Incineration of sanity

Incineration of sanity


Chapter I: A glimpse of things long gone

The tiny fist crossed the short distance that separated it from the face opposite to it in the blink of an eye; it hit it right on the jaw. A disgusting cracking sound echoed for a second, for an eternity… and it kept repeating itself, slightly changing tone as the moments passed. It kept changing, from the initial disquieting sound to a piercing shriek, till its fervent pitch could penetrate his skull; forcefully invading his mind; a monotonous chorus of disturbance.

It took a real effort from Jack to open his eyes. His bed seemed like a battlefield; sheets and blankets lay in a heap caused by his obvious turmoil. He could feel the sweat dripping from his hand, as it searched blindly for the alarm clock that denied him of any chance to continue his sleep. Yet, even after the continuous bleeping torment stopped, it continued to resound in his head.

He tried to relax, to regain his composure, but the vulgar image didn’t leave his mind. He knew what it was, he remembered every single detail of that day; but what he couldn’t understand was why it had come back to haunt him. He smiled bitterly when he realized that he couldn’t remember the other child’s name. When, that day had changed his whole life.

It was just a meaningless fight, a stupid childish argument, and how couldn’t it be so when he was only seven years old. Yet, it had escalated quickly to a fist fight. He had felt strange that day; anger was boiling him inside him, pure uncontrollable strength that had been channeled directly into his fist, directly on his opponent’s jaw. It wasn’t much of a fight afterwards. The fist smashed onto the boy’s face, a few teeth went flying, a bone misplaced, an enemy eliminated…

People would argue afterwards that it was the massive amounts of blood on his fist, others that it was the cracking sound, some would even attribute it to him being coward. But only Jack knew that it was the eyes; the brief glance of mixed fear, shock and terror that the other boy had shot him, before he fell unconscious. It was that day that he promised himself that he wouldn’t cause any more pain, that his fist would lay dormant, his emotions controlled. Tough years had followed, years of teenagers making fun and provoking him, yet not a single time had he broken his promise. He let wave after wave of taunts flew past him, into a void that he had created in his soul.

Yet none of this could explain why this particular image has returned. Why it had come back to haunt him, day after day, denying him the precious few hours that he needed to rest. It was nearly one month now that he was seeing it, over and over again. If people knew maybe they would have suggested to him to go to a shrink or something, but he felt that he knew better than them. It was just his tiredness; sixteen hours of work per day, for six days a week can do such a thing to a man, couldn’t they?...

Jack stayed still for a brief moment, contemplating if he should call work and tell them that he couldn’t come. It took only a second to make up his mind. His work was too important; it could, one day, help his fellow humans. He couldn’t afford to skip work, not now that he was so close to completion. Some painkillers and some vitamins later, the first to ease his throbbing head, the second to sustain his tired body, Jack looked to the mirror and left his house. He should have stayed a bit more, linger in front of his reflection, bask in his simple smile…

Chapter II: Welcome to life

White. Perfect, unblemished cleanliness. This one, true, color was ever present in the laboratory. For Jack it meant more. It wasn’t just the necessity of keeping everything clean for fear of contamination. It was also a clean sheet; a blank page from where things originated. The place where science was taking her baby-steps and matured to functions; to cures, to antidotes, to simple observations about the way the human body worked. A place where formulas evolved to substance, where paper gave way and reality occurred.

Around him, researchers moved in swirling patterns from machine to book to test-tubes; the sterilized fragrance of the air revitalizing them, invigorating them as they moved about towards their designated posts. Jack was nervously looking at the latest results. The experiment was a failure again. But in his field of work, even failures were counted as successes. Through those scrambled numbers, he would move one step forward and then one more, never stopping, till he founded the perfect answer.

