/~/ "Lies And Dead Things" /~/
[Warning: contains mentions of domestic violence, and slightly disturbing imagery]
When I was a child, I started an insect collection.
I collected them from the supposedly usual places. Around the windowsill, underneath furniture, trapped in webs. Then I stuck them in a small box, which I kept either hidden in my room, or safe in my lap while I was at school. The live ones never impressed me, and I ignored them, or I watched them as they flew around aimlessly until they collapsed and began to stop moving. Still, the live ones were boring. It was the dead ones that I gravitated to.
But I was not obsessed with insects or animals or anything of the sort.
It was the fact that I had a collection of dead things.
I always liked the idea of death. The fact that I was holding, in my possession, a mold which once contained life and was now no more than a fading skeleton. An object once of the living, with thoughts and actions and even, perhaps, emotions, now part of the inanimate. A creature, now less than dirt or stone. Coldness, a shadow of its earlier warmth. To think that life can regress to death, but death never progresses to life. Death is the ultimate step, the final stroke, the twelfth chime.
Dead things. It was a concept that excited me. Do not ask me why it did. I simply enjoyed collecting my dead things. Little, obscure dead things. And I liked to hold that small box in my arms and marvel at the death I had piled up inside.
I remember when I did not find any dead insects for some time, having cleaned out the apartment and all the usual places. A live one was crawling across the curb in front of me, and, deciding I could not stand the sight of this tiny creature full of life when it had no idea this life could be taken away so quickly, I crushed its head with the toe of my shoe.
It fit in with my collection rather nicely.
When asked why I had an insect collection, I did not tell them about my love of dead things, of course. Everyone who knew about the small box began to get the impression that I was an insect lover. So I played my part as the insect lover, and told them which pair of wings I wanted when I grew up or which antennae were my favorite.
I wonder if I played it well. I enjoyed playing in that way, telling everyone of one truth while an entirely different truth lurked beneath the surface.
When I was older, I learned that this is what people call 'lying.'
Now, telling lies, that is quite the skill to master. To begin with, you must ask why you are telling this lie. Why I told my teacher that the bruises on my body were from when I fell down the stairs. And then you must ask if they are going to believe this lie you tell. I may not have been the most graceful youngling, but everyone knows children don't fall down a flight of stairs every single day. Finally, once you tell the lie and then decide they will believe it, you must ask how you will get them to believe. And so, my teacher believed that the flight of stairs in our apartment was old and rickety, and prone to make people trip often. I succeeded. I told a lie and I won.
Lying to yourself is another matter.
But the lies become a comfort, at the end of it all. Making reality a game we twist and distort to our liking. We play it with until it fits our understanding, makes us feel better.
I lied when I told myself I enjoyed it when he pinned me down on the bed. When he laid out his instruments on the table and told me to put them in the order I wanted them. When the cold metal left patterns on my skin, and my insides danced wildly the next morning. And when I ran away in the dead of night, clutching that small box, having just pulled a trigger for the first time in my life, I lied yet again.
Some dead things, as I came to discover, were not so easy to collect as insects. Not only could they not fit into boxes my size, but they began to smell after a while. I still enjoyed it, however, and still considered them my collection. A collection scattered down the alleys where I kicked defenseless stray animals until they stopped moving, then I left the body to rot. Scattered along the outside of the school windows where wounded birds lay twitching near the bushes—how I enjoyed the sound of their bones crunching beneath my shoes, their last pitiful cries before I finally decided I was tired of seeing them still alive and I broke their necks. All this death, this coldness robbing the warmth and darkness swallowing the light. It was mine, and I enjoyed it.
They accumulate over time. Lying becomes a comfort. It reminds you that reality is not unmoving, that you can still play around with it when you have to.
And when you get them to believe you, you understand you have taken their own reality and twisted it to your liking. Thus, the more people believe your lies, the more of reality itself is yours to play with.
That is the stuff of dreams.
I think it was not long after that, my small box was lost, along with my collection of dead insects. But no matter. I no longer needed a box to hold my dead things.
The dead things began to pile up. I enjoyed the decay. The last breath of life. The cold darkness, which to me, seemed warm and bright in its own way. Like a beacon welcoming me back home.
It is where I am supposed to be. I belong with them. They are who I am.
Dead things. Lies and dead things.
A/N: This little piece was inspired by an RP I was doing with a friend the other day when we went a bit into Bane's childhood. Some ideas stuck so strongly I had to jot them down.
I really enjoyed writing this, and I hope it won't be the first one either :)