Hey, Cruel World - (Marilyn Manson)

No Sorrow Or Pity For Leaving, I Feel, Yeah

 -ZIM'S POV-

    I clutched the steering wheel so tight that my knuckles turned the palest white I'd ever seen a part of my skin become. Out of Los Angeles and on a long stretch of nothing but a two-lane road in front of me, no lights besides my bright headlights that illuminated the road ahead. My breathing was steady, but my heart beat inside my chest harder and harder until I began worrying that it might actually explode. The silence of my surroundings was enough to drive a person into insanity, which I was feeling then. My thoughts were so loud in my head that it seemed as if someone screamed the very words at me from beside me, leaving my ears ringing.
  What the hell was I doing? Everything that I loved, everything that I lived for...I had just given up and left behind completely. And I had done it in such a manner, such a fashion that it had been as if I hadn't cared about any of it, as if it meant nothing to me and was easy to leave behind. I'd given up the beautiful, amazing girl that I loved, perfect and flawless and innocent and sweet in every single way...and it wasn't like she was someone I could never have, it wasn't that she was out of my reach or that she would never love me the way I loved her...no, she had begged me to stay. She had cried and screamed my name, and I had turned my back on her and left. I had abandoned her when I knew, I knew that she loved me more than anyone, a feeling of the strongest of mutualities
  But it was too dangerous. There was too much risk, too much to be put on the line when I was with her, and I wasn't just talking about myself. A fatality would be brought upon each and every one of us, Marilyn, Twiggy, and Ginger. Not just myself. They would be punished and thrown in prison alongside me, they would be forced to give up everything that they loved and worked so hard for, and I would be ruining their lives in doing so. Who cared what happened to me...but if the people found out? Which they would, of course. If they found out, we would all be convicted of crime. A sixteen-year-old girl with a forty-four-year-old man. It was too dangerous on every level.
  And taking them away, stripping us all from her would ruin her. Where would she go from there if someone were to find out and when we were thrown in prison? She couldn't go back to her mother...I would fight against that until the day I died if I had to, so that she never had to go back to that monstrous, disgusting excuse of a human being. She would be sent to foster care surely...would she not? She would be taken and raised by someone who I could almost one-hundred percent gaurantee she would hate. Her career, along with Marilyn, Twiggy, Ginger's, and mine would be demolished forever. I couldn't do that to her...I couldn't do that to them either.
  I squeezed the wheel with my long, ghostly fingers even harder, if that was even possible, and tried my hardest to keep my glare on the road directly in front of me. My mind was racing and my heart still pounding, and I felt like I could vomit. My world was falling to pieces, and it was my fault. I didn't have to leave...but no, I did. I was aware that my mind kept telling me otherwise, that I should be at the apartment, with the people I loved, rather than on the road. But I knew I had to do this, that it was right, that it was only the best for everyone.
  I would completely destroy the band if I were to stay. Marilyn and I would argue every single day until it came to a physical fight, or until he plain fired me, and I wanted both of those things just about as much as I wanted to be in my car, leaving it all behind. If Marilyn had fired me, everything would have ended much more dramatically, and Mavis would have possibly come to hate Marilyn for it. I did not want that, of course. He had adopted her as his own, and I'd honestly never seen Marilyn show so much love and compassion for someone before in the way he did Mavis. He was her only real father figure, he'd given his all to her, and I couldn't have her hate him. If I'd let it come to that, Twiggy for sure would've taken Marilyn's side, naturally. I didn't blame him...Marilyn was Twiggy's best friend, his older brother in so many ways, the person he looked up to most. Twiggy was also Mavis's best friend, and I could not take that away from her either...as for Ginger, if the time had come, he would have most likely ended up leaving the band because of all the havoc caused, and I didn't want that for him. I knew he was happiest with Marilyn Manson.
  As much as I thought everything over and over again in my mind, the reocurring thought running through my mind only said, "Turn around. Go back." I wanted to, more than anything. I wanted to go back and take Mavis, take her far away with me, back to my house in Chicago. We could live together, secretly with her there, until she turned eighteen and it became legal to have a relationship with her. No one had to know...
  Yes, they would know, and I couldn't do it. Turn around. Go back. I could go back, and apologize, and only ask for forgiveness. I could do my best to get along and not argue or cause any problems, I could keep my mouth shut and everything could go back to the way it had been up until the Nine Inch Nails concert. I could play guitar for them, alongside Mavis, and we could figure it out somehow, how to continue our relationship. I could go on tour with them and everything could be perfect and we could all be happy again. I wouldn't have to leave them, or Mavis.
  I was having the hardest time convincing myself that those thoughts weren't valid, that I really couldn't go back now. My chest began to hurt and I felt it would burst open at any time. I thought of Amanda...the girl I loved, the only girl I truly loved with all of my heart, the girl who had been killed in the car accident. I thought of how it had been the worst thing to hear, the most terrible news, and how I'd wanted to die. I'd gone into seclusion, isolation, at hearing of her death. For a year, I cut off everything, my TV, my phone, my connections, friends, family, everything, leaving myself alone with music. It had been the most painful time of my life, but I forced myself to forget.
  And then, after so many years, I found Mavis, and everything was able to begin again. I could live and have a second chance, and I knew that I loved her even more than I could have ever loved anyone else. She was like an angel, someone a thousand, probably a million times better than me, undeserving of the worthless man that I was. She needed someone young, someone who could satisfy and fulfull her every desire, someone pure, like she was. But she'd chosen me...she'd loved me as much as I'd loved her, and I jumped at the fact that we could be together, no matter what came of it, no matter how colossally expediant the entire relationship would be.
