H: Chapter Twenty-One

Seagulls flew far above in the sky, circling the ocean, and swooping down only to rise back up again. An endless cycle. The clouds were a milky gray that blotted out the sun, leaving only dim traces of light. The water was a dark gray and icy cold. You couldn’t even dip your toes into it without feeling shock.

We sat on one of the docks, passing a joint around, and staring out into the vast ocean. The wood was rotted, and had panels of wood jutting out. We made sure to be careful not to get any splinters, or poky-bits in our backsides, but that was a lost cause. We were forced to deal with the struggle.

There is something extraordinarily human about struggling and discomfort. Struggling for money, for health, for your next fix, it makes you feel alive. It gives you something to hope for and work towards. In other words, it gives you a reason to live. But what happens when you achieve everything you’ve wanted? You become empty and lost. Perhaps the answer is to always strive for something and achieve more. Maybe you have to become such a God that your very existence threatens the greats. But even that is empty in a way.

“How come no one is out?” Travis asked, looking around with a cigarette hanging from his lips.

I passed the joint to Jack and said, “They’re too busy caught up with life. Going to work, taking care of a family, etcetera. They’re trapped.”
Jack raised an eyebrow. “Trapped? That doesn’t make much sense.”
I turned around and said, “Anything that we’re told we should do by other people, usually isn’t the right thing to do. To not be trapped, you gotta reject everything that is considered “life.” Reject going to work, reject starting a family, reject college. That is the only way to be free.”

Jack took a hit of the joint and exhaled smoke-rings. “Payte, you are insane.”

I turned to Jack with a wide smile on my face. “Jesus was crucified because he spoke the truth.”

“Whatever…” Jack said. Something was bugging Jack, I could sense that about him. Not that I cared, in the slightest. But it seemed that something was weighing heavily on his mind. It was like a dark rain cloud followed him wherever he went. He tried to escape it’s grasp, but was never fast enough. “I’m goin’ back to the van to shoot up.” He said, standing up.

Thomas turned around, “Why not with us?”

Jack shrugged. “I don’t feel like it.” He muttered softly, barely loud enough for us to hear.

* * *

Once the beach began to bore us, we headed over to a nearby bar to get cross-faded. The beach had hills that seemed too perfect to be made by mother nature. As soon as we realized that it was made by another human being, it lost it’s beauty. A man can only take so much of in-authenticity until it drives him insane. It really is the modern man’s plight.

Unfortunately, the bar was like every other bar we had come across. Docile. Stale. Fake. Old-timey ads and photos sat on the wall, when the owner was a man in his twenties. He was obviously pandering and manipulating people using their nostalgia, even though most people in there weren’t even around during those times.

A pregnant woman sat at the bar, clutching a glass of whiskey in one hand, and a cigarette in the other. I could imagine the baby coming out of that festering hole, slobbering and grumbling, half brain-dead from the copious amounts of alcohol it’s mother drank. Then the doctor feigns joy and delivers the baby to it’s mother, exclaiming, “It’s a boy Mrs. Peterson,” then swiftly turning around with disgust and shock on his face. A world of fake people, built on fake things.

As we walked to our table, the bartender called out, “Hey! How old are you guys?” Even though he was of short stature, I still felt that he could easily turn us into a mess of red pulp.

But out of the fear, a warm bright light of courage formed, and I said, “I’m twenty-five, he’s twenty-three, and this one here is twenty-one.” The bartender nodded and mumbled a simple, “Alright,” under his breath. It seemed that my manipulation had worked. Either that, or he just didn’t give a fuck. It could’ve worked either way.

We sat down at our table and waited for the waitress to come over to us. She wore her brown hair in a messy bun. Her jeans were slightly ripped at the ends, and her black apron had dark spots, presumably from drinks. I stared at her with lustful ignorance. As my eyes penetrated her clothing, my pupils dilated from pleasure.

“Hey, Payte.” Thomas called out.

I flicked my hand in the air, as if I was shooing him away like a pest. “Not now.” My gaze remained fixed on the curves of the waitress. So pure and innocent.

