Failurist

&;#61656;

On August 17th last year, just five years after the glorious, hopeful,
optimistic, just slightly fear tinged millennial celebrations, I
destroyed the souls of the beautiful people. Now I sit in this grey
iron clad vessel of my incarceration, sink, bowl, bunk and bed pan all
my friends in the world. Nothing changes. Justice was done.
That's why I pleaded guilty. The judge asked me:
"How do you plea?" It was in answer to ten counts of brutal
kidnapping, torture, rape and murder.
"Guilty, your honour," without hesitation, "but I didn't enjoy it,"
with emphasis.
Those tabloids said I did enjoy it, have fun in it, but how could I?
Those were the best, the brightest, with the most smiles, no bad in
them. How could I enjoy destroying them? How could anyone think I
enjoyed it? I failed even in showing the world my message. They didn't,
they don't understand&;#8230;&;#8230;.even after all the pain and
the screams and the blood and then the justice that was done, I keep
thinking, sleeping, dreaming, that their deaths have been meaningless.
The ultimate failure.
I've tried cementing my failure, giving it totality, absolution, but
they took my razor blades away, made the walls soft and fluffy, like
some children's happy place of play. Now my heart must just bleed out
to nowhere, down the river out into the ocean. The only problem is that
the painful blood will always find its way back to my heart. It travels
the rivers and streams of the earth, only to follow some savage rule of
physical geography that places on it an endless cycle of inhertia,
giving it the momentum to return home.
The only outlet now, and also the truest, is through the ink of a pen.
Imagine the ink you read is of their blood. As they sit in heaven their
earthly remains fund the obituary of my failure quest. Their lives and
deaths too might be meaningless: worse than success or failure. I
haven't decided yet. But who are they?

&;#61656;

The "Beautiful People".
When you're down on your luck and alone in your life, when that little
tune stops playing in your head and you can no longer find the resolve
to whistle, when the effort to smile becomes so tiresome that it simply
dissipates and runs off into a viscous cycle of tears and numbness,
when your brain finds its' only interests in the darker side of
pathetic lives that you hope will just disappear, when you sip a pint
of beer simply to stave off the time when you'll have to face an empty
room and a sweaty bed with no sleep or the prospect of sleep
forthcoming, when all these shades appear recurring in the once great,
now dull and grey picture portrait of your life, the "Beautiful People"
can always be relied on to make you feel worse. Seeing the sickening
smiles on their communal faces only increases the rate of
deterioration, as the haze edges out ever further to encase and
encompass your whole mind.
They have always been around, shining, while you sit, lonely, your
head in dark clouds to avoid the blinding black light of your broken
soul. That's what makes it painful: their souls, happy or sad, bright
or dull, will always shine out their true colour, while yours always
broods. Feeds in off itself, eats itself, cannibalises the raw meat of
it's own slow death into corpse. You feel death is round the corner,
but you know you body will drag it out over the years and decades. You
run backwards, lowly but surely into the dark hole, not proud, not even
loud. A whimpers' descent: they don't even notice, always moving
forward together. Ever onwards and upwards. You want them to know your
plight, you fear them knowing your plight. Emotion always gets the
better of you. The bleeding heart always drowns the voice of reason,
the face of the smile. "Why not just smile?" Asks a small voice, not
audible enough, through the lung drenching waves of despair. You see
them smile. The beautiful people.
Why are you like this?

&;#61656;

