There are two kinds of people in the universe. The walking corpses, and the slowly dying.

We're all going to hell.

There is no better future for any of us. There is no reward for the struggles we have made. No afterlife. No living force. We just die. We just end. We stop breathing and we turn into fertilizer. The carrier pigeons miss our nightly snacks, and become carrion eaters instead. They drop your eyeball from thirty stories up, but when it breaks on the pavement, nobody notices.

They just step in the puddle and go on with their lives.

They're too busy dying to ever miss you.

They kill themselves at breakneck speeds. With drugs and drink and games and dames. Fuck it all and no regrets. That's the way to go, son. With a broad on your hip and gin in your gut. Take it like a man. Go out with a hard on.

But there's no glamor in death.

No one really dies with dignity. In the end, there is no peace. We all reach out for something. We all beg.

For a person. For a place. Something long forgotten. More time. We need more time!

But there's never enough time. Not when it really matters. There's nothing but time when the blond with the bust that never ends wants to take her bra off if you buy another bottle. There's tons of time when you've cut the lines and your buddy looks at you with glassy eyes and informs you that this is indeed the shit. There's nothing but time when you're flying high, on top of the world, with life happening around you and you condense yourself into a bubble and just live in your fictional bliss.

It's when you live in reality that you never have enough time.

When you lay in bed with someone you love.

Stand by the water and watch the waves.

Stand on stage and just listen.

Those moments that seem to stretch forever but retrospectively were barely there at all.

Those are what you long for when you die. More time.

There is no easy way to accept that your life is over. Sometimes you have a long time to come to terms with it and sometimes only a fraction of a second. Sometimes there never was a real moment. Sometimes it's just too fucking soon.

Sometimes the only real moment in your life is the moment that your life ends.

And sometimes you sit in your house and wonder what could have been. Sometimes you feel sorry for yourself because you used to be alive and now you're just a pathetic shell, filling yourself with booze because you have nothing of value to fill the internal components of your body. And sometimes you sit there, a pathetic failure of a former artist, who was never that big and will never be as good as you once were, and you softly run your hands over the only friend you have, not a beautiful woman, but a long, silver revolver, and you know, no matter what, when it comes time, it will give you the answers you demand.

This is how you want to leave.

Not with a whimper. But with a bang.

Start


Int: A Hospital. The corridors flash with intermittent lighting. The walls are stained a putrid shade of yellow.

Ent, ST L: The Fallen King.

The Fallen King appears ill as the doctor leads him by the hand. The crown of thorns upon his head has begun to bleed into his eyes. He makes uncertain steps farther along the corridor as the doctor supports his weight.

Ent, ST R: The Heir To It All.

The Heir To It All enters with a measure of uncertainty. He is not sure what to expect in this, the confines of a strange land. He watches curiously The Fallen King. It seems the two are destined to share this space.

Ent, ST L: The Interloper.

The Interloper enters last. His steps are assured despite the dangerous nature of the terrain into which he steps. There is no safety for him here; none for anyone, but less for one such as he. The Heir does not see him, and The Interloper does not make a noise as he watches the procession.

The lighting fades completely.

No one understands. They walk into the darkness for reasons they can't understand.

[INDENT]Day One.[/INDENT]

A man stands alone.

Figuratively and literally; this is how we live, how we die - alone.

The world around him is a desolate wasteland devoid of comfort. A harsh, hard setting surrounds him.

He blinks.

It is like waking from a dream, like being trapped in that moment between reality and vision. Anything is possible but nothing is real. Confusion abounds.

Who are you? The figure of your dreams, endless and boundless or less... a man fragile, a man without a name. Perhaps both, perhaps neither. The self does not obtrude. It is hidden, subfusc.

He turns slowly taking it all in and yet absorbing nothing.

What do you know to be true? What facts prevail?

He is naked, his body grime-soaked and stained. A biting wind moves across the barren plain, blows his sweat drenched and stringy hair.

His body trembles, cold. Arms wrap around him, his own and yet alien to him. He is but an interloper, he does not belong and yet exists, is trapped. A part of something he does not know and yet bound to play the role assigned him.

The air tastes sour, like destiny. Fate is at work. A force moving for him, it compels him and in his empty state he cannot resist it.