“Payte!” Thomas said again.

I sighed and looked over at him. “What? What the fuck is it? Can’t you see I’m busy?”

“You’re busy eye-fucking the waitress?” Travis spoke up with a slight chuckle.

“Yeah, I am. Now Thomas, what the hell did you want?”

“Why am I the youngest? I’m literally older than all of you.”

I pulled a cigarette out of the pack I kept in my pocket and lit it. I took a few drags as I stared at Thomas with dead eyes. “Why are you upset? Does it bother you? Did I hurt you?”

Thomas opened his mouth to speak, but couldn’t formulate any words. All that came out with spit-filled, nasal, sounds, and gasps of air. Finally he relaxed in his seat and said, “What the fuck did I even do?”

The waitress, in her tight jeans, walked over to the table in the middle of our discussion. “What can I get you guys?”

“Thomas here, will have a cosmopolitan.” I said, speaking before anyone could open their mouths. “Travis, that guy right there, will get a jack and coke. I’ll take a scotch on the rocks.”

The waitress nodded, her hair bobbing in the air. She walked away to grab our drinks. I turned back to Thomas and said, “You existed,” I stole a glance at the waitress, who was walking towards our table. “Now drink up.” I said. She placed our drinks on table and walked away. As she went back to the counter, I stared at her perfectly round bosom.

Travis laughed and took a sip of his drink. “Man, we just can’t take you anywhere.” It was obvious he was speaking to me, but I pretended not to hear him. “You’re a fuckin’ creep dude.”

I kept my eyes on her, my beautiful angel, while taking drags of my cigarette and sips of the scotch. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw a head poking up from the booth behind Thomas. It was a middle-aged man, probably mid-thirties, and balding. His nose was pointy, like that of a Goblin, and he spoke only in slurs. “What’re you on? Yer period?” He said to Thomas, like a troglodyte.

I took a sharp inhale and picked up my scotch, and proceeded to walk over to him. I locked eyes with him, and he did as well, mirroring me. “Wat da fuck do yer—“ I slammed my glass into his balding head, glass sprayed everywhere and he fell to the ground. I grabbed him by the collar of his shirt and held him up to my eyes.

“Are you making fun of my friend? Because, in return, you’re making fun of me.”

Blood dripped from his head and down into his eyes. “I-I waznt.” He said, dazed and confused. The fucker couldn’t even give me the respect to look at me.

I breathed in through strained teeth, and pulled him up and slammed his head into the table, over and over, until I could only hear the soft sound of flesh being crumbled up like a fucking newspaper. Screams erupted from the patrons of the bar, and before I knew it, Travis was pulling me and dragging me out of the bar.

We walked away, and back to the van, knowing full well I might’ve just killed the guy.

* * *

In this scene, in the grand-play titled, “EARTHLINGS: ADDICTION AND DRAMA. WATCH WHILE GOD PLAYS ITSELF IN DIFFERENT BODIES FOR IT’S OWN ENTERTAINMENT,” our characters begin in a dark alleyway, chain-smoking while rain pours overhead. They have just left the bar after Payte has brutally attacked another human. A filthy human. They have been corrupted by addiction’s cruel whip. They have faced the edge with undying curiosity, and have gone over it. Nothing is well, and nothing is good.

Lights! Camera! Action!
“Payte, I just don’t understand why you do the things you do.” Travis says. For the past two-or-so minutes, he has slowly been savoring a cigarette, pressed tightly against his lip. “It’s like you just want to be a piece of shit.”

Travis finishes his statement and he slightly grimaces, painfully understanding his own awkwardness. His words are spoken with confidence, the likes of which most men fail to achieve. But behind the confidence is a fear he has known since childhood. A dark and overwhelming fear, something that will control and haunt him for the rest of his life. Ironically, this very fear is what drove him to addiction in the first place. The fear of other people’s judgments.

Payte, our false narrator, takes a drag of his cigarette and gazes at Thomas who silently sits under an overhang, protected by the rain. “I don’t believe in morality.” Says Payte.

