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Cal wanted them dead. He wanted them bleeding out and begging for mercy as he held the barrel of a gun dead against their foreheads, watching them whimper and cry and squirm. Pleading for mercy, he now their God with no plan of ever granting it. They had cursed him, poked, prodded, nipped and poked at him for aeons.
He lay in bed most nights, trying to ignore the way his back seemed to tense and bristle against his clothing from where they had torn into him under the guise of 'pleasure'. How it leads to shots of super-charged adrenaline running through his body, as if he were somehow conducting lightning strikes. The air didn't feel uncatchable, but rather too heavy for his lungs, as if they might collapse under the simple weight of oxygen itself. He gripped at his skin like he was trying to dig out the horrors that lurked beneath, banish them from his caged brain, like a canary in a coal mine. Once an innocent lamb, brought to the slaughter, his skin a commodity, his breath a perfume, his spit an elixir. All up for sale, always up for sale, a being without a soul, as that had been harvested long ago.
He felt the way the memories, like ghosts, encircled him, ensnaring and entrapping his mind, never letting him forget their hollow inky blackness, their eyes blank and pasty, their touch like talons, their movements stuttering and wrong as if out of sync and the sounds, the murmurs, the laughs; his own private synphony of the damned.
Even when he did fall into unconsciousness, he could not escape their grip, like a dark sludge pouring into his mind, creating this thick ooze around his thoughts. The kind that dripped from every surface, slivering onto his skin, covering his mouth so he couldn't scream, his nose so he couldn't breathe, his eyes and ears until he was no better than deaf, blind and dumb. A sick part of him found a never-ending solace in the way it covered him, as if lulling him into a state of sheer disassociation. He became dehumanised, moving and muzzled like a creature that had never deserved nor desired to exist at all.
Tonight was one of those nights, every night seemed to blur together now, congealing into one mass, so supermassive it felt all-consuming. It made his skin prickle and his breathing catch in a way that left him unable to grab back onto it as if oxygen itself found pleasure in never granting him enough. His duvet clung to him, feeling more like a body than a comfort, a stack of bodies, of papers, a dossier of every sin that held onto his skin, seemingly unable to wash out.
He wanted to rip it off of himself, but then what would he be left with? Open and exposed in the stale bedroom air, pariahs and marauders lining the inside of his mind, tangling in every breath, every thump of his chest. But as he lay there, far too awake to sleep, yet too lost in his own mind to daydream, he felt his chest open up. A hollow, gaping wound stretching far down into an endless void that slowly infected his veins, spreading across his body, just under the skin, for a moment, he swore he could see the inky blackness, like poison in his blood. It felt as though he was falling through himself, a constant falling, one where screaming was fruitless. Everything was slowing down until time no longer felt real, forever stuck in this loop, an endless distilling of his mind into the perfect dissociation. A phantom in his own body.
Even as he lay paralysed, he knew he needed to get out. He scratched and begged in his own mind for his body to just listen to him, to just move, to get out, to run, to flee, to be anywhere but here.
He felt tears prick in his eyes, slowly blinking, tears he knew would never fall. He felt the way his hands lightly shook, wanting to grip onto something, but they acted as if they were too frightened to move. He felt weak, useless and pathetic. Was he any better than his younger self? Maybe he had never changed at all.
Suddenly, he felt a bolt of energy pass through him, as if lighting all his nerves on fire and striking them into action. He bolted upright without thinking, moving on impulse. He needed to get out of this place, out of his house. He barely even noticed the way the carpet slightly burnt his feet as he moved, all of his actions shaky yet so sure of themselves. He grabbed a shirt and a hoodie, putting them on quickly, racing out his bedroom door and down the stairs, not even aware of the noise he was making, his mind hyper-focused. His shoes were on before he could think, and suddenly, he was desperately searching for the light switch in the still darkness of the porch. His hands were twitching and shaking as he jimmied the key into the lock.
The door slammed behind him, and he ran, no clear idea of where he was going, just running. The sound of his shoes on the wet road, how the tarmac glisened under the yellow streetlights, rain from earlier creating pools of moonlight. The nighttime air was fresher, and yet, he felt like he couldn't catch his breath, his entire body acutely aware of every noise, every gulp, desperate for oxygen, every squeeze of his eyes shut in hopes the tears wouldn't come, every shadow that seemed to distort near him, his brain unsure if they were ever even real.
