The Collection

The Old Man (Dark)

*Photo Credit to Raphael Boyon of bohemond.cgsociety.org*

"You know,there's a sort of freedom to power." the man said, enunciating every syllable in perfect monochromatic apathy. His face is pallid and lined with a thousand wrinkles etched there by worry, fear, and time itself. He has steepled his elegant hands in front of him to form the shape of a gable. His eyes, a gloomy green speckled with silver, are unfocused, as if he's seeing something no one else can.  Or...nothing at all.

He's sitting in an armchair decorated with a generic flower design. Orchids, sunflowers, roses ,lilies and  all manner of plants can be made out on the upholstery. His fingers, bitten to the nail, trace the embroidered designs on its surface. 

"At least that's what I think, sometimes." He looks old as he murmurs this through cracked lips. He looks down now, at his lap, sadly. "When you have the power over life and death in your coat pocket, it's no longer so tantalizing. It's sobering. You think that you're above others, that you have a right to more than your share. To you, it's not selfish. It's divine right." He sighs, his voice hissing out in a single rasping sneer that plays across his lips. 

"It's been a long time, Michael." He's looking across the room at his grandson. His grandson is just as pale. He's fifteen. He's passed out on the couch. His brown hair is swept over his brow and hangs in a tangled mess just above his eyes. Dirt and leaves stick to his forehead. A scrape decorates his left knee where his jeans have ripped. Michael's face is fleshy and rounded, and strangely serene in the sliver of moonlight coming through the grimy window panes and playing out across the whole dimly lit scene.

The old man either doesn't care or doesn't know that Michael is asleep, and his glassy eyes scan the room, alighting on the lamp, then the bed-stand, and then back on his sleeping grandson. There's something almost otherworldly about his gaze. Like he's dissecting everything with the precise edge of his consciousness. Or maybe...it's just the delusions of an old man. 

"And that's when it gets hard you know. Radicalization, we call it. Or they do. Whatever pronoun you want to put on a thousand human lies." He clears his throat with a sound like two pieces of sandpaper grinding together.  But really,

"It's just an idea bursting through boundaries. Rhetoric, propaganda, brainwashing, whatever you want to call it." he breaths in again, a throaty rasp that runs dark talons up the back of his throat and makes his head spin.   

"Sometimes," he continues, still addressing  a silent and motionless room. 

"Sometimes... I think that these boundaries are meaningless. That they're constrictive. That they're a noose around my neck, cement shoes, that they somehow box me in." he sighs, "To be fresh and new, as well as old and grey at the same time, that's the conspiracy. A contradiction that cannot be muddled through or puzzled out through logic and reason. This life we make...it's fleeting." 

He stops, looking over and around again, this time with tears streaking down his cheeks like crystalline star fragments. 

"Oh, what's the point?!", he croaks out in asthmatic gasps. 

"These words, they've all been said before. By hundreds of generations. Words and noise. Meaningful or not, they're pitiful explanations for the playthings of an infinite universe." he slumps down again, his face wracked with pain. Internal or otherwise, it manifests in a single streak of blood at the corner of the mouth.  

He relaxes again then, a smile playing across his lips. It's almost as if a final realization has fallen over him. 

"You know. That's kind of okay." he breathes out, his eyes glistening with still-forming tears. "I....I....can do this."

Phooo.

His breath comes out in a single long, relaxing gasp.

He get's up and walks away then, his feet making a shhhffffff sound on the thick shag carpet.

He smiles then, showing bright white teeth edged in silver braces. 

He puts down the gun he's been holding, returning it to its case near his bed in the corner. 

 He's okay for tonight. He'll make it through another day.