Healing (Part One)

© 2013 David Jasmin-Green

I was travelling through a dark, seemingly endless tunnel when I wrote the first draft of this tale a couple of years back. I was dismissed from my job in similar circumstances to our questionable hero, and I found it difficult but ultimately very therapeutic to knit in a number of heavily camouflaged threads from my own painful story. As I slowly recovered, lulled by the ever so slightly reassuring kiss of antidepressants and pondering the not always uplifting experience of group cognitive therapy I realised that people cope with anxiety and depression and the associated horrors in an astonishing variety of ways depending on their unique personalities and experiences. I started to wonder how a vengeful (and I suppose murderous) individual would react to a similar dilemma to the one I found myself trapped in, and 'Healing' is the result. This story is a fair bit longer than I anticipated, but the main character had an awful lot to say in his defence.

A list of intense dislikes, burdens, curses and sundry poxes (or a short thesis on the nature of depression).

1) Fear

2) Worry (but maybe worry belongs under the same heading as fear).

3) Anxiety, which is the bastard child of fear and worry. Anxiety sucks; it's a vile blood-sucking hag, it's a bloated, stinking, ever hungry maggot fed to bursting point by the sufferer's mind and living flesh and by all of the other poxes on this list, plus all the abominations of the Earth, perhaps, and a horde I've neglected to mention.....

4) Suffering

5) Insecurity (I particularly detest this one).

6) The lack of concern displayed by both strangers and friends and family when you're in seriously deep shit and you're sinking fast. You know, when the folk around you either obviously don't give a toss about your predicament or they pretend to care, but their concern is so transparent that you can see right through it and so false and hollow that you secretly and silently promise to hate them for the rest of eternity and somehow get even – to pay the thoughtless bastards back a thousandfold for their indifference when the time is ripe.

7) Pain, which belongs closer to the top of the list, (maybe alongside suffering; how similar are the two?) but it's only just occurred to me. Shit, how could I forget pain – how could I overlook the exquisite agony of dying in one's shoes without anyone noticing one's admittedly invisible symptoms? This list is a lot more complicated than I thought it would be.....

8) The blank or sometimes derogatory glances that people you know (particularly your former colleagues) throw your way when your paths cross on the street. Some people look at you as if they've never seen you before in their entire miserable lives, while others regard you as if you're a pile of stinking dog-shit they've trodden in whilst wearing sandals and it's squeezed between their toes – but this was supposed to be a general list of the grievances of outcasts and pariahs, so perhaps that's too specific, too personal.

9) The numb, lethargic drumbeat of time, which cripples your spirit more completely when you're depressed than it does when you're feeling reasonably whole and happy. Time is one of your deadliest enemies when you're down and discarded and you find yourself with an inordinate amount of it on your hands and nothing pressing or remotely enjoyable to fill it with.

10) Vexation, which becomes increasingly difficult to control when it's accompanied by some or all of the other crappy factors on this list.

11) Apprehension, or trepidation, which are similar in meaning, but I guess these alternatives can all be catalogued under the heading of fear. Fear is by far the greatest of my burdens (or our burdens if we're still talking about the pissed off in general, but I might as well be honest – I'm talking about me). All else is muddied by the presence of fear, all else shrinks before its mighty wrath, all else shrivels beneath its terrible, unrelenting gaze and all else is overridden by its awful majesty. Because of the inherent majesty of fear I eventually found a way to mould my own swollen, all-encompassing helping of it into a weapon.

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Fear is my only god. It is the force that shaped me into what I am, or was - I'm talking about the past, about the very darkest period of my life, but the storm clouds eventually blew over and the outlook is a lot brighter now. Shit, I'm jumping the gun, so try to forget I said that and keep concentrating on the notion of fear while I slip back into the past tense.

Fear eventually made me my own master. I came to a point when nothing could shake me any more, nothing could send me all a quiver because I had a shawl of fear to hide behind (or within). Also I discovered that I could inspire fear when I had a mind to because I had gradually, almost imperceptibly evolved into a Master of Terror. Isn't that awesome? Fear had turned me into a shape shifter.....

Though I've always had one of those ordinary, anonymous faces that can blend into almost any crowd I could appear charming and trustworthy when it suited me, which was an infinitely useful quality for an aspiring Master of Terror, I'm telling you. It meant that I could go wherever I wanted and do whatever I pleased (within reason, because I always acted as if I was being watched unless I was damned sure I wasn't). It meant that I could travel to and fro across this Earth without question when I was going about my sordid business. I was the avenger, I was Mr. Kali, the destroyer, I was the demon Dispersion, the Wanderer of the Wastes. I was what comes around after what goes around has long since passed.

I decided to start off my unholy reign by despatching those whom I believed I had a perfectly good reason to hate (and thus to murder), and I guessed that when I'd crossed off the names on my death list I would realise that the world was an infinitely cruddy place with more people that I could somehow bring myself to hate than I ever thought possible, but things don't always follow your suppositions however carefully you plan.

When you put your mind to the task in hand, assume a new identity or as many different identities as necessary, dissolve into the background and merrily go a hunting it doesn't take long to seek out the most pressing candidates for destruction and make an example of them. So what are you supposed to do when your mission is complete? What does Superman do when his mission is complete? There are a lot of hands up, and I'm sick of choosing the confident, know it all kids who take a risk answering even the most difficult questions I throw at them, so I'm going to pick someone else for a change. Now let me see.....

How about the fat ginger kid at the back with the plague of pimples, the grubby shirt and the greasy central parting? Yes, you - the anonymous looking kid with the enormous chip on his shoulder, the unforgiving boy that no one bothers talking to except when they're feeling desperately low and they harbour a need to attack the most vulnerable victim available in an attempt to make themselves feel something like whole again. What's your name, son? Humphrey? Oh my, I guessed it would be something like that.

Hang in there, kid, one day all will be avenged if that's what you really want, but it's a tough decision, believe me. If you decide that revenge is what you want the future's bright, the future's orange or whatever colour you damn well want it to be – it's multicoloured and phosphorescent, paved in gold and studded with precious stones if that's your innermost desire. When Superman's mission is over he toddles off to find another one. Excellent! Ten out of ten, young Humphrey. See me later for a gold fucking star.