The next few days were exact duplicates. Copies of old photographs that couldn't be ripped down the middle. Not only that but most pictures -- from my extensive research -- could show a thousand different words, but they rarely sounded different when escaping lying lips.

My whole body was electrified, chain-links leading to my navel being tugged every so often, jolting me. I was standing on digging, sharp thorns, with the tantalizing flowers just out of reach. Why wouldn't Riddick just be himself? Huh, flowers and Riddick in the same thought -- it just shook up my tired brain to snicker loudly at my desperation.

It's no good when your own mind starts laughing at you.

I wanted to hiss at him. Punch him. Shock him. Hurt him. How did he dare to try to protect me in this unwarranted manner, like I was some sort of delicate piece of glass? I'd shattered long before; there was no need to write fragile on my flesh, actually it would've been prudent for Riddick to watch where he was stepping, so he didn't crunch on my broken pieces and hurt himself.

Allow me a moment to lose myself?

Fuck. Fuck. FUCK!

Words like mortician and eternal damnation made their way into my consciousness. Something I'd read? Was this a disease I had picked up in my mother's womb? This ... this curse ... that prohibited further steps in the right direction to take place. Cruel, self-made circumstance? Or the waste from the universe's menstrual cycle? Fuck.

I was over thinking this. But I really wasn't. Its simplicity actually scared me. No longer were there complicated series of processes involved that led to hidden plots; no, all that existed was the mundane, so-fucking-human act of subterfuge. Riddick was asininely -- dare I say stupidly? -- trying his hand at the fundamental concept of truth hurts. Except he was molding it to fit his current perceptions of me, which ironically told him that hurt in no shape, form, or manner would be good for me, so why not just lie?

Yeah, good one Riddick ... if it wasn't for the fact that I already knew you came up with the idea to sell me and never even considered an alternative -- and why would've you even tried to? You were hard, instinctual, disciplined ... you came up with a foolproof idea, you stuck with it. And here came the problem: You didn't stick to it, did you? At the last minute you backed up, pulled out. You probably still don't know why you really did it -- you felt all confused, betraying your trusted intuition. Trying to change that, you blamed it on me, in the process convincing yourself that you had in fact searched for a plan B, before having to regrettably give up and stick to selling me. That suited you, did it not? No one was further hurt in the whole slavery taboo.

Well, think again. I was fucking hurt. You couldn't just leave it be? You just had to boil it down to an elementary equation of ' I tried my hardest to protect you and I failed so don't feel bad because in the end I saved you, nonetheless.' Even I had known the childish stigmata that phrase held in its hypocritical clutches -- I had wanted to use it after my attempt to poison you ... but I didn't, because it sounded too self-important. I was right. I was never wrong.

But I've digressed. And started talking to the imaginary Riddick in my head, which wasn't much appreciated by aforementioned ghost personality. Cannot batter someone that isn't real though, right? Saying yes would be wrong. It could be done; I wasn't ever so-called genuine, yet I was bruised.

My, my. I've done it again. Back on track now. Promise ... bleed me dry.

Repeats. Reproductions. That was now my life. The curtain came up everyday to reveal that same boring as hell play, and it was starting to irritate. I had opened up my soul to Riddick and instead of him trying to accept it, he tried to heal it.

It was fake and reminded me of days from the past. Days I had intentionally forgotten and ran away from. For the last three days I've tried unsuccessfully to get some kind of bestial truth from Riddick, my scarred other half. He was always the pragmatic one, never mincing words. But now he did nothing but soften the blow. Fucking annoying. I wanted to pull out every strand of hair from my exploding head -- go back to the beginning.

So I experimented with every twisted form of the same question.

When I asked him if he felt I was a liability, he just answered with a quick "don't worry about it." Asshole. How could I not stress over it, when I was right in the middle of the snake pit?

When I questioned if there was something he needed to tell me, he told me to "just relax." That was when I went to my room and slammed the door.

Riddick was becoming exactly what I didn't want ... a prince in a cheap stimulation of shining armor. What happened to my didn't-know-who-he-was-fucking-with sadist? Maybe not a full blown sadist -- but still he took a sick amount of pleasure in corrupting other people. And that was good enough for me. Yet now he was a fucking hallmark card. The epitome of mankind and all of its vices. Just a carbonated copy of what he thought I wanted from him. Like I couldn't have manipulated him if I had wanted something different? The truth was that I didn't want something different. I wanted him -- in all his shunned-by-God wolfish glory. Was that so wrong?

Alone in my dark room, I thought about my parents and how they had acted a few days before I had ran away. They, too, had said things that were the equivalent of "don't worry." Don't worry we'll get money for college ... don't worry we'll try to give you your privacy ... don't worry we'll try to make everything fucking perfect! How naive of them. To think that what I wanted was security in a world I never harmonized with. Didn't they know that every single right they perpetuated was just another chance for the universe to disappoint me? Idiots.

Didn't they understand that the uncertainty and misery was what fueled me? I had to leave them then, to embrace my horridly cursed life. Why try to escape it? It would sting twice as much, when it caught up to me. Didn't they understand I thrived in the negativity and loneliness, like some kind of demented, deep sea, poisonous fish?

Now Riddick was doing the same thing ... that passive, I-know-better-than-you shtick. God, how old was that routine? Wasn't the basis of whole human existence based on that one concept? Me -- God, you -- human. You do what I say, because I'm all omnipresent and shit. Double or nothing. Yeah, I was definitely right.

