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The orbital shift came contiguously. A simple dart of the pupils was enough to throw any laws of physics that was known right into the toilet.
First, an optical illusion phased his balance and with that came all function of his legs. Being flung backwards was an experience on its own, having done it many times in fits of frustration or exhaustion or bottom-less despair. But, this was a new thing. It was a new sensation, heighten and almost far too painful to bare.
It all felt new, the fluorescent lights swinging above in ceramic cones burning into his retinas as if today was the first time he has opened his eyes. The sheets draped over his mattress was ‘something’, as well, needle-like 200 thread count of what was promised to be Egyptian cotton, but evidentially was not even remotely close. Even the mattress, a hay stack of comfort, swayed and clung onto his back as he lay crestfallen and partially confused.
“You know you’ll never get out of here!” A ballad of some sort buzzed to his right and he remembered he had been watching some pay-per-view music special after the simple channel surfing swatted away his efforts. “Lay down your arms – surrender…!” What an inept gesture.
His eyes skitter and pan wayward at an attempt to glimpse towards the screen. Incidentally, he could barely register images from such an angle or, at least, anything beyond the white fading in like some photo shop graphics effect. Sure, He may have been scared, if he wasn’t already aware of what real fear looked like. What real fear felt like and how it clung through every and any stage of his life. The impeccable prestige of being a Venture came with fear. It came with a pupu platter of undignified responsibility, reserved pride and emptiness. One tall glass of ice cold indifference and regret.
This – this moment – was one of the few things he couldn’t reserve the rights to regret. Proverbs of livelihood and self-power would come drifting into his mind now and then, following images of his sons, whoever he had been fooled into believing were his friends and his father. The man that had built him up from elements of his own being only to pluck out every single endowment placed, causing pieces of himself to fall and rain down like a failed jenga puzzle.
He could, of course, blame his father for it. As he has been doing for years on end, yes—his father could be the symbolic deity of all his misdeeds, failures and untimely demise. But, he decides this time around, the old man (wherever he may be) was more of a judicial messenger rather than the cause and effect. That he, Rusty Venture himself, was the rightful heir of the blame shit storm. He had no aspirations, not a single spark or inspiration to fight against his fate as a Venture. And, even then, he had no drive to replace his father. He rode the coat tails of conformity until it all became far too real to tuck behind the ears.
His eyes shift between crossing and fading upward, losing focus all the while. Sleeping now was inevitable, and there’s nothing left to put forth on the table. There were no more lies he could dab onto the sides of his psyche like makeshift cologne. Nothing he could recite or preach or care to write down.
“Do you want to live here alone?” John Payne’s voice weans in through now profound static, a growl receiving riffs of an off-key bass melody. His head tilts backwards, glasses slipping upward and disintegrating his peripheral of white snow-like material. As his vision fades sententiously, he manages a smug grin. Something Rusty Venture could not go one passing moment without.
“I already am.”