Scilicet Insano Nemo In Amore Videt
Scilicet insano nemo in amore videt
- Everyone is blind when maddened by love.
PROPERTIUS, Elegies Bk ii, eleg.14, 1.18
It is very clear that this outcome was predetermined before I had even come into existence. I continue in an eternal limbo denied the relief of Death while Life forsakes me; there is no valley, no light but flickering shadows. Loneliness has continually pervaded my soul its melancholic pallor my companion; we have heard all of Love's commendations - its saviour-like features that endure despite the inevitable pain - and together sought affection only to intimately know the confabulation that is Love's ideal.
Ancient motions set forth have forged my temperament. Now my mind, my body, my whole being is possessed by one will, one need. All that I am, all that I ever will be has been formed to correct an error. In truth, an error perceived only by me. An error which, if not corrected, shall ultimately cause my demise.
*****
His head is throbbing; an incessant pain that numbs the mind and the senses which promises to overwhelm. His hands clutch the sides of his forehead as he desperately rubs the temples only to find no relief. It is more than a headache that plagues him. It is more than a migraine. It is a cancerous growth that swells in his head pushing the boundaries of bony skull. A cancerous growth of emotion. He has fed it with hatred and anger, lust and desire. Now it presses against his head in a painful fashion letting its presence be known. It is demanding and needy. It is taking control. Cells of emotion multiplying over and over again in an uncontrollable manner. A cancerous growth of emotion. He can feel it grow. He feels it overtaking him, gaining control - it is a battle he cannot win, it is a battle he’s willing to lose.
He turns on the tap watching the water spiralling down the drain. He feels unbearably hot. His head is pounding and his whole body is flushed. The cool splash of water does nothing. He’s burning up. Burning with rage, a fiery hot, persistent rage that refuses to cool. His brain is ready to explode.
Something has to be done.
*****
My naivete and impetuous youth had hoped that Love would act as a sanctuary. An il…allusion that Love was a preservative and an additive, its chemical composition enhancing one's storage life while adding flavour - salt in the fleshy, meat carcass that is me. Yet acquired taste has denounced my flavour as bland lacking the substantial saltiness that is required. In faint vagueness I recall the other; a perverted vexation in Life whose taint lingers within this immortal realm, perhaps quantifiable by the unique bond between us that my human peers have insistently remarked upon despite our distinctive disconnection. I have loathed my inherited foe - an opposition to the Love denied - his cunning mastery causing my mortal predicament.
However there is no expectation for sympathy - I acknowledge that my plight is beyond normal comprehension - instead I suffer the humility and scorn from my human peers; trivialities diverting focus upon my quest. Victimisation has only brought a necessary strength, to guard against others of predacious dispositions.
*****
Hidden in the shadows he watches them. He sees her long, lithe body stretch; a languid flow of movement full of grace. In this moment he hates her. He hates those silky brown tresses that fall to the side. He hates that crooked smile of hers and that characteristic roll of her eyes. He hates the way she chews nervously on the berry-coloured flesh known as her lower lip. He hates Joey Potter.
And yet he loves her too.
There’s too much of a list to explain the hows, the whys and the whens of his love for Joey Potter. It started when he was young and it’s grown from then. She’s everything he’s wanted, everything he has ever desired and for one moment in time he had been her everything too.
Now he watches as his best friend holds her in his arms. He watches his best friend kiss the lips that belong to him. He watches as her best friend runs his hands down the curves of her body touching places they should never have touched. He hates them both.
And yet he loves them both too.
He loves his best friend like the brother he always wanted. They were the best of friends. Pacey Witter and Dawson Leery. Inseparable. Dawson was the dreamer, Pacey was the man of action. They were both so vastly different in personalities and in wants and needs and desires. When they were fifteen Dawson was lusting after the girl-next-door, Jen Lindley, trying to make a fumbling attempt at a relationship with this cast away from New York. When they were fifteen Pacey was fumbling away in an illegal and sexual relationship with his high school English teacher, Tamara Jacobs.
Pacey has always played the hero to his ladies. In some way or other he’s saved them in that long lost gentlemanly fashion of a way. Tamara and Andie are prime examples. Dawson has always been the innocent in his relationships. The women are invariably much more dominant, stronger and more experienced. They seem attracted by his naivete the way Jen was or Devon or Eve.