You have no meaningful answer, but the First Failure always comes back
to haunt you when this question is asked. One of many, its appearance
in your mind heralds the onset of all failure since. It culminates in
the brutal acts of violence, torture and murder, regular as clockwork.
You can trace it through like the causes of the First World War.
The First Failure, simple really, and quite ubiquitous in scope, pain
and idiocy. An ultimately painful, totally ridiculous, incredibly
unnecessary act of self-emasculation, one that reaches through to your
very core, and for which you have only yourself to blame.
Completely terrible.
You broke your own heart, you came to realise. In the hands of
yourself, your heart was at the mercy of an innocent with an evil
streak. You meant only well, but did only harm: the most harm to
yourself, in heirarchical order reaching out to those around you. Even
now you can still see her face. You don't want to ask the question, but
what went wrong? You can only see events; meanings and reasons are
beyond your comprehension. Only the failure of it seeps through.
She was beautiful. She had a good heart. She enjoyed your company. Put
out all the signs to bring you closer to her. You wanted nothing more
than to be close to her. Therefore?
She saw you were in love with her, you saw that she saw, she tried to
lead you on. You thought about it, thought too much. For one brief day
everything seemed right: you whispered in each other's ears, her eyes
enchanting you completely. You asked a question of yourself: "What do I
do now?"
Thought for weeks, the moment past. She wondered what was going on
inside you. You still hadn't been able to talk: the same problem. Never
able to talk. Then one week you put a gun (metaphorically) to your own
head and said: "Look, are you just going to be an idiot because you're
never been here before. Are you going to just grow distant, even though
you see her every day? You'll never forgive yourself if you let this
just pass by. The girl of your dreams (you dream about her sweet face
every night) sitting right their. Do something! Do something goddamn
it!"
You've never asked anyone out before, hardly know how. But you manage
it, sort of. Emotions always run too high, uncertainty becomes your
entire being and consciousness. You ask, it is late coming, shocking
her to her very heart. You never get an answer.
Whose fault is this? Your own, and only your own. You never let her
give you an answer. Infact, hardly any words are spoken after this. You
are forced to see her every day, work with her even, but you let the
moment of asking pass by without answer. With it gone, a rug is pulled
out from under your feet. You understand nothing. Now that you
understand nothing, she also understands nothing.
The days go by, your heart is broken. It bleeds. You don't know why.
Thus begins your definite separation from the beautiful people.

The First Failure always stings whenever recalled. It took all meaning
out of life. You bounced back from despair, but the breeze of
hopelessness never leaves you completely. Trust in yourself and other
people was given a fatal blow.
After that the Second, Third, Fifth, Tenth, Twentieth failures just
breezed by like trees you stroll past in a peaceful walk in the
park.

&;#61656;

On the eighth day God really got down to business, his great
experiment.
"Now, what would happen," he thought, "if I were to starve a man, not
of food, nor water, not of sunlight, not of rain, not of teachings, not
of humanity, but of emotions?!"
"But really God," any reasonable man would say, "you can't starve a
man of emotions. After all, without emotions, he wouldn't be a man at
all!"
"You stupid biped. Don't you suppose that I, the supreme being, the
unity of the universe, all seeing, all knowing, all powerful, a God to
men, beasts and spirits of all kind," he paused for breath, "don't you
suppose that I, in my infinite wisdom, have thought of that?"
God was a little tepid at such a question. As if any mere mortal could
question God's great experiment.
"When I say starved of emotions I don't mean he hasn't got any
feelings, I just intend to starve him of those things, those moments,
those fulfilments', those shared tears, those shared joys and
ecstasies, that any normal being of your kind would expect."
The reasonable man, seeing that this was perhaps the cruellest idea he
had ever heard of, at once protested.
"But God, why would you want to do such a terrible thing?"
"To see what happens."
"I won't let it happen, humankind won't allow it. We'll see what's
going on and we'll correct it, we'll give whoever this poor creature is
the emotional nourishment he needs!"
"Oh no you won't," said God with an evil grin, the beginnings of a
maniacal laugh slipping from his lips.
"You're all going to hate him for it!!!!"

&;#61656;