It was a weird obstacle that which stopped him from providing a new way to diagnose lung cancer. Somehow the test particles where messing up some vital cells, killing the organism. What has started as a research for just a diagnostic tool was rapidly evolving, in this small building, to something that could alienate normal from infected cells. They just had to reverse which ones were targeted, and maybe, maybe, they would have something that in the years to come would become a cure…

But up until now, all they got was lack of sleep, crazy work hours followed by heavy research; tiredness was creeping in the whole team and only the determination of the head researcher held the team working in such speeds.

Jack left his eyes wander in the room. There she was, a middle aged woman, dressed in her white labcoat, radiating purpose. She was currently speaking with some men dressed in suits way too formal for a lab. Probably some investors or government people that had come to ask silly questions like when the cure would be ready... as if one could really answer that. Jennifer looked happy; she smiled as she talked about her project in hushed voices.

For an instant a vision overcame Jack, his fist, bloodied, like the day that he had broken his classmate’s jaw. He shook it off his head and returned to work. He knew that someday he would have to take a day or more off… at this rate he would soon become useless to the team. At this rate he would slow down the research instead of speeding it up… and any delay counted as a fatality in his mind.

The television was filled with macabre themes this evening… as always. A violent mean to relay the bloody theme of this age. The perfect conductor for this climate of tempest that was being cultivated to the youngsters.

Suddenly the program was interrupted for emergency news; terrorists had attacked with chemicals a small community of immigrants. Jack felt the rage boiling inside him. Why? Why did people like to kill? And for what reason? What could the immigrants provide? What were they guilty of?

Rage gave way to shock, shock departed to leave space for pain, pain left as his tears started rolling over his cheeks. Everything left; there was only a void in his heart now. The only thing that denied leaving was the image of the dead people; the bluish spots in their skin, the droplets of blood in their noses, a million symptoms; all known to him; all carefully studied months after months in the microscope; on the dead mice; on their test subjects. One by one, images started cascading in his memory.

Jennifer remaining apathetic when she first heard the news about the dead mice.
Jennifer pushing them to work on the cause of death instead of finding a way to circumvent it.
Suited people coming and locking themselves in her office for hours.
Today… the look of victory in her eyes.
The handshake.
The eyes of those people.
The cold stares.
The triumphant smiles.
The glares that showed to all that they were no humans, just numbers.
The blood on his childish hand…
His broken promise.
The blood.
The mice dying.
The humans dying.
The blood in his adult hands…

His eyes fell downwards, towards his hands; blood was running freely, filling the tight room, flooding it. So many long hours, so many months, so tired… and all just so that he would develop a weapon? The blood was filling the room now, drowning him. There was nothing left in him. With the last of the images gone, he was left alone, in a void space, in emptiness.

Jack felt the floor giving way and he collapsed.

Chapter III: From white to white

White. A blank canvas where one could sketch his life. The ever present blinding color that could deprive all vision from the weak of heart. It didn’t need much. Just give a man someplace to draw his entire life, and see him crumble from the fear of doing so. A mirror. A mirror for Jack to see his life as it was; empty, deprived of all purpose, in vain. Wherever he turned his head, there was not a blemishing spot of color to signify that he has done anything.

Tabula rasa, a blank page. Yet, they had cleverly stolen from him the ability to draw anything there. As he tried to move his arms, he felt restricted, tied. And the damn light kept shedding itself inside his brain, only to expose how empty it really was.

The monotony broke. A crack appeared in the vast emptiness. And through there, two figures stepped inside his haven. The one he had seen plenty of times before, a white tall humanoid. There was no other word that could describe what was standing in front of him, for even if one could tell that it was a human body, its face was empty; a blur of flesh-like color without any feature. Like someone had robbed this man all that which could describe him.

But the moment he looked beside him, Jack froze. He felt a shiver in his spine, so cold that it could have doused the flames of hell itself. It was the incarnation of a demon, which was standing besides the faceless man, the cause for this feeling.

A vile beast, with hair like a million snakes that writhed in hatred towards him. But even this malice dimmed when one looked at the face of this medusa. There were no eyes, just black, bottomless pits. In her mouth, a million razor-sharp pointy teeth seemed to have a life of their own, as a sickly green poison dripped out of them, making a small pool of acid near her feet.

