Fiction: The Individuals

By Tom Stuckey

 

The curse is that most men and women think, they alone,are right. Continually convincing themselves that everyone else has misplaced reality. Even more scary is when a group of people get together in collective beliefs, and that it’s nowtheir duty to make sure other people believe them. I am also aware that I am an individual, and that I have the curse to, butI am also aware that I have multiple personalities inside ofme. I was first made aware of them when i found one day that i was hitting myself in the face, nearly unconscious, when to excuse the pun, it hit me; who is hitting who? On closer inspection, and when i got sober and things got quiet, there was also a voice that would not be mine, talking and telling me things. It would range from small hurtful put downs to near catastrophic take overs, inciting violence towards others. So which voice is talking to you now, you might ask? Well,it’s the one who I will name Mack and the voice i declare as the ‘real me’, the other voice has the name Vincent. This discovery also made it clear why I don’t have any fixed beliefs, or if I do why they are changed quickly and without warning, I'm like a mirage, the closer you get, the less real it is. I have feelings like compassion and I know not to hurt others or animals or the sky, but the other part of me wants to scorch the sky and see it burn down to ash. I also go to therapy and i was told I had a dissociative disorder that is associated with CPTSD, and this can also alter reality. I think we are up to speed for now, and you might be thinking why is Mack telling me all this, well here's why; it appears that Vincent has made me kidnap my boss and we are currently locked in one of the communal office spaces and has a knife to the throat of - let's call him Brian. This is where it gets blurry for me too, so bare with me, us? 

“Get up against the fucking wall you pig cunt, i’m going to cut your fucking face off and wear it so you can talk to yourself, I’ve locked the door so no one will disturb us, turn around and give me your hands…. there, good, sit.”

Ok ok, let's see what I last remember about interacting with Brian, we had a team meeting last week sometime I can’t remember when precisely, and he was using me as an example of what not to do in terms of contracting out grade A loans to…well let's not get into the boring details. I remember him using a projector and making me turn the slides as he went through criticising, and smugly sniggering at his own jokes like so many times before, and others were joining in weather loyally or as individuals and it became quite unpleasant. I felt the room get small and my vision go blurry and extreme heat and then blackness.

So that was last Friday and today is Monday and Vincent must have been planning this all weekend. He has overpowered me and now I must watch this unfold? Brianlooks really scared and I think he just pissed himself, yep, he did. There was only one person who works here that I like and that June, she is kind, when others are not, she is fun, when others are spiteful, and the only genuine person here. She is currently looking through the reinforced windows with a look of horror, that says everything about this situation. 

“Brian now you are going to have to hold still for this next part because it’s going to really fucking hurt, you know now you look like the true coward you are, not talking shit now ay Bri. You know if you push people too much, you might one day be faced in a room with a maniac like me.”

“AHHHHRRRRHHHHHHHH!”

There is a part of me that agrees with Vincent, this man is no good, he’s a bully, he made June cry numerous times just for his own amusement. He is sinister and anti-life, put here to sadistically draw life from you and pump it into the industry. They say this industry is heartless, but i disagree, it has killed more than cancer, and taken the hearts of many. But this is, I agree too much, and there’s no coming back from this, a one-way ticket too jail? prison? there will be newspaper stories, uprisings, social media outcries, baying for blood, my blood. Social media is the worst of it, the height of ruthless banalityand hate, the modern-day farm for individuals to tare and gore at anything that's left that you could call real. It’s the downfall of man, where wars are started in the hearts and minds of many. 

“Now Brian i want you to look at me really closely and tell me in your own words what you make of these slides.”

Vincent has brought a projector in and is lighting up the walls with the images from the meeting last week, there’sblood and skin on the floor, oh this is bad, Vincent is looking through his mask and I can’t tell the expression on Brian’sface it is haunting; I feel sick. The light is terrible, glaring down the hall.

In extreme stress the 'I' no longer exists in any form, there is another place, a place where maybe God is, and He’s cut himself off from this place, wanting nothing more to do with it, and now waits for anyone and everyone to returnsomeday. Sometimes there were opportunities to stay here in the light and the warmth where thoughts and feelings areghosts and there are no decisions, no rules, no right, nowrong. I didn’t know which day would be the day when Istayed in this place, just that the choice would be made for me, it has always been that way. That was the violence in allindividuals every day, every minute, walking and talking and screaming in greed, in anger and envy - that they thought theyhad a choice, that they knew best. Here the violence ends.

Tom Stuckey is a poet from Devon in the UK and has been published in Punk Noir, Bristol Noir and A Thin Slice of Anxiety.