Our Brother Madness

Our Brother Madness Part IV

Part IV

Sometime later, Dimitri now sat upon a couch instead of punching the air at imaginary demons. Sweat lathered him like a down pour of rain would, he had taken off his leather jacket from the body heat that permeated in the room. Showing his green t-shirt that had been ripped in many places.

He didn’t know where Becca and Ryan were, but he didn’t really care at this point. He was tired so he just leaned back his head and closed his eyes, listening to the raging music of an unsatisfied people. He heard them dancing, not the thrashing and blurring fists, but rather a calmer one. People were going crazy, eyes rolled back in their heads as they let the musical waves put them into a trance.

This was where he belonged, and he smiled with eyes closed, “If only it could last forever, and I’d never have to leave. Leave back to that addiction or this lonely night. Leave back to that world. God, won’t you help me out?”

His voice wasn’t heard amid the booming music, just the way it never was and never intended to be. After a while, he stood up from the couch and looked around, a new local band was up and playing some melodic tune. Stretching his legs and taking a whiff in of smoke and sweat, Dimitri walked down the stairs where they sold beverages.

Down there was a table or two where people could sit, both tables were full, one of them hosting Becca and Ryan. The two were kissing each other, sliding soul saliva back and forth, tongues intertwining like lost lovers. Other men looked on, gazing in envy at Ryan’s luck, to land some a beautiful woman as Becca.

Dimitri sighed and got a root beer, using one of his last dollars to pay for it. His work hadn’t been good of late. They had given him no hours, and he was running dry of everything. Dimitri sat down at Becca’s table, and out came a smoke.

Up above the music played, “Every mother is a whore, every father a war.”

Then the sudden burst of chanting, it was the most beautiful sound Dimitri had ever heard. Before his two friends even realized he was there, he was already gone. Back upstairs to witness what he saw, he went up and saw a fight that had broken out.

A fat man was punching the hell out of this lanky kid. The kid was bleeding everywhere, but with a face of grimace he kept on coming at the fat man. He tried jumping around him and punching his sides, punching his face, anything to inflict what he wished, but it was to no avail. There was nothing he could do, as the fat man slowly turned around he grabbed the kid’s head and slammed his fist into it repeatedly. Blood gushed out and dripped to the floor, it was silent but the screams were not.

“Take any road you can to get home,” Came the music.

Then the chanting, the fat man picked up the kid and threw him across the room. Dimitri walked over calmly and with one punch he knocked the fat man down, “How does it feel to be so low?”

The fat man looked at him, eyes afire with an anger that spoke murder. He jumped up and punched at Dimitri furiously, again and again. The music rose in climax as Dimitri stepped back and evaded each dimwitted punch, then he grabbed one of the fat man’s fist and in the span of surprise he was able to get off a few shot’s to the man’s stomach. Ducking another punch, Dimitri came up and pushed the man away, letting out a fierce kick into the man’s groin.

Howls went up from the man’s throat as he staggered backwards. Dimitri did not relent, his fists were bleeding but he did not care, he would make the blood mix with this man’s. He punched the man again and again, until his nose cracked and red fell quickly from the nostrils, till there was nothing but black plains of desert around the eyes, until there was nothing but the dead gaze of a knocked out man.

Only then did Dimitri walked away, the little kid looking in fear at both of them.

The music played, “Was it the bastard cousin of Jesus? A jealous touch of a devil?”

And Dimitri said in the saddest of smiles, “It was the touch of the devil that drove me, dear music.”

He walked out to the back alley of Yester, people were smoking and laughing. Pretending life was never going to end as they sucked on cancer and snorted their deaths. Shadows darted across the scene, like the fiendish visitors of Dimitri’s addiction. The white spiders, beckoning him to come to them, resided here, they were everywhere with their eight-legged hell.

Dimitri sat against a building, sliding to cold night concrete. The shadows they darted towards him, they were hungry for new prey, so Dimitri pulled out a smoke and appeased his brother fiend, “Am I even a man anymore, or have I joined you, demon?”

Like always, he spoke alone and no one noticed what he said or who he was. As the smoke drifted up into the night sky, he wondered of who he was and what he was becoming. More and more he felt dead, decayed and yet still walking in man’s light. He did not feel like he was part of them anymore, they were still working their way towards to where he was. They were all working there way towards that paradise, that paradise of being no more, no more worries and no more sin, no more pleasure and no more pain.

Working their way to paradise.

While Dimitri, he was dying into it.

His tendrils of hope slowly turning ashen black and dying away. Withering like the roots of an old plant, or crunching up like an old banana peel. There was no more to his story, he would think, as the spiders landed on shoulder and whispered addiction to his mind. Even music couldn’t keep it out, nothing could it seemed. Nothing could at all.

“Hey Dimitri, long time no see,” Dimitri opened up his eyes to see an old friend, Chloe.

Chloe sat down next him, on the cold night concrete. She had a natural brown for hair, it was deep and dark and lively. Her face was pale and she wore much eyeliner like everyone else here. She had no piercing adorning her face, but that was fine to Dimitri. Her face was pretty one, she had some zit marks splotched here and there from days of youth, yet it didn’t seem to infringe on her beauty. Her eyes still sparkled that youthful gaze of the innocent and the uncorrupted, and for a second Dimitri did nothing.

