Post by Benjamin Atreyu on Jan 26, 2014 17:53:44 GMT -5
The blood dripped from the knife so expertly, it was almost as if it was all meant to happen, as if it was all supposed to take place on this night, like fate was leading up to this. The serrated edge of the blade pulled away easily from the flesh; the thrust had been clean, managing to avoid getting caught on any bones, but that one simple penetration wasn’t enough, the body was still struggling, so again the knife went in, and again, and again, and again, until the body went limp, went quiet, a head filled with silence, the man on the receiving end of this unfounded violence was dead. The murderer listened as the last bit or air escaped the lungs of his victim. Forever gone was the individual who’s intimacy with the blade had made for a blood-soaked and sudden romance. The murderer pulled his blade once more, but found it would not give; shit, he had pressed his luck. He let go of the handle and the body and watched as both sank to the floor in a sort of dramatic end fitting for any big screen.
“DEAR GOD, BENJAMIN,” cried Seth Dominics, having witnessed only a mere fraction of the event as he barged into the room, “WHAT HAVE YOU DONE?”
“Grab a rug,” Benjamin Atreyu replied calmly as he looked down at his work admiring the way the crimson tide spilled from the body and rolled across the floor in passive waves. At first he thought that site would have made him sick, but quite the opposite, he found a sort of supreme joy shooting through his body as the full of weight of the crime he had committed finally reached his ears. There was no panic, no nausea, only joy to have finally done it.
“What?”
“Get me a rug,” Benjamin repeated himself, there no rush in his voice, even as he went over the words again. He continued to repeat them in his head, letting the words signify exactly what he was about to do; he was going to hide the body. He felt a tad disappointed for two reasons; one, he would have to pack this body away and cease looking upon his artistry, two, he felt it was an admission of a guilt he didn’t feel; to have to hide a body that he would have gladly displayed upon his balcony. Never-the-less, the law was a fickle thing; it claimed a right to happiness, but once one achieved that happiness, it could be punishable by death.
“Benjamin, do you understand what you just did? Who was that guy? What’s going on?” Seth’s frantic vomiting of words grained against Benjamin’s ears, spawning a small headache which promised to blossom if his friend refused to cease asking question. He slowly turned to his friend and walked over to his friend with a slight smile, as if it were to let him know that everything would be alright. As he reached his friend, he placed the knife in the panicking man’s hands. The friend proceeded to look down as the bloody object just placed in his grasp and had to suppress that threatened to wake all of existence.
“Seth, my dear friend, I am completely aware of what I’ve done, but now we must move quickly. Since, by placing that knife in your hands, I have made you an accomplice, I suggest you get that rug; the one in the living room, don’t doddle, we have much work to do tonight and very little time to do it in,” Benjamin turned away once more and moved back over to the body, squatting down to get a more intimate view of the deceased and the many holes that had made him so. The nice suit the man had been wearing, one that had reminded him of when Blake had managed him in the old “New God Inc.” days, was soaked in the scarlet ooze that was pouring forth from the many faucets that Benjamin had installed in his aforementioned rampage upon the poor victim’s body. Benjamin’s gaze wondered up and met with the lifeless eyes of the currently-marionettee-sque-body and felt a twinge of anxiety as they gazed right back at him, but he managed to quickly regain his composure as he realized that those mirrors inside of his skull could only reflect, they could no longer be peered through. This thought might have put his heart at ease if it didn’t suddenly feel him with his own fear; his fear of dying, to no longer be, and in the act of no longer being, to no longer experience future discoveries and joys. No! No regrets, no mourning, this had to happen, do not go back on it now!
In fear of being overwhelmed, he switched his gaze over from the eyes to his hair. He wasn’t sure why, but there was something about a body being dead that made the hair seem strangely off. When attached to a body with a beating heart, each strand of hair seems to be a part of a single mass, but once the life had left those eyes (those eyes will never see again, forever without sight, to never experience another morning) each hair seemed to become its own individual piece on top of a mass graveyard of dead skin, much in the same way that an animal being dead might make its fur seem dirtier somehow.
“Benjamin…,” Seth’s timid voice broke Benjamin’s concentration and forced him to turn away from the body. Seth had managed to roll up the rug in the living and drag it all the way here. It was a nice rug, Benjamin would almost regret getting rid of it, but it would be the only one big enough to fit the body in, and survival was far more important that some long forgotten decoration. Over time he would forget the rug in which he used to hide the body.
He stood up, stretching his legs to allow the blood to pump through them again. Again, as if nothing was wrong, he calmly made his way over to his frightened companion and put a hand on his shoulder. “Don’t worry, everything is going to be okay. Now, let’s unroll this rug.” He was going to take his steps on at a time with his friend, if he could avoid mentioning the body, the smoother this would go; not that the body had left either of their minds, but to utter it would make it all to real and continue to work Seth down until he completely lost his nerve and bailed, something that Benjamin couldn’t afford to let happen.
Both of the men reached down and pushed the rug along to help unroll it. When it was fully unraveled, the entirety of the rug stretched from the door to the far wall, a feat easily accomplished in a small guest room. Benjamin looked over the rug, as if trying to measure out where the body would have to go in order to fit. After a moment of calculation, Benjamin figured his best bet was to place the body at one end of the rug and roll it along until it was wrapped snug inside the fabric coffin of sorts; a sort of cartoony solutions as he recalled a Looney Toon episode where a similar incident occurred, but instead with a living character (living, not dead, still breathing, breathing no more, never again to breathe, he is dead, he is dead), but that was no matter now, what worked worked and he wasn’t about to question anything that would help him get out of this without a life-sentence.
“Okay, now I need you to-“
“No,” Seth interrupted, his eyes turned away as to not accidently gaze upon the corpse which sat still on the far wall, as if mocking the heart-racing nature of the situation by remaining still and unaffected (his heart doesn’t race, of course not, his heart doesn’t even beat, fuck, keep your head together). Benjamin sighed at his friend’s uncooperative nature.
“Seth, please, we need-“
“No, fuck you, I’m not going to do it,” Seth interrupted again, this time with a more fiery reproach, “I won’t do it. This is wrong, who the fuck is that?”
