The Angel of Death

 Existence is nothing but painful. Everything feels hopeless. The future looks bleak. Every morning, I wake up and keep on staring at this black spot on the wall. Is it even black ? I’m starting to question my visual ability to discern colours. Or the world must’ve gone colourless.

 

I sleep a lot these days. There’s not much to do around here anyway. Sleep is an astonishing ability to have. You lose all consciousness willingly while your subconscious works on. You know, man, human consciousness wasn’t supposed to develop. But it did, and that makes us harmful creatures to everyone and everything around us. Ancient monkeys weren’t supposed to develop a well-functioning brain such as our own. The Darwinian uncertainty principle has worked out really well for us. Life wasn’t supposed to develop as much as we have, from an evolutionary point of view. Under our own cosmological and physical circumstances or in other slightly or entirely different ones, sustaining life is hardly ever possible, much less intelligent life. That makes us the actual glitch in the matrix and this so called intelligent life has been a tragic misstep. It has effectively and essentially disrupted and destructed any kind of peaceful, future evolution of our planet.

 

And humans are destructive beings, as aptly demonstrated by my own father. My father used to work as a sales clerk at a clothing store. He was the sole earner of our house, “the breadwinner”, as he liked to put it. He was supposedly a very gentle, happy young man and was very deeply in love with my mother. He used to surprise her with gifts, cook for her and go over the edge to make her happy. He showed me the wedding announcement of his in the paper, he was figuratively trying to flaunt mother to the world. But as it goes, “when a man learns to love, he must also bear the risk of hatred”. Because the time of my birth was gut-wrenching for him.

The father he became was rather violent, verbally abusive and just full of contempt for me. That transformation came after the tragic death of my mother. My parents were supposed to have twins. But pregnancy can be a fucking double edged sword. After about 27 weeks in the pregnant state, my mother started experiencing eclampsia. The seizures got so severe, she had to be admitted to the hospital. The so called pieces of shit “doctors” couldn’t help her much. Mother had to deliver, or at least Dad wanted to get rid of the “parasites” growing inside her. But the doctors showed some mercy and tried to save me and my sister. Apparently, I was eating more than what was assigned to me in the womb. My sister died in a few hours. And while we kids were being removed, mother had an unendurable hemorrhage. A literal bloody affair, I might say. Through much effort, I was the only one who survived.  And hence, my father’s worst nightmares had come true and the abomination that I am was born. My father started blamed me for “killing” his beloved wife and the star of his eye he wanted instead of a boy, his dead daughter, Lucy, my dear dead sister. That started his downfall, as the kids today might say.

My old man started binge drinking, gambling, and cursing me a lot. I was a true fiend in his eyes for killing mother and Lucy, he used to say. I used to think that it was his way of raising me to be strong. As a motherless kid, I was never bothered by any abusive words about her, but one can’t just let oneself look week. I started getting into fights in school for beating kids up. In return, father started beating the living shit out of me. It was one of those times when I got to know that he loved throwing barbeque parties in the neighborhood with mother as well. The last fight I had was with this kid about 1 or 2 grades above me in school. He lived a bit downhill from our house and knew about my family’s tragedy. He said something about Lucy and mom being lucky for dying as they didn’t have to see what became of father after their deaths. He put in a snide comment about mother and something sexual about Lucy. Man, not my sister, I said to myself. And as much as I resented father, I did love him and wouldn’t have had my brethren abused. I crushed the boy’s lights out. That was probably the first time I didn’t stop in a fight after seeing blood. I broke his nose and his left hand. That day was indeed enjoyable, but I did get myself suspended. Father was indeed furious and in his drunken state, lived up to his name: Balor Tyrell. I again got shit from him about being a huge disappointment and how mother would’ve hated the monster she herself birthed. He showed me what a near death experience could be. And of course, about the barbeque part, he hit my bare body with the grill and broke a few of my fingers. There’s even a scar on my back from back then. Thankfully, grandpa stepped in from the sidelines and took me to the hospital. I had even come up with a little poem for myself. It went like:

I want to see the ocean,

I wanna love people.

Even monsters have hearts,

Cold yet so warm.

There used to be a girl who showed me some sympathy. Once after a fight, she had tried to offer me some chocolate, but in my fit of rage and the adrenaline rush, I ignored her and got the fuck out of there. She started helping me at school. As a deemed delinquent, I didn’t have friends, but only people who feared me. I did get above average grades though. But this girl, Bertie Clarence was fearless. She used to smack me a lot and be strict with me. All in all, she had a sisterly vibe. I had seen abuse and horniness in others a lot. So, I made it a point to not “get hard” thinking of someone I really admired. This girl was someone I liked a lot. Having no social life did contribute to it a lot. I told her that, but she liked girls. We did grow up to be best friends. She did have other buddies, so I used to get a bit jealous of her other friends. But, jealousy is a rather corrosive emotion to keep on entertaining. So, sometimes, I used to hang with them as well. Later, we got distant with time. When we graduated high-school, we started giving each other more space than before.

And that’s when I met her. There was a gorgeous, pretty, kind and amazing girl in my psych class in college. She had the prettiest smile and big brown eyes with a wolf cut on. My friends helped me talk to her. We clicked instantly and spent the whole first date laughing and staring into each other’s eyes.