Payte speaks in that narcissistic tone, where he thinks everything he says is badass and amazing and just super-fucking-cool. But in reality everyone is aware. Everyone understands when he manipulates them. The very reason he does this is what turned him to addiction. Fear. The fear of being inadequate. His mother manipulates him for money, so he must be inadequate. His father left him, so Payte must not be adequate enough for his own father. Right? Payte has never had a true friendship. All of his friends seem to abandon him, so they must view him as inadequate. Behind the facade of narcissism, is a soul desperately yearning for love and recognition, something that they have never had. But he is a prisoner of his own actions and fear, which makes him unloved.

Travis looks up at Payte with half-closed eyelids. “What does that have to do with anything? Because you don’t believe in morality, you have to be a piece of shit? Is that it?” Travis grimaces once again. It’s not his words that are the problem, it’s his facial reactions. They are over-exaggerated and he knows this.

Travis is cripplingly self-aware. He is aware when his eye-lashes touch and make that horrible noise, he is aware when his mouth turns slightly to the side, he is aware of the inflection of his voice, he is aware of his nose in his vision, he is aware of that weird thing he does with his fingers. In fact, he is doing that weird thing with his fingers, right now.

Payte paces around the alleyway as rain-drops hit him. Lightning strikes overhead. Clouds gather in the sky, creating an ominous tone above the stage. Payte gathers his words for his evil-monologue. His narcissistic, villain-like, speech. He takes a deep breath and opens his mouth, here it comes, oh, wait, maybe not. He has closed his mouth, unsure of what to say. But then he opens his mouth again! “Morality is a human-construct based off of what and what does not allow the human race to evolve and grow. Murder is considered bad because you are stopping a person from having children.”

Travis gasps and can feel the air escape his mouth. He is aware of how loud the gasp was, and subconsciously takes a look around, hoping no one heard that. But they did, and he knows this. “So, murder is okay?”

Payte stops and looks at Travis. Payte has the same eyes his mother has when she manipulates him. The dead eyes. The reptillian eyes. The eyes of a predator. “I won’t do it, because then I won’t be free. Murder is neither bad nor good. It depends.”

As the argument rages on, Thomas watches on in silence. He pretends he is not there. He pretends that he is not in his body, trapped with people that suck the soul out of him, trapped with his addictions, trapped with his fear. The fear of being alone. The same fear that made him pick up the needle and spiritually mutilate himself with it.

He has been alone his entire life. Sure, he’s had foster parents, but they haven’t really seen him. He can’t relate to them. Sure, he might have friends. But those same friends shut him down when he talks about the things he loves. He is alone. Utterly alone.

Travis puts his cigarette out, twisting it and almost shredding it into the asphalt. “Payte, what the fuck are you on about?”

Payte stops and stares at Travis while collecting his thoughts. Now is the time for the villain-monologue, the one line that will bring it all home. That will make the audience empathize, and well, almost agree with Payte.

Payte takes a long drag of his cigarette. He throws onto the floor, stomps it out, then looks back at Travis. Here it is: “Punching someone and breaking their bones is considered bad because it can hurt them, and not help humanity grow and flourish. Raping a lady is bad because it causes harm, and does not help humans evolve. Murdering someone is bad, because well, you’re killing someone and stopping them from having children. Religion is used as a tool to create morals. But if there is a God, it is the universe, and the universe does not care about right or wrong. It simply exists, and is consciousness gestalt.”

Travis watches on with eyes full of wonder, and terror.

“That being said, I believe there is an animal in every man and woman. An animal that exists as the Ego, a mechanism derived to help humans live in the wild. The very existence of this Ego shows that humans were not meant to grow this intelligent. We were not meant to have every piece of information (that we know of) available at our finger-tips. Humanity is simply an error in the grand scheme of things. And now, we are suffocating ourselves, overcome by the waves of data.”

Thomas is now looking at Payte with awe. His pupils have dilated, and the whites of his eyes are revealed.