“Seth, that’s not important right now,” Benjamin replied, gritting his teeth as he attempted to keep his cool, “if you don’t want to help move it, that’s fine, I don’t really care, but if WE get caught with a dead body in my house, we’re both going to jail.”
Seth looked over at Benjamin, a sort of look that pleaded “please, don’t make me do this,” but Benjamin just shook his head. After a moment or two, Seth’s glare went from Benjamin’s hesitantly over to the dead body. He felt a sort of disgust rise up in his bowels, threatening to burst forth all over the floor. Benjamin hoped that it wouldn’t come to that as it would be hard enough to clean the blood, adding stomach acid and lunch into the mix would not make things any easier. Seth managed to retain the content of his bowls before looking back at Benjamin and gesturing a sort of submission, giving himself over to the scenario at hand. It was not a happy moment, making his friend give in like that, but Benjamin smiled anyways as they both moved over to the body and positioned themselves in order to move it. Benjamin shifted the body so it would be lying flat on the ground, but in doing so he felt a wetness on is hands and quickly realized it was blood. His thumb and fore finger swirled it around a bit before flicking off what he could.
Benjamin stood at the head of the body while Seth stood at the feet. Benjamin reached down and again found himself staring into the eyes of the man who had once been, and felt that same anxiety from before, the one that showered him in a sense of slight guilt for taking away the life of another, but he quickly shut it out and grabbed hold under the arms waiting for Seth to do the same with the feet. He watched, but his friend just stood there, his silence horror etched onto his face with fine detail.
“Seth, we don’t have time for this,” Benjamin yelled at him to break him from his trance. He didn’t want to raise his voice, he didn’t want to be angry, he wanted to dwell in the happiness of relieving some of the stress that had been sitting on his shoulders for the past couple of weeks, but it seemed if he didn’t start rushing and yelling, he would have to reminisce about this moment in a tiny cell as he waited for his last meal, and that was not something he was particularly keen on having happen.
“Huh?” Seth broke from his dead(get it?)pan gaze and suddenly remember what he was supposed to do. He squatted down and reached out the legs, a visible disgust forming on his face as he touched the dead body, as if he were a nine year old being forced to eat broccoli, but despite his disgust, he wrapped his arms around the legs of the body and waited to move on Benjamin’s mark.
“Okay, one…two…three!” Both men lifted at the same time, almost thrown off by how heavy the body was, deceptively light as it had looked, but that kept hold and quickly shuffled over to the rug, placing it down gentle on one end, as if forgetting the man was no longer among the living. Benjamin grabbed hold of the rug, looking over and motioning for Seth to join him, which he did reluctantly. The rug was just wide enough to enclose both the man’s head and feet as they rolled him up, assuring them that no one would be able to see any part of the body as they carried out of the house, when that moment came to pass. Once the rug was fully rolled up with the new cargo inside, Benjamin stood up and took a deep breath. Seth just fell back onto his ass and looked up at his friend, still in complete disillusionment over what was going on.
He had known Benjamin for at least seven years; never once had it occurred to him that he would have the capacity to kill someone, especially in such a violent and coldblooded manner. What had the man done to make Benjamin go over the edge? Had the man done anything at all? Was Benjamin going crazy? Would he killed again? Was Seth safe being in the same house as him? All these questions raced through his mind in a sort of jumbled mess, one over lapping the other as he tried to make sense of the whole ordeal, unsure what to make of the events as it seemed he was still missing so much information.
Benjamin began to walk out of the room and Seth quickly followed behind him, still so many questions buzzing in his brain, but one had to have answered right then and there, “where are you going?”
“Right now? Going for a drink, never realized how hard moving a dead body was going to be. Want one?”
“A drink?”
“No, a dead body…Of course a drink, you stooge.”
“No, I’m more concerned over the fact that there is a puddle of blood in your guest room right now,” Seth was a few steps behind Benjamin, trying to keep up as Benjamin briskly walked down the hallway, as if the day was like any other.
“Oh don’t worry, A couple of towels and some cleaner will do the trick I’m sure.”
“That’s not what I meant. You killed a man, he is dead, fucking dead! You stabbed him. I watched as he slid down the wall with you standing over him. Can you explain to me who he is and why I am not wrapped up in a possible homicide charge?”
“Well, first off, I’m very aware that he is dead, I’m very aware that I stabbed him, and I am very aware what you saw,” Benjamin replied, the calmness having returned to his voice, “secondly, there won’t be a homicide charge if you help me with the body, no shut up and join me for a drink.”
“Benjamin, I’m going to ask you one last time, who is he?” Seth grabbed hold of his shoulder and jerked him around so they were stopped in the middle of the hallway facing each other. Benjamin just sighed and rolled his eyes.
“You know, for a comedy relief character, you sure are being a buzz kill right now,” Benjamin turned back around and continued on his way to the kitchen, “if I must answer your question, though its more of a ‘who was he’ instead of ‘who is he’ now, the man currently rolled up in my imported Persian rug is my writer’s block.”
“Wait, what?” Seth followed behind, nearly tripping over himself as he couldn’t believe what he had just heard, “would you care to repeat that for me?”
“My writer’s block,” Benjamin repeated, but the inflection was still the same, as if somehow what he said wasn’t completely mad. Seth felt a steadily increasing uneasiness as he followed Benjamin.
“You do realize how impossible that sounds, right?”
“You’re telling me. You should have seen my reaction when I found him walking around,” Benjamin chuckled as they emerged into the kitchen, he quickly walked over to the fridge and pulled out a bottle of cold water.
“Think about what you’re saying.”
“I have been thinking about it, I’ve been thinking about it since I grabbed the knife I used to kill him. Hell, it still sounds crazy, but that doesn’t mean he isn’t currently in a cloth burrito in my guest room. You sure you don’t want anything to drink, I mean, we aren’t going to be stopping anywhere on the way.”
“On the way to where?”
“To disposing the body, got a friend who works in a morgue who owes me a favor. I called him not to long before I grabbed the knife, no questions asked. We’re going to cremate fucker so we’re sure no one will be able to find the remains, great right?”
“You called him BEFORE you killed the guy?”
“Well, I wouldn’t call it a guy, more the manifestation of a concept that both you and I thought was merely a construct of the human mind before tonight, but yes, I did call my friend about it before hand.”
