Going Mad For Maddox

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

MADDOX

I'M PACING BACK and forth like some maniacal caged tiger who's moments away from tearing down the bars of his enclosure. I want to punch myself in the head the louder my demons I've suffered with since I was kid beg to be freed.

The humid air is now fragrant and I surreptitiously try to control the sporadic intakes of my shaky breaths. I have never been one to fit into stagnancy, I've slowly learned to normalize my incessant need of control and begin to reign in every emotion I have ever felt.

I wasn't an artist by any means, that was my grandfather but I like to believe I sculpted a niche for myself.

Someone who possesses my devilishly strange need of order and control would be seen as psychotic. Especially by a neurotypical person whose impulses run the trajectory of their mind. Their fucked-up desires will never be satiated, their needs are excessive and I am not a man who will ever give into the demon that lurks deep inside of me.

Red may be the only color I see at times, but I am the one ultimately in power that is until I come across a fixation. It's imperative for me to stay composed at all times in order to never catch an unexpected obsession. My life is already complicated enough, I teeter on a line of mayhem and I don't need something or someone to rob me of the control I spent years mastering.

I'm leaning on the wall that's closest to the restroom door, quietly waiting for Kodi to finish. My hood is pulled up while the shadows hide me enough from others, making it easier for me pass under people's radars.

"You've got a lighter?" I glance at the stout man beside me. He has a loose cigarette hanging from his mouth, I can't help but stare at his bulbous nose which just adds to his peculiar facial features. "Do ya, kid?"

"No." I lie, as an only child I've never learned the act of sharing. I'm selfish in that regard, and I'm not about to start now with Jabba The Hut's look a like.

"Fuckin' hell." He roughly wipes a meaty hand down his face, "I haven't had a smoke since this mornin', it's godawful I'm tellin' ya."

I wonder if this man knows how effortlessly annoying he is.

"I'm actually tryna lay off em' y'know?" I don't know but I'm sure Jabba is going to tell me all about it, "the wife ain't liken' it and I don't need another thing to add to the list of shit she ain't liking about me." Jesus Christ, do people not have secrets anymore? "I wanna quit I really do but I'm been doin' this since I was kid it's a damn nasty habit to break." That's something I can agree on.

Nicotine has given me balance in a world that seems to lack any form of equilibrium. Growing up with voices in my head who continuously shouted at me it was hard to not have my vices. I was repulsed by touch, anything really that involved intimacy and something about inhaling intoxicating chemicals erased everything I loathed about myself.

"I'd quit for Shari, I really would, but I'm afraid that I might love these damn cigarettes more than my own fuckin' Mrs." He wheezes out a laugh, entirely unaware that he is the only one that finds his joke humorous. "Ain't that something?"

I notice a woman not much older than me exit the bathroom wearing an old Rolling Stones T-shirt. She nods her head at the insufferable man next to me, "c'mon, Derek."

"That was fast."

"I only had to hand over a piece of fucking paper." She grabs the cigarette from Jabba— I mean Derek's mouth, tossing it onto the graveled floor, "what did I just tell you earlier, huh? You're no better than some poor old field rat, you son of a bitch." She snatches ahold of his arm, dragging him away. "I oughta divorce you if it wasn't so goddamn expensive."