Chapter 4: Insular Captivity

Doctor's Notes: From the Journal of Lester Johnson, dated 4/18/98. IT is important to note that this entry is in the third person, while most of the other entries are in the first person. There are a few more like this and when asked about them, Lester does not recall writing them. Lester, however, has no problems recognizing the subject of the entry, Amanda Levingston, though she is never mentioned by name. She was apparantly a girlfriend of his, though no record of any woman by that name exists anywhere my staff can locate.

Love has a color.
It is brown, the color of her eyes.
He didn’t see as much of that color as he would have liked. Each time he did see it made him happy. Retardedly happy, for no reason at all other than the fact that she was there. She loved him in her own way, though certainly not with the magnitude he brought. Time would eventually allow the brown to fade to gray, like a flower that is not watered it would eventually wilt and die. There is no need to cry for this tragedy, or mourn the passing of such a plant for it is the nature of all things to be born and to someday die, but that is the objective reality of things. The personal reality is much harder to swallow. It was hard to fight a battle were the enemy was not a faceless barbarian, different from you and cold, but a person almost too much like you, someone you love. There is a sense in which he wanted to throw the match, allow her to win, to go on her way without knowing what she had done to him. But he didn’t love her that much. She needed to feel some of his hurt, a tiny revenge that would make her a companion one final time.
Or….
He could make her feel more than that, he knew her well enough to destroy her from her foundations, to bring her to the height of an ant, maybe even destroy her fragile psyche forever…she didn’t deserve that, but that didn’t matter, not really. In fact, this was a perfect opportunity to vindicate himself. A glaring jewel of a prospect. How many countless times had he fallen for the same sort of girl? Needy, insecure, weak, beautiful. And every time, what had been the result? Pain, anger, and frustration. He always felt used, and more than that he had allowed it to happen and that was what burned the most. This was his chance to make up for all these past injustices. By getting to this one he could spit in the face of all the other times he had been to weak to take revenge.
He was not a good person. He wanted to be callus and unrepentant, but he had no choice but to empathize, and he could not go through with it. The fact that he could was a responsibility that screamed that he should not do it.
Hate also has a color.
It is blue, the color of his eyes.
The color that greeted him every morning, that mocked and tormented his tired conscience. There was nothing he could not manipulate, nothing he could not twist and contort to his will. It was just a matter of how--- how much work he wanted to put into it, how much he wanted to change it. He was the only one who was immune to this power, and it was extremely frustrating. Not only because he was something that he could not mold, but also because he was in a shape that he desperately wanted to re-cast. Too many things about himself were beyond his comprehension, but their presence was heralded by his behavior. His fears and doubts, his loves and hates, they all seemed so devious, insidious, and mean. They tortured him at night, evil demons that whispered their deeds with forked tongues and languid slurs. Some of the demons had been born by his mistakes, his own personal evil. Many of them, the majority by far, were bestowed on him, secretly planted in his very soul, so that their seed was invisible, but their sprout was undoubtedly existent. He could not lie to himself, he knew too much about himself, and he fixated on it.
The most horrible of the demons, the tyrant that ruled with an iron fist over the kingdom of his heart, was one of the first, though he wasn’t the first. He came into power when the defenses were not yet completed, before such things were needed. The need to hide the truth, to keep the true personality a secret, fed the demon until he grew too large and influential to deny. “Who will like this boy? He is different somehow and they can see it. If you want companions you will have to put your real self into the darkness.” The demon had done so and now that part of him was drifting around inside the darkest parts of himself, unable to be retrieved. Half forgotten it nags quietly from the abyss, its tiny words just loud enough to remind him what the demon had done to him, just loud enough to pronounce the hate of what had been done to him, what he had done to himself, of what he had become.
If he could not kill the demon, could not bend the reality of himself back to its rightful, healthy form; could someone else? Maybe it was not impossible to change, it was just impossible for him. That was a very good possibility, but there were more demons that tickled his ear, and they made this option almost as difficult. It was as if he was hungry for a food that did not exist. Some foods had similar smells, but they were not the genuine morsel, and their taste became fallow in their trickery. Quieting the hunger for a time, but eventually it made him vomit.
If they only knew. If only he could tell them. He was the only one who could know, at least that’s what the demon said. The vicious circle was hard to analyze. When it had mattered most, he began to live a lie just to fit in. When he realized how weak he had been it made him angry and he fought against it, yet this bravado was so much a part of who he had become, who he was now, that it would be dishonest inside the framework of his personality and so if he stopped lying he would be denying the very thing he wanted to be.
Himself.
The lie was who he was now.
He was what he was not.
Letting someone inside, and then watching as they opened a door that belied an interior that was elegant and good, only to discover a hovel of weakness and bitter hatred. The outside was popular, it was the part of him people were drawn to, a lesson he had learned hard and fast. If anyone else discovered this truth it would lend reality to his hate, it would take it outside of himself and birth it into the world. The nature of a lie is such that it is the truth as long as only the liar knows that it is false. The lie had become so immense, so saturated into every facet of his life, that he could not allow the façade to crumble and expect there to be any sort of positive result. Many people would be hurt, not the least of which would be him. Why had he chosen honesty as his lie? That was a stupid move that had been overwhelmingly effective. Who would look for falsehood when they were assured that the truth was staring them in the face?