“That’s first degree murder! Its predetermined. You let someone know you had plans to kill someone! If we get found out, that could be a life sentence, or worse, the death penalty.”
Benjamin took a sip of his water, “In all fairness, I often considered life imprisonment worse than a death sentence.”
“How can you be so calm about this? Our lives hang in the balance!”
“Well, then I guess we’ll just have to make sure we don’t get caught then. If we make it to the morgue then we’re home free.”
“What if your friend blabs?”
“Trust me, he won’t. If he did, then I would make sure that our body isn’t the only one they would find off the record.”
“I really don’t want to know what you had to do in the past to get this favor.”
“Oh, don’t be so ridiculous, he is a friend of my cousin, I invested in his business, the very one that’s going to save us tonight, and he came up to me with the proposition that if I needed any ‘problems’ to disappear, he could do it. I think he used to be a hitman for the mob or something, very Italian-y.”
“Great, first degree murder, attempting to dispose of evidence, and now a link to the mob; Why don’t you just get it over with and kill me to?”
“Don’t tempt me, if you keep bitching, I just might,” Seth quickly feel silent to Benjamin’s reply. Benjamin just looked over with a queer expression on his face, as if unsure what had just been said, “oh, for the love of God, I’m joke. I’m not going to kill you, you still have to help me hide the body, haha.”
Benjamin’s joking nature did very little to set Seth at ease as he was worried that maybe he might just end up like the man in the rug by the end of the night. He had never seen Benjamin so mentally unstable before; drunk, depressed, angry, but never…insane? He kept a safe distance as he waiting for him to finish his drink. It seemed he was getting no closer to answering any of his question and with what little information he did know, it seemed that the answers he did get only managed to breed more questions. He just stood there, thinking about how he could possible get out of this; reasoning? No. Running? No. Hiding? No. It seemed as if he was stuck there, watching his friend grow increasingly mad as the minutes ticked on.
“How do you know he was your writer’s block?” Seth asked, hoping that this might shed some light on the ever-so-dark situation at hand. He knew that Benjamin wasn’t in his right might, but he needed to know to what degree did his insanity extend.
“Well,” Benjamin turned the question over in his head for a few short minutes, “I guess I could feel it, you know what I mean? I was walking around my house when I saw him standing in the door way just staring at me. I ask him what he was doing there, but he didn’t say anything. I told him I would call the cops, but he still didn’t move. I tried to push and shove him, but he just wouldn’t leave, but that’s when I realized who he, or it, was. It was my writer’s block, it made all the sense in the world, almost like a sort of metaphor, my inability to move on, the way no words came from him, he was the embodiment of my writer’s block.”
“So, at no point did he say anything to confirm this theory of yours?”
“No, he just stood there, eventually I went to my phone and made the call to my friend, before calling you to come over. After that, I knew I had to go through with it. It was this urge coming over me. The only way I could explain it is that it was like a sort of inspiration, the antithesis to the writer’s block and that when I knew it had to happen. I moved him over to the guest room, he didn’t put up much of a fight as long as I didn’t try to make him leave. I came to this room and grabbed a knife and the rest is history, but let me tell you something; the feeling of sticking that knife deep into body was one of the greatest experiences of my life. After years of fighting that fucker day after day, I finally got him back in the best way. When I heard that last breath of air escape his lungs, I smiled involuntarily.”
“Stop, please stop, I don’t want to hear anymore of this.”
“Seth, you couldn’t possibly understand what it’s like-“
“To take a life?!”
“No, to finally rid yourself of the burden of your writer’s block. Goddamn it, Seth. I’m not just a wrestler, I’m not some rich smug asshole, I’m a fucking poet. When I go out there and face the wrath of that crowd, I am speaking poetry to them, whether or not they want to listen. Think what it must feel like to not know what to say when all you have to fight the odds are words. Think about how empty this world would feel if I didn’t have a way to express the thoughts fucking destroying my mind. I’ll sit night and day, try to assemble something close to a rational thought and nothing will come out! It’s insane making! To speak, but all that can pour forth is hollow bullshit that you put out there because you need to say something, anything, because it is better than being silent.
---“I’ve struggled FOR YEARS to fight it, but I’m always on the losing side, and now, after years of talking, I’m running out of things to say, writer’s block has been circling me ever since I came to WCF and its waiting for the right moment to finish me off. I’ve been sitting around, waiting for the day it finally kills me, but that’s the thing, I got to it first, I shoved a knife into that fucker over and over again until he stopped moving, and you want to know what, Seth?”
“What?”
“I feel better than ever. My mind finally feels at ease, being able to move freely and speak without the feeling of an impenetrable wall keeping me from the perfect word choice. It is such a weight off of my shoulders that my only regret is that I can’t do it again. It’s like finally being able to breathe after years of being deprived of breath, to be able to love what you think again, to be able to look at the world with a renewed sense of passion after years of living under the same oppressive rock, listening to it whisper sweet atrocities in your ear, telling you how it’s going to break you and leave you dead where no one can find you, this is my final revenge, Seth. If only you could understand that. That wasn’t a person, it was a monster, writer’s block is the bitch mother of all failure in this world, the great indescribable feeling that keeps men from reaching their true potential, and now I’ve killed mine, nothing will be able to hold me back, because now I can see the world beyond just fact and numbers.
---“See, Dr. Reymus is not a man of foresight. He can see the world as it is, because that is what his ‘facts’ permit him to do so, but I can see the world for what it is, because I can add it all together and stretch beyond mere knowledge. See, Reymus has no imagination, he simply see things as they are, but he is a man of science, so I can’t blame him, but I am a man of the written word; a believer in the what-could-have-been and what-might-be. Facts are so boring, it gives people the impression that this is the only way things could have ever been, but I know better.
---“Let’s start with where it all starts, the universe as a whole. The unimaginative man sees it in such a way that it simply how it is, that there is no other way it could have been, but take someone like me and force me to think about it long enough, and you start seeing all the little cracks in that idea. The universe could have been anything it wanted to be; there was no rule maker who set it down in stone that gravity had to work how it did, that physics had to go by any law of Newton’s, that the human biology had to be anywhere near as complex as it is. If all had been different, if the universe been created under a different theme, that would be the only way many of us could imagine it being, that way would be the ‘only way’ it could have been. Do you see what I mean?”
