I'LL LEAVE IN THE MOURNING

I can still see it, that bullet ripping through Leon's head, through his beautiful mind (though I was interested in much more than his mind), and decorate the already disgusting degoutant wallpaper with a grey and red swirl of death.  How clearly I remember the small details, that's what shocks me, the wallpaper with its nauseating yellow and green swirls, the fractal geometry of the blood and brains flying across the room, the way the light reflected off the gun that I thought was for me.  Everything else pales in comparison, trapped in slow motion, it's as if I'm watching a movie, the queer killer gangster movie that Tarantino never made, with not a ninja nor a tracksuit in sight.  The gun recoils in his hand.  Leon's head throws itself back with an expression of shock and realisation combined.  The head falls forward again.  It's empty.  All that was Leon was painted across the wall an abstract in grey and crimson on a yellow canvas, a painting by a psychotic murderous Jackson Pollock.

It's strange but there is always a beauty in death.  A tragic beauty, that I'd never seen before. Not when my parents died in a car crash while I lay unknowing in my crib. Not when my god parents went to join them slipping away like invisible ghosts. Certainly not when I (safe in the arms of my lover) joined a plot to bomb Quebec central bus station.  An unchanging and final beauty that steals the very core of being and replaces it with a shell of a still life.  And it doesn't just steal the core, the heart, the soul, of the victim but that of those who behold it.  In its place there is a cold emptiness which wishes only for a reunion in sweet oblivion.

Something inside of me dies.  Shatters into a million irreconcilable pieces.  The beauty without is reflected by the beauty within.  A strange and eerie beauty seeking only the varnish that will hold it in place forever.  It's like a broken mirror at once more radiant than the sun and totally and perfectly broken.

The artist speaks, viewing the perfection he has wrought, and appreciating his reward (the reward of the artist is always in the fulfilment of his vision).  I do not truly hear him, I still remember his words, but they fell only into the dark oblivion of my mind unheeded, his actions speaking for him.  Through art we perceive the soul of the artist.  Here we see his soul, his life, his heart is the stealing of souls.  He covets them and sees that they are beautiful and then he tears them out and leaves but a lifeless husk and never notices the change from living to dead.

I recognise the artist, I have met such as he before, but then I lived in hell, and now he has stolen my heaven, my guardian angel from me and thinks sweet and terrible words will lure me down to lie at his side.  They won't.  I lived in hell once. J' habitait en enfer.  I will not return again.  I will not turn back. 

My feet fly as the have never flown before.  All grace is forgotten.  I run across the room, barely seeing my lover slumped upon the floor, he is gone now, he cannot help me, and I leap through the window.  The glass shatters into a myriad shards and becomes a mirror of me.  The artist screams for the ruination of his beauteous creation, yet at once revels in the beautiful desolation he has wrought, as I spread my arms wide and fall towards the dark and distant earth.

My soul has broken into a thousand pieces.  And this is what I wished upon others.  My mind races, the bomb is still in position, safely secluded within its box, slowly ticking its sweet unvarying litany of death.  I shall escape the bringer of my pain, and I shall escape my pain entirely.  I will not, can bear not, to bring this pain, this void beauty to others.  For I see at once my escape and theirs.  But theirs shall be unknowing, they shall never know their saviour, nor shall they know this pain.  And I shall joyously escape into blissful oblivion.  My body shall match my heart and shatter into a myriad pieces and I shall be whole once more.

I tilt my body upwards skimming the black tarmac.  The dark clouds obscure the sky and make my progress invisible as I fly one last time across the city I thought I loved, then found that there was some for whom my love was greater at that very moment that he was snatched away by a sculptor with a cold calculating passion.  And his passion was for me, that I should be made perfect, freed from the shackles of love and care and be made his forever. 

I arrive at the bus station.  The last passengers are still there, a bus must have been late, we thought that it would only be a few watchmen and mechanics.  Yet watchmen and mechanics must still love and be loved and live in some part of another's heart, a part that will yearn to join the lost whole if it is stolen from them.  I run into the station, into the waiting rooms, I know where the bomb is, I couriered the plans, and now just as then swift in my urgency I go unseen by human eyes. 

I clutch the box to my chest as if willing to fill the hole within me and I run, I dare not fly with such a dangerously precious cargo, I run towards the outskirts of the city, I run towards the snowplains that have always been my refuge.  I run to surround myself with their clean and pure beauty.  And then it happens.  The box goes quiet.  Dear God, not yet, I have not reached the city limits!  Then I am engulfed by a white light and I am thrown back and my chin slams into my chest.  There's no sound, just a wave of pressure.  I feel warm blood upon my lips and flooding my nose.  A perfect joy fills my heart.

And then I weep for I never escaped at all.  The blast did nothing except start a prodigious nosebleed.  I still live and yet I am not alive, nor do I think shall I ever be so again.