Jack wanted to scream, wanted to run, but fear held him tight. As he was cast in stone, petrified, weak, he could only watch in terror at the two figures. They didn’t seem to have noticed him, and he felt himself shrinking to nothingness, crumbling to his corner, as if by this way he could avoid detection.

But life isn’t so merciful. Slowly he saw the beast approaching him. It seemed larger from up close, each step enhancing her terrifying appearance, making her look like a giant, while he felt himself becoming smaller and smaller… like he was nothing. The beast was now only a breath away, its stink invading his senses.

Jack broke. He felt something hot overcoming him, something familiar, something long now forgotten.

There was a deep darkness. Not the kind that is just the absence of light, but like some kind of an anti-light, like abyss herself. Slowly, two dots started to appear, two eyes opening, two furnaces of red hot lava ready to spill destruction. They were not enough to illuminate the place, but in the far end of the darkness, a door started to open, little by little, like a rusted metal door that had forgotten it had hinges someday. As the eyes approached the opening, the outline of a human figure started to appear. A tall man, eyes made from fire, grin made of rage, soul made of destruction. It delayed just a second in front of the door, like he wanted to make sure that this was real, and then, with the speed of death himself, he rushed forward.

Jack felt that he was dying, the demon had bended her head towards him, her hand was approaching him, and he could clearly hear a gibberish incantation coming out of her mouth. The familiar hot feeling hadn’t left him. He knew that there was something he had to remember about it, but hard as he tried, the memory didn’t appeared.

An image flashed in his eyes; blood in a kid’s hand. And he remembered… rage.

The hot feeling had left him. Now he was a bursting volcano, the heat of the sun couldn’t compare with him. And he consecrated this fiery hell; his last escape. And he let it loose, towards the demon.

~~~~~~~

The doctor jumped just in time to restrain Jack’s fist as it flew towards Jennifer; she ended landing on the hard floor of the clinic’s room.

Seconds later three men managed to fully restrain him and to properly re-secure the restraining jacket that had somehow snapped open.

“What was that?” Jennifer whispered towards the doctor in a, still shaking, voice.

“Honestly mam, this hasn’t happened before. As I said earlier to you, he had spent his last days here just apathetically looking at the wall. I cannot know what triggered this violent behavior, till now he had only tried to hurt himself, thus we had him on the safe room with a jacket…” The doctor’s replied, still trembling with shock.

“But… this attack? Why…? Maybe some of the drugs had affected him somehow… he was always a very calm person…” Jennifer couldn’t believe what had transpired moments ago.

“No.” The doctor was still skeptical. “We are not giving him any meditation… yet. He has clearly suffered from a nervous breakdown, maybe from the long hours of work that you yourself have reported to us… But his body is in very bad condition too; like he was trying to slowly suicide through lack of proper nourishment and sleep. We need to wait for his body to recover before we start treating him normally. Although my first impression showed that maybe he could recover by himself given proper feed and rest… but now, after this incident I fear I might have to look a little better at him.”

“Please do your best Doctor… He is one of our most valued researchers; we would like to have him back at work as soon as possible.” Jennifer replied tired, and then turned her back leaving the building, and abandoning the doctor in his thoughts.

~~~~~~~

Jack really though that at that exact moment he could kill the demon. Yet the faceless man interrupted him, momentarily, just enough for the beast to run away. As he saw them leaving his haven, he saw another form. A man with eyes made from pure fire, from purifying heat. The man’s face looked familiar, like he should have known it, like he was used to see it everyday in the past… but again, his mind denied him of any clues.

