Stephen Craig
FEEL
Sin, guilt, neurosis; they are one and the same, the fruit of the tree of knowledge.
Outside in the land of the living, the storm had finally begun. Weeks of endlessly sapping heat that remained as a constant at night had now been confronted by a cold front. Clouds had gathered to watch electricity dance down towards the earths skin and booming claps accompanied to show their joyful appreciation.
The rain battered relentlessly against the glass of his bay window where he sat watching the chaotic patterns of water being lured downwards by gravity and forming into puddles on the driveway outside. His knuckles were white from where they were clenched tightly and he held the base of his index finger in his mouth – applying pressure with his front teeth.
So much pressure that an imprint was visible once he had finally released the grip, the tooth marks remained – as too did his mood which was black to the world around him. Hatred, discontent, all existed within him and without him.
He held the anger inside so much they he almost wanted to explode. Even so, for as much that he burned inside – he wanted to stamp on the heads of those people that whispered at him from the shadows.
They had been with him for as long as he could remember. The Voices. They taunted him and mocked him for his cowardice. They laughed at him for being so very pathetic and yet these shadowed voices remained with him even when the people around him left him behind.
Alone? Yes, he was alone and Michael had felt like an outsider ever since a very young age; certainly different to the pathetic lemmings of society that he had been forced to grow up with. He hated them for trying to break his will and change him into something that he was not, all of the tablets and therapists in the world could not change his nature. He was Michael Broadstone.
At eight, years of age, his nature was already developing. Following a disagreement with Gary, the obnoxious child from next door, he had stolen the boys pet kitten. One month old, black with green eyes, people had ‘cooed’ over it and said it was beautiful and adorable. He broke its legs and threw it into a bucket of water. To make double sure that it drowned, he put another bucket on top.
He did not feel any pity for Gary’s tears when ‘Pixie’ had been discovered and they had needed to move after that.
By twelve years of age he had started to cut himself. He did not want to die and at that age he did not really have a full concept of ‘death’, but he knew that the pain from a blade always made him feel alive. The more he cut, the more ‘real’ he felt – pain became his drug. His desire, his need, his want. His arms were scarred as if somebody had used his skin to produce a tally chart.
At sixteen he lost his virginity to a woman that was much older than him. Wiser perhaps, but certainly not compliant to the act that was forced upon her. Numbed by detomidine that he had purchased in a pub, she was oblivious to the depravity he carried out. She never knew how tempted he had been to put his hands around her neck and squeeze the life away from her. Power. He had it in his mind – along with a God-given right to do whatsoever he wanted.
The authorities had not quite seen it that way and he had been extremely fortunate only to get a short custodial sentence. Four years out in two.
He had been nothing but meat to the inmates in there and he had spent the years broken, battered and sore.
By eighteen, his family, now sickened by his maladaptive and destructive behaviour had fully disowned him. They claimed to have put up with years of his abuse, aggression and mood-swings but he knew that it was they who had abandoned him. They had turned their backs on their ‘blood’ – his own parents had turned their faces from the seed of their creation.
They were weak and they had deserved the death they got. A car, a fire, tortured screams and the pops and cracks of melting glass before a beautiful explosion. An accident? The authorities said so, but he knew different. He had filmed it all on his camera phone, but that was only for his own personal pleasure.
The thought brought a rare smile to his face and he grunted a little as he tried to stifle down a deep laugh.
He looked down at the table in front of him which was bare of content except for three things. There was a line of white powder that was undoubtedly cocaine, a solitary razor blade and a long piece of black braided rope – onto which the end of, he had already formed a running bowline. With no prior experience and from information he had only gleaned from a book, the layman’s noose had been partially completed an hour ago.
That was long before the rain had started.
He got out of his seat and knelt down besides the table and over the line of cocaine. In a controlled fashion, he rolled up a note from his wallet and covering one nasal passage and then another, he snorted the line until all that was left were fine particles.
He breathed in deeply and his nose burned a little. Eyes widening and in deep thought, he considered all of the wrongs that people had done to him. The betrayal, the disloyalty. The people who had wronged him and told him that he was out of his mind.
The voices from the shadows were true though, they were real and he could hear them talking. He listened hard to make out what they were saying.
‘Kill me’.
‘Kill you’.
‘You kill’.
‘We kill’.
‘Kill them’.
‘Kill us’.
‘We die’.
‘You die…’.
The voices had merged and echoed and repeated themselves. He had listened and heard it all as he had done thousands of times before. Perhaps it was time to take their advice? Perhaps it was time to remove them from the shadows? What was the last part they had said? ‘We die, you die’?
Maybe there was something that he could do.
He reached down and collected the razor blade from the table, then he picked up the rope. He walked up the stairs, counting them – thirteen and secured the end of the rope around the banister from the galley landing so that the noose rocked back and forth in the living space below.
He walked back down the stairs and judging the height to be correct, he placed a chair under the noose. For some reason, he decided that it was proper to remove his shoes before climbing up and he revealed socks with holes in, just like his character.
Thick yellow nails protruded as he stood on the chair and he placed the rope around his neck, tightening the knot a little. For minutes he stood in contemplation before reaching into his pocket for the shaving blade. Steel between finger-tips, he felt the metal scrape against his wrists and the sudden pressure and release of blood. He turned his head upwards and screamed at the top of his voice. Pain was his reward and pleasure.
He became aware the blood was dripping and looked down at his damaged wrists. So much blood over the years, so many scars. It was surprising that he had any more to bleed out. Without a second thought, he edged a foot to the side of the chair and raising his left, used his right to kick it over.
He felt the tightness around his neck and was aware that he could not breathe. He had thought that there would have been a quick crack and his neck might break to end it quickly, but he had not planned it out that carefully and the fall was not enough. His end was going to be slow, painful and panicked.