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The rooms I walked into were never empty but flickered with the shadows ofa happiness I used to know,like a knife always twisting in an open wound. That made me different, and that made me utterly insane in a relentless search for the long-lost feeling — notlivingbutbeing alive.
I had felt dead for so long now that sometimes I needed to look at myself in the mirror to see that I was still breathing. Not that I ever enjoyed looking in the mirror. I hated the image staring back at me because it was reflecting the monster I had become.
I fed on others’ fears, each time in a useless attempt that they could smother my own, constantly searching for a salvation that I knew would never come.
Morality was a word I lost track of, and the search for any kind of impulse to make me feel alive had become a daily struggle.
Mynew lifebegan with two bullets in my chest.
One may think this is how life ends, but this was how I was reborn, or more precisely how my monster had been born. What else could result from such grief and trauma? From seeing your loved ones drawing in their final breath just moments away from when you took your own?
My parents lying there, cold on the floor... and the blood. There was so much fucking blood covering the Persian carpets. That’s all I could remember before stepping into my second life.
They said I was lucky I survived.
I’d say I was cursed.
I only got out of one hospital to be put into anewone.
Paranoid schizophrenia — the diagnosis written on my admittance paper.
Idiots, they left out PTSD, OCD... and plain fucking insanity.
I was seeing things and places that didn’t exist until the pills wiped them away... that on the days I took the pills, because on all the other days I just needed to fool everyone else around — including myself, that I was fine.
I was never fine. Not sure I would ever be again.
A year later, and with severe Agoraphobia ruling my life, I became a prisoner within unlocked doors. The fear of going outside amongst people was just another mental condition to add to the list, making impossible any kind of normal interaction.
I’ve isolated myself, cutting off any other connection with the outside world. Everyone, that is except for my personal butler, Alfred. Funny how he made me feel like fucking Batman, except I had no wings to fly, and was about as far from hero material as it got. Come to think of it, I had all premises to turn out to be the Joker.
All my nights were haunted by nightmares, endless bad dreams always playing at the edge of madness. Or maybe I was already mad, hanging on with false hopes to the fake promise of salvation.
At least the thought of having Alfred around kept me on track. He was as close to a family for me as it got, and when it came to true feelings, he was the only one that cared enough to accept my outbursts.
I guess I could consider that I created an addiction to knowing him around. Like he could save me from an endless nightmare, helping me awake from it.
That’s exactly why I feared him leaving.
Alfred had a sister living out of town, who he went to visit every other week. Those were the days I dreaded most, being unable to sleep until morning, hoping that the monsters in my head wouldn’t follow me into the light.
My fears pushed even Alfred over the edge, all the way to the point of asking for a Pleasure on my account.
I’d known about The Pleasure Room for a while but never considered using their services.
I could only imagine the ordeal Alfred went through just to get the courage to go there. The thought of him walking in and asking for the Pleasure made me smile, although the end result made me quiver.
Meeting another person from outside my closed circle was as unsettling as it was almost impossible to conceive. But it might well have been the only way to avoid total madness.
I didn’t have friends or even female companions to pass the time with. The whole city knew me, or at least about me, and I couldn’t force myself to look at the pity in their eyes, or worse, answer their questions. That was making The Pleasure Room deal much easier to accept. No questions asked and no strings attached. Just a companion to talk to and help me pass the time.
If only it was so...
I discovered I was much more similar to a wild beast than a human being, at least when it came to my socializing skills.
Just another gift, courtesy of mynew life.
I remember the moment my first companion for the night entered my room like it was just a second ago. I kept looking at her like I was some kind of a freak, constantly biting my tongue so that I don’t ask her to leave. We were supposed to talk, that’s all, just talk. But talking was the one thing I was absolutely failing at. The only sentence I could speak was asking her to take a seat in one of my armchairs where I had studied her in silence like she was a piece of art in a museum and not a human being. I did have many more pieces of art in my life than human beings after all.