The fiery being looked at the demon, then nodded to Jack, and followed her out. Jack was left alone again. Yet somehow, he felt even emptier than before; spent.

~~~~~~~

Some minutes later Jack heard a female scream, followed by an explosion. He would never learn that Jennifer had died in an explosion in her car, neither that this occurred about a mile away from the clinic, and thus that he shouldn’t been able to hear it at all…

Chapter IV: We are what we think we are

Restrained again. Alone in a prison self made. All emotions gone. All things forgotten. A broken man. Yet Jack smiled; calm. Something has changed, he could feel it inside him, not stirring, not moving, not struggling, just gone. A burden released, a memory that he had denied, erased. He was lighter now, a free floating spirit of nothingness. Like the primordial essence, waiting to be shaped into a form.

Who are we? Are we the actions that we make? If so, repentance is null, for things done, are hard to unmade. In the end, does it matters? Is it worthy to look back and judge yourself on your past? Does this differ from trying to guess your future? Can you atone for things that you have yet to accomplish?

No.

We are not our actions; actions are just repercussions of our thoughts. And thoughts are based on our experience and our instincts. But a newborn man has none of this. A baby boy cannot survive; instincts are still underdeveloped, thoughts non-coherent.

So then, this leaves only one more thing; our mind, our soul, our body; the holy triad of a human. Each aspect weak by itself, but all three together form a perfect being. And the glue is memories; the divine ability to remember, to extrapolate the meaning of an image and link it to a specific thought, emotion, action. That is who we are. We are a string of pictures, a series of events that have wedged themselves tight into our conscious, and subconscious, mind.

Clouded thoughts danced wildly in Jack’s head, it was easy for them, it was unoccupied, empty… new.

“If we are just memories… then what am I?” Jack thought.

Jack tried to move again, to bring something in front of his eyes, so as to shield himself from the light. Yet the bonds were tight, and his eyelids transparent. The white walls of his room seemed to have a life of their own, like crushing platforms they kept coming closer, to erase him from existence. Yet, every time he looked at them, they seemed to back off a bit, always threatening, but never quite reaching him. There, in the middle of his haven, he was a God…

He wondered where the color had gone to. Had it completely vanished, or was it simply trapped outside. And if here he was a God, was he the one that had banish it? How was the outside world? Why had he forgotten everything? Was this a punishment for something?

Jack embraced his destiny. Looking straight at the light, he let himself be invaded.

“Let it end. Let it burn me. Let it purify me.” He thought exhausted.

And burn it did. As layer after layer of its vision became bleached with fiery dots, he felt himself being seen, judged… evaluated; by the God of this place, by himself.

And when his vision was completely gone, at last he could really see; blue sky, white wings, freedom.

The walls gave way. From thick white substance, to thin transparent glass; and the outside world revealed itself.

Jack soared on his white wings. Flying from the currents of the busy city-life to the tranquil waves of the clear sky above, and back again. A land made from children colors, where sky was blue, sun was yellow, and the city the deepest black. From the brown filth, to the white clouds; a free spirit, a soul without constraints, a human without memories, torn apart to its each individual substance, waiting for the mind to give him a defined form, waiting to be molded to the soul’s wishes.

Jack saw Perfection, and started his long travel towards there, but in the end, the image of a young woman dying in the filth below captured his sight. A demon was standing next to her, eyes black as coals, claws made of dirtied bones. And he realized, he could end it now, become free, without any responsibilities. Or, he could help the world below, to return to its initial form again, to become pure.

The thief started to run panicked when he saw him materialize next to him. Jack wasn’t fast, but the man with the fire-eyes next to him was like the wind. When only ashes remained of the murderous demon, Jack smiled, and the fiery being next to him burst into maniacal laughs.

Jack looked at his clothes. The white fabric of his jacket didn’t suit him anymore. He didn’t need an empty canvas to draw his life now. He had chosen his path, he had made his life, and he has shaped himself. With the blink of an eye he decided to a new color and simple as that, dirtied rags covered his body; brown, like earth, a fitting color for one that tried to cleanse it. The man next to him wore fire-red clothes, fitting for the incineration, for the cleansing pyre of destruction, that he was ready to unleash to purge this place…

The outside world awaited Jack with his embrace open. And Jack could only cry as he looked at the masses of the moving crowd. Out of the hundreds of individuals, most where just faceless pawns, moving without thinking, acting without judging, never taking a stand for their beliefs; if they had any at all… faceless people, only capable of creating a mob, only minding their business, allowing themselves to be pushed around by the demons that filled the alleys and the executives offices. The few people with features were vastly outnumbered by the vile beasts roaming the city. A city that had to be purged, the only solution to its decay…