“This animal is the sum of all that is deemed “morally bad”. It exists only to fuck, kill, and eat. To survive. Do you really think that we’ve become more civilized? Or have we really just stuffed our animal down, and made it consume in different, more covert, ways? Now we bicker over meaningless arguments like what actually defines a woman. When in reality, it really doesn’t fucking matter what you want to identify as or who you love. In the end, you are just a filthy, stupid, weak, human. Consciousness gestalt. A living and breathing babe, lost in space, with no purpose other than what you create.

We haven’t silenced our animals, that’s the thing. All that we’ve done is find different ways to feed the Ego. We feed it through gossip:

“Oh my God, look at that guy’s hair! It’s so ugly.”

“That guy has a lisp, how strange.”

“Man, I’d fuck that girl if her nose wasn’t crooked.”

We also feed our animals through hate. Hating what you really despise in yourself. And while you, sitting upon your throne of narcissism, deem what is bad or wrong, is really what you harbor inside of yourself. We can all be pedophilic, necrophilic, murderers, if it weren’t for the consequences.

Hear me when I say this. You are not a woman. You are not a man. You are nothing that society and the gestalt of humanity deems you as. You are a filthy, hypocritical, porn-addicted, human.

What do you do with this information? The fact that you’re a filthy human who exists in a hollow world? Fuck a prostitute, do a line of coke, go climb a mountain, go run a marathon, go make paintings, maybe start the revolution and let these corporate-cats get what they deserve, or maybe, just smoke a fuckin’ bowl. In the end, we all end up dead and alone, so why let anything stop you from making your meaningless life the way you want it to be?”

* * *

The curtains are rolled back as the stage dissipates. God stands up in the void to decide which character to play next. Will it be a person with an unnatural talent so he can experience that? Will it be a narcissist who is controlled by feelings of inadequacy? Will it be a person who is so utterly alone? Or will it be a person with a normal life that has had no pain? No, that would be boring. What the new character will be, is a boy who has had to grow up extremely quick, and is burdened by feelings of having to put up a strong facade, when he is sad. So, so, sad.

It’s entertainment. God distracts himself in the void of nothingness by shattering himself into pieces and creating plays. It’s just how we make movies or video games. A distraction and escape from our environment.

Enter, Jack Matthews. A boy forced to take care of his four sisters, because their father is too drunk to do it. A boy living with a group of drug-addicts who are so fucked up, they put Hitler to shame. A boy who is in an abusive relationship with his only love, heroin.

Lights! Camera! Action!

Jack sits in the van. The rain patters the window, trickling down to the ground. Jack lays across the back-seat with the needle in his hand. He has put so much of me in his syringe, I might just end up killing him.

I have let him down time and time again. I have given him the peace he longs for, only to take it away from him, forcing him to love me more. I have broken him. I have taken anything good that was left in him, and burned it. There is nothing left of the idiot, except me. Me and me alone.

His thoughts are overwhelmed with thoughts of me. Every second of every day is spent thinking of me. I am his master, he is my slave. I have taken what was once a bright-boy, full of life, and squandered his potential.

Tell me, Jack: Is this what you wanted? Is this really where you pictured yourself, ten years ago? Dying in my arms?

Jack readies the syringe, knowing that if he takes this, he will die. But that’s alright, his soul is mine now, and he will be laid to rest.

Jack now inserts the syringe into his arm. It hurts, more than it usually does, but he doesn’t care. He knows that he has let his friends down and lost the battle. He gives up and lets go.

Jack, you never got the peace that you wanted in life. You never got to be a Navy Seal. You never got to say goodbye to your sisters, or your father. You never got peace.

Now I shall take your soul into my arms and put you to rest. You’ll finally get the peace that you wanted. You’ll finally get rest. Tell me what you see when you get the other side. Payte, and all the others, will be waiting.

* * *

The curtains are rolled back once again, and the lights go off. The audience is left in shock and awe. Some are crying, and some are walking out. God sits back in the void to admire his creation. So beautifully sad. There is now a hole that will never be filled. But hey, it’s a good piece of art.