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Hurt was not supposed to come easily to boys like Kevin. Anger, yes. But never hurt. Because boys like Kevin were not human, that was gospel. Humanity was ordained onto those who spoke and listened and read, those who knew. Understood. Those who had the words to folly the voices inside their heads. So yes, Kevin was hurt. But he was not human.
That made him a monster.
Because that’s how life works. The villain and the victim. And Kevin could never be the latter, that was insanity. He was incapable of emotion, feeling, he was incapable of humanity. For humans could bleed. Humans could hurt. Kevin could not. Therefore he was the monster, irredeemable, caged to the fringes of shadows. An onlooker who could never feel the warmth of understanding or solidarity or empathy.
For you cannot pity a monster.
Kevin was a monster. He didn’t deserve the knowing eyes of acknowledgement. He didn’t deserve shit. And yet. And yet he craved it, a thirst that grew inside him day by day. A hunger he could never surfice. Just a fragment of recognition, a flicker in the foxes eyes, his deseraption for them to know that he was one of them. Even entertaining that idea was selfish, who would want that dependent needy fuck in their life. The foxes had made their stance clear, a stark like in the sand that branded him as the raven. The other. Would Riko ever have wanted him back if he knew, if he saw? Kevin sure knew he wouldn’t.
Kevin knew he was a monster.
But that didn’t make this ebbing, devouring void of catharsis any less consuming. Knowledge gave you nothing if you didn’t know how to utilise it: that was his quandary. He was imprisoned by his own mind, sabotaging himself where he was desperate for stability, a walking contradiction.
Nobody understood. Nobody was expected to understand. Because his hurt made him a monster. Disgusting. Disgusting.
He wanted. He wanted so bad. Perhaps that was his problem.
To some degree he was aware. He knew he kept himself in the vicious cycle of pain, a cycle he could logically escape with little effort and time expended. He knew this, yes. But pain was his addiction. Stronger than any alcohol, sleeping pill or dust he could get his hands on. Pain was comfortable to those who grew knowing nothing else. Pain gave you solid ground to stand upon. Pain was predictable. Nothing better than fighting fire with fire.
He hated himself. That was simple. A clear cut fact that needed no justification but his own existence. Hating himself came as easily as a rabbits instinct to flee at its own shadow.
The contradictory thing about hating yourself is that those who may tell you to not hate yourself are the ones who are the quickest to turn it against you. Maybe they’ll slowly remove themselves from your life, uninterested in harbouring a bit quite suicidal attention seeker in their midst. Maybe they’ll give and give until there is nothing left of themselves, still never enough to fill the hole inside. Or maybe they’d tell you point blank just what a leech you are, how hated you are, how perverted your relationship had become, how dependent, how needy, how contradictory. How tiring. Maybe they’ll just confirm the fears you had all along. You knew you were right. You knew you were irredeemable, you knew you were a monster before the scene even played out.
Maybe they’ll act shocked when what you told them will happen has the audacity to come true. The heavy weight of Andrews fingers bruising his throat choked him even is his wake. Another day, another hollow promise.
And somewhere along the way, you give up too.
All that trying and failing and fixing and breaking; wasted. Wasted. Pointless. Days, months, years taken off your life pushing a rock endlessly up a mountainside to an end you will never meet but in the grave. Like a journal dutifully kept, reread as the pages run thin, and realising it was a story retold over and over and over. Again and again. A story of dichotomy, of extremes and opposites. Untethered ecstasy soon to be crushed by existential hatred.
And that fear that ultimately, at the end of all this, you will indeed amount to nothing. Nobody recites the eulogy at the empty funeral. There would be no mourners. There would be no flowers.
Perhaps that was why Kevin lived. Because if that selfish fear was confirmed then why bother being just another statistic of untimely tragedy. A boy taken from us too soon, he wished somebody would say. Anybody.
Not that that would have made a difference anyway. Contrast to common consensus, Kevin had had his fair share of healthy ish relationships. None had lasted long, granted. But that wasn’t the point, the point was he had heard the ‘i love you’ spiel time and time again, he’d heard how much he was adored and how much potential he had and how beautiful he was a million times. It never meant anything. For a moment perhaps it did, fleeting.
Kevin could not believe those dangerous words. For they were just that, dangerous. No monster was beautiful. No monster had a capacity to love nor be loved, praise or be praised. He couldn’t accept lies.
His father had known that, and he had hated him for it. How could have he sired a son so corrupted and monstrous and vile. Barely able to look him in the eye, his father had been disgusted. Repulsed. Angry. Like this was Kevin's fault, being born into unwanted arms. Not born. Forced.
Every therapist had a different answer to the cause of the pain. Every therapist had a different drug to offer. A new take to spin, a new lie to tell. Why couldn’t people just accept that he was despicable and call it a day.
Because Kevin knew the problem.
The problem was him.
And there was nothing he could do to fix it. Nothing but a bullet in the temple or a rope round his neck. Riko had found an easy way out, the target he’d placed there himself. Riko had tempted fate. Kevin had wanted no part in it.
He didn’t deserve the freedom that the sweet grasp of death would grant him. Of course he didn't. He deserved as much hatred and pain and hurt and rejection as the earth had to offer. He deserved hell on earth.
Punishment felt futile. A blade on his wrist, imprisoned in silence, depriving in ways nobody could comprehend. Punishment was that carrot in front of the blind donkey: his punishment was the answer. The answer to why, when, how this all went so horribly, disgustingly wrong. That was purgatory in truth; knowing enough to know you know nothing.
No amount of vodka could drown out the screaming, the bone heavy irony.
Sometimes he didn’t know what direction his life was taking, it was an open road and hands were unfaithful to the wheel. Exy was logical, it gave him purpose and meaning and everything a young boy deprived of a mother could need. But he wanted. He wanted. Perhaps that’s where he failed, who dare ask more where there is a roof over your head and an exy stick in your palm. Who dared.
He had tried. Disappointingly so. He’d tried and waited and reflected and sought help and tried again and held his tongue. And still somehow, some way, not an increment of improvement was left to show. No grand ‘i’m better now’, no big catharsis, no moment where he was sure that the next thing he’d do was screw it all over again.
He had given out apologies. Something that did not come naturally to him. Apologising meant admitting the burning shame that crawled within him was a frank and real thing. Perhaps they came off half hearted or callous attempts at remorse. Perhaps they thought him a sociopath, unable to conjure up anything but a scheming, feeble lie. Perhaps that’s what they thought of him.
A monster charading a man. A facade. That was all it came down to.
For a monster so unable to be hurt or maimed or loved or wanted, why did this emptiness bother him so. It was walking through a maze knowing that you were to find it’s centre but the hedges kept shifting, moving, obstructing. The rules of the game were not fair. But neither was life.
Kevin found no use complaining. No, he shut up. Detaching any residual vulnerability and cutting it off at its source. No pain could be felt if you were unavailable or feeling at all, Kevin grew acclimatâtes quickly enough. Wading through mundanity like a death sentence. Words became white noise, faces became unintelligible.
Some would call it fate.
Others, a self fulfilled prophecy.
But to Kevin, he knew it was none of that. He had created this. He had created the shadow looming, terrifying, haunting and mangled. He had created his own waking nightmare.
He had created this monster.