Me, Myself and I

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Portions of a life.
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What is on a man's mind?

Sex.

Yeah, said the juvenile. I said on a MAN'S mind.

The answer is, depends on the man. Not all men are equal. As in 'the same', or 'equivalent'. 'In the mathematical sense', as they say.

Hell, as if anyone except them damn mathematicians gives a damn about the 'mathematical sense' of things. Well, I am a mathematician, so I do give a damn! We are a strange lot, us mathematicians. We are like the worst nightmare of thinkers and philosopher wannabes. We spot the blemish. It's in our training, our way of thinking. If you think you have proven something, it is us that will put your thinking under the microscope, and if we see the tiniest little hole in your deduction process, you are screwed. That is what we mathematicians do, either prove truths or kill deductions. Ours or other people's. Mostly ours. Brings the picture of flagellants, the self-flogging monks, to mind.

But, really now, who cares? The Grave don't ask no questions. The Grave don't care if you were a zillionaire, a great artist or scientist, or a worthless piece of trash offing other similar trash or the occasional unlucky bastard. Or a mathematician, for that matter, offing the fruits of somebody's intellect again and again, mostly his own, or in the few and very sparse 'Eureka' moments, actually catch a glimpse of the Truth. The Grave is the great equalizer. Like the movie.

Facing the Grave is a very enlightening thing. It tells you more about yourself than you could ever know otherwise. All our wants, needs, desires, dreams, fears, all are heavily based on what we know, and mostly on what we don't. And, except a few lucky (or unlucky) bastards, most live in complete and blissful ignorance, which usually translates to more fear. Ignorance breeds fear. Being bereft of experiences creates ignorance, usually with the delusion of knowledge, which solidifies and hardens fear, and makes it a functional (no pun intended) part of the psyche. If you are honest with yourself and of a sufficiently well-worked brain, all your deficiencies come to fore when you face your Grave. Suddenly, it all seems like dust in the wind, as the song says. Insignificant, a total waste of time and life. Minuscule, like a bug. Like an atom.

Suddenly you realize that, except a very lucky few, your life was pretty much a waste of time. How many things you could have done. How many places you could visit. How many inventions or artistic creations you could muster. How many women you could fuck in how many positions, each more depraved than the next. How many children you could father. Or none of the above. Or how many more lives you could save. Or off. Not all men are equal.

In the end, it is about all you can cram into a limited, precious amount of time.

I think I passed mine ok. Given the circumstances.

_________________________________________________________

I was born on a cold December day.

I never met my mom. I guess I must have hated her guts in our limited time together. She probably hated mine. As I learned later, when I researched the matter, I was a love-child with a Casanova who disappeared the day he was informed that I came to be - which probably was a few weeks after he came inside her himself. She probably started hating my guts right then. As many young distraught girlies that had one fuck too many, she probably preferred for me not to exist, but the sperm did find the egg, and lo and behold, yours truly. She kept me alive for some reason, even if unwillingly.

I must have really been royally pissed at her for (probably) not wanting me in the picture, because, in an ironic twist of fate, I was the one to off her, and not vice versa. She died the day I was born. Yeah, I know, it wasn't my fault, I was just an innocent baby, blah blah blah. Bottom line: If she hadn't had me, she probably would have been alive today. She ain't. QED. So there you have it. I was born a murderer from day one; my first kill as soon as I first saw the light of day.

The Grave. The motherfucker had an open account with me from birth. A greedy sonofabitch he is. The worst part, I became his instrument. More than that: I was BORN his instrument. The great executioner, the punisher. And what a balanced execution: repaying a fuck with death. Repaying giving life with taking life. This wording actually makes it seem balanced. Well, it ain't. Fuck no.

Grave, you... you greedy fucker! You had to tarnish my existence with your wants and desires. As if anyone can escape you, except a bunch of prophets that rose from the dead - like I believe all that bullshit anyway. Even if it is true, I ain't no prophet, nor was anyone I ever knew or knew of. She sure wasn't. But you knew that, didn't you? Well, fuck you!

But I digress.