“I-I…” Seth trailed off, he was completely lost in Benjamin’s rambling, none of it made any sense to him and only served to make him wearier of Benjamin’s mental state. These are the words of an insane man, right? This is what people point at when they want an example of the kind of people you lock up in an asylum. He couldn’t respond. If he said he didn’t understand, he wasn’t sure what Benjamin would do next.
“Okay, that might be a bit too much to get your head wrapped around, I understand. Let me try something a bit closer to home. In fact, let me start try home itself; the good ole’ United States of America. This country has been crafted by a series of very particular events, ones that have come to form is “DNA” if you will, the very thing that makes the US, the US. Now, imagine if one of these events had not taken place, or had gone the other way; what do you think the result would have been?
---“Think about the revolutionary war. If that had not gone in our favor, if we had not managed to learn guerilla warfare tactics from the Native Americans to give us a distinct in the battle field, there is a very good chance we’d still be a colonial country to this day. Look at India, they were under British rule until the 1940’s where they had finally managed to make themselves and independent nation, freeing themselves from the cultural oppression afflicted upon them the monarchist governing. Think about it, still being taxed without representation, looked down upon as a little brother country attached to a bigger nation. We would have no individual nature, we would have no banner to call our own.
---“Or think about the civil war. What if all had not fared so well and the north had not managed to recapture the confederacy to join back with the union? Slavery would still exist, the confederacy would be the dominant power in the country and all those who would speak against might be slaughtered under the whim of such a state so devoid of human empathy. I would think such a hellish state may cause such uncontrollable violence and ignorance that our country would be looked at as more of a tribal pack of barbarians instead of a greedy super power.
---“Let’s even look at a tragedy instead of a victory, but a tragedy that shaped this country greatly, Pearl Harbor. If you recall, we, as a country, we choosing to stay out of the war in hopes to stabilize our collapsed economy, a rough period in our history for everyone, but one day an event so awful occurred that it shaped the United States for years to come. A group of fighter pilots from Japan had crossed our seas unnoticed and managed to bomb one our largest navy bases, leaving many dead and countless more incredibly wounded. Not being one to take being attacked lightly, we used this as motivation to join the war effort and fight on the side of the allies in World War II. The result being that the Axis was defeated, our economy was saved, and our banner flew higher than ever. Now, think if Pearl Harbor had not occurred. There is a good chance we would have never gotten involved in the war effort, at least not before it was too late, and the Axis would have been able to get the upper hand, leading to a fascist future where those not of Aryan descent would be massacred by the millions, even billions. Then of course, there is the story at home; if we aren’t overpower by the Axis as well, our economy would still be in shambles, leaving us as a broken nation that had once been great.
---“Okay, not lets jump a bit more into the present. A few weeks ago, Violet and I faced each other one-on-one in a confrontation that had ended with me on top, of course. As a result of my victory, the doctor saw to it that I would be granted what was rightfully mine, a shot at the United States title. Now, imagine if I hadn’t gotten picked to face Violet, some random Jobber probably would have gotten his ass kicked, leaving Violet the number one contender to the US title. What would this result in, probably another victory for the Doctor, probably a month longer reign, probably more arrogant spouting of his faux-intellectuality…”
“What are you getting at?”
“WHAT AM I GETTING AT? I’m getting at the fact that I am completely free from the restraints of a closed mind and I can see the endless possibilities of what could be. What I’m getting at is the fact is that in a million possible forms of the past that could have taken place, I am in the one where I have the chance to fix one of the biggest mistakes this company has ever made, giving the doctor the US title. Don’t look at me as if I have been rambling like a mad man. My point is clear, for years I have seen what the rest of the world couldn’t possibly imagine, I can see what may someday come, but finally I will be able to show the world this exact same information and then they won’t have to look at the world as so set in stone, that they don’t have to stew in their filth anymore, they can change the future to be anything they want it to be. These simpletons will finally learn, I will be their teacher, their king, their god, and they will praise me.
---“The doctor can only see what is, he cannot make the kind of leaps and guesses that he would need to in order to see beyond what he knows. He is too stuck in the present, but I am already years in the future. I can see myself holding that title high, showing that this country can be proud of an accomplishment once more. The product of the extreme violence that took place in that room only a few short moments ago will by the final breakthrough I need to finally show this company I am one of the best competitors in its rosters. No more mid-card hell, no more fighting unworthy opponents. I will finally do something worth noting and people will finally understand what I’ve been trying to say. If this country’s history is too be soaked in blood, then let its future be soaked in blood too. The skewing of British troops helped forge its independence, and now my knife impaling my writer’s block will finally cement this countries potential as one of the world’s greatest super powers.
---”See, they thought they could drive me to madness, but I’m seeing clearly for the first time in years.-“
“Benjamin…” Seth uttered just over a whisper, his incredibly fear translated in an intense stare, but not at Benjamin, right passed Benjamin and too something far more frightening.
Benjamin turned to see what was wrong, but the image which stood before him filled him with absolute dread, making him wish he had remained ignorant; the dead body, the man he had left for dead in a rug in the middle of his guest room, it was standing before him, holes and all, with a knife in hand, staring directly at Benjamin. Before he could react, the knife was plunged deep inside of him and Benjamin felt its piercing blade tear into him as if he were made of butter. The knife was pulled out and thrusted back multiple times, just as he had done to the man only moments before, but Benjamin didn’t feel pain; he felt that weight enter his body once more, that wall that stood so dauntingly in his mind, not allowing him freely access the deepest of his thoughts, his writer’s block was returning to him, it was all coming back in full force. He wasn’t a poet, he was a fraud, he was a liar, he was a weak piece of shit, and other such things, but the words were leaving him, he couldn’t put his thoughts together as the world seemed to be distorting.
Benjamin dropped to his knees and clutched at his gut, trying to pull out the knife, but he couldn’t find it. In fact, he couldn’t find any hole at all. He looked up at where the dead body had once stood, but found nothing there.
