Terror's Agony

Chapter 1-Marigold Gamble

I am Jack Ridley, and I'm a firm believer that everything we do will someday be forgotten. All of our struggles and worries will be lost in the supposedly never-ending thing we call time. This is the exact concept I think about whenever I let go of my rage.

I remember the specific day when I met someone with a similar opinion.
Marigold Gamble thought the same thing, except her perspective was incredibly different compared to mine.

Mare believed that we as people have the gift of being free to do anything and everything our hearts desire. She said to me, and I quote, "There will come a day when everything that makes us who we are will be erased from time. The mark we left on this world will no longer exist because this world will no longer exist."

I was unimaginably enchanted by her statement. If it wasn't for my differing opinions, I would've wanted her beliefs to be written in stone for all the world to live by. It was the picturesque version of the world while mine was the daunting and unchangeable reality.

Mare thought that people were ruled by their hearts, and she saw our hearts as part of who we are.
She was everything I wasn't, even in her beliefs.

As I countinued to hold on to every word she said to me, I also debated on whether or not to slam her head into the wall she was leaning against, but that was just the unanswered chaos talking as it continued to be ignored.

I was currently leaning against a brick building that no longer held its stereotypical red hue, thinking about the things I couldn't change, patiently waiting. The smoke I puffed out of my mouth disappeared due to the wind that destroyed it into oblivion, a place where we would all end up...in metaphorical aspects anyway.

I saw him walk by me, the man I was going to choke with the hands that I no longer owned. He had a wife, and a kid, who most likely owned a goldfish. He was everything my father wasn't, because he existed in the eyes of his family.

His name was Williams, John Williams. I always think of my victims with their last name first, it makes the process easier, more business like. It's as if the sin I was about to create was only a business transaction, only a mindless conversation between nice people in nice suits talking about typical boring things that have already made headlines.

I don't want to do it, but that doesn't matter.
I'm scared, but that isn't relevant to anyone but me and my controlling fear.

The hands that used to be young, and painfully innocent, and mine grabbed Mr. Williams' throat till his face turned red as he struggled to inhale the oxygen that all beings on this earth should have a god given right to, but then I start thinking again.
Why should a mortal like me have the power to take life away? Why was man born with a weakness as strong as the ability to kill ones enemies?

The man I was choking had his life, everything he was and everything he ever will be, in my hands, yet he had no power over his fate. He was feeling a fear I can only hope I never will, and unlike me, he couldn't do anything to save himself. I am the weak one, I give in to my fears and I let them control my hands and use the strength it has taken from me. I am weak.

Mr. Williams had squinty brown eyes that stared at something only he could see, they continued to grow duller by the second.

His eyes held an understanding, an understanding that only comes when you look death in the face, when you look me in the face. I yearn for his understanding, for his wise and unyielding gaze that scared me down to the cold ice that took the place of my heart. I think those eyes that come at the hands of my unfortunately placed anger are the only things that truly make even my fear shiver from the sudden rawness of the moment it was responsible for.

It was a few second later that I realized his body had gone limp, that I was supporting this almost 200lbs. man against a wall without even realizing it, but I need to correct myself, it wasn't me anymore. I was in the passenger seat, no, the backseat, looking out my side window, seeing the ground below me and the sky above me. Neither changed when it killed this man. Life went on for everyone except it's victim.

I dropped Mr. Williams to the ground, trying to take in the relief I thought I would feel from killing this man, but its always the same. The relief I would drop to my knees and beg for no longer exists. I don't deserve that relief, I just killed a man in order to feel in control of the life I'm clearly not in control of.

What would Mare think of me now? After seeing my anger in action would she still believe that people are free to do whatever their hearts desire? Because I'm not free, I'm paying for my sins under the eyes of only myself and my victims.

I am not free.

Mare is not free.

You are not free.

America is not the land of the free, it's the land of misguided people and empty hopes and dreams. Unfortunately, I am not one of those people. Let fear be my witness and the chill on my calloused hands my testimony. I will not stop until I get the reprieve from this hell...but that will never come. Even if forever is an incorrect statement, even if time will stop eventually, I feel as though I have already lived the hell that only the devil himself can understand.

Why do people wonder where my sanity is when they never wonder where he shows his?