Not having a mom or dad means your life is pretty much cut out for you. Adoptions. Foster parents. All kinds of weirdos who, for some reason that to me remains inexplicable to this very day, are deemed capable of raising children by the relevant state agencies. I am telling ya, most of the ones I had were nut-jobs, evil or both. At best.

In general I was an inward kind of person. I learned fast not to tell how I felt, and in time, I learned the real thing: the great art of how not to feel. It was better that way. It is better to not feel anything than to feel the knives on the operating table. If you feel your life IS the operating table, then you have little choice but to survive under anesthesia or bear impossible suffering without it. A gray-scale semblance of life or a colorful torture. I took the first option.

People came and went. And then, one day, I was given to the Harris's. They officially adopted me. They didn't change my name though. Mark Harrison was how I came to this world, Harrison being my birth mom. Mark Harrison I stayed. A Harrison with the Harris's.

Emma Harris. That woman loved me the moment she saw me. She saw my survival plan and killed it in five seconds flat. She showered me with all the affection that I never thought I would ever get. At first I tried to resist her, but for all my practice, I lost. I started feeling things. How it would have felt to have a mom. And it was a beautiful, warm feeling deep inside, a revelation of sorts, in my limited lifespan up to the time.

She cared for me. She made me believe that I was worth something, that I actually deserved to be loved. She helped me see that I had a sharp logical mind. She turned me to chess. She turned me to the sciences. She turned me to music. She also turned me to sports. As inside myself as I was before, I actually started having dreams that I could be someone in something out of all this.

I seemed to be a fast learner in pretty much anything I liked. Given the previous foster parents and complete lack of communication I had with them, it was a true change of life. I was ready to devour everything, pictures, emotions, knowledge, whatever, to make up for the lost time.

Her husband, Gene Harris, was the towering male of the house. He was a doric figure: serious, strict, just, the definitive stoic, no-bullshit type. He knew stuff, but you could never tell what, he was securely locked inside himself. He was a tough nut to crack, and I had not cracked it. Actually, nobody had, except for her. He absolutely adored her. He adored the ground under her feet. And she seemed to do the same for him and me. Which, by transference, means that he was at least fine by my existence, although I was mostly her affair, not his. But he was there, and if he sensed I was going to do some stupid childish shit, a scowl would be enough to kill it dead in its tracks. Fearsome was that scowl. Fearsome, but fatherly. In its own way.

Balance and beauty in my life? You bet. The world started having colors, smells, sounds, logic. The sun started to shine, and the moon started to caress my nights. And the stars, like the Sirens of Odysseus, sang a spellbinding tune.

They were calling her.

Someone heard that tune and liked it. The song made him hungry. That someone decided to grant their wish.

The Grave.

The bastard delivered her to them, so very unfairly and prematurely, as I had just entered high school. Car accident. Drunk driver.

They told me, or I like to think I remember them telling me, she died with Gene's and my name on her lips. Her two men, as she would say.

She killed me. Having never felt anything is one thing. Having felt and then having it all ripped out of your soul, shredding it to pieces, leaving an ever-bleeding scarred void in its place, a gaping hole in your gut that will never heal, well, that is another. Feels like death. Smells, tastes like death.

She killed me. I know she didn't mean to. She wanted to live. For me and her husband, she had said. She wanted me to live. She wanted him to live. And she offed us both that day.

The Grave don't care. When the bastard is hungry, when he has plans, he just don't care what yours are. He wins. Always.

He didn't just swallow her that fateful day. He swallowed the leftovers of my soul right beside her. Gene's too. Right there, six feet under, deep in the hallowed ground. One body, three souls.

God bless'em all.

____________________________________________________________

I was left to live with a shadow of his former self, Gene Harris. A once sturdy man, a rock. Now, a self-loathing pariah, with severe drinking problems, and with an attitude towards people that almost sent him to jail a few times. I believe that he hated having been left alone to raise a child all on his own, although, in all fairness, his attitude towards me didn't really change, even when he was drunk. He himself changed, but not towards me. He never raised an arm, and did not do any injustice to me, as far as I can tell.

