Bugs

"Bugs"



It is from no depression, illness or unexplainable reason that I plan to end my own life. I wish it so; had a set of dire circumstances befallen me that one would explain as irrevocable, inconceivable or ghastly, then I would feel better about my choice, or perhaps see a way out. This is not the case. My present mindset is not the result of such a phenomena, but rather from the knowledge that my every waking moment is a blasphemy on everything that is good. On everything that is whole. It is not something that can be taken lightly. That is why tonight, on October 20th, I intend to draw a bath, slip into its warm asylum, and slit my wrists, so this waking nightmare can be ended, and my penance for such a crime be paid.

This story starts, as most do, from a launching point, or a fulcrum if you will. My fulcrum is a man named Garret Yeats, a man whom I met my freshman year at college and to who my future, though short lived, is inextricable tied. Garret and I had both been students at Lee college, a community college in central Massachusetts. Lee, like myself, has its own ghosts. Those who have lived there for a year or two will notice its eagerness to keep a tight lip to new denizens or college students. Not since Jacob Hallman and his wife ascended the mysterious mountain and took with them secrets of witch-craft and devilry have the townsfolk been able to return to a semblance of normalcy. But that is a story for another time, and not one relevant to my present set of events. It was not because of any town history that I have succumbed to self annihilation, but rather discovering, rather acutely, that I was a monster. It took a revelation, of course, to realize this...a revelation from Garrett Yeats; and a revelation that I will damn him for even as I pull the razor against my wrist.

In college, Garrett had set his course of study upon the field of Entomology. The study of bugs equal in interest to me as a dentist’s root canal, I divided my energy fairly equally between journalism and parties. However, his deference for the topic was indisputable; he would often avoid campus events to study various tomes on ants, spiders or beetles, claiming their presence on this Earth was something that we, as men, take for granted.

“These insects have been around since the age of Dinosaurs, Alex,” he remarked as I prepared for debauchery on evening.

Honestly, I didn’t care less. Not then. His defense of insects of living, breathing animals that commanded our respect initially fell on deaf ears with me as something too ludicrous to be considered. I had but shed a tear when my own dog had perished years ago...why should I give any credence to an insect walking the Earth and what amount of pain he should feel? But this was what Garrett became obsessed with. He considered these creatures akin to humans, and I would often find him in varying stages of despondency should his hand end a fly’s life while brushing the keyboard, or should his foot step upon a carpenter ant crawling along the floor. What a fool, I thought. His idiocy over the topic was clinical. But that was then. Before I, like Garrett, saw too deeply into the issue. Much like a man who boycott’s a fast food once he discovers its contents, we both felt a similar psychosis when confronted with our oblivious, callous and indifferent extermination of an entire ecosystem. The thought of it now chills me to the bone! The razor lays sharpened, awaiting my stoke. My only fear, at this time, is that it won’t be enough; nothing would, it seemed, erase the absolute hatred of myself and the unspeakable deeds I was destined to commit by default. Oh God! The end cannot come soon enough.

It was one day, while walking through the quadrangle with Garrett that my destiny became undeniably altered. I was discussing a situation of importance concerning my grade in our Environmental science class, illustrating my point emphatically when he became alarmingly animated, shoving me to the ground as though I had not nearly been setting my foot on the ground, but rather murdering his very own brother. Striking my knee in the process I started.

“What on Earth is the matter with you?”

He expressed horror, as though my oversight was not one a man of any intelligence, no matter how limited, should make. “You were about to step on an anthill.”

“So?”

“You would have surely killed them. Is your life so much more than theirs, that this does not matter.”

“You forget yourself Garrett,” I said. “I surely did not intend such a thing. Now you have shoved me and bruised my knee.”

“Did Pontious Pilot intend to kill Christ,” he claimed, “or Peter seek to deny his name thrice? Yet these events occurred, their outcomes blasphemies on the very fabric of humanity. Your ignorant footstep, however benign in intention, carries with it such weight as cannot be measured. You need to be cautious; by merely walking you almost ended the life of a whole colony!

Foolhardy, to say the least, I wrote his words off to such hippie behavior as was expected of him. He often forgot himself. Should we cease to produce paper, because the tree may feel the axe? A ridiculous concept, I told myself. Then. But as time wore on, I did grow to see his point. It didn’t take long. Garret, with his infinite tree hugging behavior had infected me as the aphid infects the tree. I started slow, but quickly blossomed to a degree as to make me regret each step I made, or each breath I took. Could I really be that evil by default? Could my life, which I initially had thought full of ambitions, be a blasphemy against all of life? I tried to forget it but couldn’t I grew increasingly despondent.

