The Metaphysicist (Kill Your Darlings) | Featured

Lucien's back in the closet

Lucien Carr has known a lot of things throughout his lifetime, but the only thing he knows now is that he needs to get out. He needs to rummage through every item and toss out the unnecessary ones that will in no way benefit his death. He needs to lace together a ribbon of his ending in the bible that is his life, praised by many and misinterpreted by all. He needs to escape this prison that should be his paradise, this cesspool of sin and delusion. He needs a way out, and in his mind, an organ keen to versatility, the closet in his bedroom holds just the recipe for the kind of disaster he craves.

Lucien's roommate has no idea that he's currently on the hunt for a means of escaping, a tunnel in a peculiar form of flimsiness and pliance, an antidote to twenty-four years of self-destruction, a parting, and it is Lucien's goal that his roommate will remain to have no clue about it, even if that roommate is in the house with him at the present moment, unsuspecting yet capable of catching Lucien in the act at any point in time if I only just looked far enough, though it's not like Lucien's complaining about his newfound freedom in the slightest, just that his paranoia is becoming sort of a duvet for his normal caution, and it's relatively exasperating.

It feels as though every second he's whipping his head around to see if anyone has barged in on his farewell extravaganza that only he should be a part of because he doesn't owe anyone the majesty of watching him begin to rot, and every second there's nothing there besides the door to the bedroom, keeping its distance yet peeking at Lucien as much as it can without allowing the rest of the apartment to do so in its vacancy. This is all that clouds Lucien's head right now, not even the excitement of his mission, just the fear of being caught by people who will halt his duties to pretend like they give a shit about him when it's only them trying to spare themselves from the agony of loss. He tries to shake the feeling, but soon it becomes like an energy drink, urging him to proceed faster than ever to his grave, and though drugs are a tricky weapon, this paranoia one is pretty convincing.

The closet calls out to Lucien from its tidy spot by the door, closest to would be my side of the bed and farthest from the window where the stray cat hasn't appeared yet this morning, and immediately Lucien ambles over to it as if he's an instinctual neanderthal and the closet is a delectable ration unseen for weeks.

Peeling the closet's double doors away from each other like he's a cartoon princess in the middle of a song about how their life is changing for the better bursting onto their first world balcony, an array of clothes bloom in front of Lucien's bloodshot eyes, some of which is mine and most of which is his, because somehow this disheveled mess thinks fashion is the key to persuasion if you play it right.

Over the months of living by himself in this ruddy old apartment after skipping college and toting his dagger of a middle finger everywhere that bigots could find him, Lucien has amassed quite the stock of clothing articles, confident of each and every one. For relaxed days of sipping tea on the weekend without his library manager to scold him, he has selected sweaters and spunky t-shirts regarding grammar and philosophy (which his relatives all abhor, especially because he takes such pride in them), sometimes flannels if he's recently bought a candle that sets the mood for it, as he's all about aesthetics. On other occasions, Lucien prefers dress vests and dress shirts, which he often times unbuttons a bit like the heartthrob of a pirate movie, and this getup is usually accompanied by a tie when the shirt is fully intact, fabricating a gentleman out of a wreck.

All of these items could be potentially useful in Lucien's mission, but nothing screams out to him like the ties do, each of varying colors and patterns and materials but each of the same capacity to kill, strangle, pen the last pages of the novel that is Lucien's life, exactly what he needs now that an old flame has burnt him, and before he even realizes it his hands are grasping at the items, snaring them from the hangers and drawing them in to him as if they'll depart if he doesn't.