~~~~~~~

The clinic was a mess. Investigators and detectives had scanned the place over and over again, yet no one could find how the patient had disappeared. The reports just said that, one morning, he simply wasn’t there anymore.

No one could link his disappearance with the dozen or so disappearances that were happening in the city. From murders and burglars to businessmen and employees, from poor to rich… no discrimination, at least to their eyes, for Jack knew, that each day that the sun rose, one less beast would roam his city.

Chapter V: A pool of blood

It wasn’t difficult anymore. It was as if he knew how to do it in his entire life; and this wouldn’t be far from the truth. For Jack’s life could only be measured in days. Fourteen days since he was really born to this world as he wished to be. Memories new, morals that were developing on their own, no parental advices, no external outputs, no classmates or colleagues to guide him in the ways that the world turned around, in the way that humanity worked nowadays…

Everything he saw, everything he touched, every single smell, was brand new, and as such it was categorized in his mind. As easy as any child could distinguish the smell of meat and fries, so easy he could sniff out the vile taint of the demons; a stink that left a palpable trail of death behind her.

Fourteenth day, and on the hunt for his twenty seventh demon, Jack had left not a single minute go to waste. Trails of fragrances and vile were constantly being distinguished, the first one left alone, it belonged to a dying race, to humanity…

Two giant antlers were clearly visible in the alley. The demon was bending over a faceless being, talons searching through a hand bag. The black eyes of the demon rose for an instant and saw him; his talons grabbing a hideous knife as he lunged forward. Jack smiled, after all the poor demon was only seeing a homeless person, and turned his head towards his companion. The unsettling feeling that he should recognize this man returned again, but Jack had chosen not to dwell too much on that. The wild grin of the man lit up, and his eyes spew fire as he got ready to sent hell to the demon.

But Jack hesitated. Something new was invading his senses, a smell so pure, so clean, so… distinct, that nearly drove him mad with joy. His eyes fell next to the dead faceless woman, where another human form was standing. He hasn’t seen it before, as days had passed, he had noticed that he was starting to just ignore the faceless mob, like his eyes didn’t registered them as something to be noted…

But this one was changing, rapidly he was developing features, in the blink of an eye, a boy stood there, bleeding, with eyes watching the demon… like they wanted to remember that moment.

Jack stopped. He felt a knife going through his fresh flesh. The fiery being besides him looked puzzled.

“What the fuck are you doing? Let me incinerate him.” Jack could hear there was some kind of emotion behind the last word. He wondered why he hadn’t noticed the passion of his companion for fire before; almost as if he wasn’t burning them to relieve the world from them, but just so as to fulfill some personal agenda.

“No.” His voice kept steady as he felt the knife moving in and out of him in a wild pattern.

“This one lives. After all he has helped to create a human.”

“You are mad” The flaming man screamed. “You talk about balance? There is no balance any more. The demons have won already. We are fighting a losing battle and you allow them to live simply as that? Balance is broken beyond repair, and we can only hope that we can kill enough demons to just lift the scale a bit. KILL him.”

The murderer had left; obviously thinking that Jack was dead. He didn’t even cast a second glance at the child. He just grabbed the bag and left.

Jack felt revitalized, his body hadn’t felt any pain since he was born, but now, even though alive, he was feeling his whole body ready to burst. It was a new emotion, a new sense, a new memory; but somehow, familiar, like he was supposed to know it. A lingering though stayed at his head “How do the people I kill feel?”

