• BURN ME •

• 1 •

Pain ~ Jake Daniels

Flame

The question hangs, humid and heavy in my mind, like the San Diego air just before the storm breaks. What is guilt? They call it recognition. Recognition of the rot in your soul, the stain of a deed deemed foul. They say it's the understanding, sharp and unwelcome, that you, by your own hand, have carved a wound into the delicate flesh of morality. But is it ever truly just your hand? Philosophers, those vultures picking at the bones of meaning, they argue. They say actions aren't born in a vacuum, pristine and singular. No, they sprout from a swamp of influences. Genetic whispers, the chill of environment, societal chains, the ghost of experience—all sculpt the hand that acts. So they say, guilt shouldn't be a solitary cell. It's a tapestry woven with threads of the world, not just the isolated sinew of self. Yet, the weight is individual, isn't it? When the deed is done, and the echo rings hollow, it's you who stands in the debris. What then? They speak of justice. A cold, measured thing, scales and ledgers, demanding recompense to balance a cosmic debt. Forgiveness, a fragile bird taking flight on scorched wings, offered and rarely earned. Reparation—cobblestones laid on a road already cracked, never quite smoothing the fault line beneath. These are the societal rituals, the attempts to cauterize a wound that festers deeper than any law can reach. Because guilt itself, the feeling – that's the true beast. Not the lash of law, but the gnawing rat in the gut. A weight, yes, but one that crushes spirit first, then bone. Every damn day, it's a garrote tightening slowly around the throat of joy, of peace, of any lightness that dares to bloom. It's not just memory; it's a living, breathing shadow, stretching longer in the dim corners of the soul.

It's a monument erected in the soul. To failure. To weakness. To me. It doesn't just weigh. It anchors. Drags me down into the murky depths of what-ifs and could-have-beens. Reminds me, with each agonizing pulse, that I was not enough. That something vital was lost, shattered by my own clumsy hands, and the fault line runs directly through me. And the anger, bitter and black, rises. Not at them. At myself. For being the flawed vessel, the broken link, the one who bent and broke when strength was the only currency. Disgust coils in my gut, a venomous serpent roused by the morning's light. It's not just directed at myself, no, it's a wider sweep, a contempt for the goddamn human charade. I see it. The rot beneath the veneer. This city, San Diego, gleaming under the relentless sun, is just a stage set. Behind the manicured lawns and smiling faces, the same festering secrets writhe. Everyone plays the game. The saint in church on Sunday, the sinner in shadow comes Monday. They hoard their darkness like misers count gold, terrified it might spill out, tarnish their carefully constructed lies. Darkness isn't some mythical beast; it's human. It's the unspoken desires that fester, the obsessions that coil tighter than any lover's embrace, the buried offenses that stink like corpses under floorboards. Most people, they dabble in the petty shadows – white lies, glances in mirrors they wish were someone else. But then there are the others. The ones who carve their darkness into reality, who taste the iron tang of cruelty and crave more.

And me? I walk that razor's edge. This path we all tread, paved with hushed whispers and forbidden zones. Don't mistake me for some devil incarnate, but spare me the halo too. My conscience? Rusted shut. My hands? They've known the sticky warmth of blood, felt the tremor of bone give way. I'm the shadow flickering at the edge of your vision when you walk these San Diego streets after dark. But peel back the layers, crack the facade I've built brick by bloody brick, and you'll find the wreckage. A soul flayed raw. Too much seen, too much felt. Too much broken. They don't see it, the pretty little lambs in their pastel lives. And that's fine. Indifference is its own shield. I've made peace with being an anomaly, a glitch in their perfect matrix. My mind? It's a labyrinth of sharp corners and dead ends, a place where sanity goes to die. Stray in there too long, and you'll emerge fractured, haunted. The judging stares? They used to sting. Now, they're just white noise. Survival is a lesson learned in silence and steel. Break down? Sentimentality for the weak. Not an option. I have a purpose, a grim calculus to perform. Emotions are luxuries I can't afford. Tears? For children and fools. Men like me, we break bones. Because in that brutal ballet of fist against flesh, something shifts. The relentless drone of guilt... it falters, stutters, silences. In the crimson haze, the red tide of rage, control surrenders. And in that raw, unleashed fury, there is a perverse kind of peace. Guilt fuels the inferno, and the inferno... it burns clean. The infliction of pain, it's a twisted balm. A high that eclipses any chemical bliss. A brutal, beautiful high that stretches out, lingers, a dark echo in the hollow of my chest, long after the blood dries.