Then tears came form his eyes as he lunged for Chloe in a great hug, “Oh Chloe.”

Chloe returned the embrace, Dimitri wouldn’t let go, “What’s wrong Dim?”

“Everything,” He whispered shallowly. “Everything Chloe.”

“Oh Dim,” Chloe said, she pushed him away so she could look at his face, her delicate hands on his shoulders. “You’ll make it, you always have.”

“No I haven’t,” Dimitri said. “I’ve made it to the sun just to die, Chloe. Everything I do just falls away, or everything I want to do is blocked by my own chains.”

“Chains?”

“Addictions Chloe,” Dimtri said, wide-eyed, he hadn’t admit his problems to anyone in a long while. “Every human has them, so why do I have the ones that kill? Why are my addictions so close to the devil’s bosom?”

She gave a weak smile as she lifted her hand to his cheek, “Ah Dim, a poet even in depression. Hey, you’ll make it out, if you try.”

“I can’t even try, it’s too strong, Chloe,” He replied.

“Things often look like they’re too big out there Dim,” She said with a loving voice. “People see thing sand they say they cannot, but how can they judge what they can do in the world? You cannot judge the world, Dim, for you can do anything. You can’t just base ultimate failure off of your own experiences.”

Dimitri looked away, craning his neck upwards so he looked towards the stars, “I can’t judge this world, Chloe. But I can judge the world that my experiences have created.”

He looked back to her and said, “Please.”

She looked at him, not knowing what he intended, and then there it was. He came in, trying to kiss her, but she pushed him back and said, “You know I can’t do that Dim. Too much history between us.”

Dimitri stood up and nodded, “A friend, a friend for life. A friend, a friend that will never be anything more.”

She stood up and said, “Dim, you know it’s not just because of that. I do love you! I really do! It’s just, not in that way. You’re my brother.”

Dimitri nodded and walked away towards the streets, “And for my brothers?”

The shadows darted all around him as he said, “Is it humanity I call brother, or is it these demons that follow that now have become my blood?”

He walked the streets, not caring where he was going or if he couldn’t find his way back to Yester. No one really could find Yester anyways, sure people knew how to get there, but when Dimitri went in, it was like living a memory then a life. By the time he had walked a few blocks, he had already past over thirty bars and brothels, all of them begging for more attention, more addiction.

Begging that men would give up their endless crusade, and just go in, just go in and take a quick dip. That if they did, they could go back out and fight the thing that they fought, with an impure conscience and images that would always beckon them back. Beckon them back into those seedy taverns, to make man’s will destroyed and crush the freedom that was humanity. They were marching soldiers of black against the unarmored priests of white, and they would slash while the priests cried no.

What was mercy to them? A few slaps and a deafening bludgeoning? What was life to them? But a few fleshy holes or poles with a drink there and here? What was happiness to them? The sounds of orgasmic pleasure, the sounds of the snorting, and the money-maker question, “How much for the rest?”

Amid this all, he walked by one church and Dimitri was curious so he went in. The place was filled with dirt and had been abandoned long ago apparently. There were some signs of life, probably homeless people living within it as best as they could. An old statue of Jesus rested in the center back wall, hands out to embrace all those who would ask him of it. There were veins of dirt coursing through the statue, years of neglect and sadness cracked along the face, long gouges in the God’s stomach as if trying to spill out the intestines.

Dimitri kneeled before the statue, “What have we become?”

“Who’s that?” Came a haggard voice and the scraping of shoes.

Dimtri stood up and turned around, out of the enveloping shadows of the unlit church, came a man into moonlight. A long white beard, scraggly and unclean, dangled beneath his chin. His eyes were old and looked as if they were going blind with white decorating it here and there. An old cane was the only thing he held onto, he looked at Dimitri and he shuffled in the patchwork of rags that he wore as shirt and pants.

“Who are yah?” He said in that haggard voice. “This is my home not yours. Get out.”

“Why must I leave?” Dimitri said looking at him. “I am Dimitri, I was just coming in here to see what it was.”

“Well now you have seen and now you can leave,” The old man said, his face turning dark with anger. “This place doesn’t belong to you people anymore! It’s mine! Got that? I found it, it is mine, no one else.”

He looked at the homeless man, “How do you survive here all alone?”

“I find my way,” The haggard man said. “No more questions, you must leave. Leave!”

The man pulled out a small knife, as if it would convince Dimitri even more. Dimitri didn’t feel pain like most anymore, so it didn’t phase him as well as the homeless person had hoped. With a great sigh Dimitri nodded his head and began to leave.

Dimtri pulled out his wallet and dropped his last fifty to the man, “Goodbye, brother.”

The man scraped his way over to the money and picked it up, and smelled it, “Ah fruition. Ah money!”

As Dimitri walked away, he couldn’t help but see the old man tear down the statue. And in it’s place, no holy thing, but an idol.

An idol of green


End of Part IV