“He kicked me didn’t he?” Jack mused to his enraged partner.

“THAT WAS ENOUGH. THIS ONE DIES” Was the only answer, a fiery path behind him as he raced towards the murderer.

Jack stood up, pain was everywhere, clouding his senses, or, as he wanted to believe, allowing him, for the first time since he was born, to see clear.

“You will do no such thing my friend. Come back here.”

Jack was surprised when he tried to look at the flaming eyes that were now just an inch from his face. He was surprised because he had to tilt his head all the way upwards in order to see him. He realized that he should have noticed earlier, after each kill; after each soul that he devoured; after each inch he grew taller. But it all seemed too sudden to him now, too hasty, too… wrong.

“Science needs patience” he said to himself. Followed by an awkward feeling and an almost instantaneous “Where did this came from” exclamation.

“You command me no more, pathetic man. Once maybe, but now I’m far too strong. This one will die. And we will continue our mission. We shall not rest until the demons are banished, incinerated, dead.”

Jack’s eyes felt downwards, to his hands. They were flooding with blood. He could now see that it wasn’t only his blood, but the blood of each one that had perished from them.

The blood was pooling at his feet; a small red lake. And then he saw, for the first time, his reflection; a constant haze of chaos, a swirling recollection of images that swiveled around in wild shapes, never resting in one, always changing, always moving…

This wasn’t his face, he knew it, none of those were. He looked at the flaming man besides him and knew… who had stolen it.

“No. Not stolen. I’m still a tiny god. I created him. I gave him my face out of my own free will…” He though. And then he started laughing…

“You are right my friend. You are too strong to order you not to kill.” Jack said. ”So… I’ll just order you to kill another one, me. This, you cannot refuse.”

“You insignificant little worm think that you can blackmail me?” The fire’s maniacal laughter echoed in the entire world as his flames engulfed Jack.

He would have liked to say that he didn’t scream, to say that he endured it. But each and every cell of his body was thrown into a pit of lava. Hell was nothing compared to that.

Pain.
Torture.
Agony.

Jack was going mad from the chaotic inferno that was devouring his very being. His screams tore his mouth open, adding to the blood that he was shedding from all the pores in his body.

Pain.
Torture.
Agony.
…Madness.

Jack had to end it. He felt his bones being reduced to ash from the incredible heat, his lungs screaming for a last gulp of air, his mind exploding from the suffering.

But he knew. He had no chance to fight him. And he endured… Till he felt the heat subside, till Jack was just a trembling mass of flesh that lay to the cold cement, in a pool made from his own blood. And he felt him; he felt the demon doing the only thing he could do to stop himself from following the suicidal order that Jack has given him.

Jack knew his own demon, he was too afraid to die… and as such he felt him entering the prison Jack had made him so many years ago, when he was still a kid, when the demon was still a newborn, when he could contain him.

Jack sealed the sturdy metal door in his mind again. He looked at the pool of blood and saw him wearing his own face again, and fainted smiling.

~~~~~~~

Jack was standing in a dark alley, a place fitting for a homeless. His eyes were glued to the mailman. He would deliver a prized scholarship today, as he had the day before and the day prior to yesterday. Jack knew it. After all, it was him that has willed those in existence.

“You see my friend. We can still fight our war. We need no killings, we need not to become like them in order to win. Humanity shall arise not because her enemies will die, humanity shall stand up on her own two feet. We can simply be a helping hand.” He told to the voice in his head.

In a place were even darkness would have been considered light, two flames, like eyes, opened. “You will break again someday Jack. And I will be waiting… I’m always waiting for when you will need me again, when you will call me.”

Jack’s voice was tired, maybe it was intended for a joke, but it didn’t sound like that. “Yes my friend, I know. And believe me the day that I will call you shall come. For even I need to die, and you’re the only one that can kill me… one day, I shall call you again, and I’ll expect you to perform your duty to me…”



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