Dementia's Keeper

The lank, dried out rose weeps in its glass prison, a constant reminder of my gears wearing themselves to dust. I don’t see far in my handful, but sterile desert of monotony and apathy. Dim embers drop into the crystal, my end and the cigarette’s. The smoke, acrid but sweet, cancerous but life-giving all the same, curls around my nose and tickles my eyes. I blink. In the momentary darkness, my existence, for my life has yet to begin, flashes before my eyes in the geriatric cliché. A child, happy and benign, with all of his needs and every want fulfilled. An adolescent, stereotypically confused and rebellious, with an untroubled home and a stormy head. A young man, disillusioned and angry, finds his proof of the insignificance of existence. Finally, a decade shy of forty, that steel-trap age, sitting in a cheap apartment drinking cheap booze and purveying the noble services and cheap whores. I down a slug of whiskey that tastes like fire and smells like brimstone.

I sleep, and I dream.

The clock blinks the witching hour in an appropriate color, and I have to stop myself from crawling under the covers in fear of midnight ghosts. They are should’ve dones, could’ve dones, maybes, and wishes. I dread the missed opportunities and failed endeavors, my little reminder that maybe I should have tried harder. I’m out of rye, I can’t lock the dark chest in my attic. The monsters are able to run free, frolicking in my ego, a virus spreading in my cells. They take over my rotting mental machinery and force me to look inward. They nail me upon a familiar cross with self-knowledge. My hindsight is the lance in my side. My inexplicable lack of motivation is the vulture at my eye. I cry out for a release from this Hell, but no one can save me from myself.

It’s what I know, you see. I know that existence is futile without a life. Maybe God left a piece of me lying on a heavenly workbench, or maybe a mischievous angel stole something from my heart, but I am lacking something, some pure and shining drive integral to being human. I’m missing a life. Not that shallow concept of a teenager’s “life”, but an actual substance, something with flesh. Humanity drowns this truth in the deep waters of the unconscious, but I have dived to the depths and retrieved it, dank and dripping with carnal seaweed. I have no motivation when the moment is upon me, only in sepia vignettes do I know what I should’ve done. My past is full of seeds ready to flower but I cannot see the ones beneath my feet. Maybe it is my fault; maybe I’ve done it to myself, a melancholic self-delusion of despair that I have acted out for so long. Have I cursed myself to a self-constructed prison?

The interrogation is well underway, so I light my final smoke to give my idle hands pleasure. I eye my cruel interrogator, myself, carefully. He is blustering, frustrated because he is running out of time and material. He knows what I have planned. Finally, I’m going to take the initiative to act. I’m going to plant this seed and watch it grow into a bloody rose of hope and redemption. I have been slowly gathering my energy, hiding its presence from the demons that haunt me. I’m shining with it, my hair is crackling and my teeth are buzzing. The shocked face in the mirror screams when I break the glass. It is quiet now, a more appropriate setting for the final act. My flesh and crimson hands float down the table, where my revolver is waiting. Suddenly, I feel six fathoms down. Time slows and my senses sharpen. The checkered grip of the gun sends shocks of sensations to my fingers and through my spine. I see God reflecting from the blued steel of the barrel. One brassy cartridge is placed into the chamber. The anticipation is building profusely inside of me, my heart racing. Slowly, to savor my greatest action, I lift the pistol to the side of my temple. The smell of gun oil and burnt gunpowder fills my nostrils like a sweet perfume. Every metallic click or the hammer as I draw it back is a wave of orgasmic pleasure. My finger strokes the smooth metal of the trigger and a sigh of content slips from my throat. In this, the culmination of my years, I have finally come alive. This will be my rebirth. I am now my own God, my own Devil.

I pull the trigger.

A dry snap. My eyes open and a tear spills out. I move the gun away from my head and look at it in astonishment. I see the laughing face of my infernal inquisitor. I have failed.

I sleep, and I dream.

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One of my more serious pieces...