I am (Not) What I am Page #5

The Great Irritation

• Fiction
• Horror
• Short story
• Fantasy

								


The young man had an intimate familiarity with this beast; that cautious awareness shared between a breeder and their lions. He knew Its ways, knew Its victims, knew the protean menagerie of forms It adopted. He saw It everywhere he went; the city’s true face—  that banality of evil. The streets swelled with bodies, turning the pavement black under the glut of their footfall; their tread bounding over accumulations of grime and filth. The air stunk of trash, bodily waste, pollution and the green herb; all of it, an assault to the senses— pungent, arresting, the stench of a people mired in a long narcoleptic apathy. Crowds clamored over one another; rodent-like, fearful, small; fighting and clawing to betray their fellow Man. The daily grind was king and not a single member of the hustling horde cared for anything except their own success— the all mighty dollar, existence’s premium. True camaraderie was an extinct feeling: ample kindness, a casualty of the modern age. Charity was a rarity and  people lived  their entire lives locked away in private spheres— little worlds that passed each other like ships in the night, colliding occasionally, totally self absorbed. An egoistic herd. These were pretensions. The young Baal’s meditations on the world around him. Callousness was the selfish drum beat that orchestrated the rhythm of the city street; the constant moan that hummed in the young man’s ears. Clouding his vision with a centuries long cataract of malaise. Beaten dogs barked seeking relief. The elderly, blind and hobbled, were left to stumble uselessly through unforgiving labyrinths of confusion. Some fell on their face, left squirming at their spot of impact on the pavement. Others dribbled strings of befuddled drool on their laps; rocking feebly on public benches. The delirious flooded back alleys in swollen fetid hordes; hooked on barbiturates, driven mad by drink and psychedelics, long suffering, sick at heart. These were the walking dead, shadow shooters, the witch blooded; their plight running parallel to that of the young man’s. In fact, in more ways than one, the young man seemed to be strikingly similar to them. Lost in thought, muttering incessantly, flinching at noises, talking to air. At times, they even seemed to respond to his own Voices; as if they too were aware of his Dark Passenger, afflicted by the same diabolical force. He stopped and stared at them from time to time; sorrow flooding his features— he could not help but pity these people. A little boy was run down by a rogue driver. As the maniac sped off, the boy’s ragged remains were left lying in the street; blood and body cooling. No witnesses. Except the young man. He stayed with the boy until the cops came, holding his hand while he died. In the park, two men were locked in a bloody brawl over the theft of a cell phone: one trying to recover his property, the other trying to get away with it. Just as the victim inched toward victory, the assailant took out a knife and stabbed the victim several times about the chest and stomach— leaving him to die as he secured the phone. Of the few people there to witness the assault, not a single one lifted a finger to stop the assailant. Under the orange glow of a street light, the young man saw three kids playing soccer with the carcass of a large rat they had killed with BB guns full of rock salt. The sight was as pedestrian as a crack in the sidewalk. As was the sight of that sorry mile and a half known as Main Street in the city’s downtown district. Homeless lay strewn about the sidewalk, passed out drunk or dying. The lucid ones begged for change; only to be shooed away, ignored or stared at as if they were a walking disease. Others, bathed in tides of desperation, formed roving gangs: raiding grocery store dumpsters, robbing cashiers at knife point, pickpocketing tourists, plundering homeless encampments, patrolling the streets in rabid bids for territory. The empyrean vanity of Man pierced even this “lowest” veil of the human experience: a  veil that stood open armed, indelible, all welcoming to the simian machine’s mechanics.  Lying just above that hospitable curtain, the drug peddlers and call girls stood waiting at every corner of the downtown stretch— waiting for a John to fall into their patient trap. Escorts addicted to crack, half crazed and emaciated; whimpering, wining, moaning; laid in waiting to scrape up the leftovers of the bigger pimps’ prizes. Pathetic, despairing, hopeless.  An ecosystem of definite striata, arose in the city like an alchemical process: giving body and nerve to the spirit of a land defined by hurt. 

Many in this place went out of their way to torment their fellow citizen. Many embraced the law of sadism. There was a game played among the teenagers here: its premise simple, its object plain— punch a target hard enough for the victim to fall unconscious. The knockout game. Children’s fun. He saw it played on more than one occasion; saw its rolodex of human pain and suffering. Every race was a victim. Every bracket, a charging flag. Boom. Boom. Boom. A white single father; poor, disenfranchised, fatigued, his day spent rearing three children— down in a single punch. An Asian young man; pride of his family, first to graduate college, heart bursting with a boundless love— down in a tooth shattering instant. An African American working stiff; large, proud, old, an empty-nester beaming with the majesty of a man who could earn his daily bread— felled by a flurry of punches that shattered his eye socket. All of these moments were forgotten in the span of a week; folded neatly into the broad obscurity of a city steeped in blood— fading away permanently. The young man felt tuber stirrings in the recesses of his mind, a familiar rage rising at the thought of such rampant neglect. The regularity of belligerence.  Women were perhaps some of the most persistent victims of aggression. Men dragged their partners by the arm, smacking them about the head if they resisted. Strangers started heated arguments with one another out of defense or horniness. Gangs of petulant youth treated their opposite sex like trophies; winning them in extravagant games meant to achieve nature’s most feral end— continuance, the biological imperative, the animal’s reward. So, they jeered at them, followed them; nipped at their buttocks, numerous as wolves, ravenous, cooing, identical clones of each other, like some flock of bipedal lizards, surrounding, swarming, overwhelming, choking off all escape. From afar, they yelled the worst things. Unrepeatable things. Those robed in the sweetest garments were harassed in expeditious blitzkriegs: sometimes grabbed by their clothes, sometimes grabbed by their skin. Some in the midst of these assaulting gangs would say that their  actions were an expression of passion. But the young man knew better.  Sure, men boasted for women; sure, they strutted; sure, the whole of the human complex was a labyrinthine mating display, elaborate and perplexing ; but they did not love them— at least, to the young man, the majority did not love them.

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