We had some nice moments together: the first date, the first time we kissed, slept together, sneaking out of the house to meet at night under the stars, all the dates we spent dancing together, making out, that park date I had romanticized a lot in my mind, so many magical moments  indeed.

What an amazing piece of luck to have something so beautiful with the first person you land, right? The only good thing after the first 6 months was her presence in my life during my father’s accidental death. He died in a brutal motorbike accident when I was 20, about 8 and half months into my relationship with Lily. Man took up riding first, then the riding took him up. Haha……..Wow, a laugh’s not something common for me these days. I’m glad my wordplay’s still intact. But, my old man did try to make things right before getting toppled of the bike and falling off the cliff one wrist short. You were late with the good deeds, Dad, but its alright. So long, father of mine. Sadly, we couldn’t nab the culprit. It was the early 90’s and shit wasn’t as advanced with hell lot of security cameras as they got today. We buried him next to his beloved wife, my dear mother, Gloria Tyrell. Man was an asshole to me my whole life, but he did have some respect still after having trodden down the path of life so lowly in his later years. You either die a hero or live long enough to see yourself become the villain.

While these things were happening, grandpa had been diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease shortly after the grill scar incident. While it progressed slowly, grandpa became forgetful much faster. He used to help me sneak out at night to meet Lily. Once while I was out on another episode of romance under the stars, my father got to know of my shenanigans. He found a note I wrote to give to Lily that night. He asked grandpa if he knew about my whereabouts, and grandpa had till then forgotten where I was and denied. I got home, and there he was, the bane of my existence, sitting in my room with his verbal whip and wooden stick, all ready to beat my ass again. And when I claimed about grandpa knowing about it, he called grandpa in and then grandpa said he had forgotten about it. He started demeaning grandpa for a minute or two and returned on his mission to destroy me. That was one of the last few sneak-outs I pulled off. Maybe that dumb old grandpa did it on purpose, he did have a snide look on his face that night. The last one came when grandpa himself reported to father of my absence in my room. Another night of ass whooping and father asked to meet this girl. It took some persuading but she got home for dinner one night. Oh, and this asshole had the fucking audacity to tell Lily about how I ate Lucy and killed mother and how great of a monster I was. I was frankly surprised she still stayed with me after that nightmare. This was in probably 3 months together with her.

But shit started to fall apart after that. After my father’s death, grandpa was in great shock. He had a fall a few days after that and his disease progressed at an exponential rate. He started rambling on about vague stuff and wandering off. I had to take up the mantle and look after him and myself. I got a writing job at a magazine and also started working as a delivery boy. Lily and I began spending lesser and lesser time together as I couldn’t really afford a sitter for grandpa. She started hanging out with other people, we started arguing a lot, I got insecure and created problems for us. Being abused does take a toll on one’s self-esteem. We grew distant and as she had a bad experience with opening up too fast before, she started going back in her shell with me. Intimacy became non-existent and our bond started to fade with each new fight.

I realized what all problems we had and that I wasn’t the only one causing them. She was a listener, but not a good, enthusiastic one. I started getting insecure about people she hung out with, I got needy and took her for granted. But I started working on myself, working hard to hold us together, cooking for her for all of our dates, going the extra mile, baking for her, singing and dancing for her and accommodating my schedule for her. But as they say, no good deed ever goes unpunished. She deemed all I did as unnecessary and kept name-calling me. We broke up, inevitably. Back then, I used to think that the act of admiring a flower should be done from afar, unless you know how to cherish it and help it grow. But now I think that it was good riddance. I had been friend-zoned within the relationship and now I was free to do whatever I wanted to do.

I had actually seen this coming. The dilemma that overthinking poses is that since you’ve imagined all possible scenarios, you can hardly ever be surprised. But the problem was that shit still hurt. Because after only 2 months of our break-up, I saw her with one of the guys I was insecure about.

The problem with the dating pool is that there’s too many options for women to choose from, while men actually have to work their way up from wooing ‘em to actually landing ‘em. It neither gender’s fault, no. Since before the beginning of mankind, males have tried to dominate other males to woo females. We have evolved with this process. Now, men chase pussy relentlessly and women grant men pussy to have a run at their money. And females have indeed been weak, physically and so have evolved mentally and emotionally to judge and manipulate. This is something I heard somewhere, but it applies really well here:

Women are born with this little hole between their legs, which every man on earth just wants to stick something into. And they’re weaker than men, so they learn strategies. They deploy their minds and their sex and they intuitively learn to humiliate.

And so I harbored severe hatred for her for some time. It's easier to hold grudges than letting things go, but incredibly burdening.

But life, it goes on, what can you do? And, while all of this was happening, grandpa’s condition worsened. He was already suffering from diabetes before getting diagnosed with Alzheimer’s. He had taught me how to inject and I had been doing it since he began losing his sanity. On that fateful day, about a month after finding about Lily’s new suitor, I had a stressful day and accidentally injected grandpa with a minute overdose. He got dizzy, had a fall and broke his arm and his jaw. But that had already done enough damage for him to get back to his own self. He got severely paranoid, so they put him to sleep for a bit. But he started hyperventilating and never woke up.

