk – And who says you have cleared the path with hate as your weapon?

Corvik – I know you must assume it.

Monk – That is the problem with assumptions. They go unspoken. I can speak nothing of your life outside of this place but inside, I see deep in you that you have the love and kindness. Yet your weapon is neither love or hate. It is retaliation against those who have scorned you.

I set the pen down next to my paper and leave it aside for a moment, basking in the warm flicker of the red candles as they dance upon the floor, ceiling and ground. He stares at me, stares holes perhaps, shots I try to evade. He stares directly into me, trying to grab something but I constantly sway and do not let him inside. Yet his fist has a stranglehold on my heart, it squeezes, hard, it causes my heart to almost stop … yet he also makes me realize that it is there.

Corvik – Ah, my weapon. If only I knew how to use it.

Monk – Weapons are what is wrong with this world. You cannot use weapons, you must use gifts. Those you have found and those you were given. You have to discover them, you see. All of us have traits that make us different from the next person. Some are good with drawings, some are good with words, some are good with sports. But we are all artists, we all collaborate on the collage of the most grand scale. We should all be proud to be a part of it.

Corvik – And what is there to be so proud of? With all the pain, heartache and betrayal, what is there to be proud of? To be another peg in the machine of hate?

Monk – Only if you want it to be. This world is only what you make it, Sean. What you see is what you envision. And you have such a hate filled outlook from a few slip-ups that you have let it control your life.

Corvik – It is my life.

Monk – It does not have to be.

Corvik – It is my only choice. I came here to unleash my emotion and … I don’t know if it will work. I’ve tried to separate two sides of my body. The one that wants to save and the one that wants to destroy. And I don’t know if I can do it …

Monk – Trust in God.

Corvik – God has done nothing but turn my life upside down. The very mention of his name seems to ruin everything for which I have so painstakingly worked.

Monk – I can tell you nothing more, then.

The monk turns to leave and I stand up for a moment, watching him go before waving him down for a final time. He turns and looks at me, approaching me. Between nimble fingers behind my back I hold a red serum. I will show him the path to enlightenment. I will show him judgment. I will show him the weapon that is pain. He needs to understand the other side of the spectrum. He must learn his lesson. As he approaches I quickly grab his throat and force the serum from the beaker down his throat. He falls to his lordly knees and sputters, coughing as he holds his throat, gasping for air, certainly seeing his life flash before his eyes. Coming face to face with his own discrepancies. Finally realizing that he too has sinned, no one is different from the human animal. I look upon him for a final time, grabbing my Yurick, running the base blade gently over his cloth.

Corvik – How can you tell me nothing more … when there is so much more to learn?

I throw the hood over my head, my face again becoming nothing more than a black hole with two eyes lurking within. Eyes that watch, eyes that know every little thing committed. Every little sin, every little death as it relates to the broad spectrum. Eyes that burn a hole into the images of what could have been, if only give the chance. I take my leave from this hellish place, leaving behind my scripture. I could set fire to this place, I could prove a point. But who would it be proven to? And why not let these mindless little God-loving rats live? I would be doing them too large of a favour to kill them, they would think their entrance into the Kingdom of Heaven is a lock, those greedy little bastards. And just as the assassin …

I become the nothing.

Sean opens his eyes as he crouches above the building in the harsh rain, ringlets of hair falling down his face. He licks his lips for a moment, tasting the salty reality. Resting over his lap is his Yurick, his fingers casually wrapped around its staff. And in his opposite hand, the beaker, which still drips a crimson colored fluid. He licks the tip of the beaker and heaves it into the rainy night, where it surely crashes somewhere, in some time or another. He stands to his feet, his staff in hand, the rain coming down in torrents now yet his eyes are open and alert. He shrugs and pulls his cloak back on, disappearing into the night before him.