“Seth, did you see that?” Benjamin turned to look at Seth, but found that he had disappeared as well. They had both vanished, what had happened? Where did they go? Benjamin scrambled back into a corner, completely confused and bewildered by the absence of life around him. What was happening? Suddenly RIIIIING! RIIIIIING! Benjamin’s phone began to ring on the counter right beside him. He quickly reached over and picking it up, answering before looking at who was calling, he needed to speak to someone, anyone, he need to hear a human voice.
“Hello?” Benjamin asked.
“Hey, Benjy. Sorry, I got your message earlier asking to come over, but unfortunately I’m out of the state at the moment, sorry.” It was Seth’s voice. He wasn’t here, he was never hear. He quickly dropped the phone and ran over to the guest room. There was no blood, no rug, no knife, and no body. None of it had happened, none of it was real. He fell against a wall, confused, bewildered, and disoriented. What was happening? Was he going insane? Was wrestling finally starting to destroy his mind with constant stress?
Whatever the reason, Benjamin felt weaker at that moment, than he had in years, feeling maybe that the future of his victory wasn’t so certain.
“DEAR GOD, BENJAMIN,” cried Seth Dominics, having witnessed only a mere fraction of the event as he barged into the room, “WHAT HAVE YOU DONE?”
“Grab a rug,” Benjamin Atreyu replied calmly as he looked down at his work admiring the way the crimson tide spilled from the body and rolled across the floor in passive waves. At first he thought that site would have made him sick, but quite the opposite, he found a sort of supreme joy shooting through his body as the full of weight of the crime he had committed finally reached his ears. There was no panic, no nausea, only joy to have finally done it.
“What?”
“Get me a rug,” Benjamin repeated himself, there no rush in his voice, even as he went over the words again. He continued to repeat them in his head, letting the words signify exactly what he was about to do; he was going to hide the body. He felt a tad disappointed for two reasons; one, he would have to pack this body away and cease looking upon his artistry, two, he felt it was an admission of a guilt he didn’t feel; to have to hide a body that he would have gladly displayed upon his balcony. Never-the-less, the law was a fickle thing; it claimed a right to happiness, but once one achieved that happiness, it could be punishable by death.
“Benjamin, do you understand what you just did? Who was that guy? What’s going on?” Seth’s frantic vomiting of words grained against Benjamin’s ears, spawning a small headache which promised to blossom if his friend refused to cease asking question. He slowly turned to his friend and walked over to his friend with a slight smile, as if it were to let him know that everything would be alright. As he reached his friend, he placed the knife in the panicking man’s hands. The friend proceeded to look down as the bloody object just placed in his grasp and had to suppress that threatened to wake all of existence.
“Seth, my dear friend, I am completely aware of what I’ve done, but now we must move quickly. Since, by placing that knife in your hands, I have made you an accomplice, I suggest you get that rug; the one in the living room, don’t doddle, we have much work to do tonight and very little time to do it in,” Benjamin turned away once more and moved back over to the body, squatting down to get a more intimate view of the deceased and the many holes that had made him so. The nice suit the man had been wearing, one that had reminded him of when Blake had managed him in the old “New God Inc.” days, was soaked in the scarlet ooze that was pouring forth from the many faucets that Benjamin had installed in his aforementioned rampage upon the poor victim’s body. Benjamin’s gaze wondered up and met with the lifeless eyes of the currently-marionettee-sque-body and felt a twinge of anxiety as they gazed right back at him, but he managed to quickly regain his composure as he realized that those mirrors inside of his skull could only reflect, they could no longer be peered through. This thought might have put his heart at ease if it didn’t suddenly feel him with his own fear; his fear of dying, to no longer be, and in the act of no longer being, to no longer experience future discoveries and joys. No! No regrets, no mourning, this had to happen, do not go back on it now!
In fear of being overwhelmed, he switched his gaze over from the eyes to his hair. He wasn’t sure why, but there was something about a body being dead that made the hair seem strangely off. When attached to a body with a beating heart, each strand of hair seems to be a part of a single mass, but once the life had left those eyes (those eyes will never see again, forever without sight, to never experience another morning) each hair seemed to become its own individual piece on top of a mass graveyard of dead skin, much in the same way that an animal being dead might make its fur seem dirtier somehow.
“Benjamin…,” Seth’s timid voice broke Benjamin’s concentration and forced him to turn away from the body. Seth had managed to roll up the rug in the living and drag it all the way here. It was a nice rug, Benjamin would almost regret getting rid of it, but it would be the only one big enough to fit the body in, and survival was far more important that some long forgotten decoration. Over time he would forget the rug in which he used to hide the body.
He stood up, stretching his legs to allow the blood to pump through them again. Again, as if nothing was wrong, he calmly made his way over to his frightened companion and put a hand on his shoulder. “Don’t worry, everything is going to be okay. Now, let’s unroll this rug.” He was going to take his steps on at a time with his friend, if he could avoid mentioning the body, the smoother this would go; not that the body had left either of their minds, but to utter it would make it all to real and continue to work Seth down until he completely lost his nerve and bailed, something that Benjamin couldn’t afford to let happen.
Both of the men reached down and pushed the rug along to help unroll it. When it was fully unraveled, the entirety of the rug stretched from the door to the far wall, a feat easily accomplished in a small guest room. Benjamin looked over the rug, as if trying to measure out where the body would have to go in order to fit. After a moment of calculation, Benjamin figured his best bet was to place the body at one end of the rug and roll it along until it was wrapped snug inside the fabric coffin of sorts; a sort of cartoony solutions as he recalled a Looney Toon episode where a similar incident occurred, but instead with a living character (living, not dead, still breathing, breathing no more, never again to breathe, he is dead, he is dead), but that was no matter now, what worked worked and he wasn’t about to question anything that would help him get out of this without a life-sentence.
“Okay, now I need you to-“
“No,” Seth interrupted, his eyes turned away as to not accidently gaze upon the corpse which sat still on the far wall, as if mocking the heart-racing nature of the situation by remaining still and unaffected (his heart doesn’t race, of course not, his heart doesn’t even beat, fuck, keep your head together). Benjamin sighed at his friend’s uncooperative nature.
“Seth, please, we need-“
“No, fuck you, I’m not going to do it,” Seth interrupted again, this time with a more fiery reproach, “I won’t do it. This is wrong, who the fuck is that?”
