What a Pain

by themanfromlevion

The Reckoning #1

(You can read the prologue here: https://ohmynatis.wordpress.com/2017/04/03/the-reckoning-prologue/)

 

 

 

I stood upon Vision Hill, the whole of the kingdom stretched out in front of me. From horizon to horizon, the resplendent beauty of the land in the early sunrise dazzled me. Anybody standing upon the hill would marvel at the wonders of Creation, anybody but me.

The Creation that I was musing on was of a different kind, a kind that once I had been intimately familiar with. It was a unique kind of power, a power that could only be felt when one turned the depths of their soul into physical form.

I didn’t possess that power anymore.

Aww, poor widdle baby.

 There was a time when I could stand on this hill and visualise an entire world, layered onto this one, full of subtle differences and exciting new prospects. Now ideas flashed in front of my eyes, just out of my reach, but every time I tried to focus on them, my mind rebelled, a voice in my head started to scream.

Hey, hey, don’t knock me for your failings, buddy.

I looked around at this wonderful, magnificent kingdom-

-that I quite possibly would not see again within a week.

It started then, the sensation that the ground was collapsing under me; the gut punch that knocked all the air out of me. I clutched my chest, breathing hard. No, no, no, this was supposed to be over, I was supposed to be done with it.

I stopped, composed myself. I was done with it. I couldn’t do it anymore.

Gradually, my breathing normalised, my hands steadied. I sucked in mouthfuls of air, like a drowning man just come to the surface. I looked around, there were a couple of people pointing and giggling. I turned and started to walk fast.

It had been months since I had felt like that, the treatment had been working. Now it was back, no no no.

And then the images, the sounds, the sensations, all of them came rushing back. The way it used to be, afraid to step out of the house, afraid to interact, afraid to eat or breathe or exist. I couldn’t, I couldn’t go back. NO!
How did I get through it? How, how, how?
I had reached the bottom of the hill when. Oh, God. There had been only one solace to carrying the burden of the world. There had been only one way to soothe that monstrous beast, cease that ceaseless torment.

I wrote.

And now. And now, oh my bloody holy irredeemable irascible God. Now I was left without that.

Ah, what a quandary, what a conundrum! Fancy words soothe troubled minds, nay?
No. Must not let monster come back. Must fight. How? How?

Need to write.

The only way to prevent the monster from coming back. Need to do it to save myself.

That’s it.

I needed pain to overcome. I needed the pain to write.

Yes, yes, yes. That was it. I needed the incentive, I needed the motivation. I needed the dogs of despair and doom nipping at my heels, pushing me to run faster and outrun them.

But how? I can’t risk letting the monster back in, I can’t let his pain back in, no; I had worked too hard for that.

Wait. There was another way, yes there was.

I had been walking around aimlessly, muttering to myself, ignoring the looks of everyone around me, but now I turned towards my house. I knew what I had to do, and I was willing to do it. The cost didn’t matter, the cost was the objective.

I reached my lane and saw him there, standing in his puffed-up peacock stance, talking to some women with helmet in hand and a hard grip on his spear, something that was painfully obvious he craved from them.

I walked up to them as they laughed and said, “Haha, yes, that’s a really good one.”
They paused and stared at me, surprised.

“Did you hear about the time dear old Barnacle here arrived early to his mistress’s gala? Let’s just say, she wasn’t surprised.” I said and laughed, clapping him on the shoulder.

He didn’t understand what I meant immediately, but the women, from a lot of experience, I guessed; understood and roared in laughter.

Barnacle figured he was being insulted and flushed. “Don’t you have better things to do,” he asked, flashing a cruel smile. “Like writing anything at all?”
The women giggled, but at the same time, seemed unnerved by the edge in his voice.

“Oh, know a lot about writing, do you, Barnie?”
“Why, actually, I do.” He seemed rather pleased with himself at this point. “Every morning, in fact.”
“Oh, Barnie,” I sighed. “I know that you have a big ass for a mouth, but your daily shit is not considered poetry.”
BAM. The wind flew out of my lungs again, this time because Barnacle had punched me right in the stomach. I staggered back a few steps and then straightened up, breathing hard. I smiled. It was a good start.

“Damn, that was a good punch,” I continued, grinning. “I bet you spent a lot of time as a kid punching people who called you a girl, huh? Couldn’t handle not being a man, huh, Barnie?”
He stepped forward and pushed me so hard I fell to the ground. “And what, you’re better off? Not a woman, not a man. You disgust me.”
“So?” I said, getting slowly to my feet. “You must be used to that feeling, eh, Barnie? You own a mirror.”

“Aargh!” He screamed, socking me straight in the jaw and sending me sprawling to the ground again. “My name is Barnacle!” He yelled.

I wiped my mouth and laughed again. “Are you sure you want to yell that out loud? I mean, you want people to know that? Hate to break it to you, man but you were just named for the sake of a shitty pun.”

Barnacle stood over me, steadily getting more and more enraged. He spotted two of his lackeys walking past, and yelled out to them. They came over and he muttered something to them. I was in for it now.

They each took me the armpits and dragged me into my house. They let me fall to the floor in my study and Barnacle loomed high above me. He said simply to the other guards, “Leave the arms. No excuse for not writing.”
Without further prompting or preamble, pain engulfed me. I was assailed from all sides by a flurry of leather. Boots slammed into me hard, over and over and over. I yelled from the pain but it did not cease, it did not dissipate, it grew stronger as the kicking grew harder.

I could tell how long it was till they stopped, but I know that when they did Barnacle brought his face close to mine, sniggered and then punched my head, slamming it onto the floor. Then his face disappeared.

I was alone with my pain.

Just like I wanted.

I was a fucking idiot.

My vision blurred, my head was spinning, almost every inch of my body was on fire.

I let the pain engulf me. I let myself feel every single bit of it; I let it soak into me. I let my mind drift; I let images flood my mind. Images of death, destruction, war, horror all filled my imagination, but there was no light, no hope. There was no sense of fighting through it; there was no epiphany or incredible sense of purpose flowing through me. I was just a person in pain, lying on a floor, with no answers whatsoever.

Again.

Maybe I was better off dead. If I couldn’t write, what was the point of all of it anyway? I deserved this pain, I deserved all the pain and sorrow because I was unable to make any use of the gifts I had been given. I was pathetic and useless. I couldn’t even use it when I needed it, to get through the pain.

But what if that wasn’t its purpose?
I had the ability to write my way out of a hurricane, to survive when the world around me was burning. But did I have the right to expect that same strength and ability when I was the one who had set the fire? It’s an act of heroism to be able to fight, to be able to endure under horrible circumstances; it’s an act of idiocy and self-indulgence to create those same circumstances yourself so that you have something to fight.

In the middle of my pain-addled mind, the voice of an old sage rang loud and clear:
Only one thing made him happy

 Then he let it go

 Now everything makes him happy.

I couldn’t expect writing to save me. I couldn’t expect it to carry the world or magically make everything better or even make anything better. Because the moment I expected it to be something, it lost the ability to be anything. And that’s what art is.