Post by Chains on Feb 28, 2009 3:02:41 GMT -5
(Just thought I'd say this is quite funny, having a journal dedicated to the thoughts of someone as unhinged as Chains. Seriously. That's kinda messed up. There's some moderately hard-core gore down below, so if the whole crow minus wings things wasn't your cup of tea, consider this your disclaimer.)
Sometimes, I wonder what the others are thinking. I do not do it on purpose, nor do I condone such a weak and sentimental mentality. I expect better of myself. I expect to be above the endless “what ifs,” and the perpetual “maybes,” that trouble all the rest. And yet.
This city is a ghostscape. It is a charcoal sketch done in grays and blacks and the occasional, bold streak of dark blue. It is dead and moldering. No, it is asleep and rotting.
I am not sure.
All I know is that I stumbled across an occupant my first day here: some average looking man of average build and average make, but with a face as emotionless as the spearheads they drove into my side back in Noosetown. I tried speaking with him but he ignored me and continued on his way as if he had been wound up like a rather intricate toy and placed on a linear path. I followed him. I called after him. I shouted obscenities at his back, flung rocks, darted in his path, and threatened him to his face. No one had ever ignored me so completely as that man did. No one had dared to slight my promises of a slow death before.
It was due more to curiosity than to rage, that I grabbed him by the shoulders and dragged him into the next alleyway we passed. He didn’t resist, even as I flung him to the filthy ground. Hard. Hard enough to tear his hands open to the bone as he threw them out to break his fall. I was pleased to note that he had that much vestigial reflex left to him. But I watched him as he got to his feet, his face blank, his eyes somehow unseeing, and my pleasure faded. I kicked him in the side as he tried to get up and he went down again grunting like a stuck pig. My second kick shattered at least one of his ribs. I felt it splinter into so much calcium matchwood and he coughed wetly, exhaled a fine mist of gore. I took my time with him, disabling him bit by disbelieving bit. Broke his kneecaps, crushed his elbows, snapped all ten of his fingers under my boots. And even as I incapacitated him, he kept trying to get stubbornly to his feet. There was no emotion on his broken, blood-streaked face. His body was responding to the abuse but for some reason, I couldn’t touch his mind.
It was infuriating.
All this should have been my ecstasy and he was making a farce of it all. His stubborn defiance to the thing that animated me was sacrilege. If he had had any decency, he would have been howling by now. Screaming for my mercy or gagging on his bloody vomit. But no. As I backed off, breathing lightly from my exertions, he coughed again, paused for a moment, then tried to prop himself up on a mangled arm.
“You know,” I told him, “I cannot decide if you have too much complacency or too little. Either way, it’s beginning to severely irritate me.” I paused to wipe some of his blood from my forehead, where it threatened to drip into my eyes. “Come now. Look at the mess that you’re making.” I shook my fingers, scattering the drops. “A smarter man than you would have gone belly up already. As it is, my friend.” I strode back over to the crumpled figure, kicked him onto his back and grabbed a fistful of his shirtfront. Effortlessly, I hauled him up and slammed him into the side of the alley wall. “You’re risking not having a belly at all.”
I set about disemboweling him with methodical precision.
Nothing.
Not even a flicker of pain across his eyes. My anger rose. My knife strokes became less and less careful, more and more destructive, until I was stabbing him again and again and again and again just to watch him die because it seemed he would give me nothing else.
Suffice it to say, that when I finished, I felt only an immense swell of rage. I had been cheated. I had been left unfulfilled. This. Was. Unforgiveable.
I wanted to lash out at it then. At this vast and ghostly city with its dead marionettes walking its dead streets. If I could have, I would have torn it brick by brick and painted myself in its ashes. But such are the idle fancies of the discontent.
And so, I find myself wondering, sometimes, what passes through the minds of the others. I can sense them. The ones like me. No, there are none like me. Let me correct that. I can sense them: the ones that are foreign here like me. They glow like little embers amidst the soot. They travel in their own little bubbles of warmth and life, emotion and blood. I want to take them all into my fist and crush them like so many ripe berries into so much viscous pulp.
And I want to etherize them like so many pretty butterflies in a scented study case.
And I want to destroy them.
And I want to save them.
