Redemption

My hands shake as I rake my nails into my red, burning flesh. Red from the beating and the smacking caused by none other than myself. This self-inflicted torture is just the first step of many in my gentle glide towards insanity. My eyes search the room for the voices that echo in my mind. "Die you fucking waste of life!" It's screams break off the walls like water off a waterfall. I slam my head into the wall to eliminate the voice. That voice that won't let me sleep; that voice that carves up my happy dreams like some butcher chops up old pork. I cry out to God, but where he is I do not know. The voice stops; clarity for but a moment. I pray that it lasts. Rising to my feet I gaze across the room toward the door. Someone knocks. The knocking must have brought me back to sanity. I step toward the door. One step. Two steps. Three steps. I arrive at the door and peek outside to see what visitor has came to see me. This lowly servant of what ever God happens to be paying attention. It's a woman. She has long, red, curly hair that drapes down her back and curves toward the cleft of her ass. Freckles dot her face like spots of decay on an old orange. Beautiful is not the word. She's my height but much more diminutive. I open the door but not the screen."Hello" she says as she offers her hand toward the screen and me on the other side."Who are you?" I reply through clenched teeth. "In due time I guess. Why don't you come in?" She enters.Her beauty has woke up the demons and I can feel their voices boiling to the surface. I can see the future with these demons as my diviners. They tell me that she will come in and I can get her something to drink while she waits in the parlour. I will pour her a glass of Coca-Cola because she will ask for it if I have it. As I make idol chat and walk into the kitchen I'll search the spice rack for my special medicine. The medicine those fucking doctors decided that I needed. The one behind the Risperdal and the Seroquel. The one that is supposed to help me sleep at night. While I continue talking about the weather and things I'll be doing when it gets warmer I'll crush up the pill in my hand so it won't make any noise. She'll tell me that she is conducting a survey of this neighborhood for her high school as I sprinkle the crushed up pill into her drink. She is eighteen just about to graduate. Guilt tears through me, but the demons remind me that she is the kind of people that ignore painful experiences. She is probably the school princess on special assignment to seek out the weak minded and the fools. I will not let her turn me into a statistic. Not like everyone else has. She'll take the drink and pass out during a question about her survey.As I think about the future it all seems to happen. Everything I imagined happening occurs depriving me of the ability to interrupt it. The demons have won again. They have taken more of my life for their own sick pleasure, but they leave me with the mess. I have an eighteen year old girl lying on my couch in a state of delirium. I take her down to the basement. She's so beautiful tears stream down my face as I lay her down on the mattress I have set up at the bottom of the stairs in the corner. I turn on the only light by pulling on a switch attached to the socket. I tie her hands and legs to the poles I have drilled into the wall on either side of the mattress. It doesn't matter if she screams; no one can hear her. I was once afraid of this part of the house; the part beneath it. It always reminded me of my eventual grave and this is were I first heard them. They told me what to do back then. I couldn't fight it. There have been many eighteen year old survey girls since that time.I wake her up by smacking her into consciousness. She wakes up slowly and surveys her surroundings. That's when the screaming starts. This part always makes me feel like God. I have control over life and death. I choose. No more asking for help from some being that ignores me like my father did. No more self inflicted misery to haunt me. The demons have given me power over the God that denys me love and gives me guilt and hopelessness. She's crying. She's begging me to let her go. She is the kind of person that puts people like me in hospitals. She is the kind of person the pities me. She doesn't know that now I pity her. I am her God, and I pity her. I start ripping her clothes off of the bloody, welted body.Bile rises up from my stomach into my mouth. She's passed out again. I wasn't even able to get started. This sick feeling has consumed my body. It's happend before but never this bad. "Finish her you fucking idiot!" The voices have gotten stronger. I push myself onto the floor in front of the mattress. This isn't me. This isn't how I am. Visions and memories of when I was a child envelop my psyche and push out reality. I grab the back of my skull in some vain attempt to sheild my brain from the voices. This is my chance to end it all. I cannot go on living like this. I stand to my feet. I reach down and give her one more strong smack across the face to wake her up. She leers at me through her one good eye as the other bleeds down across her swollen face. I take my knife out from under the mattress. The knife that has had other uses in the past. She squirms and fights against the knots I have tied. "Eagle Scout" I say as I reach the knife toward her. She screams out as I cut the ropes tied to her hands and feet. Dumbly she stares at me. "Get the fuck out!" I scream and point toward the stairs. She stares at me for a moment more. "Leave before I kill you. Leave and run home, now!" She jumps up and runs up the stairs never even looking back. It's amazing how much energy she had left.I fall backwards toward the far wall. The voices laugh into my ears. It won't be long until she stumbles home or crosses paths with a law enforcement officer and tells her gruesome story. She'll win their pity in the courts by being brave enough to point out her attacker and tell her story on tv. I'll be the monster that had a guilt trip, or most likely she'll make up some story about how she fought me off and escaped. Either way I'm fucked. I slide my back down the wall and fall into a sitting position. The voices laugh into my ears as I turn my empty hand over. Guess there's no hope for me in this world. I hold the knife over my flat wrist. Best to go down the street than across it. I slice into my wrist and watch the blood trickle, then pour out across the basment floor. The voices laugh until I can't hear them anymore, and maybe after.