  I promised myself to cherish her, to be everything for her that I could be. I swore that I would protect her and not let the same fate be brought upon her that had been brought on Amanda. And then I took her virginity, which I knew had been wrong of me to do. I'd taken her innocence, everything from her, and even though she didn't know or realize it, I'd done one of the worst things I could have done to her. I know we loved each other, and that people in love were meant to do what we did...but it still tore at me. She though, as she saw nothing wrong with it, still seemed the innocent, sweet young girl she was.
  The night she'd been taken, and left on our doorstep...the images flashed again through my mind which they'd done every day since. Walking up and having no idea that that would be the first thing I laid my eyes on, my heart literally stopping and everything standing still as I was convinced that she was gone, dead, taken from me as the last girl I'd loved only half as much...to think that it had happened again, that I'd failed, that she'd been brutally murdered, and that it was my fault...I knew I couldn't live from that point on. And finding that she was still alive, even barely, but that she was still breathing, was still with me, had been the most indrescribable feeling. But seeing her laying there, broken and on the very edge of her life...
  I bit my bottom lip, wishing that it would draw blood, to know that I was still alive, that I hadn't already slipped into the bottomless pit of Hell, which I felt in every way was where I already was as I continued to drive across that wasteland. I need you to carry be across this wasteland, I thought to myself, remembering the lyrics to the song I'd written, called 'Nothing,' that my band, The Pop Culture Suicides, had recorded. It had been years before I'd known Mavis when I wrote that song, along with the other songs, but somehow I'd known that there would be again that girl who would carry me across that wasteland. And now I was travelling back across it, this time without her.
  I jammed my finger into the radio volume dial, taking it off of mute, and twisted it a bit so that the volume turned up from its formerly quiet tone. The beginning of a song was starting, a song that I recognized from hearing so many times throughout my life, but never caring about once before. 'I Am The Highway,' by Audioslave. I listened to the first few seconds of the instrumental part before Chris Cornell's voice would begin, and realized that I couldn't handle to listen to it. I turned it down to where I could hear it no more, but after a few seconds, I took a long, deep breath, and turned it back up again.
  The lyrics and music filled me with a feeling they'd never given me before, and I truly felt the song inside of me, as if I were speaking it myself at the same time it was being spoken to me. His voice, so pained and almost longing, filled the emptiness I felt then, and I listened to the words for the first real time, ever. By the time the chorus was reached, I could feel the stinging sensation in my eyes, and knew that tears had filled my eyes.
  Rarely did I ever cry, but I knew then that I couldn't hold it in, no matter how hard I tried. My attempt would be a failed one, and as I felt the tears flow airily over my cheeks as if they weren't really there at all, I reached up and moved the back of my hand across each side of my face, wiping them away. They only covered my face again immediately after, and I turned the steering wheel to the right, pulling off the empty road and into the ditch where I put the gear in park and turned my key back as to not use up the battery.
  I put my arms up, crossing each other, as if shielding my face, and leaned them against the upper part of the steering wheel. I arched my back and let my head lay on my arms, and then let the tears fall freely. I didn't think I'd ever cried so hard in my life, nearly sobbing, as Mavis had been when I left. I gasped for air, my voice crying for her, only wanting her, only wanting everything back again. I knew I was hurting her so badly, and in the same way, this was the same as self-mutilation, in hurting myself.
  The music filled my ears, seeming to become louder and louder with every word sung. They seemed to sink into me, and I felt them alive and powerful like they'd never seemed to be to me before. "I am not your rolling wheels, I am the highway. I am not your carpet ride, I am the sky. I am not your blowing wind, I am the lightning. I am not your autumn moon, I am the night...the night..." I was one with the highway, I WAS the highway...there was no better explanation...it made sense in every way, in my mind.
  But did anything really make sense in my mind anymore...?
  At some time, I finally raised up again, and leaned against the back of my seat. I caught a glimpse of my reflection in the rearview mirrow, only barely, due to the lack of light, and felt I was seeing a ghost. I already didn't look like myself anymore...I was a stranger. I was the night.
  "Let me introduce myself, I am the night." I thought then of my lyrics of Inherently Hopeless, also of The Pop Culture Suicides. "I have hopelessness and despair in my brain. Like a hard-wired message playing in my head that says, 'Blame everyone else for all this pain.' I have hopelessness and despair in my brain. Goodbye shadows, goodbye light, let me introduce myself, I am the night." Another great explanation for myself.
  Mavis would inherently be a part of me, forever.
  At last, I started my car again and pulled out onto the road. I forced myself to stay connected with the pavement, to not swerve back to the ditch or drift into the other lane. I drove for the rest of the night, and only when I had to fill my car with gasoline did I stop for a break. I picked right up again immediately after and drove until the sun fell again, then stopped to sleep. Eventually, I found my way finally to Chicago, back home, where I knew I belonged more than anywhere else in the world. Without realizing it, I had imagined Mavis in the passenger seat next to me, not knowing which way to look first, smiling at the beautiful city she'd never visited before as the sunlight shone in her window, brightening her face. Both of us overjoyed that she and I could finally live together, just the two of us, in Chicago. But I shoved the thought from my mind, and even though it kept finding its way back in, I made myself stop imagining the thought for as long as I could.
  Still, not a minute went by during the entire drive that I did not think of Mavis Anderson.