Part 5:
Bad news
Max
I've often said that I have nothing to lose. I've often thought that I have nothing left. The grinning void of apathy had grown in my guts until I thought I was a hollow man, devoid of emotion, sentiment and sensation. Like an icy claw it had frayed my insides, disjointing me, making me flawed. Making me damned. You could sit for a million years, trying to piece together the shards that were once your life, until your fingers are torn to the bone and the puzzle is more impossible than ever. And then, just then, you realize; you cannot mend it. Your life will forever be broken shards on the floor of eternity. All you can do is savor the few fragments remaining, thinking back to when everything was perfect.
I had nothing to lose, I knew that. My heart beat, my lungs breathe, but I'm dead, in any way but clinical. But if I was dead, rinsed of all things even related to emotion, then why was I holding my still bloodstained knife, contemplating my only way out of this hell?
What awaited me outside the bars? And was it worth it to betray one of the only persons left who could understand me?
Justifying my actions had lost its meaning after the first hundred kills, but I had only ever killed those that had tried to kill me. I had just returned the favor. Here, I was thinking about killing an innocent for my own egoistical gains.
Scratch that, Frank and innocent are two words that will never appear in the same sentence. Uninvolved is probably better.
Insane. Psychotic. It's easy just to label him and disregard his actions as acts of lunacy. And my actions too. I once lived in a world where I would have viewed his actions, and mine, with horror and aberration. Disconnected from the rest of the world, people like him would live in their own twisted version of reality, forever distancing themselves from all normal human contact. Had I crossed this border? Did I live in a self-imposed shell of existence, or was it the rest of the world that chose to close their eyes to the horrors of the real reality? When had the world reeled on its axis? Was it the night my family died. Was it the night Alex died? Winterson? Mona? The lines were blurry, a kaleidoscope of mangled bodies, bullets and pain, smudged by the endless rain.
What was one more road kill on the dark highway of my life?
I clenched my fist.
Why did it always have to come to this?
Frank
A life of death.
I repeated the words, letting them roll over my tongue again and again, measuring and analyzing them. One reflexive movement, pulling a trigger, thrusting a knife, a squirt of blood and another life extinguished. Killing. It had almost lost its meaning to me. To kill. To deprive of life, to slay, murder, execute. Taking a man's life. Robbing him of the one thing he truly possesses in this world. Stealing his ability to laugh, sing, play, jump, run, love.
I should probably feel guilty for all the lives I've taken.
But I don't.
Every single one of whom I killed had fully deserved it. I did my homework. I researched, analyzed, examined and studied until I was sure that they did not deserve to live. And then I made sure they didn't.
That same sense of righteousness was what kept me from murdering Max on the spot. I knew that our chances of survival in here were slim, and refusing to obey the higher powers only made them smaller.
Max was no innocent, knew this. But he was no bad guy either. He had been through the same things that I had. And reacted the same way.
A life of death.
I know the overwhelming sense of rage that overtakes your body when you are unable to help those you love. The frustration is like acid pumping through you veins, fuelling the rage, making you act on instinct rather than thought. There really are no words to describe the feeling when you lose everything. You will never know true anger or true sorrow until you do. Many people who have experienced this can tell you of an insane desire for payback. They have violent fantasies of torturing and killing those responsible, and people will say that they understand.
But when someone actually has the balls to do it, we're insane. I never said I'm not, but I'm not the living in a shell of self-deceit. They are.
How can you live a life of death?
Max was sitting in the courtyard with a vacant look in his eyes. Many eyes were on him, but no one dared approach. I sat down next to him.
"I have some bad news" I started
"Not as bad as mine"
Sorry it took so long, and sorry it isn't longer.Next chapter's almost ready, and there'll be a lot more action.
Thanks to Actionmax and Sorceress Cassandra180 for reviewing. You guys rock!