He stepped out into the cold light of day, and the sun shone right
through him. Above and behind birds flittered on treetops and
windowsills, cats chased playfully with mice, and children ate
breakfast with aeroplane spoons. Infront the day ahead sprawled like an
empty road. Infront the road was full of cars and people.
He strolled down the pavement towards the bus stop, and an old ladies
gaze crawled its way over him, through him. He felt the gaze as a
rising pain in his stomach.
"What does she see?" he thought in panic.
"What is there to see?" he thought and felt as the rising, dilated
pain thrust further out over his body.
Her gaze was soon averted as the bus approached. He let her get on
first and then carried on up the stairs and asked for his ticket.
"That's one pound please."
He reached into his pocket and fumbled his wallet. His fingers were
shaky and so was his mind. He counted the money out of tens, twenties
and fives onto the drivers' counter.
"One pound" he said to confirm the amount.
"Thankyou" said the bus driver.
"Thankyou" he replied as he was given his ticket, but something was
wrong.
As he took the ticket he noticed the driver give him a funny look.
Yes, a funny look, and once again the hungry emptiness inside him
roared its' deep curse. He hurried up the stairs to find a seat.
"What does that look mean?" he thought, trying to take care with the
implications, but once again feeling the panicking sensation stab at
his insides.
He found a seat towards the back, struggling to avoid looking at
anyone, but just as he was about to bend down and begin staring out the
window, he noticed a beautiful girl sitting afew seats behind. He
couldn't help but stare at her for just afew seconds, but that was long
enough. She noticed.
The sunlight streamed through her golden hair. Her eyes twinkled in
its' brilliance. Her cheeks blended seductively into her nose, softly
bringing her milky complexion together. He noticed her lips, and the
way they formed so sweetly with her chin. In the seconds that he
glimpsed her, a single image filled his mind. An exquisite picture of
senses and feeling overwhelmed him. He imagined her simple smile of
pleasure, happiness, as he gently kissed her neck.
He had let his eyes wander, even if for just afew seconds, and now he
would pay for it. The stabbing emptiness inside him had been tamed,
stroked, into purring with ethereal delight at that single thought. But
now, as his simple dream faded in a slow, slow instant, the real
expression on her face shocked him.
She noticed, and she huffed indignantly, looking away at something,
anything. On her face was a look of disgust.
He sat down very quickly and his eyes soon found the moving
nothingness outside. His fingers soon found his mouth, his insides soon
felt their customary painful turmoil, but also his mind now went to
work.
"What's wrong with me? What's wrong with me?"
The rainbow of his experience filled him, but he could find no answer,
not even a hint. Every door had two more behind it. Every turning had
another corner he must investigate. Everything moved, never still, as a
circle spinning endlessly around.
"What's right with me? What's right with me?"
This proved an even tougher line of inquiry. His mind began telling
him it was foolishness to ask such questions, but the hole inside him
wanted to know. It was as a black hole, sucking in his faculty of
control.
If he had had someone beside him then, a mind reader perhaps, even
just a talker, then perhaps the questions would have abated.
"Who am I?"
But the circle span faster, and in the middle there was nothing.
Emptiness.
He was invisible to himself, and so he could be nothing but a
nonentity to others.
At the next bus stop he got off and walked home to safety, the womb,
where the bare walls could reflect his emptiness back at him and make
him a very small something.

&;#61656;

There was an article in the paper about me today. Apparently I was to
be put up for parole in a years time, but people were so horrified at
the prospect they took to the streets of London around the
Magistrates.
Next to the main picture was a shot of me from afew years ago they
bought from my employer, taken just before I hatched the plan but as
the final madness began to instil a sense of complete hopelessness in
me. This truly was complete hopelessness. Though I thought I'd
experienced it before, this was truly the time. An evil picture: three
days stubble, emptiness in my eyes and depravity on my lips.
Next to this picture was a shot of the protesters. They'd all been
cajoled into action by the tabloids, holding banners printed by the
tabloid press in their press factories of emotive issues, reasons to
get worked up. These banners proclaimed shamelessly that the courts
should;
"Keep him [me] in his [my] cage,
Protect us [them] from his [my] evil."
I couldn't agree more, I am a man of evil. That was the whole point.
That's why I did it. To show the world what a man of evil really was
and why. But they didn't get the why. I'm not sure they ever will. I
don't want to leave prison anyway. Out in the world I am hated for my
evil. Evil, it seems, breeds evil. All I've achieved is bringing a
little more hatred and fear into the world.
Father, if you can, forgive me.
The headline reads: "People Proclaim Hate for "Lonely"
Mass-Killer"
And the subtitle: "Thousands of protesters shouted "keep him away,
keep him away, we don't want him spoiling our day" in what turned out
to be a successful bid to keep the perpetrator of the so called
"Loneliness" killings locked up. We salute them."