It feels to him like a city, or the memory of one. Mountains formed of rubble are here looming high and ominous above him. They are to him as though toppled buildings, scrapers of the sky torn down, crushed under foot by some mad god. The ground itself is not unlike a road, a city street, but upturned and worn by the passages of time, the ravages of nature. And yet nothing seems to him familiar, nothing brings him any comfort.

He continues to tremble with such potency his knees cannot sustain. Collapsing as he imagines these towers have done falls to the ground and finds himself sobbing. The tears trace crisscross patterns along his cheeks, cutting through the muck that conceals his features. He feels pity, pain and loss. But these emotions, these sensations so twinned with death, destruction... they are not his own but they come to him still, come up from the ground, saturate his being like the wind, like the dirt.

For a time he remains here, lost and consumed by it until it ebbs. Waves receding from the shore, it passes slowly.

Slowly, exasperatingly, he crawls through the debris ploughing a path through the detritus. Textures rough cut through his flesh drawing crimson rivulets behind him but he feels no pain, only numbness. A sound has come to him and though unable to place it, another object of indefinite confusion such as the landscape of which he has become integral, it draws him on. His eyes see all yet his minds, his shattered memories, are at a loss to explain what he sees and so, as an infant new born, he struggles. Needs, necessities such that carry genetic memory function, but in a far off manner.

Nearer he draws himself leaving bits behind coated in blood until a dawning understanding, a burgeoning realization, comes.

An object, a shaft, rises up from the clods. It seems to him like a thing known, yet forgotten. The shape is roughly straight, roughly true but the aspects of its dimensions confuse him for it seems split by a cross bar, a cross, near its top. And on that cross shaped top, hatched and flapping in the breeze, seems something like a cloud caught in tow. He reaches for it, extends a bloodied and dirty hand, clutches it and pulls. It comes free, falls around him.

He feels sheltered, less cold now. Understanding, knowing, he yanks the thing around himself until it finds purchase, holds and enwraps his body. Soft to the touch yet embedded with the dust that inundates everything, he calls it a word.

“Cloth,” he speaks.

But the voice scares him. It is not to him known to be his own and the formulation of sounds, of words, is new. He repeats it, drawing from the sound of his own voice consolation. With each utterance it becomes more a part of him. Cognitive logic is born.

Again he reaches, now with his other hand, the left. Closing fingers around the shaft he again pulls but this sensation is different from the last and it causes him to cry out... in pain. A great welling of the reddest ichors swells in his palm, courses down his arm and pools at the bottom of the shaft. He clutches the wounded limb, automatically wraps it in the fabric adorning his naked self and pulls it tight. The pain continues, though abated, as his blood mingles with the coal coloured stuff.

It goes like this for a time and with each attempt he learns, garners wisdom until finally deducing – holding the object by its highest precipice he is able to right himself, to regain his footing without pain, without injury. Successful and taking some small measure of joy in that triumph he knows, applies the same logic to the world around him.

Hours pass and words come, spoken aloud. Knowledge begins its slow return enabling him to, eventually, make some sense of the place he now inhabits. Soon he is feeling brave, adventurous yet frail, malnourished. He pulls, shakes, wiggles the shaft loose of its prison until he is able to lean against it, and to move it freely. Knowing, if this item could do him harm, could rend his flesh open, then perhaps it could do the same to others, could protect him, he drags it behind.

Setting off in to a wilderness unlike any other the day draws to an end.

[INDENT]Day 2.[/INDENT]

Sleep is a predator and exhaustion its medium.

He awakes where last his body fell.

His mouth is dry, parched. A rumbling emptiness roars at him from his abdomen and the sting of infection bridles in his wounds. But sleep has done more than just worsen his condition. It has brought dreams.

Some small part of him remembers, and it speaks through his dreams.

There, in the land of imagination ruled by the subconscious, images coalesced. Shapes, sounds and smells all made sense, were part of a cognitive world he remembered there and only there. Though lost, perhaps amnesiac or worse, his mind worked to draw wisdom from these events which, shaped by the dreamscape as they were, served him well in some small capacity.

Words form in the back of his mind, struggle to form sentences against the cracks in his lips and the dried saliva coating the back of his throat. It seems an impossible task.

“Who?” He asks. “Where am I?”

Queries preceded by ‘W’ are interchangeable. One question equals five. But no answers are forthcoming.

