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Were anyone else to bear heinous, pitiful witness to the display before them, they may come to a resolution that the motionless, static body before them was that of a lifeless being. A corpse, left carelessly afloat within what appeared to be a sea of hot water gone cold, a peaceful lake of once so nostalgic comfort becoming that of an ever-persisting nightmare. A prickly thorn in his scarred, rugged side… for what felt like weeks stacking upon weeks, at this point.
But, that would be if anyone were even able to navigate their surroundings within the murky black of it all… only to be aided by the dim, occasionally flickering luminescence provided by that of a nearby wax candle, just barely casting even a fragment of light upon the deathly still rapids of a fixed tub of lukewarm water, so still that one may be able to view their past life within its murky, yet effectively reflective surface. Only complimented by the seldom hues of brown and orange to so delicately kiss the chipping paint on the walls, providing for an otherwise comforting atmosphere… in an otherwise compromising time in his life… or what he’d left of it.
Though… if he were being entirely honest with himself, perhaps such an abundance of shampoo, soap, and other foreign expletives to fog up the bathwater was necessary. Necessary for his sanity, already having dwindled so low, like a rope a mere few strings away from snapping into two separate pieces. A worm, severed in parts, yet ever writhing in its own fictitious pain. He swore, never again would he so foolishly gaze upon his own reflection, lost and lacking in hope… already once had he been granted the privilege… but even once had been one time too many for him. Never again.
Never again would he dare to dream.
And so, he remained awake, restless and phobic, even in the cold, black depths of the all-embracing night, where not even a hint of living, breathing life made itself known to his conscience; as though every living, breathing creature within his immediate vicinity had been swallowed whole by the figureless void shrouding both his body and mind, shrouding the very shape of the tub within which he’d laid so lifelessly… until it appeared as though the fluid water wasn’t fluid at all, but solid.
Frozen, and cold. Much akin to the conditions he’d once been accustomed to, before…
Truthfully, he was surprised he hadn’t borne witness to the taste of his own filth first… almost having been surprised to be met with the taste of his own tears sooner; salty, and bitter, streaming sluggishly down his cheeks, yet kissing his lips so sweetly. But not at all had he felt comforted by its gesture of kindness, not at all… even if it had been a reminder, however dour, of his unfettered consciousness. That his reality was stable, and concrete… having set in stone everything to have occurred up until this very moment. Where he could do nothing but surround himself in his own filth, everything that reminded him of home. Of his dreams…
Eventually had he turned to lie upon his side, his shoulder just barely propped up against the cold, unwelcoming marble of the bath, of what had been left dry in comparison to what abundance of water had instead pooled around his body. Such an abrupt movement was when he’d felt it… the sensation of his own tears at long last streaking down his cheeks with gravity’s coercion, leaving uneven lines of moisture to trace the curve of his nose, every imperfection and human deficiency he’d possibly left to account for. The only existing reminder of his own humanity… even if his own dilemma left him feeling more closely to that of a machine.
A cold, heartless, lifeless machine… which held onto nothing. And felt nothing… and meant nothing, to anyone.
Home came to his mind, during these oblong remedial sessions of his… and he knew, if he closed his eyes, he could imagine it down to even the most insignificant detail, even if some major aspects of the memory in itself had gone to waste. Though, within what had chosen to remain, he could so clearly feel the arid wind as it brushed past his ears, reinforcing the warmth within his feeble body. Were he to reach out an arm, he would be able to feel the wet flower heads of sprouting cattail plants, the tall shards of dry grasses against his very digits… swaying in the whipping gales of an incumbent storm. Guaranteed to make an aqueous mess out of the fields… an ever-persistent torrential shower upon his dark skin, a wet squelching beneath his sandals, as he so gleefully trekked through its muck. A beautiful, beautiful mess…
Home came to mind, as his palm brushed against the side of the tub, his bruised fingertips caressing its cold, unwanting texture with a kind of fondness he’d never reserved for anything in his entire life. And as his eyes shuttered, he could perfectly picture the ovoidal shape of the very basin within which he bathed in days of old. His manky knees pulled into his chest, his scuffed chin tilted back, as a pair of warm, loving hands—disembodied in his own fragmented memory—sowed through his greasy scalp… the only gesture even close to adjacent to kindness he ever bothered holding onto. Existing by a slim thread within the very back of his mind, where even his own putrid acrimony for humanity and their earth… hadn’t dared to graze.