&;#61656;

He moved like a devil through the night. His hurt feelings weighing
like an albatross strapped around his neck. They sucked his body dry,
asif it were merely the hulk of a forgotten enterprise.
Only the desires, (forgotten by his conscious self, steadfastly held
onto with such a tight grip by his inner being,) kept his feet moving
as all he encountered became as ghosts of what he should have been,
what he was going to be.
He witnessed a funeral, no a cemetery of unholy risings' up, as he
moved through the hub of nightlife. The laughs, screams and
undercurrent of low voices filled his ears, like the streets worth of
emotions and toils and up and downs of a soap opera in the background
of his torment. The unknown torment.
Some of those that moved past him looked him in the eyes, if only for
brief but meaningful seconds.
"Meaningful," He thought with a doubt cast yet surprisingly
illuminated, somehow inspired mind. "Are they really meaningful?"
The meaning he experienced could only really be objectively cast as
psychic. Either that or psychotic. But in those moments, those brief
glances, he swore he could understand the moment by which others
understood others, people understood people, and in that very moment
only did it become crystal clear the exact nature of his deep felt
pain, his inner scar.
The eyes that dared to look, clear and distinct from the mass of
unthinking, uncaring, smiling, laughing non-entities, those eyes. His
face communicated to them, he imagined, his total loneliness and
isolation, the desire to break it, the understanding of the natural
pain that such loneliness brings to a person, sympathy for such a
predicament, a wish and a prayer that's things will get better, yet a
tacit acknowledgement that nothing could be done by those eyes.
This was part of the unspoken medium which set forth the doctrine, at
least as he saw it, of silence with regard to those such devastating
and terrifying situations in which a soul could find itself. The eyes
showed first fear, then the disbelief that comes with understanding,
then the solid inner resolve that the only way forward was to continue
how they had been going. This way at least, he imagined they thought,
brought about a settlement, whereas the position which showed itself as
a glimmer on his face, in his eyes, displayed the true and horrible
abyss that ultimately faced us all. Something to be avoided at all
costs.
This was where his anger could ignite. The fairground of psychoses
that greeted him every time he went out for such a night on the town
always gave him this choice. Not every time did he react the same. He
could get mad at how the others, all the others as he saw it, always
had their settlement, their own solution to the dark night of the soul,
that he never found, that always illuded him.
This night, he got over it, and walked in a mildly sober fashion
onwards, till he came to the bar where they drank sometimes.

Seeming like a sudden change in surroundings, he found himself in the
middle of a park, trees scattered and dead autumnal brown leaves
fluttering and filling the air with their chaotic dance of midnight
death. He cried up out to the heavens, to the stars, to the
overwhelming blankness of nothingness that mystics like to call the
"other side", the spirit world. He cried out with his voice and his
soul to be heard in his suffering and isolation. He cried out to all
the eyes, so that just one could be part of a cosmic miracle that saved
his life.
He cried out to the world to hurry lest too much time should pass. Then
the need for revenge and a desperate message no one could ignore would
become irresistible.
"Explain yourself to me!"

&;#61656;

In need, indeed, I am in need. Shut up you, always moaning. Yes, but
really I am deprived and sick inside. Sick of my life, spent years
feeding my dreams and desires, years holding on to the idea, only to be
washed up on an empty shore. No intimacy, no lover, no friend. Only a
dissatisfied soul. Where to go? Death holds many answers. Boring, this
is boring tripe shit, no one wants to read about you and your sick
soul, its dull and uninteresting, no stimulation, numbness of feeling
and cowardly behaviour are not good features. But I am nothing else, I
have no life but a sagebrush without any paint or ink. That's boring,
shut up and kill yourself before you descend into the forfeit option of
a dull life. Content at a dull life, you never will be. Alone, you'll
forever be alone. This poem proves it, you're dead. Where's the
feeling? Here it is baby. This is boring feeling you deadbeat party
pooper. Leave me alone. So I leave all alone. Only dreams work- -sex
obsession and beady eyes beside no life. Dream on dream on, but how
without hope? The empty year has deadened you, you have been pacified.
Hope no longer exists. Experience? Where and how I am lost of that
information/knowledge. Give up now's an answer, anything else will
fail, has already failed. Permanent aloneness is and always has been
the norm, how do you expect that to change? Miracles are few and far
between you sad, defunct, boring, ugly, unintelligent, moderate,
fearful, forgotten, deadbeat, stoner, drunkard, spiritless, heartless,
party killing, despised loner. I go to hell every night, don't you
worry. But I do it alone. Drag sometime to hell, you all do it all the
time. That's not me, that's my nightmare. Never, never. Rather be alone
than destroy another. Love another. I want to love another. PLEASE to
the universe!!! Overemotional.