He takes some reassurance in their putting however. It is a sign of progress.

Progress...

Ironic, he thinks distantly surveying his surroundings. How far had he come? He doesn’t know, it all looks the same. Miles, maybe. Likely less, but nothing has changed. The world around him is still barren, empty but for the ruins of a bygone era. The remains of a fire, still smoking with glowing embers yet illuminating the charred coals, lay in a dejected pile before him.

Did he create this? He doesn’t know, he doesn’t know a lot of things it seems. But there it is none-the-less. It makes no sense, he has nothing… nothing but his tattered, makeshift robe and the shaft.

He looks to it, examines it, and another word forms. Again, he gives it life.

“Sword.”

Something stirs inside him. A memory, he realizes, attached to the item along with a sense of belonging, of possession.

“Good morning,” utters a voice behind him interrupting his reverie.

Scared, the fear response kicks in. Adrenaline pumps through his veins. Conflict arises, quickly answered though without effort or thought. Flight, or fight.

He spins, scrambles, grabs for the sword. Movements instinctual, not conscious, overwhelm him like a beast, an animal raised in captivity and suddenly provoked. As though taken grip by a million years of evolution, he lashes out.

It’s a blur and a part of him hides from it pressing shut his minds eye and as soon as quickly as it came, is gone.

Breathing hard, he collapses. Seconds pass and it is not until a groaning, pained sound penetrates the fog and sound of his own pulse pounding in his ears and in his chest.

A shape is crumpled, bent at an awkward angle, moving, twitching. It is, he knows, a human. Or it was. Whoever this person was it’s death is not far off, a death brought on by him and by the sword still gripped in his palm. The pool of blood is reaching out to him.

He feels compelled to do something but nothing comes to him, he is gripped by fear and indecision. Still he manages to move closer, to focus his vision on the creatures face. Between the dirt and sores he can tell, it is female… or was.

“Why,” she breathes her last breath. “I helped you…”

And then it’s over, she is dead.

Another mystery without answer, perhaps never to be resolved, for he is standing already, gathering himself for a panicked sprint.

His feet carry him with uncanny speed, he vanishes in to the waste only to stop when his body shuts down, forces him to rest.

Another day slips past and the sword lays by his side again.

White walls. Fake brick. Glossed over to look sterile.

They had, once.

The walls had taken on a dark, brown hue. A large, inconsistent stain pattern had developed on it's surface. The pattern began about level with the doctors knee and spread across a considerable portion of the floor.

He looked at it and sighed.

The stain was blood.

He hadn't stopped.

He'd promised that he would stop.

That stain had been caused by the man who occupied this room slamming his head against the surface of the wall. He did it three times, sometimes five. The back of his head ripped open and poured blood on the first impact, but he didn't stop. He didn't stop until his body drifted out of consciousness, and he slumped down, dragging his head across the brick until his body slumped, the blood seeping freely from the gaping gash on the back of his head, pooling around his form as he blissfully rested in the glorious afterglow of his concussion.

He had promised that he would stop.

He had lied.

It wasn't the first time he had broken a promise. It wouldn't be the last.

"Paint the walls."

The man at the doorway sighed. "How many times are we going to paint the walls?"

"As many times as it takes. Now paint them."

The man in the white coat shoved his way out the room, heading down the white halls as the white paint splashed over the brown blood stains.



"I thought you were getting better."

The man sat, hands folded across his lap. They were bound with steel and the steel had an inlaid wire that was meant to prevent him from simply straining his muscles until the steel bent. Of course, he could simply do it all with his head anyway, using fired neurons in his brain to snap the metal, the neck of the doctor, and the guards in the hall. Why he sat there, hands folded in his lap, and did nothing baffled them all.

The sessions were an endless source of frustration. Reading the emotions of a man who had stoically executed billions of people, some of them personally and very, very slowly, was a task and a half. He sat there and talked about what he had done with the same calm one would use when discussing their day at work. Sometimes it seemed like he considered his past as an executioner to be just another day at the office.

Sometimes, though. Sometimes they came to root causes. Sometimes they made breakthroughs. He admitted them, and said he would need to consider them further. But he did so in the same monotonous tone in which he professed and in which he refuted. One never knew when they looked at him that he was capable of understanding. He was ruthlessly intelligent and lucidly aware of his surroundings. But there was something about him that seemed... detached.

