The Watcher
by Daniel Beadle - Saturday, July 28, 2007
“There was a time when everything seemed so damned important. Things mattered once. I mattered. Hh. It’s a human thing, to think that things matter. We all like to think that our lives, that what we do, all have meaning. That our existence is important somehow. It’s not. Nothing matters. Life is meaningless. I am meaningless.”Stalker rubs his face, slowly at first, then more aggressively. He sits alone, in the dark. His eyes are bloodshot. His face is overgrown with stubble. Tiny beads of sweat dot his forehead. He’s shivering as he puts a Blanchard in his lips, and lights the tip with a match.
Stalker's mind is cluttered with nonsensical thoughts, thoughts that don’t quite congeal. His hair is greasy and unkempt. He long ago stopped caring about his appearance. He sits alone, in the driver seat of his truck, gazing out the windshield in a subdued trance. It is night, and while the world sleeps, he does not. He cannot. He gazes with intensity, knowing full well that he is unhealthy. He is obsessed. He likes it, even if it slowly kills him inside.
Stalker watches. He waits. He thinks of her, and only of her. He tried to stop, at one point, at many points in his past, but he can’t. Everyday, she scrapes through his mind, unending. "What’s worse than rejection?" he thinks. "Replacement." Yes, replacement. He has been replaced, and he doesn’t know how to deal with it.
Unfortunately, Stalker is not one to live in the present, but forever in the past, and always scared of the future. He remembers the first kiss. He remembers the way she felt in his arms. It was like… relief. Like everything painful about living went away. And now it’s over. He cries here and there, facing the big nothing. Feeling empty everyday. Knowing that he can’t make a U-turn and be happy in that way ever again.
"No, that’s absurd," he thinks. "Sure, it’ll happen again. I’m young. But I can’t forget her. I won’t forget her. Even if it kills me." He watches as the lights in her room come on. He watches, and his heart quickens in his chest as he sees her hair move past the window.
Suddenly, Stalker’s stroking her hair, laying lazily next to her, feeling content, feeling satisfied. Feeling happy. "God, she’s beautiful. Never let her go. Never…" But he did. Life pulled them apart like an arm being torn from his shoulder, feeling the ligaments snap as the bones were wrenched apart.
Stalker listens to that inner voice taunt him, "You used to be someone, didn’t you? You used to be important. And now you aren’t. You are nothing, and now all you want is the long numbness to set in and set you free. But it won’t. Because all you can think of is her. She’s gone from you now."
Stalker sits in the dark and watches the lights go out. He returns to darkness. He’s familiar with it. And it always comes back to him. He sits alone in the dark. He drove five hours to get here tonight, and it’ll take just as long to return home. Was it worth it? Was a brief glimpse worth it? He reaches for the keys, and stops. "No. I’m not finished here. There is so much more to do…"
"Broken bruised forgotten sore... poisoned to my rotten core... too fucked up to care any more."--Trent Reznor
