Sometimes reality has a way of fading around you.
It had been weeks since the last time the boiling and internal curdling started. Once again, I had hoped that it was just a fragment of a distant, horrible vision that came in the night. I can usually perpetuate the illusion while he slumbers. An everyday scene of an average workaday life unfolding – just one man in the crowd, alone. To the casual observer, I am no one. Moderately dressed, slightly better than most, but a bit of wear around the edges. Just a man, standing in a crowd, waiting for the traffic light to change when the entire world suddenly begins to melt into something else. Something internal. Something dark. Something that definitely shouldn’t get out…not again, anyway.
I saw it coming, but I didn’t do anything to get out of the way. Life is like that – it sneaks up on you with all the subtlety of some darkly contorted circus parade. Initially, I was unaware - blissfully caught up in the brightly-colored ridiculousness of the moment. I found myself laughing-reaching that dangerous moment of awareness that I was reacting without judging. I stop laughing, and clear my throat to mask my previous exuberance, hoping that my discretion was unnoticed – at least by anyone that matters. Almost cruelly, my gaze becomes paired with that uninformed sideways smirk of the all-knowing and little-understanding masses, and my thoughts become judgmental and callous. My happy place, as it is.
“Look at the pathetic, maniacally-twisted faces of these assorted freaks and clowns, so desperately trying to capture my attention with clumsy pratfalls and exaggerated antics,” I think to myself. “What does it take to fall so far and not realize what they’ve become?” This, like most questions I ask in life, will become coldly ironic in retrospect.
Glancing at the crowd that has gathered around me, I realize that we all seem to watch the show with a degree of carefully-calculated aloofness. Refusing to lower ourselves to such a base level, we watch, arms-crossed as the spectacle passes by. As though acknowledging the efforts of fools would lessen us, make us look weak in front of the pack. Entertaining enough for a moment or two, I break my gaze, giving little notice to the setting sun, slowly turning the once dazzling assortment of color into a dusty brown silhouette, difficult to discern from the clouds of dirt kicked up beneath the tires of trucks slowly turning in the fading light. The thick, black smoke of diesel exhaust obliterating any hopes of melancholy, I feel it happening…again.
As I turn to watch this distraction from my daily routine, an uneasy realization stirs within. Perhaps, somehow, I was a part of the show all along. As the crowd, once united in their disdain and collective arrogance, breaks apart into shattered assortment of cold, empty souls, the nausea wells inside, resting at the back of my throat. The spinning starts within, as the dizziness clears the path for the voice – that horrible, dark and evil voice, once again rises inside my head to taunt me.
“It doesn’t really matter which side of the parade you’re in,” it begins. “They need each other to exist. Who’s more pathetic, really – the buffoons who don’t realize how ridiculous they look, or the curmudgeons silently scolding them from the sidelines, so entrapped within their own bitterness that this is the best that they have become?”
I really hate that voice. Not because it keeps me grounded, but because I’m not sure where it comes from anymore. More so, because of what it tells me to do, and what it shows me, inside my head. How can there be so much anger, so much blood, and why does it seem to be rushing towards me so quickly?
“Not us,” he continues. “We know how to rise above the clatter – we know how to take control and really live.” This is how the blood lust starts - subtly prodding at my insecurities until I relent and let…him… take over. If only it would pass as slyly as it begins, though – and not in a blood-stained orgy of screaming, and begging before it all goes silent, and the curtains are pulled closed. I know that soon I will wake up somewhere new, unable to explain the scrapes and bruises, running from the blood-stained walls into the night, only to recover bits and pieces of the experience through the recurring nightmares that I pay a professional to explain away as phobias or unresolved issues from my past.
This time seems different, somehow. Usually, the voice in my head is enough to bring the bile from the back of the throat spilling onto the sidewalk in heaving convulsions. Instead of dread, are those butterflies in my stomach? What does it mean that I’m looking forward to it this time?
As I contemplate my evolving situation, I find myself stroking the blade of the knife in my pocket with my thumb. Back and forth, back and forth, each time removing a layer of skin until the warm, silky feel of blood begins to run down the serrated edges of the knife, down the worn-leather handle and melting into the dark fabric of my coat. The acrid taste of my own life-force escapes the folds of the fabric and like the broth of a salty soup, the aroma finds it way to my nose, snapping me back to whatever reality this is. It’s happening more quickly this time.
“It’s time for the mask again,” the voice growls within. “We’ve barely started. There’s a lot of work to be done.” With that, it hits me at once, sending me reeling into an alley to spill the contents of my stomach in an explosion of dark vomit. I’m certain it’s not the first time that a tortured soul has emptied their lunch into the piss-soaked walls of this back-alley. I pull the crisp, white handkerchief from my pants pocket, wipe the clotted remains of partially digested meat from my chin, adjust my tie and return back to the bustle of humanity all pretending to have better things to do. A murderous wolf amongst sheep, I return to my flock, quickly forgetting the last few minutes within.
A moment later, and I find myself standing, alone, on the side of the road, lost in thought. Embarrassed, I quickly pan around at the people walking around me, hoping that I haven’t become the spectacle. Now focused on the faces momentarily fixed upon me, and clinging to the empty hope that someone might, for one brilliant second, fix their gaze in my direction and offer redemption in just being noticed, I recoil within myself and the dark rumblings of self-hate start again. We’re all longing for that spark of connection between mankind that validates our experience, makes us real. Tattered Velveteen Rabbits, all of us – halfheartedly playing along in spite of our pain until there’s nothing left inside to define us at all.
That’s when the reality of it hits – just a momentary realization that I have become no more than another in a long line of juggling idiots trying to compete in someone else’s realization of a grand vision. By the time the reality of it strikes that ceaselessly echoing off-key chord in my soul, it’s far too late – the music faded, and the dust settled back into the fading sun, the realization that what has passed was more than an ornate spectacle – it was my life-at least until now. After a momentary thought I relent only to return to the same repetitive motions that have been successfully keeping me treading the waters of you reality – but I’m that much heavier now, anchored by failure in a bottomless sea of drudgery.
Ah… I’ve gotten ahead of myself, it seems. Dropped my defenses and let you look into the darker corners of my soul, only to find…more darkness. This will all be over soon enough, and then there will be peace.
With that, the guttural groan of the voice that lives inside takes solace and fades into the blood-soaked truths hidden beneath the surface again. It’s time to rest –and in rest dream. Dream that god-awful dream of dismemberment and agony once again. It’s time to choose.