Choose Life

The sun abandons a city brim full of life. This overcrowded and noisy place buzzes with an electric vitality that heats the pavement beneath my feet and shines bright lights through my eyes and into my brain. There was a time when this cocoon of hyperactivity enlivened me. But tonight I am tired. Tired of this life. My bones ache and once again I am sinking below the surface of humanity, my breath caught inside my chest, making me feel sick to my stomach.

I sink lower and lower until I am where I deserve to be. I find my level and the pressure of the world above me reassures me. I belong here. I should never have had ideas above my station. I should have quit those aspirations a very long time ago.

But I haven’t. Hope springs eternal in the foolish heart. And I am as foolish as they come. I have very little of worth within this frame of mine, but I do contain a childish naivety that does nothing other than hurt me. I am my own punishment and I dwell in a world named Purgatory. This is my world, and yet it rejects me with every fibre of its being. I am witness to it and nothing more.

Tonight is like any other night. I have gone forth into this world to observe someone of interest. I take my time. I always take my time. I have all the time in the world and I dare to think I may be mastering patience. Damping down my disastrous urges. Holding them at bay for as long as is possible.

Waiting.

Besides, I have to be sure. Even after all this time, I have to be sure. This in the face of my utter certainty. I knew at first sight. Love is not the only thing that can strike in that initial instant. There are always two sides to everything and I dwell in that other side.

So does he.

I saw him for what he was from the off. 

He spends a lot of time pretending that he is something other than what he is. He pretends so often and with such aplomb that he thinks that he believes his own lies, but how can he when he is focused so totally on his inner darkness?

He’s a monster in the making, and I should know. I’m as monstrous as they come.

I have been watching him for quite a while now. He has not made this easy for me. He is reclusive and no wonder. His biggest fear is to be caught in his lie. Ultimately, he is ashamed of what he is becoming. He knows what he is doing is wrong, but he does it all the same.

What I saw from the start was an absence. Where his humanity should have been there was darkness and in the darkness lurked a heady cocktail that could easily be mistaken for rage and hate, but within that was also fear and shame. This man is no man and what is left is wounded, cowardly and weak.

Tonight, I watched him lurk in his own shameful, dark hewn pain and eventually bring himself forth into this night. I followed him from his flat. His broken nature obvious to anyone who would take just a moment to gaze upon him. Shoulders sloped, head fallen forwards, eyes downcast. Always pay attention to the eyes. The eyes don’t lie. His eyes look down into the depths of despair and this is where he dwells. This is where he wants to take others. He intends to seduce the vulnerable and drag them under. Torture them whilst whispering sweet nothings in their ear. He’s very good at sweet nothings. He’s filled with nothingness after all.

Sometimes, I have to remind myself that they know exactly what they are doing. This life of theirs is all about choices. They are no different to everyone else. Even though I know their nature and what they are about, I still lapse. I find myself swept out by a deceptive tide into their sea of lies.

He enters a bar and I follow suit. The bar is not a dive, but neither is it fancy. There is a formula for many things and this bar follows a formula in the hope that it works well enough to still be here in a year’s time. The attrition rate for these places is startlingly high, but it is masked by the next iteration. The bar fails, new owners come along, the façade changes, but inside it will essentially be the same. 

Always the same. 

Seeing through the smoke and mirrors depresses me so utterly. Under the layers of reinvention, under the paint and wallpaper it is all the same. Nothing changes. Ever. It is all a dance, and when the music stops there is a dark anarchy that threatens to consume everything. 

The veil behind which chaos hides is dangerously thin. We create an illusion to hold back our own madness, but the madness is there all the same and it pushes us hither and thither, pushes us closer and closer to that fatal edge.

I watch as he deploys a smile, and I wonder why his intended victim does not see how that smile falls so short of his eyes. There is nothing behind those eyes, but she is blind to that. Too busy is she in mirroring his smile. She wants this too much. She grasps what little he offers her and makes it into something far more than it could ever be.

He makes her do the work. He uses her against herself. He’s found his victim. She has had a bad run of it and she’s desperate for affection. All he has to do is smile and say the right things. Words are one of his most effective weapons. She is another of his weapons now. He uses words like a chef uses ingredients, only a chef cares about those ingredients and they have meaning. But he does not care. There is no meaning. There is only the dark urge. She is his drug and he will use her. 