"Good morning, Doctor Fraser. Did you sleep well?"

Doctor Fraser sat down behind his desk and rubbed his eyes.

"Not at all. I'm here on my day off, at this ungodly time of the morning, because of you. So tell me, why do you keep lying to me?"

"I don't know what you mean."

"You told me before, you would stop slamming your head against the wall."

"I didn't lie to you, Doctor. I had every intention of keeping my promise. Unfortunately, things necessitated that I break my word."

"What things?"

"How do you sleep, Doctor?"

"Well enough."

"Do you think, if before the end of the day, you watched the life slowly dissipate from the eyes of a human being, you would sleep well enough tonight?"

The Doctor leaned back a bit and let out a long deep sigh. He spoke of murder in such a robotic tone. As simply as one would do the dishes, this man would end a human life. With the same casual disregard one cleaned a knife, this man extracted organs from his victims for no reason other than the fact that he could.

"What do you dream about?"

"What does any human dream about?"

His answers were like that sometimes. Blunt, and demeaning. In their speaking they implied that the asking of the question made the questioner an idiot.

"Humor me. What did you dream about last night?"

He sat there, unmoving. Tried to shake the lances of damaged brain tissue into the places they belonged, to bring back memory of what he had tried to forget...

"Her."

The doctor sat up in his seat.

"Her? You mean..."

"No, not her."

"Your mother?"

"No, not her either."

Now the doctor leaned forward, hard. He had no idea there was even the possibility of another woman of consequence, given the pattern of his development.

"Tell me about the dream."

He sat there, unmoving. The only sign that he was alive was the vein in his neck jerking and pulsing as his heart rate increased.

"We were walking in a forest. It was a forest path I'd walked many times. The trees glinted from collected moisture as the sun shone down from overhead, and the rippling of the nearby stream..."

"I get the picture. Tell me about her."

"I carried her, in my arms. Blood dripping from the back of her skull. I thought that she would die. I didn't want her to die."

The doctor leaned forward even more, putting a hand on his chin. Curious. This was entirely out of character for him. Compassion...

"Why was she bleeding?"

"She hit her head, on a rock. She was bleeding very badly. I thought that she would die for certain."

"What happened?"

"I spent three days by her side. I willed that she not die and did everything within my power to ensure that she survived. She woke up, and smiled at me. She leaned up and kissed me."

The doctor couldn't help but to allow a stunned gasp to escape his lips. That this had never come up before, or the fact that it had occurred at all, came as a complete surprise to him, and, when noted in his case files, would surprise everyone else as well.

"What happened to her? Once she got better?"

"I realized that I had developed an emotional connection to her. It was an attachment that made me vulnerable in many different facets. I couldn't afford the weakness I had allowed her to become."

The doctor sat back. The color faded from his face.

"What did you do?"

There was a short pause. For a moment, it seemed the vein in his neck would burst. But his expression, that damnable expression, spoke silent volumes about his ability to suppress absolutely everything. If, in this moment, he felt nothing, then his disassociation was complete.

"I held her close to me. Wrapped an arm around her neck and pulled her up to kiss me. Then I let her lay her head on my shoulder. I brushed back her hair and brought my other hand up to her chin. I turned her face so I could look her in the eyes. Then I bent her neck and severed her spine. I watched her smile at me and held her as she shuddered, and died."

The doctor let out a sigh. He turned his head down to the desk, and remained unspeaking for several moments.

"I disposed of her body in a fire."

"That's... enough. Thank you."

The man in the chair remained unmoving.

"Doctor Fraser, do you think it would be alright if we ended the session for today? I cannot recall when last I ate, and find myself suddenly hungry."

"Promise me again that you won't continue to smash your head against the wall."

"You have my word, for whatever it is worth."

"Alright. Then our session for today is complete. The guards will take you to get food."

The man nodded, raising from the chair. He nodded again, this time, a respectful gesture to indicate that he was leaving, before walking to the door held open at the edge of the room and excusing himself from the doctor's company.

The doctor looked down at his desk and sighed. He realized he hadn't taken any notes. He didn't need to. No amount of studying this man's behaviour would illuminate anything.

He was going to hell.

He knew it.

And was merely waiting.

It was impossible to change the mind of a man like that. All that he could do was continue to paint the walls.