They’ve never wanted or desired the same woman, at the same time.
Until now.
Until Joey Potter.
He feels the scar on his left wrist; thin, white, almost invisible. It is the remnants of their bond. Blood brothers. They swore an oath. They promised. An unbreakable bond that ties them even now.
He loves this brother whose blood was mingled with his at the age 10.
And he now hates him with a vengeance. He wants to tear apart the bond, wants to drain his brother’s blood from his veins.
He doesn’t want to share.
Joey Potter belongs to him and him only.
*****
With detailed precision I recollect such misery, glorious in it effects, dictating sensory overload - I am aware of long, narrow slits illuminating the darkness with strange, dusky orange, almost brown light. I had long wished for normalcy to rid myself of this throbbing emptiness - an ache that Love had refused to fill - and end this cycle of nothingness. As it is, such contemplation must be expelled and its avenues forsaken. Tonight a weariness of the soul sits heavily in the air and the irregular walls reluctantly cave upon the pressure.
*****
He remembers the tears. He remembers how she left him and returned to the other. The one person in the world she says she will always return to. She claims their future is linked.
“I love you.” She tells him. “But I love him more. We’re meant to be together. You’ve known that. I’ve known that. He’s known that. Deep inside all three of us know that this is inevitable.”
He watches, still at a distance, as she rests her brown hair on the other’s shoulder. Watches as another man kisses those lips. Watches as she accepts the kiss.
He’s tired and he’s sick of watching.
*****
I blink, profoundly aware of my resplendent surroundings.
The beginnings of sunset bade farewell to a fulfilling autumn's day - ordinary in its momentum yet contrasted by an explosion of contentment and unsurpassed delight - the clouds plastered haphazardly across the grey gloom welcoming the black, when I begin my long trek home. I return to my sanctuary away from the false beauty of day and into the comfort of blackness and the confines of my room. Imagined secrets of happiness pervade my mind as I dream of what has long been denied. A strange sensation haunts and lingers throughout the air in a random spiral-like fashion and I feel the day of reckoning humming in the air. My ears pricked at the sound, a hush tone whispering in sweet caress the promise of the untold and the forgotten and impulsively.
A haze of dust descends - misty and musty - clinging to the air with the distinct reminder of mould and decay - I pause, inhaling the fumes - it is overwhelming, a blanket of fog that suffocates as I drown in its staleness; yet even in this asphyxiation I am acutely aware of the sound that persists, more urgent, more desperate. It is a slight buzz warming my mind; my hearing is impaired by the low, distant ringing; my hair stands alert as my body shudders with the appearance of tingling prickles. There is, in my belief, a spirit of some sort that emanated out of the cloudy fog - vacant eyed and indescribable, more hallucination than real - in which its voice, small and thin, bounded from the hollow spaces of its throat and its bony cavities amplifying the sound and producing a flat tonal colour. Yet, I can not hear the words! only the countless ringing in my ears, fading then intensifying louder, Louder, LOUDER. This is not madness but anticipation. I know this spirit, this shadow that is bonded to me by forces unknown when I was only a babe. I know him. Long have I waited, nursing the years, abiding my time for this one moment. His influence has not gone unnoticed - simple additions imprinted the presence of error - tainting and thwarting my pursuit; desperate to escape reckoning - a brilliant coward. Those who study the human mind, examine behaviour as a science would declare me obsessed wrought between hatred and admiration for this man, no! creature before me. I would not admire the perverted deeds of a demon; his continual masterpiece - the interference of my will.
*****
In the darkness of his room, he sees his foe. The ghost of his best friend, translucent and barely visible. He snarls inhuman noises and mutters threats. His sanctuary has been invaded. Even as he tries to escape the image of his best friend and the love of his life they will not leave him alone. More specifically he will not leave him alone.
*****
We have battled unbeknownst to others, his frequent supervision of my daily activities leaving me chagrined, agitated and fearful of his nefarious schemes that will undoubtedly involve me. It is never competition but war; his intrusion and manipulation stemming from infancy, persistently haunting me throughout my entire existence. Sadly, I am unable to escape his grasp, his talent so unique! so far-reaching! that his presence embodied my dreams depriving me of human's habitual rest. He has manifested during sleep - a customary sneer of superiority as he robbed me of all those I had loved or might have loved; responsible for my degeneration as I sought to reclaim control - turning all into hellish night-terrors.