&;#61656;

He thought about sex a lot, but he never did it. He didn't really know
what it was, but he knew he wanted it, and bad. Still, he never did it.
Her had waited for afew years, in the vague hope that someone would
come along and show him the way, but it never happened, and he couldn't
understand that. How had it happened to all the other normal people who
had done it, and presumably were doing it, at any moment in time? What
had been different about him?
He didn't know the answer to these questions, but depending on how he
felt, where he was, and what he was doing, there was always a suitable
theory. Sometimes he thought that it was just a pleasure waiting to
happen, that one glorious day would come soon when he would meet her
and she would be his own girl and they could be happy together in so
many ways that sex would just blend into the rest of it.
Other times, at night on the town, he would imagine they were all
waiting for him to make the right move, dancing in the night-clubs and
sitting patiently in the bars, waiting for him to begin his talk and
give something of himself to them. But this fiction lasted as long as
it took for the bars and night-clubs to close. He never talked to
strangers, and like it or not, those mysterious, beautiful, hopeful
women were strangers. Then walking home he would kick himself and blame
his weak spirit or his poor vocabulary or his bad hair or that one
fatal moment that prevented it from happening.
These were run of the mill solutions. Sometimes the whole problem
would consume his mind as he lay in bed expecting sleep. Relaxation
would never come in that state; only the essential wrongness of his
life, how if God were watching him he would be frowning as if there was
some obvious solution, some glorious path of the just, the beaten path
that all before him had treaded and somehow he had almost completely
fallen from. Hope remained as he tossed and turned, only leaving the
sleepless console of trying to figure out what fundamental error he was
making so that he could remedy it the next day.
The dullest times would come as he watched t.v., or read a story, or
listened to others discussing relationships or sexual conquests, and he
would try to place himself within the social context of the picture he
subjected himself to. Where did he fit in this everyday scheme of
loving and losing, when he had never really loved and never lost
anything because he never had it in the first place. He felt every
mundane day of his life in these situations as if he had lost, but he
knew not what it was he had lost.
Then the times would come when he glimpsed a half-naked girl somewhere
in the media, caught a frivolous scene in a late night film, or some
girl in the street caught his eye for outstanding beauty. The desire
would appear all over him, as if from nowhere. He could not control it;
not to say he had ever, until that steamy august bank holiday, actually
done anything about it. It would control him though, destroying him
from the inside. Burning his skin as he ached with needs and questions
and failures because he had never done that very thing that defined him
as a creature of life. Often such fires would descend into
masturbation, leaving him cold, dejected and alone as soon as it was
over. The lack of action in his life meant it was always over very
quickly, never satisfying in the least. He tried to imagine what it was
like, but his actual experience taught him nothing, so it was more like
crying ones self to sleep than fantasies naughtily and exhilaratingly
indulged.
He was sick in the soul; his coconut was full of tears.

&;#61656;

Writing in prison, after all the shit that I did, often it's much
easier to describe everything if I imagine that I'm not me. In a sense,
the person whose coconut is full of tears is not me, but some other
person. The path is one that has been walked by me, it has run its
course, and so now I can see it from a detached, reasonable point of
view.
For instance, I have realised that there were principles running my
life; there was a reason why it all went so wrong. I had my own life
manifesto that through its own unique truthfulness destroyed what hope
there had been of me living as a human in humanity.
Here it is:

1. The best happiness is good happiness.

2. Good happiness is best realised through the love and intimacy of
individuals.

3. Love is an expression of what is dearest and most suited to a
person's soul in perfect communication with another soul.

4. This is best expressed through affection.

5. Affection can differ in form.

6. The best form is that which achieves the greatest degree of
intimacy.

7. Physical/sexual union achieves the most perfect degree of
intimacy.

8. A sustained discourse of love and affection between individuals,
followed by the greatest expression of such love and affection in the
most perfect form of intimacy is the happiest day possible for a
human/humans/humanity.

9. Since 8 is a good happiness, it constitutes the highest good, i.e.,
the best happiness.

When I thought about it a bit more, I realised that to make the
happiness good happiness the greatest day possible had to be conducted
under one more essential condition:

10. Real love, affection and intimacy must be conducted under
conditions of honesty, or they are not real. Without this honesty it is
cloaked, which is either bad (i.e. using someone, the opposite of good)
or neutral (i.e. adults consenting with the intention of mere sexual
gratification). Therefore without honesty it is not the highest
good.