The mindset that now leads to my self extirpation started simply, as most awful things do. Shaking Garrett’s nonsense away, I awoke one morning walking to the counter of my kitchen to prepare my breakfast when I happened upon a spider floating helpless in an inch of water that had accumulated in a coffee cup. The old me would not have though of such a thing, but Garret’s words had affected me to the degree where I found myself reaching in to free the thing. By such a simple gesture I had saved its life, and presently felt good. However, rather than to be a turning point in my life, or lead me toward a path of animal activism, it wholly ruined me. I didn’t see the good in life, but the evil; I wondered, walking to my counter that instant, how many insignificant, minute life forms I may have ended by merely existing. Did I step on a ant, or a mite? A larvae whose insignificance in my mind of the past now sought to protect? In the course of seconds could I have been responsible for the deaths of countless insects...countless LIVES? I found it hard to breath. How carelessly I had lived my life. My ignorance of the sanctity of life now flashed before my eyes much like a moment of clarity dangles in front of the alcoholic in the brief seconds before he reaches for the bottle yet again. I panted, grabbing my jacket, leaving my apartment in haste. I much needed air to clear my thoughts. Garrett’s voice haunted my every thought.

My sojourn did little to relive my soul. Shortly after reaching the sidewalk I discovered a shoe mark resting over the crushed body of a bee. Had I caused this cessation of life? My thoughts now plagued me. How many careless steps had I made...how many careless DEATHS! My reign of terror may be endless. By simply waking up and walking to and fro, had I inadvertently become a murdered the likes of Stalin? Oh Hitler? My extirpative reign may be endless! I found it hard to breath; my every step, my every second of life, which I had considered so benign...was my existence not strewn with hope and life but mere genocide. I had not intended it...I had not! But my lugubrious remonstrances did little to assuage my aching heart. I was a murderer not by choice but by design. I couldn’t help it and there was nothing I could do to stop it. By simply existing and simply walking I had become a monster. I resolved to fix it but could find no way to. Quite simply I hated myself and couldn’t bear to see my hypocritical and murderous face in the looking glass.

I then after found myself going out less and less. I couldn’t erase what I had done, but I could stop it, I resolved. I turned off my phone, refused to answer the door, and even shewed Garrett away on several occasions as he beckoned me. Damn him and damn his insight- he had brought me to this...he had ruined me! I was afraid to step foot on my own floor let alone venture out into the world ripe with fresh victims for my indifferent feet. A covey of food lay at my side; cold soups and dry cereal became cuisines; water my only hydration. Alas, this could not continue. Running out of food, I became desperate. I tried to fight it but couldn’t. I had to venture out; I had to move.

Pressing my accursed foot against the floor I felt the invisible souls I could be destroying. An ant lay dead near my bowl of corn flakes. Had I caused this? Had my had carelessly swept down in the night? Had my foot ended its life while I lay sleeping? My thoughts became my enemy. The though of my birth and my purpose became convoluted with what I saw as my unavoidable destiny. I had no way of redeeming myself for my crimes. What hope and future I had had been dashed; I was a murderer not by choice but by default, but a murdered nonetheless. I wept to myself, begging for a forgiveness that will not come. I alone endure this hatred of my soul, a hatred born of the utter immovability of ones self. I could not stop this nightmare. There was nothing I could do but accept my fate as a dictator of mass murder, nor could I look past my role on this Earth as anything more than a cleanser of not just one ethnic group but the unequivocal extirpation of a whole Kingdom, Phylum and Class! Monster didn’t cover it. Oh! How it barely began to explain!

Complaints of fellow students, and the failed attempt of the Resident Advisor to garner my attention was what brought Garrett to my door. I didn’t answer; I couldn’t. I heard his knocks for days, it seemed, but I couldn’t bring myself to face him. Damn him, and damn his irreversible effect on my life. That a chance may have existed for me to coast through life unaware of my own vileness, had that wretch not brought to my attention the despicable secret of my existence. Let him knock...oh, let him knock to his fingers tear!

There will be no note. No one, not even Garrett Yeats will know the true reason for my self destruction. He caused it, but he will not hear it. Perhaps his studies will not effect him in the manner to which they have me. It matters not: my life, for this one simple reason, has ceased to be tolerable. I must end it. Slipping into the warm bath, naked except for my un-erasable guilt, I run the razor against my wrist, not wincing in pain but relief as my life blood runs into the water and mixes around me. There’s not much time left, I grow weary. Ants pick at an apple I have dropped with a liberated vigor; never again will I cause their deaths, never again will I do harm.