*****
He thinks back on the past. Thinks back to his own foolishness. Thinks back on the time he believed that Pacey Witter and Dawson Leery challenged one another. He didn’t realise the extent of the treachery back then. Now everything is revealed in new light. The helping hand is really a knife slowly sliding deeper and deeper into his back.
*****
His appearance is deceptively ordinary, his entire being ingrained in my memory; an intimate acquaintance - his distinctively pungent animalistic odour, the tilt of his head favouring the left, a haughty gait demonstrating an innate confidence - so familiar I have difficulty forming and later distinguishing my own mannerisms. In truth, he is my shadow - useless but always there and always watching - ready to betray in a telltale fashion. Moreover, there is a certain air of affectionateness incorporated in his endless survey which I have sensed; a degrading patronage derivative of a child with his favourite amusement. Such a connection is intolerable - loneliness is preferable - but I can not break his stranglehold. As it is, I, at length, grow more restless for an altercation, burdened for having allowed the continuance of this vile indignity. I bitterly despise his existence and now I take it upon myself to rid the earth of this gratuitous mistake. It is my intention to penetrate his discourteous facade of power, retaliating in violence at the outrage I have endured - my conduct would not be cordial; defiant of the protocols of war - such ordinariness belongs elsewhere.
Determinedly I have collected all manners of information, sought defects whilst awaiting an exposure of inevitable weakness - tolerating his unspeakable designs until the time was right, until the time is now. I have waited in earnest patience, his movements and actions intimately became so familiar to me they are now mine - his thoughts now clarify in my mind seeking union and I have no doubt that he too experienced this affiliation. Inadvertently I become entangled in a simple game of complexity - the hunted is the hunter is the hunted...
*****
He has made plans. He has followed them around so it is the three musketeers once again – Pacey Witter, Joey Potter and Dawson Leery. Yet he is in all essence truly the third wheel. It is not one for all and all for one. It is the two of them snuggled together and him alone in darkness and the cold of night.
He has followed his former best friend around and knows everything about him there is to know. He knows of the erotic dreams his best friend has at night; knows of the dreams filled with Joey Potter, her head cocked to the side, her body naked, warm and inviting. He’s watched his so-called best friend touch himself, down there, and gather a slow and steady rhythm that quickens until they both cry out in relief. Until they both cry in unison…“Joey.”
Maybe it’s their bond that has inexplicably joined them together. They are both of one mind, one need, one love…all encompassed in one girl. He begins to feel the same emotions, the same feelings, the same thoughts so that when his best friend kisses Joey, he too feel the tender brush of her lips against his own. Pacey Witter and Dawson Leery have become one. He knows this to be true.
*****
At night - confined in necessary bleakness - I would sit, purposely relaxing my body into a statue-stillness as I planned his various deaths - asphyxiation of any kind, no! drowning where water would cleanse his contamination. Moreover I have envisioned bleeding; vivid images of dark red almost brown mineral liquid liberated from the confines of baseness and diluted by clear water - agonising pain equivalent to my infliction.
The black that filled the silent nothingness of this hour exacerbated such moments, consuming the air electric with my desire for the occurrence of an altercation. His agony would…must be intensely numbing, the death excruciatingly slow to ensure the error is corrected; my perpetrator must appreciate my premeditation - his guilt finally recognised and payment exacted!
*****
They may be one person but it is reluctantly without any other alternative. He longs to kill his best friend, his other half. He longs to rip him apart, tear at his flesh until the muscles and tendons stretch and snap and break. He plots his death. He plots his demise. His mind is always planning. Always.
*****
Yet my eyes now scan my darkened surroundings, terrified that such a relished moment might be betrayed as my ears pricked, deciphering a woody creak that acknowledges a slight change in atmosphere. A spirit of some sort emerged from amidst a cloudy fog and intoned with flat resonance. I can not hear the words! only the countless ringing in my ears, fading then intensifying louder, Louder, LOUDER. This is not madness but anticipation. Long have I waited, nursing the years, abiding my time for this one moment, until now.