He absolutely hated not having his - and mine - Angel with him. They planned to live the rest of their lives together. He lost his soul that day too, just like me. One body, three souls. Grave, you greedy motherfucker...

So where did that leave me? Two soul-less corpses hanging on to dear non-life. Non-living each day, trying to find a reason to continue to the next. And failing miserably.

I found that friggin switch that turned the goddamned feelings on and off, and turned it off again. And this time, I decided to lose the key.

Better dead and numb than alive and hurting.

____________________________________________________________

If there were a few kids that kinda liked me before the accident, the numbers started dwindling pretty fast after, and the subsequent behavior of Gene Harris didn't help much either. I didn't really have any friends. For all effects and purposes, I was basically alone, with nobody to turn to. Gene's communication skills were zero before the accident; now, he was pretty useless.

I really wasn't a social person to begin with. I kinda disliked people and with most kids the feeling was mutual. Maybe because I was the drunkard's adopted bastard. Be it as it may, after the accident, I had to survive. I decided early on that the best course of action would be to focus on becoming good at anything I could. Even just to send a smile Emma's way. So I focused even more on reading, devouring books like a madman. Like an addict left to die with his own addiction - only mine didn't kill me. It sharpened my wit even more. Honed my thinking, my prowess of reasoning and deduction, my sense of cause and effect. And I was good at that, damn good. I took a small amount of satisfaction in being the top student in my class without even trying, I was way ahead. A class that I never really fit into.

I loved music. Even as a small child, the music I loved was almost always dark. I adored music that most people couldn't stand for a second: contemporary classical, modern jazz, very dark metal music, even some really weird-sounding ethnic stuff ; anything gut-wrenching or chaotic or with a crazy rhythm, or full of dissonances or crazy tunings or any combination thereof. It just was what I was. It was so me. It was as if I had no choice in the matter. It helped that I learned to play the piano and some guitar under Emma's guidance. She had said I could be a very good musician if I wanted to. Well, it was just a way for me to do something that helped me survive. And Gene, although I am sure hated hearing me play 'crazy people music' or 'space cadet music' or 'horror movie music' as he jokingly said in those rare moments when he still was a person, he never once discouraged me, to his credit. He just took himself outside when I practiced. A practice that he continued when we both became empty shells.

I also took it to heart to build my body strong. Since Gene was effectively out of the picture as a father, just opting for the absolute bare essentials, I started doing the chores in the small part of Earth that the Harris ex-family owned. I also read a book or two about body-weight exercises and I started working out. Calisthenics is cheap and very effective. Soon, I got lean but strong. No excess fat and way more strength than meets the eye. Based on my looks, at least with clothes on, nobody would know.

As I said, most kids were indifferent towards me. Some were mean. I tried to stay clear, since they always had friends, while I only had myself.

Fear is a child's companion. Since I had no allies to speak of, I had to face my fears myself. I sought information on relevant matters in one of my true friends, yet another book, 'children's psychology for kids' or something, I don't really remember now. It said that your best ally, when you face your fears, is yourself. And I gotta say, there is no ally like yourself in overcoming fear. Your logical self, in particular. And if I had something going for me, well, that was logic.

When you face a problem, you try to follow a few strategies, if possible. If it is easy to understand the cause of it, then you tackle it. If it is complicated, you can try to break down the problem into smaller sub-problems which work in a specific manner to produce the big problem, again, if that is possible. Then you do the same to sub-problems themselves, until you reach a stage when you have specific non-breakable (call them atomic) problems to solve. You see what causes them, how you can tackle them, then you do it, one at a time, and voila, every problem across the board solved.

Now, fear is a feeling, but sometimes it is a reaction to either a problem or a distance from something unknown, or both. Sometimes it is something else entirely.

Logic dictated that some of my fears were based on real problems, and those fears I decided I had to tackle first. So, first, if Gene died, what would I do? Logic dictated that I was back to foster parents and all that. Basically I was screwed. So I decided to cross that bridge if I ever got there, and try not to impose on Gene too much. Every little thing helps. If he died, at least it would not be with my help. I sure as shit couldn't help him in any way that I could see, but at least I wouldn't be a problem to him.