And I want their company.
And I want their heads.
And most of all, I want to know what they are thinking.
And I say to myself:
Chains.
Are you going soft?
And I laugh at the irony of it all.
Sometimes, I wonder what the others are thinking. I do not do it on purpose, nor do I condone such a weak and sentimental mentality. I expect better of myself. I expect to be above the endless “what ifs,” and the perpetual “maybes,” that trouble all the rest. And yet.
This city is a ghostscape. It is a charcoal sketch done in grays and blacks and the occasional, bold streak of dark blue. It is dead and moldering. No, it is asleep and rotting.
I am not sure.
All I know is that I stumbled across an occupant my first day here: some average looking man of average build and average make, but with a face as emotionless as the spearheads they drove into my side back in Noosetown. I tried speaking with him but he ignored me and continued on his way as if he had been wound up like a rather intricate toy and placed on a linear path. I followed him. I called after him. I shouted obscenities at his back, flung rocks, darted in his path, and threatened him to his face. No one had ever ignored me so completely as that man did. No one had dared to slight my promises of a slow death before.
It was due more to curiosity than to rage, that I grabbed him by the shoulders and dragged him into the next alleyway we passed. He didn’t resist, even as I flung him to the filthy ground. Hard. Hard enough to tear his hands open to the bone as he threw them out to break his fall. I was pleased to note that he had that much vestigial reflex left to him. But I watched him as he got to his feet, his face blank, his eyes somehow unseeing, and my pleasure faded. I kicked him in the side as he tried to get up and he went down again grunting like a stuck pig. My second kick shattered at least one of his ribs. I felt it splinter into so much calcium matchwood and he coughed wetly, exhaled a fine mist of gore. I took my time with him, disabling him bit by disbelieving bit. Broke his kneecaps, crushed his elbows, snapped all ten of his fingers under my boots. And even as I incapacitated him, he kept trying to get stubbornly to his feet. There was no emotion on his broken, blood-streaked face. His body was responding to the abuse but for some reason, I couldn’t touch his mind.
It was infuriating.
All this should have been my ecstasy and he was making a farce of it all. His stubborn defiance to the thing that animated me was sacrilege. If he had had any decency, he would have been howling by now. Screaming for my mercy or gagging on his bloody vomit. But no. As I backed off, breathing lightly from my exertions, he coughed again, paused for a moment, then tried to prop himself up on a mangled arm.
“You know,” I told him, “I cannot decide if you have too much complacency or too little. Either way, it’s beginning to severely irritate me.” I paused to wipe some of his blood from my forehead, where it threatened to drip into my eyes. “Come now. Look at the mess that you’re making.” I shook my fingers, scattering the drops. “A smarter man than you would have gone belly up already. As it is, my friend.” I strode back over to the crumpled figure, kicked him onto his back and grabbed a fistful of his shirtfront. Effortlessly, I hauled him up and slammed him into the side of the alley wall. “You’re risking not having a belly at all.”
I set about disemboweling him with methodical precision.
Nothing.
Not even a flicker of pain across his eyes. My anger rose. My knife strokes became less and less careful, more and more destructive, until I was stabbing him again and again and again and again just to watch him die because it seemed he would give me nothing else.
Suffice it to say, that when I finished, I felt only an immense swell of rage. I had been cheated. I had been left unfulfilled. This. Was. Unforgiveable.
I wanted to lash out at it then. At this vast and ghostly city with its dead marionettes walking its dead streets. If I could have, I would have torn it brick by brick and painted myself in its ashes. But such are the idle fancies of the discontent.
And so, I find myself wondering, sometimes, what passes through the minds of the others. I can sense them. The ones like me. No, there are none like me. Let me correct that. I can sense them: the ones that are foreign here like me. They glow like little embers amidst the soot. They travel in their own little bubbles of warmth and life, emotion and blood. I want to take them all into my fist and crush them like so many ripe berries into so much viscous pulp.
And I want to etherize them like so many pretty butterflies in a scented study case.
And I want to destroy them.
And I want to save them.
And I want their company.
And I want their heads.
And most of all, I want to know what they are thinking.
And I say to myself:
Chains.
Are you going soft?
And I laugh at the irony of it all.