I have seen where that use leads. I have marvelled at how long the symbiote can feed from its host. Fifty years and counting in some cases. You would think the host would wake up to its plight. But then no one wants to wake up to the true reality of their existence. The very prospect of that is terrifying and they are too invested in the way things are to ever question them, even in the face of worsening torture and pain.

I observe his actions. From where I sit, they are methodical and they are clumsy and obvious. He is a badly programmed robot going through the motions. I see this again and again. Sometimes it’s the same robot going through the exact same patterns over and over. Simple, sad and deadly dangerous.

There are many ways to kill someone. A person who experiences death doesn’t necessarily cease to exist. Death is being torn away from everything you love and value. Death is isolation from the world that counts.

She thinks he’s charming. He is not. Nonetheless, those who escape his kind will recount those early stages and they will all say that creatures like him were charming, when all they are, are liars. Lies used to perpetuate the wants of the victim. Deception is easy. It is merely a gentle push.

I smile despite myself as he does his pushing and she enjoys a fantasy that will ultimately be her undoing. 

“I will save you,” I whisper across the bar to the damsel in denial.

I know this to be a lie. I do not do this for the poor unfortunates drawn towards these collapsed dwarf stars. They are of no consequence to me. I know my nature. This is sport. Anything more is a salve to a conscience I no longer possess.

I blink and the evening is already in its dying throes. I come back to myself via the music playing a little too loudly. Music has always spoken to me. Music persuades me that maybe there is still something of worth within this old shell of mine. I take a moment to enjoy the song that is playing and I am moved.

Disappointment taps me on the shoulder as he finishes his act and takes his mark from the bar. I watch him leave and entertain the possibility of a swift and merciful end for the thing that should have been a man, but was too cowardly to be so. I would be doing the world a favour. I’m a problem solver. Maybe I can’t bring light into this world, but I can rid it of some of the dark and I figure that’s something of worth that I can do until I solve the ultimate problem; the meaning of my existence. I’ve still not worked out why I’m here, and what I am for.

There is no solace in understanding that no one else has either.

I do not rush. There is no need. I know where he is headed and were I to be wrong about this, I could smell him from a mile off. That smell of his is what attracted me to him in the first place. He thinks he’s clever. He believes that he can hide in plain sight. 

I see you. 

I see you well enough.

I think this to myself as I unfurl from my seat and drift out into the neon clad night. Soon enough, I have caught up with the deliriously happy woman who is hand in hand with a giant leech. I swallow down my frustration at the blindness that she shares with so many. I resist the sudden impulse to call her out on this. To reveal him for what he is.

That would not do.

It appals me that in this we are similar, he and I. I do not want to be exposed. I protect the secret of what I am fiercely and jealously. Yet, I convince myself that I am better than him.

I’m different.

They enter his flat. It is one of the four flours of an old Victorian house. One of many grand houses that were the norm for a family a hundred or so years ago. Now too expensive for many of the denizens of this sick city. A city poisoned by such as he.

I enter the house itself and then I knock on the door of his flat. Fittingly, he lives in the depths of the house, in it’s basement. 

He opens the door, “hello?” he says.

I stand before him and watch the veneer he has been wearing these past few hours ripple and then dissolve. Behind it is the sneering mask of unfettered callousness that is ever present. He never grew up. He never learnt to control this aspect of himself. He is a dangerous one trick pony and I see right through him.

I am smiling and he sees in my smile, his own. Only my smile is no deception. Mine is turned right up to eleven on the dial and he sees it for what it is; the snarl of a predator.

“I see you,” I say quietly to him.

I am rewarded with the sight of him diminishing. I have unmasked him. I am using him against himself. Two can play this game, but I will always, always win.

I take his limp hand and lead him to the slaughter. He does not go willingly, but he is weak. He cannot organise himself into any semblance of resistance. He has deceived and denied for so long, he has been rendered a loose and incoherent bag of lies.

“You didn’t even have to invite me in,” I say softly.