Riddick must've borrowed God's attitude for a while because he was acting like my protector and making me feel all relaxed, and I despised it. I couldn't even put it into words how much the thought created fluffy loathe to swim my veins and expand my horizons. What I really needed was focused definition. Not some many faceted choice. Choice had always hatched evil, deranged plans, that never panned out. So fuck human will. What was the use of it, if all choices get affected by even the tiniest stimuli -- like which direction the wind blows? And whose in charge of nature? Exactly.

The more relaxed I became with Riddick's "kind" coercion (oxymoron if I had ever seen one), the faster the heavy veil was put down on reality, creating tense doubts. Because if I couldn't see beyond the point Riddick wanted me to, then how could I know what I was missing? Godsend luck. Now I know that was oxymoronic.

Then the fear came. The fear came like a glittering ice goddess in the dark room. The walls were iced over with the strong scent of dread. Dread was the most powerful and action eliciting emotion that ever existed. Even Lucifer himself would cower in cold horror in front of its frosty presence. Dread did not need reason, it paid no mind to choice, and it never, never responded to happiness. Dread was everything -- a combination of fear, anticipation, trepidation, and restlessness. It was worse than Death, for you had to turn to the indifferent face of death in order to escape Dread. Death was a mere escape compared to the wicked game of Dread.

The fear was that if I became too happy, than I would lose a part of myself ... a strong part, that always knew how to end ... destroy ... mold things. I didn't desire satisfaction; that would mean "game over." Nothing else to strive for ... to reach. Riddick was trying to take away my pain, but all he did was oppress my true feelings toward the world, and that always led to drastic measures. Maybe I was just a cynic. Fuck, I wasn't cynical ... I was just perverse. Was it wrong for me to smirk at that and enjoy its full spectrum of meanings?

Why was he trying to convince me that life is supposed to be happy, when he knew it himself that life was much more powerful in the form of misery drops? If I had thought the world was a beautiful place, I could guarantee that I wouldn't have learned much; all the attempts on my life by the cosmos' essence would've succeeded. Couldn't he see that I didn't want life's definition of "good"? That I just craved to remain like I was and be understood as the selfish, malicious orphan of anti-creation?

If he took that away, I would be created, completed, and dead all in one moment.

I rocked back and forth on the empty bed, in the absolute darkness of my suffocating room. The only sounds were the slight squeaking of the mattress and the calm breathing of my body, as my mind was full of chaos, trying to make sense of the checkered board, that was the anatomy of existence. My world was withering.

Riddick was trying to shield me, when all I needed was the truth. Basic. I knew what the partial truth was and in all reality, it wasn't that bad. However, it wasn't the yellow daffodils Riddick was trying to force down my throat either. The truth did call for some darkness and affliction, but than again if it didn't, would it be true? I required bitter ... harsh ... real life, not make-believe. I had run away to escape dying the last time it had happened, but now it seemed too hard and useless. Where would I go? Would I have to start making fresh new associations? How vapid.

I decided that since Riddick had been trying to assure me of the greatness and worthiness of life (the opposite of what I told him a while ago) that I would take his advice and kill myself in order to escape this fake sugariness. Heh. I didn't think that was what he was going for. But I hadn't been kidding around when I explained to him life was shit and now that he was attempting to lessen its grimness I had to get the fuck out. Too tired to start anew, I figured Death would finally get its wish -- me giving up. Ciao life. And a fuck you too.

When I thought Riddick would make my life as complicated as possible, I would've never have died for it, but now ... I was too proud to give my being to a phony materiality ... to a prison. A system of bland rules of cause and effect.

The bony paleness of goddess Dread's frigid finger poked me in the chest and lifted my chin to her wispy, silvery form. I submerged myself in her black eyes, full of nothing, not even reflection....

She whispered meaningless nothings in my ear, like I was doing this for her or something. I heard snippets of words like "release" ... "can't go back" ... and "easier" coil around my body, like strips of ice and layers of skin. This was the new me -- fearless of the nothingness, that lays beyond this plane of awareness.

I tiptoed out of my room, with Ice's arms around my shoulders, or was that my throat? And made my way to the kitchen. Filling a simple glass with water, that I would never again need to sustain me, I set it down in the center of the table. Then I made a trip to the maintenance room.

I sat down at the table, arms stretched atop its comparably warm surface, one fist tightly clenched. I alternated dropping a pill in the water and swallowing one dry. Swallow. Plunk. Swallow. Plunk.

Killing yourself sure was depressing and lonely business, I mused. It was so quiet and surprisingly it was like that on all fronts -- even my mind. I didn't fuck with a suicide note. What would I have written? I was scared of mirrors?

So hushed was the whole process that I didn't even notice doing it. I would die alone but be found by Riddick ... that thought was comforting. Would he try to wake me up and notice that I was too cold to just be sleeping? Or maybe not, since I was always abnormally glacial. Swallow. Plunk.

It was late, I presumed. Was he sleeping in warm blankets? My stomach was thumping some sort of message now. Thump. Plunk. Swallow.

My arm snaked around my middle, trying to silence the agitation. I think I needed to vomit. Held down that urge. It was going to be so good when Riddick found me here in the morning, I thought unabashed. All perfect just like his contrived words of reassurance. Double edged too.

I watched the last pill dissolve in the water and then I pushed the pill, resting on my tongue, to the back of my throat to send spiraling down. And then I picked up the glass, around its slippery, wet shell, and tipped it up in cheers to no one in particular. A sardonic gesture. A closing jest.

And with a final expletive, I gulped down the tainted water....