“Seth, that’s not important right now,” Benjamin replied, gritting his teeth as he attempted to keep his cool, “if you don’t want to help move it, that’s fine, I don’t really care, but if WE get caught with a dead body in my house, we’re both going to jail.”
Seth looked over at Benjamin, a sort of look that pleaded “please, don’t make me do this,” but Benjamin just shook his head. After a moment or two, Seth’s glare went from Benjamin’s hesitantly over to the dead body. He felt a sort of disgust rise up in his bowels, threatening to burst forth all over the floor. Benjamin hoped that it wouldn’t come to that as it would be hard enough to clean the blood, adding stomach acid and lunch into the mix would not make things any easier. Seth managed to retain the content of his bowls before looking back at Benjamin and gesturing a sort of submission, giving himself over to the scenario at hand. It was not a happy moment, making his friend give in like that, but Benjamin smiled anyways as they both moved over to the body and positioned themselves in order to move it. Benjamin shifted the body so it would be lying flat on the ground, but in doing so he felt a wetness on is hands and quickly realized it was blood. His thumb and fore finger swirled it around a bit before flicking off what he could.
Benjamin stood at the head of the body while Seth stood at the feet. Benjamin reached down and again found himself staring into the eyes of the man who had once been, and felt that same anxiety from before, the one that showered him in a sense of slight guilt for taking away the life of another, but he quickly shut it out and grabbed hold under the arms waiting for Seth to do the same with the feet. He watched, but his friend just stood there, his silence horror etched onto his face with fine detail.
“Seth, we don’t have time for this,” Benjamin yelled at him to break him from his trance. He didn’t want to raise his voice, he didn’t want to be angry, he wanted to dwell in the happiness of relieving some of the stress that had been sitting on his shoulders for the past couple of weeks, but it seemed if he didn’t start rushing and yelling, he would have to reminisce about this moment in a tiny cell as he waited for his last meal, and that was not something he was particularly keen on having happen.
“Huh?” Seth broke from his dead(get it?)pan gaze and suddenly remember what he was supposed to do. He squatted down and reached out the legs, a visible disgust forming on his face as he touched the dead body, as if he were a nine year old being forced to eat broccoli, but despite his disgust, he wrapped his arms around the legs of the body and waited to move on Benjamin’s mark.
“Okay, one…two…three!” Both men lifted at the same time, almost thrown off by how heavy the body was, deceptively light as it had looked, but that kept hold and quickly shuffled over to the rug, placing it down gentle on one end, as if forgetting the man was no longer among the living. Benjamin grabbed hold of the rug, looking over and motioning for Seth to join him, which he did reluctantly. The rug was just wide enough to enclose both the man’s head and feet as they rolled him up, assuring them that no one would be able to see any part of the body as they carried out of the house, when that moment came to pass. Once the rug was fully rolled up with the new cargo inside, Benjamin stood up and took a deep breath. Seth just fell back onto his ass and looked up at his friend, still in complete disillusionment over what was going on.
He had known Benjamin for at least seven years; never once had it occurred to him that he would have the capacity to kill someone, especially in such a violent and coldblooded manner. What had the man done to make Benjamin go over the edge? Had the man done anything at all? Was Benjamin going crazy? Would he killed again? Was Seth safe being in the same house as him? All these questions raced through his mind in a sort of jumbled mess, one over lapping the other as he tried to make sense of the whole ordeal, unsure what to make of the events as it seemed he was still missing so much information.
Benjamin began to walk out of the room and Seth quickly followed behind him, still so many questions buzzing in his brain, but one had to have answered right then and there, “where are you going?”
“Right now? Going for a drink, never realized how hard moving a dead body was going to be. Want one?”
“A drink?”
“No, a dead body…Of course a drink, you stooge.”
“No, I’m more concerned over the fact that there is a puddle of blood in your guest room right now,” Seth was a few steps behind Benjamin, trying to keep up as Benjamin briskly walked down the hallway, as if the day was like any other.
“Oh don’t worry, A couple of towels and some cleaner will do the trick I’m sure.”
“That’s not what I meant. You killed a man, he is dead, fucking dead! You stabbed him. I watched as he slid down the wall with you standing over him. Can you explain to me who he is and why I am not wrapped up in a possible homicide charge?”
“Well, first off, I’m very aware that he is dead, I’m very aware that I stabbed him, and I am very aware what you saw,” Benjamin replied, the calmness having returned to his voice, “secondly, there won’t be a homicide charge if you help me with the body, no shut up and join me for a drink.”
“Benjamin, I’m going to ask you one last time, who is he?” Seth grabbed hold of his shoulder and jerked him around so they were stopped in the middle of the hallway facing each other. Benjamin just sighed and rolled his eyes.
“You know, for a comedy relief character, you sure are being a buzz kill right now,” Benjamin turned back around and continued on his way to the kitchen, “if I must answer your question, though its more of a ‘who was he’ instead of ‘who is he’ now, the man currently rolled up in my imported Persian rug is my writer’s block.”
“Wait, what?” Seth followed behind, nearly tripping over himself as he couldn’t believe what he had just heard, “would you care to repeat that for me?”
“My writer’s block,” Benjamin repeated, but the inflection was still the same, as if somehow what he said wasn’t completely mad. Seth felt a steadily increasing uneasiness as he followed Benjamin.
“You do realize how impossible that sounds, right?”
“You’re telling me. You should have seen my reaction when I found him walking around,” Benjamin chuckled as they emerged into the kitchen, he quickly walked over to the fridge and pulled out a bottle of cold water.
“Think about what you’re saying.”
“I have been thinking about it, I’ve been thinking about it since I grabbed the knife I used to kill him. Hell, it still sounds crazy, but that doesn’t mean he isn’t currently in a cloth burrito in my guest room. You sure you don’t want anything to drink, I mean, we aren’t going to be stopping anywhere on the way.”
“On the way to where?”
“To disposing the body, got a friend who works in a morgue who owes me a favor. I called him not to long before I grabbed the knife, no questions asked. We’re going to cremate fucker so we’re sure no one will be able to find the remains, great right?”
“You called him BEFORE you killed the guy?”
