The Metaphysicist (Kill Your Darlings) | Featured

run me over papi

If I were not rattled from my late night tea session with myself (and a lack of other companions to join me from their sulking) by the fragrance of flames and their ashy spit, then I would not have known that Lucien had noticed my excavation dig of his terrible memories from when he was sixteen years old and decided to dispose of them because they were really that terrible, and I don't blame him, to be honest.

A lot can change in eight years, including one's impression of another, one's impression of strangers, and one's impression as the world as a whole, and though Lucien is a man to highlight his past, he only highlights it when it suits him, not when it beat him to a pulp and made sure he survived just near a flatline for the collateral that will last forever, just hanging on by a string that he wish he could either snap or climb if it were possible. The most average of men will only showcase their accomplishments and hide their faults, but Lucien Carr is far from average, yet he still hopes to deify himself no matter what, going to great lengths just to preserve how other people see him, and now that he's crumbling, that's becoming increasingly difficult.

Despite being extremely stubborn to the point where I cannot persuade him to my side of any claim, Lucien is somehow not diligent enough to hide the extent at which he is falling apart, which may be a side effect of that weathering. I would've thought he would be more desperate to conceal any emotion that is shamed by society when it is only as flagrant as tears, but all he does to cloak the fact that he's dying is tell me that I'm being nosy and that nothing is wrong with him, when he constantly talks about how true writers noted for their passion are never okay, because passion is derived from experience, and emotions are a living hell.

So I went to bed without another word about it, because if I offered any, they would be scorned just like they would be scorned at any other time in the day, and that was that, and I suppose it was a mistake to leave Lucien unsupervised, but I believe he's had enough, and I've done too much for him.

But as Lucien awakes with a sort of drugged up heaven in his lungs, all of his goals have been diminished, the last fragments whose majority was stolen by depression now stolen entirely, in order to leave one last thing on which to focus: leaving the apartment without being caught.

With that choice already deep in his mind, he can only say goodbye as his last parting, the best thing he can do. Eyes thatched with concern, he sweeps his vision over my slumbering figure unaware of what is about to transpire, and he leans down to deposit a final kiss in the thicket of my hickory hair. I subconsciously reach towards him, discharging the tiniest of sounds, but Lucien wills himself to proceed and abandon me.

It appears that now all Lucien wants to do is not be caught in the act of doing something he shouldn't be doing, which he probably should be caught in doing so someone can protect him from its repercussions, but Lucien is as intractable as ever and won't settle for protection when his mind is a criminal perpetually on the loose and is unable to be detained by anyone except the owner of that mind who arguably doesn't own it anymore, and it seems that Lucien is too weak to detain that criminal, so his life has been flipped into a pan of hecticness and disorder until he can only stick to one goal at a time, and he will do anything to achieve it.

Lucien knows every inch of this house, has carved his possessions into it with a meticulous guard so that he can locate everything and pretend as though he isn't obsessive about it, and because he knows every inch of this house, he knows where it moans under his feet, where it screeches against his touch, where the noises reverberate from and can give him away as he slips out of the house without the knowledge of the roommate who is quietly slumbering in the other room. Lucien knows both how to play the instrument of this apartment and how to mute it, a skill that is quite unnerving to his roommate, because it can ensure that Lucien will sneak away at one point, and that one point is now.