13 - Alone

Do you think he is gone when I wake up?

Do you think he could leave without me knowing?

If you let someone live, isn’t that the same as saving their life? Isn’t it?

I have never tortured anyone before. It does not surprise me that I am good at it. It is easy to cause pain, I have spent my life avoiding it, avoiding giving it to others, it is like I am sitting in a chair, a lawn chair now, a broken lawn mower, out of gas, it doesn’t need to be, I will not use it again were it running. I have a drink in my hand because it has always meant 'easy' to me, having fun, relaxing, drinking. It meant I was with friends.

I did not take his eyes because I hated him or I didn’t want him looking at me or I wanted to hurt him. And there is no amount of gaging or removing of things that will stop a man from screaming and carrying on if that is what he wants to do, nothing short of death of course.

I tell him I am saving his life. Right now I am. I know he does not see it that way. I know he thinks that if I will kill him eventually then I am killing him right then, always, am capable of nothing else, like offering him a cake, water, a reprieve.

Hurting him is easy like resting is easy, in that chair with the drink, the friends, all that. I don’t expect to feel so alone when he is dead. Despite it I see him, glance at him and there is this quick idea or thought that he’s still alive, he’s alive. He is not, and it goes but not as quickly as it comes, its probability pushed away like unwanted attention, shoved out of a room and a door shut behind it until I turn and see him, the twist, the unlikely repose and he is in the room again, still, passed out maybe, but no, no he’s dead.