A Hopeless Journal for A Helpless Man

Chapter 6: Intervals of Insanity

I woke up. I'm bewildered with the thought that I didn't have any of my recurring nightmares. I'll start by changing the adjectives towards it. Scratch 'recurring' and substitute it with 'occasional'. This improvement is simply a pitiful, blind attempt at tranquility and hopefully an upbringing.

It was daytime. I heard a door open somewhere, but I didn't bother to look, for my back was wedged and locked by the bars of this cage, since I had slept sitting down on this dirt with my back laying against it. I saw Ros going over to this little shade not too far away from my cage. He has a clear view of me, part of his base, and his hut. Nonetheless, people on patrol are not uncommon. That is where he had been these past days, from the looks of it he seems to be counting, checking, and marking things. I have no knowledge as to which diligences he tends to.

I swear that the bars of this cage have either conjoined with my back or indented themselves within it. My attention is oddly striving for irrelevant and unimportant occurrences and problems. As if being stranded on an unknown island filled with a malicious drug and slave trafficking gang wasn't agonizingly bad enough to suit my inevitable life quota of torture. I'm barely comprehensible anymore. Now I'm talking as if this were my destiny, as if this were meant for me. However crazy it may sound it's still on the table. Why me? Why was I taken? I remember that there were so many people before I woke up physically and mentally lost. I still have too many questions.

Unknown speaker: "And they won't get answered, you know?" 

Someone appeared in front of me.

"What the fuck? Who are you?" – I implored

"No one... just another dead puppet with his head in the ground and strings in the sky." – said the stranger

I neared myself to him and whispered anxiously and desperately.

"Help me... Tell me what's happening. Please..." – I said

Ros looked over his shoulder at me from his little shade seeming slightly confused.

"I'm as lost as you." – said the stranger

The person kept staring at me, focusing only and specifically on my eyes. I felt my soul being watched. The man started morphing, as if turning into something. That something was me.

"What... are you?" – I asked

Beside him I began to see someone appearing, from the looks of it, it was an exact duplicate of Ros. He was sitting down. As soon as his figure established he took out a gun, held it against my duplicate's face while staring at me as deeply as the duplicate. The duplicate was about to talk.

"See? We're all lost”, said the duplicate Ros, "Some just find themselves by others, I guess."

Ros's duplicate pulled the trigger. They both disappeared. I was drawn back, startled and scared, abruptly hitting the end of my cage in shock. Astonished by what I witnessed: my death. This is one of the many events or occurrences life prefers you to never ever witness. Life just intends you to go through it, not observe it by a third person point of view. That's just maddening.

Ros noticed my hesitation and awe.

"You look like you've seen a ghost, my friend. And like you've been talking to one... (Pause)

Shouldn't you have realized by now that you have to be more afraid of the living than the dead." – said Ros

Ros started to take out his machete, then carefully wedged that same arm in between a pair of the cage bars. He inched the machete closer to me. I was overtaken and paralyzed on the spot. Perfectly reasonable, I don't want to end up chained to the wall with my balls cut off. The machete began touching under my left ear. Ros never took his eyes off me, nor did he utter a word. He stroke fear into me like nothing else ever had. I'm sweating and starting to breathe heavily. I prefer dying by my own hand than by the extremity of this creature. Ros was barely human anymore. He held the machete now tighter below my ear, then continued to make a slow, shallow incision below my ear and across the side of my neck. I barely felt it. I couldn't feel anything except fear. Ros's poker face broke and he couldn't resist laughing. He pulled back and began looking at me, my fear, his machete, my blood, my ear, my wound, and at the blood on his machete, all while attempting to subdue his comedic, yet sadistic enjoyment.

"Hahaaa... You look like shit! God, you (points at me laughing) are shit, Aaron. But even shits look back at me." – said Ros

I'm unsure as to why I didn't get his hint and refused to look back. I had just watched a hallucination of my death. I guess the last thing I wanted was to look at the trigger happy lunatic responsible for my duplicate's death. I don't think I should even use the word 'responsible' in the same sentence with him. He cut my fucking neck. Nevertheless, I saw he started to get infuriated.

"Now even shits are silent. Goddammit... At least a 'fuck you'... For old times’ sake, Aaron." – said Ros

"You killed me." – I said

"Well then, calm the fuck down. Don't ruin the fun. The pleasure should be mine. Here, I'll say it.

'I killed you.' Woah, that felt better than I thought." – said Ros

"Fuck you, Ros." – I said

He began walking back to his shade, again. 

"You might want to enjoy saying that with your finger, before you lose it." – stated Ros

This can't be my life from now on. It can't. This isn't life. I've seen corpses livelier than me at this point. It's sad when you think about it enough. You're life endures so much until you finally crack and realize that death became a better life than life itself. My life has indubitably reached its sinkhole. There's no way to go but down and I wish I would have at least prepared, but my insanity denial is too predominantly severe. All my hopes are for change, which are simply cynical attempts at sanity because all the changes are for my hopes. I'm not thinking straight. My incoherent thoughts are back. My vision of the afterlife has changed. I now welcome it as my savior to this hell I'm hardly enduring. Anything is better than my life right now. Any afterlife. I'd rather divide and fall apart into an infinite darkness for all I care. As long as I'm not here.

I'm insane. I'm scared. I'm delusional. I'm in denial. I'm lost. I'm broken. I've never had such a vivid hallucination. Duplicate Ros stroke the exact same fear into me as the real Ros. He managed to strike a bullet into me too, I wonder if the real Ros relates. Or is there a sign I'm not getting? Am I subconsciously attempting to help myself? What has my reasoning leveled down to? My mind has collapsed. Everything has lost sense.

On the other less desperate and hopeless hand, this can make sense. I haven't eaten in a couple of days. These hallucinations are probably the effects of either dehydration or starvation, which aren't as severe as I make them out to be; nonetheless they seem to be doing their job just fine.

Do I seem incessantly crazy? I most certainly might be. Then again, let's not call certainties. I've speculated about it, yet I keep contradicting myself. Lately, uncertainties have prevailed. I am certain of nothing, except my death; that is imminent, so is my denial. I continue to contradict myself.