Sometimes there's nothing. No noise, no responsibilities, no people wanting something. Just nothing. No words, no thoughts, nothing but the relentless pounding of the rain on the metal roof. Loud in the deserted building, pummelling the ground and drenching everything around. It muffles sound and washes away the dirt of this entire stinking place. It surrounds like a blanket but burns like a fire. It is both comforting and torturous. It drowns the body and cleanses the soul. Or it would, if his soul wasn't too far gone to save. It helps plants grow and creates puddles for children to jump in gleefully. Not that he cares about the aftermath much, the joyful smiles of the children and the scolding of their mothers swirls around him like mist. He goes ignored and he ignores. He may as well be dead, a spirit strolling amongst the living, untouched and untouchable. He sees but he does not feel, for him smiling is not infectious, nor contagious. It is a sign of something other than him, something living and breathing and doing and feeling. Something with emotion and heart and soul and love. Most of all he hates love, hates the premise of it, hates the sight of it, hates the word itself. He's never experienced love, doubts he ever will. Shunned by his family, hated by society, even nature itself rejects him. His mere existence is a contradiction, a faint crack in reality that he crawled through on hand and knees. Sometimes he wonders why he bothered. Sometimes it's not the rain he craves, but something less real, something crafted and packaged and sold. He longs for the packages, long thin needles, indented pills, tabs of sugar paper, gritty powders, vibrant liquids. He pays for them easily enough, his body is not his, so he does with it what he likes. Or what they like, anyway. What he likes isn't important, not to him and not to them. He doesn't know what he likes, what he wants, what he needs. All he knows is desire, strong and unrelenting. Painful and hard. Continuous and desperate. It whirls in his brain and seeps through his lungs, tricking from his body like blood and sticking to him like hate. But desire is deeper than want. A want can be ignored, pushed aside, dismissed. But desire runs so much deeper. He needs, he desires, he craves. He cannot exist without, so he takes. Whatever he wants he takes. Any method to fill his desire, he fights and fucks and steals. He'd sell his soul if he had to, if anyone would be sick enough to want it. Feelings mean nothing to him, cries of fear or anger or pain bypass him. Existing is different to living. Being unfeeling is different to being numb. But sometimes, when the rain pounds onto the roof and he curls up in his hoodie, stash of desires beside him barely filling the need for more. Sometimes, just breathing is enough.