And then… the face of one familiar—despite no such familiars existing within his long-term memory… or short-term, all things considered—smiling at him with such genuine glee, leaning so tenderly against his own shoulder… that he nearly believed he’d dreamt it all up, as he’d known no such unfettered bliss could ever possibly exist within his own warped perception of this world and all its inhabitants. But, it had… and he could recount it all with flying colors… just as he could those agonizing times in his life where no such largess of euphoria even existed. Where nothing but pain… pain and insouciance, resided.
As hard as he tried to recall even the smallest detail, to put place to a name, a voice, anything… nothing arose. All having washed away with the stains of his aging, all equally as insignificant and utterly futile as the flesh and blood he’d left behind to rot deep within the earth. Nothing more than a fading memory… earnestly deserving of such a title. As he knew… he knew he hadn’t deserved to remember such moments of innocence, of civilian domestication and bliss. For what he had done, and what he had intended to do.
Perhaps such was his punishment, for his insolence… how easily he fell from grace, into a winding, unforgiving path of nothing but hatred and prejudice. Never again had he deserved to know peace. And he knew.
Even now, as he so attempted to become intimate with its embrace, in the most reticent of places… the sordidness lingering like a plague in the back of his mind remained, eating away at his dwindling vitality like a parasite, exhausting him of his very breath, until all he could possibly have mustered was the inclination—or lack thereof—to remain completely, utterly still. Unmoving, for as long as the listless strength in his feeble body would carry him into what felt like the distant future. A fate so far gone… that he had no choice but to trudge endlessly towards his own conclusion, no matter how uncertain. Just as he had in days of old… a tragic nostalgia that already felt so far away, but had never felt closer.
Inevitably had he allowed his body, for a moment, to anchor upright, having nearly locked up in a tensed shudder as the sensation of near-freezing liquid run down the back of his neck appeared to paralyze any and all other subtle motions; careening through every uneven, imperfect defect to bore into his meager stature… a mild inconvenience for some, but an unwanted, blood-curdling sense of nostalgia, for him. The very thought, not only having successfully plunged him further into despair, but also prompting him to wonder just how he would survive… how could he survive, if the puppeteered strings of his nightmares and of his exigencies controlled his every motion and predicted his every impulse?
Had it been the fault of his weakness, or had it been because he refused to acknowledge its existence?
In a rigid life, so teeming with vehemence and necrosis, he really hadn’t come to question why he felt the way he did… despite some abundance of otherwise intrusive questions eating away at his dwindling lifeforce like a leech. With how he’d grown up—where he was, and how he fared in an otherwise unforgiving environment—the very idea of even the slightest instability within his life truly wasn’t a factor that frightened or terrorized him in the slightest… no, not at all. For many a year had he seen—and, quite frankly, carried out—unspeakable things, thus he’d no reason to fear any variety of first-come, first-serve bullshit that his very existence may attract. As though he were a magnet… an object with a gravitational force facing one singular direction. Himself.
After all was said and done, he simply hadn’t the energy to carry out fruitless acts of barbarism anymore. He was too tired. Far too tired… and done, far too done… as ‘fun’ as it used to be…
But… more often than not, especially in this very moment, he supposed it was nice to finally have a—begrudgingly—safe and quiet place to properly cleanse himself of the heft of his burden, particularly after… well, everything. To have a sanctuary, where he could wash his hair, where he could rinse the salty tears from his heavy eyes, and the crusted residue of vomit, blood, and phlegm alike from his lips. Where he could allow himself to unwind from what felt like years upon years of built-up stress and obligation, all finally granted with the means to adequately crumble away… into a solemn, but otherwise necessary kind of nihility. Nothing he wasn’t already accustomed to, of course.
Were he currently in a more productive state of mind… and perhaps he may have viewed this as one facet of many of his own rebirth. To finally rinse away the onerous weight of his antiquity, and to begin anew. Even if the phantoms of his past haunted him forever still… forever incumbent no matter the methods he’d used in gainless attempts to leave them behind. He would still prevail, as he’d no other choice.
Alas, despite his status, he still remained perceptive enough to know better than to allow his cussed phantoms to reserve their laborious hold around him any further. A man of war, he was… so he’d been no stranger to feeling accustomed to simply swallowing his sorrow, and—at the very least—attempting to trudge forwards; no matter the pain, no matter the strife. As such a resolve was simply within his nature, even if it had already been a given that his ingested misery would soon return to burden him once more. Forever aiming to taunt him, in both strength and in weakness. In both sickness and in health.