I miss him every day. Simon Christian Tyrell was a great grandfather who took care of me since I was a child. He was more of a father to me than that fiend Balor could ever be. But, man he deserved a painless death.

This is exactly why I don’t believe in the concept of a deity. This man came from a shitty family in a shitty place and worked hard his whole life to support the shitty people around him. His father died in his childhood, leaving him to pay off his debts. His wife cheated on him, he lost his daughter-in-law and granddaughter and his son became a rageful beast. But this man never swayed away from praying. And yet his pretentious god gave him a rather painful death. I don’t understand the point of having a god if he doesn’t have the fucking decency to grant you a moment of happiness in your life. If it was all god's creation, don't you think the world would be a better place. If he has given a brain, then he has also taught to kill, rape, massacre, made religions that make people do that stuff. For everything you cannot explain at the moment, you don't need a celestial being or a deity to do it. We previously did not know what causes lightning, then came along various gods in various religions to explain it. A few years ago, electricity was explained. Now there's no need of those old gods. They should be discarded. Similarly, if the human race finds another home before it's extinction on this planet, other such explorations and explanations will occur leading to discarding of all gods. God is just a form of mental and emotional support for the weak. If one believes in himself and the technological as well as scientific advancement, it'll lead to better salvation than what a god can give. But, now he was dead and I was all alone again. I buried grandpa next to my parents.

But still, having seen Lily with the new guy was always on my mind. They were being playful, making gun gestures to themselves and to pointing those guns towards each other. And life is so fucking cruel, I can’t seem to stop laughing at this particular event. The both of them were shot dead a few months later by someone the police suspected to be from the underground. I never wished it upon her, but nevertheless, it happened. I did mourn her though, cried a lot.

Living by myself was easy. I had to cook, clean and earn for myself. I got a kitten. I had always wanted one, but never could quite muster the courage to ark Mr. Devilman to get me one. I had named it Luna. It was nice to talk to it about my life and all the losses it had. Life finally felt like it was getting better.

Then, about a year later, I reconnected with Bertie. She had gone through a lot, She had lost her dad to a gunman attack. Her girlfriend died of a cardiac arrest while working out. This girl, who was once the happiest child in the room, was now nothing but hollow through and through. She had no family as they disowned her when she came out to them. Only her dad supported her and now he was gone as well. Her life had been thoroughly obliterated by fate. I invited her to live with me while she got back on her feet. She obliged. We recalled all of the things we used to do together. And man, had we missed each other. You know what, man didn’t invent love, but tries to explain it in words that he and others around him will understand. This seems like an incredibly futile exercise. And yet, that bond of friendship was still intact between us. It was so warm.

A few weeks later, we were discussing how I used to be suicidal and joke about killing myself. I used to say that if I lacked the balls to jump, I’d ask her to push me off and had a laugh. I headed off to work. I returned in the afternoon, tossed her workout clothes to her and went to my room for a nap. When I woke up, there were sirens blaring. Bertie had jumped off from the terrace of the building. I bawled my eyes out over the next few days. I locked myself in the house. Another important thing person my life dead. To top that loss, a few weeks later, my kitty Luna was torn apart and bit by strays and killed rather harshly. I went on a rampage beating all the dogs up with my bat every chance I got. Revenge and spite don’t bring the dead back though. I wish Dad had known that.

But after a few days of Lucy’s death, I felt relieved, somehow. These were my thoughts:

I had strings,

But now I’m free.

There are no strings on me.

My life has indeed been nothing but painful. And now I sit here every day, thinking of the life I’d have had, had mother been alive. I keep on speaking to myself like today. This would sound so tedious to hear for another human.

Life and reality have blurred for me in this place. I've stopped sleeping, I walk around in a haze. Sometimes, I'm floating around on this island. Sometimes, I feel like I'm drowning, choking under the water. The waves do splash up here and the water gets inside. Maybe my time has come. We don't know what kind of people we are until the time of our death. But reality is subjective. One lives by what he sees and accepts to be true. But others might not deem this same view as the true reality. So, this makes all of reality an illusion, just like the illusion people have in their minds of others loving them. And our minds bind us with fear. This will give you a picture:

Prison is a frame of thought. We’re all our own prisons, we’re each our own wardens, we do our own time. Prison is in your mind.

That being said, even the people with a great circle could feel alone while others with no-one might be content. What is the use of relationships, though? We're born alone, and we'll die alone. So, we create an illusion of togetherness through the bonds we make with others to hide our loneliness.

Oh, look at that, the spot on the wall isn’t black anymore. The spot has turned blood red. Is it blood? I must be hallucinating. Jail is a crazy place to be in. I have lived up to my name of  Enma Tyrell. Maybe father was right, I did eat Lucy in the womb and tore mother apart and killed her. About the others, though, my fiendish old man who did love me but loved his dead wife more, my Grandpa who raised me and cared genuinely, Lily who was the only woman I ever loved, Bertie who was my only friend and Luna who gave me some hope for a better life. Maybe I shouldn’t have killed them after all.