He reached the top of a hill, finally stopping to look down at the road stretching on far in front of him. The way it snaked into a treeline, how the houses around him were dark and eerie, as if no one was home, and for a moment, he felt like he was the only living being on Earth. He let himself feel the breeze on his cheek, how it didn't aim to hurt to maul him, just gently rustling past him. How the moonlight seemed to gleam and the yellow street lights created this almost dreamlike glow, hues of comfort, still peppered with deception.
He thought for a moment of walking to Andre's house, of turning up there at 3 am, looking all pitiful and inadequate. He knew logically Andre wouldn't judge him and yet…The idea of anyone seeing him like this for even a moment felt like a worse punishment for his sins than death. Besides, he'd never been one to bother others with his own emotions. But for a moment, the idea of real, genuine comfort was nice. He could almost smell the soft blankets, how they didn't hold the same weight as a body, the way Mel's fur was both warm and welcoming to the touch, along with the soft hum of TV static filling the air, fighting back against the snapping, cruel remarks bouncing around his brain.
For a moment, he let himself be comforted by it. He stared back down at the winding road, his legs feeling unable to carry him any further. He moved slowly to sit down on a nearby curb. While he was glad to get out of the house, out from under those covers, had it really even mattered? He'd be lying back in that same bed, in that same room, in that same house tomorrow regardless.
He brought his knees up to his chest, wrapping his arms around them and placing his head down, as if trying to make himself as small as possible, as if he didn't want even the moon to see his sins, afraid it would peer into his soul and shut him out as well. Finally, a few choked sobs escaped his pleading grip, unable to contain them anymore. 'He was weak; he was pathetic.' Those were his only thoughts as the sobs continued, hoping the shadows would finally swallow him whole this time, leave no trace of his existence, a ghost at the back of people's minds, too insignificant to picture clearly.
This moment seemed to stretch infinitely, twisting and spiralling in every direction, consuming his past, present and future until all that remained was this selfish moment. His body for a moment, once again feeling paralysed, he knew as much as he ran, he'd never escape it. He looked up at the sky, the streetlights bleeding out into the darkness, causing a level of light pollution which made it almost impossible to make out much of anything in the deep blue.
But after a moment of focusing his eyes and blinking away the last of his salty tears, he saw a few stars. Bright white pinpricks in the sky, like holes in a blanket, giving a glimpse into a world out of reach. They say it takes years for starlight to reach our eyes, and for a while, Cal wondered where he was when this light had first started travelling. Was it before he was even born, or was it on a night spent happy and warm, a feeling that felt so foreign now? It was like being able to reach into the past, gaze upon a life he could never have, a childlike wonder and glee which was all but dead to him now.
He sat there for a while longer; he wasn't one to stay up until sunrise, but he was too tired to move. His body now becoming cold, the nighttime air finally penetrated past his hoodie, shirt and sweatpants. He shivered a small bit, his body now shaking from something other than anxiety and regret. The air was nipping and biting at his skin, and he knew he'd have to return home soon. But as he sat there, finally feeling at least a little calmer, the bubbling anger and hate started to take hold in his abdomen again. A cascading remembrance, this time not in pain and agony but born in fire and brimstone.
Zero Day would be his reckoning, his turn to claw and rip into their minds. He got to decide who lived and died. He got to decide who was forsaken and who was worthy. He would fester in their nightmares, dive into their souls and carve his name across them, leaving them in cold sweats at night where they didn't have the strength to check if their doors were locked, too riddled with paranoia. Sheer anxiety and panic over the simple what-ifs of life that used to come so easily for them, something that hadn't been easy for Cal in years. He wanted them to understand even an inch of what it felt like, what they had made him, what they had created and gorged on like some forbidden fruit. He would become their sin, their God, their shadowy ghosts and demons. He would splatter their blood and taunt, he would slaughter their children like lambs, hoping, desperately clinging to find even an inch of peace in their destruction.