His eyes go wide. I have confirmed his suspicions and he now knows me for what I am. The myths and the legends stipulate that I must be invited over the threshold. Regardless of the truth of it, his lies and his foul deeds have invited much worse than I over this threshold. He disregarded the warnings and he thought he was in control. Never was this the case. In the circumstances, I am a blessing.

We enter the living room and he stands dumbly and awkwardly. Much changed from the charming liar in the bar.

“Steph!” I say brightly, “I have heard so much about you! It’s so good to meet you!”

I cross the room and she stands to greet me, confusion writ large across her face. I take her hand and slip my arm around her waist, “but my, you are more beautiful than I could have ever imagined!” I say this whilst staring deeply into her eyes. She responds to me just as I knew she would.

And then we dance. 

I swirl her around and around, her already dizzied mind taken on a rollercoaster ride of senses and emotions. There is music, but none that anyone other than the two of us can hear. We dance and dance, she is breathless with an excitement she has never before experienced and I could take her in that moment. I could give her exactly what she thinks she wants and I could take everything from her, but somehow I don’t, and we are out in the street, going around and around until we come to a stop under the amber halo of a street light. 

I kiss her once before we part forever, “you’ve had a luck escape, Steph. Never sell yourself short again. You are good enough. You were always good enough. Never let anyone make you think otherwise. That includes you. You’re destined to live a good life with good people. Go. Go now, and make it happen.”

I gaze down into her eyes. Eyes that cloud over as I speak, “Daddy?” she whispers in a small voice.

“It’s OK,” I say in a voice that she knows only too well, “go home now, chickadee. Tomorrow’s another day…”

“…and the sun always comes up!” she says brightly.

She turns then, and skips away.

I have a pretty good feeling that Steph’s going to be OK. Now to make sure of that and ensure no one else is drawn away from where they belong in this strange and sometimes wonderful world.

Nursing a fragile feeling of elation laced with something that might be happiness, I return to the flat. He is exactly where I left him. He has not moved. He does not have the wherewithal to do so. I closed him down and he has nothing left.

He is nothing.

I could lie and say that this hopelessness speaks to me. That I see there is nothing here for me, and so I walk away. That is a mistake so many people make. I will not make that mistake. I will not falter. 

Gently, I lead him to the threadbare and battered sofa and guide him to a seated position.

“You can come back now,” I say to him, “she’s gone.”

He awakens from his self-imposed hypnosis, confusion flitters across his face like a startled bird and then there is shock and fear. I have breached his defences, of which there are many. No one is supposed to do that. He has spent a lifetime constructing those defences so that no one can see who he truly is.

Including him.

“There’s nowhere to hide,” I tell him.

“No!” he gasps.

That is the last of his resistance. 

I burn him alive with the truth. I expose him to its light and he chokes on his own screams. I give him everything and he cannot take it. He is crushed and pathetic. I hold a mirror up to his true self and his shame consumes him.

When it is done, I consume him, ridding the world of a small piece of evil.

I have convinced myself that I am making the best of a bad situation. I did not choose to be this way. Or if I did, then I do not recall making that choice.

The lies we tell ourselves.

Perhaps I pursue these broken would be monsters in the pursuit of my own redemption. How much of myself I see in them is a mystery. I once heard someone say that we are more similar than we are different. I hope not. I hope the people milling around me are better than that. I have had over two hundred years as a monster and still I resist the nature of the beast that I am. I refuse to admit that I am no longer human and I keep up the pretence of my humanity in the hope that the fantasy of my existence will one day magically transform into reality.

Two centuries ago, I lost myself. I lost my humanity. I lost it to charm, charisma and an empty promise that contained my demise. I have fought against that truth ever since. 

Maybe that is what it is to be human.

Is it enough?

Only time will tell, and I have a lot of that on my side. Far too much of it. And I’ve had time enough to discover that it’s far easier for some to give themselves over to the darkness and unleash the monster that lurks within. 

Easier to be a monster than a decent human being.

Problem is that most people deny the existence of monsters, when we all have that dark side. Far too many people turn away from their true nature instead of doing what is right and shining their light into the darkness.

I don’t see that changing.

In fact, it’s getting worse.

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have monsters to catch and a hunger that will not be ignored.