“Well, I wouldn’t call it a guy, more the manifestation of a concept that both you and I thought was merely a construct of the human mind before tonight, but yes, I did call my friend about it before hand.”
“That’s first degree murder! Its predetermined. You let someone know you had plans to kill someone! If we get found out, that could be a life sentence, or worse, the death penalty.”
Benjamin took a sip of his water, “In all fairness, I often considered life imprisonment worse than a death sentence.”
“How can you be so calm about this? Our lives hang in the balance!”
“Well, then I guess we’ll just have to make sure we don’t get caught then. If we make it to the morgue then we’re home free.”
“What if your friend blabs?”
“Trust me, he won’t. If he did, then I would make sure that our body isn’t the only one they would find off the record.”
“I really don’t want to know what you had to do in the past to get this favor.”
“Oh, don’t be so ridiculous, he is a friend of my cousin, I invested in his business, the very one that’s going to save us tonight, and he came up to me with the proposition that if I needed any ‘problems’ to disappear, he could do it. I think he used to be a hitman for the mob or something, very Italian-y.”
“Great, first degree murder, attempting to dispose of evidence, and now a link to the mob; Why don’t you just get it over with and kill me to?”
“Don’t tempt me, if you keep bitching, I just might,” Seth quickly feel silent to Benjamin’s reply. Benjamin just looked over with a queer expression on his face, as if unsure what had just been said, “oh, for the love of God, I’m joke. I’m not going to kill you, you still have to help me hide the body, haha.”
Benjamin’s joking nature did very little to set Seth at ease as he was worried that maybe he might just end up like the man in the rug by the end of the night. He had never seen Benjamin so mentally unstable before; drunk, depressed, angry, but never…insane? He kept a safe distance as he waiting for him to finish his drink. It seemed he was getting no closer to answering any of his question and with what little information he did know, it seemed that the answers he did get only managed to breed more questions. He just stood there, thinking about how he could possible get out of this; reasoning? No. Running? No. Hiding? No. It seemed as if he was stuck there, watching his friend grow increasingly mad as the minutes ticked on.
“How do you know he was your writer’s block?” Seth asked, hoping that this might shed some light on the ever-so-dark situation at hand. He knew that Benjamin wasn’t in his right might, but he needed to know to what degree did his insanity extend.
“Well,” Benjamin turned the question over in his head for a few short minutes, “I guess I could feel it, you know what I mean? I was walking around my house when I saw him standing in the door way just staring at me. I ask him what he was doing there, but he didn’t say anything. I told him I would call the cops, but he still didn’t move. I tried to push and shove him, but he just wouldn’t leave, but that’s when I realized who he, or it, was. It was my writer’s block, it made all the sense in the world, almost like a sort of metaphor, my inability to move on, the way no words came from him, he was the embodiment of my writer’s block.”
“So, at no point did he say anything to confirm this theory of yours?”
“No, he just stood there, eventually I went to my phone and made the call to my friend, before calling you to come over. After that, I knew I had to go through with it. It was this urge coming over me. The only way I could explain it is that it was like a sort of inspiration, the antithesis to the writer’s block and that when I knew it had to happen. I moved him over to the guest room, he didn’t put up much of a fight as long as I didn’t try to make him leave. I came to this room and grabbed a knife and the rest is history, but let me tell you something; the feeling of sticking that knife deep into body was one of the greatest experiences of my life. After years of fighting that fucker day after day, I finally got him back in the best way. When I heard that last breath of air escape his lungs, I smiled involuntarily.”
“Stop, please stop, I don’t want to hear anymore of this.”
“Seth, you couldn’t possibly understand what it’s like-“
“To take a life?!”
“No, to finally rid yourself of the burden of your writer’s block. Goddamn it, Seth. I’m not just a wrestler, I’m not some rich smug asshole, I’m a fucking poet. When I go out there and face the wrath of that crowd, I am speaking poetry to them, whether or not they want to listen. Think what it must feel like to not know what to say when all you have to fight the odds are words. Think about how empty this world would feel if I didn’t have a way to express the thoughts fucking destroying my mind. I’ll sit night and day, try to assemble something close to a rational thought and nothing will come out! It’s insane making! To speak, but all that can pour forth is hollow bullshit that you put out there because you need to say something, anything, because it is better than being silent.
---“I’ve struggled FOR YEARS to fight it, but I’m always on the losing side, and now, after years of talking, I’m running out of things to say, writer’s block has been circling me ever since I came to WCF and its waiting for the right moment to finish me off. I’ve been sitting around, waiting for the day it finally kills me, but that’s the thing, I got to it first, I shoved a knife into that fucker over and over again until he stopped moving, and you want to know what, Seth?”
“What?”
“I feel better than ever. My mind finally feels at ease, being able to move freely and speak without the feeling of an impenetrable wall keeping me from the perfect word choice. It is such a weight off of my shoulders that my only regret is that I can’t do it again. It’s like finally being able to breathe after years of being deprived of breath, to be able to love what you think again, to be able to look at the world with a renewed sense of passion after years of living under the same oppressive rock, listening to it whisper sweet atrocities in your ear, telling you how it’s going to break you and leave you dead where no one can find you, this is my final revenge, Seth. If only you could understand that. That wasn’t a person, it was a monster, writer’s block is the bitch mother of all failure in this world, the great indescribable feeling that keeps men from reaching their true potential, and now I’ve killed mine, nothing will be able to hold me back, because now I can see the world beyond just fact and numbers.
---“See, Dr. Reymus is not a man of foresight. He can see the world as it is, because that is what his ‘facts’ permit him to do so, but I can see the world for what it is, because I can add it all together and stretch beyond mere knowledge. See, Reymus has no imagination, he simply see things as they are, but he is a man of science, so I can’t blame him, but I am a man of the written word; a believer in the what-could-have-been and what-might-be. Facts are so boring, it gives people the impression that this is the only way things could have ever been, but I know better.
---“Let’s start with where it all starts, the universe as a whole. The unimaginative man sees it in such a way that it simply how it is, that there is no other way it could have been, but take someone like me and force me to think about it long enough, and you start seeing all the little cracks in that idea. The universe could have been anything it wanted to be; there was no rule maker who set it down in stone that gravity had to work how it did, that physics had to go by any law of Newton’s, that the human biology had to be anywhere near as complex as it is. If all had been different, if the universe been created under a different theme, that would be the only way many of us could imagine it being, that way would be the ‘only way’ it could have been. Do you see what I mean?”