Even if he were six feet under, he was eerily certain his burden would remain everlasting… perhaps even so persistent as to taunt him in the afterlife… in either Heaven or in Hell, or if he were to simply return to the earth, as nothing more than a soulless carcass.
Eventually had both of his chapped hands reemerged from beneath the lightly disturbed rapids of his bath; slick with suds, so that he may sufficiently brush away the dry, heartsick remnants of moisture from his empty eyes, lidded with nothing but fatigue, and some other integer of emotions he hadn’t the bravery to sift through quite yet. Of course, he knew the gesture would always be for naught… as it would only be a matter of time before his tears would once again sully his sight, but… he hadn’t a limit anymore. No limits, no obligations… he’d all the time in the world to allow himself to sort through his emotions, so that they may not burden him in the near or distant future. To grieve…
But, as of right now, all he wanted… was to rest.
Yes… a chance to rest, and recuperate, maybe… perhaps wanting to take advantage of the timeless privacy he’d now been granted, given the newfound legality to his status as a mere casualty. A dead man. To once again find some definition or tier of meaning for his now aimless existence… however long that may take, however hopeless it may be.
As tempted as he was to remain forever idle within the once-toasty comforts provided by his remedial bath, he knew it’d only be a matter of time before he would grow tired of its fluctuating temperatures and its texture… as peaceful as sitting by the warm light cast by the candlefire was at this hour. The sensation had grown a little too close to home for his liking… and thus he concluded; the further away he was from any and all things sodden, the more restful he may feel. And so, that is exactly what he set out to do… even if it had taken an otherwise insurmountable amount of time for him to dry off and clothe himself properly. But, such wasn’t a concern for him, anymore. He’d all the time in the world…
Even if he’d most probably spend the grand majority of his time curled up on the nearest sofa, swaddled within the sweltering warmth of whatever quilts and blankets he could get his hands on, in what felt like one of his only moments of true, undisturbed peace… for what felt like the first time in his life, really. Before, all he’d known was to fight and to kill, likely the only two skills he’d garnered in his mind that he’d ever used throughout his day-to-day life… but now. Now, he’d been in a position where, if he were to even attempt such provocative actions, he would surely die.
And so, he opted for this sort of life, instead. Body-deep, upon the nearest sofa, in a rental apartment he’d surely get kicked out of in the coming weeks.
And yet… he’d felt the most tranquil in what felt like his final days, than he’d ever felt in his entire life…
And as he laid here—clean, warm, and comfortable—as desolate and depressing as the very idea had become… Montha thought of home. Not of the contemporary set of living quarters and storage lockers he’d acquired the moment he was deployed within Desperado’s ranks, no… but his home. Of the torrential floods, and of the dry, grassy pastures… of the anonymous faces he’d come to know, of the loving hands of those who so cared for him… and their warmth. Of which he’d missed so, so much… even if the man hadn’t truly cared for its significance very much these days… he knew it was there, a persistent headache that never truly waned. And it hurt.
He knew there was only so much loss he could take, before it would all come crawling back to him… as even the most heartless, cruel, and apathetic of men, would inevitably be subject to heartbreak. The most dreamless of men, would bear witness to every last fraction of their ambitions crumble… to an extent where the simple act of living, was that of a calamity. And not worth the struggle… regardless of just how far he had come in his life.
And it was pathetic… that all it took to break his stride, was a single man. A single, foolish man… who was now dead, and the very last of his once-honorable bloodline, killing it off with a single blow. With no living, breathing soul to maintain his legacy, not a single artifact to preserve his memory… all having been lost to a grandiose, raging fire, crackling away in the dark of night for weeks to come.
Every minute particle of his remains on this earth now having been kicked up like ashes in the wind. Returning to the earth…
Quietly, had he pulled the warmth of the quilts further over himself, burying his very essence within their protection, until none of his very being would be visible to the outside. A desperate attempt to mask his weakness, the sickening fear which took his very soul by the reins and controlled his every action, and his every word. Until he’d been nothing more than a puppet to his own sorrows, longing forever for something that may never arrive. Something that may never return again.
When his home came to mind, the most he could do was mourn. Yearning, and praying, that one day, harmoniously would he be able to rekindle with everything he’d lost. To become one with this wretched, dying earth, so that he may know true peace, so that he may forget the inevitability of the remainder of his days. So that he may relearn all that he had once loved, and forgotten, so long ago.
Home was his broken heart, but his only dream. And it was all he’d left to strive for in his new life.
So on he dreamt.