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(Page 3 of 3) Totality by Gregory Harvey
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He continued to flirt with the knife's edge as he spoke.
"In trying to become unique I have lost my self. All that remains is a useless mass of ill-fitting ideals – ideals that were never originally mine. In attempting to rise above all things, I have become all things."
He lowered the knife to his naked stomach, and sliced across it with enough pressure to cause a shallow flesh wound. It bled moments later – but with no real force. Little more than a paper cut...
"When I dream, I dream of chasms; they descend along jagged rocks into nothingness. Yet in my dreams I am granted hindsight, and so I stand above them. Dreaming, I have climbed upwards; I have risen. My fingertips, having lifted my weight for such a distance, are worn to the bone. They bleed."
He brushed his fingertips against his stomach wound, smearing the blood from it.
"Yet pain does not consume me. Pain is not a thing of dreams, but of reality," he sliced the knife across his fingertips, they bled as he continued, "When waking, I cannot climb up the sharp rocks, for the pain quickly stabs through my fingers, and I fear I'll lose my grip. Falling further yet..."
The man smiled in the mirror, "Even though sometimes I long to believe that falling is the solution. That the nothingness conceals not only answers, but freedoms. That the void knows who I am. That it utters my name. But that's not truth. The quest, once started, cannot be completed. Once begun, it cannot be ended. Yet neither can you opt out. Once you begin the quest you must end it or die. We are damned in that way."
Watching the blood drip from the man, the boy's muscles tensed. The noise from outside had all but ceased, yet the fire still burned.
...did not consume...
The floorboards around the basin were glistening crimson.
"We all die confused. Our last though – my last thought – will be but the agony of another unanswerable question. And so the only way to truly die in peace is to die in violence, your body suffering the most brutal physical torment so that the mind's last moments are not spent in thought's despair – but only in the purity of experience."
The man who was going to kill the boy moved to within three inches of his victim – close enough for both to realize that their breathing was synchronized.
The man raised his bloodied hand, still gripping the knife with the other, and placed it gently on the boy's cheek.
"You are about to witness something beautiful."
He withdrew his hand, leaving a small smear of his blood on the boy's cheek, then glided back to the mirror.
He stared into his own eyes once more, "This will... this will be extraordinary."
The man who would kill the boy raised the knife to his own throat, and slashed across it in one smooth motion. The blood began to cascade to the floor, some of it running the course of his naked body.
The boy watched as the man, choking, dropped to his knees – colour fading from his skin as the blood emptied his body.
He struggled for air, turned to the boy, and spoke between gurgling breaths, "How wonderful," before collapsing with his face in the floorboards.
And so it was that the boy watched the man who would kill him thirty-eight years later, die in peace..
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