I thought the highest good attainable was the expression of love. Not
selfish, not bad in any way, harming no one, infact, and bringing joy
and happiness into the world. But now I realise what was wrong with
this view.
What could make a life alone and without; without companionship,
without love, without intimacy, what could make such an existence any
more unbearable than a strong idea such as this? I believed that it was
an entitlement of every human being on the planet, a basic right to the
standard of happiness that all were capable of. But I idealised it too
much, so I was left to live in a nightmare world that satisfied none of
my own basic requirements, and since nobody else had the same idea (or
so I thought and circumstances seemed to testify to) there was no
obvious escape.
11. (footnote). Question? What do you do in the absence of
perfection?
What do you do in the absence of a perfection you believe so strongly
to be real? You have already seen the answer to that question. Failure
is the only thing possible.
Now you see; I am a contradiction. I shouldn't be here. I shouldn't
exist.
But now that's the whole point really.
To all intents and purposes I don't exist.

&;#61656;

One should never kill, under any circumstances, that's what I've learnt
now. No one has the right to tell you when it's right to kill, not your
mother, your father, your community, your government, your spiritual
leader, not even your god. It's just never right, and certainly not
over a silly little thing like women.
I used to have this theory, and I think, in the light of my crimes,
crimes against humanity no less, that maybe it has some plausibility.
It runs something like this:
If all men just had a good woman to look after them, and if all woman
just had a single man to look after, then there would be no trouble in
the world.
In younger days this was articulated thus:
"If all those stupid politicians just got the sex lives they were
after, you think they'd bother to start wars?"
If every man had a woman he could love, and every woman a man she
could hold on to, then what possible strife could there be?
I was the test subject of this theory, and just look what happened.
Bottling up the suppressed anger and desire, primarily directed at
women, but make no mistake, no less directed at the "bastards" who got
to have them. Then everyone realised what a danger the starvation of
one of mans primary needs could be. An orgy of death and mayhem was all
that could satisfy the needs that my own warped psychology had thrown
back at me day after day, year after year, until that final moment
arrived.
Depravity. Beware depravity, it leads only to death.

&;#61656;

It was a clever and surreal execution. August Bank Holiday. Steamy hot
weather. Mists rising and falling to bring sweat dripping across the
moist faces of the beach dwellers. Everyone out for the day. The
lobsters all congregated. Ice creams all round, dipping legs in the
murky still waters.
It was the perfect day for a picnic. You saw them all sitting around
on the lawns from your window, drinking dry white wine and eating
organic food. Organic food from the only totally organic supermarket in
town. You knew the place very well, buying all the quality coffee
available. Occasionally you would see one of them in there. Then it
grew into a regular occurrence. Completely conforming to type. They all
ate and drank from the alternative stream, not the mainstream, just as
yourself. The week before they all went in together to prepare for
their picnic. You made sure the bread was loaded with sleepers.
Using the binoculars, you now watched as one by one they passed out,
spilling the expensive wine all over each others' shirts and blouses.
It looked suspicious at first, but soon they blended in. Just a well
deserved siesta in the blistering August sunshine. Then you went down
and left them the note you had prepared. You stole all their
accoutrements, left them nothing but pants and socks. When they woke up
they would realise something weird was going on: lying, half-naked,
passed out, everything gone. Then they'd see the note, directing them
to your house if they wanted answers, warning against the police.
Threatening further incidents of they chose such a course of action.
You knew they hated police; they liked the occasional snort, pop,
smoke, the odd counter-cultural exhortation. Sure enough, by nightfall,
they arrived at your door. You greeted them with a Smith and Wesson in
the face, and they obliged your requests.

I don't remember the next part so very well. I didn't enjoy it, and
they screamed with the pain of it. I worked the dance of depravity and
pain over them. Tortured their sensibilities, stroked their weak
corners, kneaded their darker hungers, their neuroses, fed my anger,
gave it full and free creative expression. It was an orgy with only one
ringleader. An orgy of blood and tears. Ending only after a weeklong
odyssey in final and slow death. Then I handed myself in.
So your honour, now you know.