stabbing inward

not for the faint of heart

Blackened. Blackened to deep black that it no longer has a shine.  It is no longer a color.  Devoid.  Absent. Weightless yet powerful, it is only feeling.  Intangible, yet real.  The feeling has no shine.  It is dark.  It is the color of black found on the inside of a burnt oil drum used to heat the destitute of life.  The blackness is spreading and I am trying to stop it.  I am trying to isolate the pain. To locate where its’ origins are stemming from this time.  I have defeated this blackness before.  Dozens of times.  It is a war though and winning battles against an enemy that doesn’t quit until you die is an impossible war to win. War brings out the worst in man and this time will be no different.

Like an oncologist attempting to find the origins of the cancer, my quest may take weeks and months.  The black sits on my heart most of the time.  It moves to the stomach though too.  Back and forth it makes its’ painstaking trip.  Shards of glass glued to rototillers blades.  Back and forth it cultivates new, fresh ground.  Jumping up and down.  Bludgeoning any confidence.  It has a sinister smile on its face.  It relishes the blood it feeds on.  The blades are rusted and serrated.  It stabs and tears at the insides of him.  It has no remorse.  It only knows destruction.  Destruction means defeat and defeat means victory.  Victory means an end and someone has to win.  Blackness will win.  Spinning.  Tearing.  Smiling.  Viciousness.

The pain used to come in small manageable doses.  Laughable doses.  Is that all you got?  Bring it on?  I have defeated you.  I have beaten you down.  I have turned your tools of agony and malcontent against you; thrashing and stabbing you into an indistinguishable pulp. 

I have reached for the knife you ripped at my eyes with and taken it from you. My hands cut to the bone from grabbing the serrated, rusty 8inch blade.  I am blind from the blood turned tears. I knew where you were. I was able to grab you. Choke you. Mame you. Break your bones into pieces with my elbow, my teeth. Pounding my skull into your cheekbones over and over. Hearing the cracking, the mashing.  I had flipped you under me.  Pinned you with my knees.  Head crashing down onto you. My skull the only weapon to keep you down. I could feel your evil under me, bucking me, wrenching under my weight. Arcing back, both hands gripping the handle, I took the knife behind my head and I drove it so far down into your brain that I laughed while you wiggled frantically from the intense pain I expelled throughout your spastic limbs.  Wiggling and screaming a hellacious scream that would chill demons in their sleep.  I smiled, dropped the instrument and walked away.  Tired.  Bloodied.  Exhausted.  Victorius.

You came back years later. Eating away at my core. Months and months passed before I knew it was you. Your motives were still the same. Kill the weak. Destroy the meek. Greed. Dancing about my brain, every thought negative and of death.  Challenging me to do it.  Questioning my ability.  Laughing at my weakness.  Shouting to everyone in sight where the real me was. 

I was able to defeat you again. Months and years it took, but I was able to to take the pick axe you had been using inside of me and drive it directly into your chest. I had been watching you. Learning what you were doing. How you were planting the seeds of denial, defeat and death in me. Taking the axe and burrowing down deep, throwing the seeds in and smiling devilishly. As you closed your eyes and started your predictable assault on me I lunged and manuevered, taking away your ability to do more harm.  Wrenching my body with as much force as possible I drove the axe in so deep that I had to work the steel tip left, right, up, down, back and forth until finally I was putting my foot on your head to dislodge it. Freeing it so I could level it in you a dozen more times.   Until my shoulders were so fatigued it hurt to pick it up. My pain was your pain.  Till the sweat dripped off my arms, down my elbows, off the tips of my fingers and puddled with your blood.  Catching my breath though I knew I had to send a message.  To let you know that I had done it before, and I could do it again worse, more violently this time, matching the pain with pain.  Again, taking a cut at you I drove it lower into your abdomen and again laughed at my defeat of you. Dropping the tool and walking away again victorious.

Years have gone by before I felt you taking shots at me again.  The thuds were familiar but I thought them to be phantom pains.  Coming in my sleep.  Deep into my sleep.  As I wakened you went silent.  Harboring your blackness for another night.  Then it happened.  I felt you.  I felt you creeping out the cavern behind my eye.  You made too much noise and came out with less caution.  Complacent you had finally won, you got lazy, greedy. You had managed to kick around inside me during my sleep, infecting different parts of my body this time instead of keying on one or two areas as in the past, it was an all out assault. The last pitched battle that if defeat comes you know your death is permanent.

I knew you would live.  I knew you would be back.  I thought I could defeat you again.  I see you for what you are.  You are nothing.  You are the worst in man.  You have manifested yourself inside me and my brain inside those that have hope and want change.  Want the power you hold. Want to cut the strings you hold, the fate you seem to steer. You have attached yourself into my deepest thoughts so even when I think I have anihilated you, I have not.  You have merely hidden yourself from view until the time was right.

I have found so many weapons in my life to keep you at bay.  None of them seems to work anymore.  There is no point in using them.  There is no point in attempting to violently dismember you and throw the bits of your carcass to Orwell’s pigs.  I enjoyed carving you up in 1992.  I smiled as I wiped the blood off my chin that had splattered my face from 2 hours of sawing without an ounce of remorse.  You had it coming.  You nearly wrecked my life and I wasn’t going to let you do what you did to me in 85′.  I took a picture of you lying there in pieces.  Limbs lying in piles.  I tossed your limbs to the pigs as casually and gleefully as boyscoust throwing wood onto a campfire.

The time has come for us to battle again. I do not know what weapon I will need this time to defeat you. I do know that I am ready. I am ready to devastate you.

I awaken at night now, trying to figure out ways to defeat you.  We are in yet another battle and you think you are winning.  You don’t care about me.  You only care about yourself.  The cold sweat that cocoons my body each and every night will dissipate.  It has before.  ‘Was mich nicht umbringt, macht mich starker.’
‘What does not destroy me, makes me stronger.’ I am down but not out.  The nightmares are nothing new.  The feelings of helplessness are temporary.  You can’t defeat me.  You can’t defeat us.