Second: fear of the dark. This is a primal fear of the unknown. We are so dependent on sight that we have not used our other senses that much, and in the absence of light we are totally incapacitated. Logic dictated that in the dark I cannot see, but I have a damn good ear and sense of space and sense of smell and touch, and if i use them, the dark is not so dark anymore. Blind folk don't see and they do fine. So I blindfolded myself a lot of times and tried to find my way around using my other senses, sharpening them tenfold in the process. It took a while, but it worked wonders. I can say that I was never afraid of the dark again, to this day.

Another problem was my well-being. As long as I am not a fully-grown man, there will always be someone ready, willing and able to beat me up. So, I needed to stay in a good shape, be able to run fast to evade when the need arose and also learn a few basic ways to defend myself if evasion wasn't an option. Since there were very little real money and no sort of parenthood from Gene, I knew I had to do this entirely on my own, so it was going to take time. If they wanted to fuck with me, I had to run. One day, when I would be ready, I'd show them. 'Just wait until I am ready', I thought.

Of course, they didn't.

____________________________________________________________

One gloomy day, I think it was winter, a bonafide ass-hat named Chris Efran and his gang of four, including himself, cornered me at a school corridor. The bastard cut my way and said:

"You are that drunk shithead's adopted little turd, aint'ya?"

Now how the fuck do you answer that?

"Who are you?", I asked without really changing my expression. I fought my fear inside, but tried to remain expressionless.

He laughed. He really thought he was a heavy gangsta and shit. He was only a high-schooler, just like me. So were his goons.

"So you don't know me, shitface?", he said, and laughed. And the three pieces of garbage that passed for his entourage laughed along with him.

"No", I said.

"Well, you'll learn who I am, little bastard fuck!", he said and pushed me.

Then he spit on me.

The motherfucking piece of trash actually spit on me! And as his spit started dribbling down my face, he laughed. And so did his three goons.

At that precise moment, all fear was gone. I could only find one feeling in me. Rage. Blind, murderous rage.

I wanted him dead.

His goons, who gave a shit. They didn't matter. A little roughing up would be enough. But him?

Death. Nothing else. Only death.

I cleaned my face with the back of my sleeve and was getting ready to jump him when a teacher showed up.

"What's going on here, boys?", he asked, I guess suspecting what happened.

"Nothing sir, nothing. Just chattin'", said the fat lard-ass fuck that decorated my face with his bodily fluids.

'You'll pay', I thought silently. The teacher saw only him, but the shithead saw me. He seemed amused by his own actions on the exterior. But he must have read my thoughts. I think I saw a small indication of fear cross his face, under the facade of amusement. His eyes. I knew those eyes. I used to have them too. No more.

'Thanks you sick fuck, you just saved me. I am not afraid anymore. Your time will come. And you WILL, dearly, pay.'

I was pretty sure he heard my thoughts.

_________________________________________________

First things first. I needed a plan.

Well, that came easily. Goons first. Then him. Alone, without any friends. Begging for his miserable shitty little life, before the Grim Reaper took him for an everlasting stroll, his very last one. That greedy fuck, the Grave, took my Emma from me. I would return the favor with a present.

Oh, there would be no mercy for the sick little fuck. No mercy.

I started following the clan right after school. It was not easy, they could potentially spot me. But I took cover as well as I could. In my mind, I was invisible. They didn't really spot me anyways.

I took mental notes of all places they went to. When they got together, and most important, when they separated.

I had created a daily regimen, practicing baseball swings with the bat. I was in no team, so I would not raise any suspicions. But I became good at it, at least in my own mind. My targets were not going to be small balls, anyway: they were going to be big sacks of shit. Kinda hard to miss. And practice does make perfect.

John Wilks, the smaller-sized of the goons, was the first to get it. I was waiting for him, lurking in the shadows, head and face covered, in a dark corner right next to the entrance to his house. It was dark all around. Just before he reached the dimly lit entrance, something fiercely hit him on the knees. I heard their sweet sound, shattered from the force of the blow with the baseball bat.

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