"Fiend!" my voice is low and husky, parched with prolonged anger. "I know you, I know your brutish intents and purposes. Demon! I will not submit, you cannot conquer me!"
He does not answer but raises his penetrating eyes upon me in silent regard. I will no longer flee from his inscrutable tyranny; he will plague me no more.
"Your unearthly form will not protect you. No more." I declare, scrambling from my position I pace the room. "No more. I will not submit to your evil propensities. You will dog me no more, nor tempt me with you uncertain favours! No more!"
"Have you no reply?" my mouth sneers in contemptuous victory, "Or shall you hover there attempting to infect me with your plague of sickness and defilement? I am immune! No more! NO MORE!"
He stands silent, unrepentant and unwilling to face his responsibilities, "Do you deny the torment you have caused me? Do you dare to refute your obligation? Long have I suffered for your mistakes because of your repugnant existence. Because you are an error! Everything, everything I have lost - countless, numerous…will you never be satisfied? How much more I ask? How long have you schemed, when will you finally cease this profanation? NO MORE! NO more…no more."
My voice is hoarse, aching from the exertions - my body wracking with sobs that my eyes can not weep. I thrust him upon the wall daring him to battle, yet his arrogance will not admit defeat and insolently refuses a strategy of defence. Roaring with mad wrath I inflict upon my perpetrator of ills blow after Blow after BLOW. His head lolls to the right yet his bloody face retained his gleeful sneer - it is not enough! Shakily I grasp a knife and plunge the blade into his hated torso gathering an unsteady, frantic rhythm. Blood spills as I drag his body into the bath - several jerky spasms hinder my progress - permitting his concluding breaths to dilute his blood-filled lungs.
I collapsed into the tub engulfed in stained water; my breathing undeniably clavicular for my expirations are uncontrolled. I feel or believe I feel myself drifting beyond. In the exhaustion that follows the extremity of my wrath I see - or so it had seems in my tired confusion - that the dimensions of the room are distorted, flickering and wavering until…a material change. Large mirrors at every angle; crimson and vitreous reflected nothing; no image, no twin of myself. Such emptiness overwhelms, my eyes blur unable to observe this terrible, infinite vastness.
Reopening my eyes and glancing down, beyond, I noticed that the villain's body has mysteriously disappeared. In the tub floats the smiling image of Pacey Witter, Joey Potter and Dawson Leery stained by blood, water and time – the three musketeers - fragmented and mine own limp body; alone.
*****
They find his body in the bathtub. “Suicide.” The police announce.
There’s no explanation except for the ramblings and the planned death of his other half. “He hated himself.” The local psychiatrist explains. “He saw himself as two people. One was the hated self, responsible for all his wrong doings and all the mistakes he had made in life. When he killed this perceived other self, he killed himself.”
His parents cried and say they wish they had been better parents. “We could have done more. We should have seen it coming.”
Everyone in town talks about the loss. “Such a waste.” They sympathise while tut-tut-tutting. “The boy had such a bright future. He had his whole life ahead of him.”
Two people stand alone amongst the crowds and mourn.
“Was it our fault?” Joey Potter asks.
“It was but it wasn’t.” Her boyfriend replies.
“There was a time I thought I would spend the rest of my life with him.” She confesses.
“I know.” Her boyfriend replies with a wry smile. “I know.”
They stare at a tree that contains a crude carving:
D.L., J.P. & P.W.
Best Friends 4eva.
“Forever is a long time.” Joey finally speaks.
“I loved him too.” Her boyfriend whispers. “He was my brother. My blood brother.” He stares at the almost faded white scar on his left arm.
“Is this a sign?” Joey cannot help but ask. “Are we destined to fail as well?”
“There’s no such thing as destiny, Jo.” Her boyfriend reminds her.
There are tears in her eyes as she nods her agreement.
He kisses her tears away and his touch has never felt so bittersweet.
“I love you Jo. I can’t promise you forever but I’m willing to try.”
“That’s all I need from you Pace.” She mumbles into his chest. “Just hold me a little while longer.”
They stand holding the other tightly as the sun fades leaving a shadow of darkness behind the tree. They wonder if it is the shadow of their dearly departed friend, Dawson Leery.