Fresh Short Story: Sibilant (8)

Michael continued helping Alan despite the cessation of his passion for the project. Embarrassment over the ridiculous gothic indulgences and the scenes of the past month contrasted with fear of his hunger to experience death in the flesh. One certainty was that his games with Alan were done. He severed any remaining ties with women he had known. He spent his spare time studying for classes or reading. In short, he became an ordinary intellectual college student, and did not so much as capture a beetle for months.

After exercise became habitual for Alan, Michael focused him on literature, news, and cultural events, and while Alan's addiction to video games remained, it was supplemented by a fit body and increasingly broadened mind. When he spoke of nothing but his new girlfriend, Michael let him go.

Fall bled into spring. Springs intertwined. Classes began and ended. Before Michael knew it, his college life was over. He found the well-paying programming job and upscale apartment he had planned as a teenager, sans purpose. He felt that he was following a schedule set by someone he no longer knew. He thought about joining the military, decided it would not suit him to have masters. He knew the thirst for death remained, but he could not humor it in a healthy or socially acceptable -- rather, legal -- fashion.

He was haunted by the self he had seen when Alan held the knife to his wrist. That outlandish, TV-vampire caricature of himself! It was repugnant. If that was what lurked beneath the layers of self, from the little boy who loved vampire bats to the giddy teen hiding his nakedness beneath only a coat to the amateur entomologist to the lucid dreamer to the researcher of anthropodermic bibliopegy to the womanizing sadist, if that hungry little gothic child feeding on death was what awaited him, he would rather go through life numb.

So when he naturally woke in the morning (he no longer needed an alarm clock), when he brushed his teeth, when he showered, when he drank a healthful smoothie, when he rode the bus to work, when he said good morning to his coworkers, when he ate lunch in a nearby restaurant or cafe, when he went for a run after work, when he read in an armchair upon returning home, when he ate dinner, he felt little. He was an automaton wound up by his past self and society's expectations. He could not risk going back down the road of death, so he could not explore the road of life.

He had no use for a pet or a girlfriend. He had always been his own closest companion, his favorite, and a glorious ocean of depths to explore. But he felt that the ocean had dried away, leaving only a shallow pool to reflect mundane surroundings. Aside from exercise and reading, he had no hobbies. No friend, lover, or pastime could change the self-disgust he burdened in his heart.

Sometimes he watched porn, but it was whatever he found online that was popular; it matched none of his predilections. He felt no predilections. Even his masturbation -- an intrinsically private act safe from society's gaze -- still adhered to some broad narrative, for the yoke placed on him by society was far less cumbersome than his own. He did not fear disappointing others, only himself.

Christmas night. New red scarf wrapped around his neck, Michael crunched over the frosty ground to his car. He turned to wave goodbye to his parents, who stood in the window framed by the twinkling lights of the Christmas tree, smiling proudly. On a whim, before opening the car door, he looked up at the gelid sky, where stars shone like bitter tears. I am depressed to death. For the thousandth time, he considered and dismissed suicide in the same breath. And what should I tell Death about this pathetic affair? A gust stirred the scarf and chilled his ears, so he climbed into his car. He started the engine, drove down the street, waited at the stoplight, inorganic and far away.

He blinked. For the first time in over a decade, tears.