“I-I…” Seth trailed off, he was completely lost in Benjamin’s rambling, none of it made any sense to him and only served to make him wearier of Benjamin’s mental state. These are the words of an insane man, right? This is what people point at when they want an example of the kind of people you lock up in an asylum. He couldn’t respond. If he said he didn’t understand, he wasn’t sure what Benjamin would do next.
“Okay, that might be a bit too much to get your head wrapped around, I understand. Let me try something a bit closer to home. In fact, let me start try home itself; the good ole’ United States of America. This country has been crafted by a series of very particular events, ones that have come to form is “DNA” if you will, the very thing that makes the US, the US. Now, imagine if one of these events had not taken place, or had gone the other way; what do you think the result would have been?
---“Think about the revolutionary war. If that had not gone in our favor, if we had not managed to learn guerilla warfare tactics from the Native Americans to give us a distinct in the battle field, there is a very good chance we’d still be a colonial country to this day. Look at India, they were under British rule until the 1940’s where they had finally managed to make themselves and independent nation, freeing themselves from the cultural oppression afflicted upon them the monarchist governing. Think about it, still being taxed without representation, looked down upon as a little brother country attached to a bigger nation. We would have no individual nature, we would have no banner to call our own.
---“Or think about the civil war. What if all had not fared so well and the north had not managed to recapture the confederacy to join back with the union? Slavery would still exist, the confederacy would be the dominant power in the country and all those who would speak against might be slaughtered under the whim of such a state so devoid of human empathy. I would think such a hellish state may cause such uncontrollable violence and ignorance that our country would be looked at as more of a tribal pack of barbarians instead of a greedy super power.
---“Let’s even look at a tragedy instead of a victory, but a tragedy that shaped this country greatly, Pearl Harbor. If you recall, we, as a country, we choosing to stay out of the war in hopes to stabilize our collapsed economy, a rough period in our history for everyone, but one day an event so awful occurred that it shaped the United States for years to come. A group of fighter pilots from Japan had crossed our seas unnoticed and managed to bomb one our largest navy bases, leaving many dead and countless more incredibly wounded. Not being one to take being attacked lightly, we used this as motivation to join the war effort and fight on the side of the allies in World War II. The result being that the Axis was defeated, our economy was saved, and our banner flew higher than ever. Now, think if Pearl Harbor had not occurred. There is a good chance we would have never gotten involved in the war effort, at least not before it was too late, and the Axis would have been able to get the upper hand, leading to a fascist future where those not of Aryan descent would be massacred by the millions, even billions. Then of course, there is the story at home; if we aren’t overpower by the Axis as well, our economy would still be in shambles, leaving us as a broken nation that had once been great.
---“Okay, not lets jump a bit more into the present. A few weeks ago, Violet and I faced each other one-on-one in a confrontation that had ended with me on top, of course. As a result of my victory, the doctor saw to it that I would be granted what was rightfully mine, a shot at the United States title. Now, imagine if I hadn’t gotten picked to face Violet, some random Jobber probably would have gotten his ass kicked, leaving Violet the number one contender to the US title. What would this result in, probably another victory for the Doctor, probably a month longer reign, probably more arrogant spouting of his faux-intellectuality…”
“What are you getting at?”
“WHAT AM I GETTING AT? I’m getting at the fact that I am completely free from the restraints of a closed mind and I can see the endless possibilities of what could be. What I’m getting at is the fact is that in a million possible forms of the past that could have taken place, I am in the one where I have the chance to fix one of the biggest mistakes this company has ever made, giving the doctor the US title. Don’t look at me as if I have been rambling like a mad man. My point is clear, for years I have seen what the rest of the world couldn’t possibly imagine, I can see what may someday come, but finally I will be able to show the world this exact same information and then they won’t have to look at the world as so set in stone, that they don’t have to stew in their filth anymore, they can change the future to be anything they want it to be. These simpletons will finally learn, I will be their teacher, their king, their god, and they will praise me.
---“The doctor can only see what is, he cannot make the kind of leaps and guesses that he would need to in order to see beyond what he knows. He is too stuck in the present, but I am already years in the future. I can see myself holding that title high, showing that this country can be proud of an accomplishment once more. The product of the extreme violence that took place in that room only a few short moments ago will by the final breakthrough I need to finally show this company I am one of the best competitors in its rosters. No more mid-card hell, no more fighting unworthy opponents. I will finally do something worth noting and people will finally understand what I’ve been trying to say. If this country’s history is too be soaked in blood, then let its future be soaked in blood too. The skewing of British troops helped forge its independence, and now my knife impaling my writer’s block will finally cement this countries potential as one of the world’s greatest super powers.
---”See, they thought they could drive me to madness, but I’m seeing clearly for the first time in years.-“
“Benjamin…” Seth uttered just over a whisper, his incredibly fear translated in an intense stare, but not at Benjamin, right passed Benjamin and too something far more frightening.
Benjamin turned to see what was wrong, but the image which stood before him filled him with absolute dread, making him wish he had remained ignorant; the dead body, the man he had left for dead in a rug in the middle of his guest room, it was standing before him, holes and all, with a knife in hand, staring directly at Benjamin. Before he could react, the knife was plunged deep inside of him and Benjamin felt its piercing blade tear into him as if he were made of butter. The knife was pulled out and thrusted back multiple times, just as he had done to the man only moments before, but Benjamin didn’t feel pain; he felt that weight enter his body once more, that wall that stood so dauntingly in his mind, not allowing him freely access the deepest of his thoughts, his writer’s block was returning to him, it was all coming back in full force. He wasn’t a poet, he was a fraud, he was a liar, he was a weak piece of shit, and other such things, but the words were leaving him, he couldn’t put his thoughts together as the world seemed to be distorting.
Benjamin dropped to his knees and clutched at his gut, trying to pull out the knife, but he couldn’t find it. In fact, he couldn’t find any hole at all. He looked up at where the dead body had once stood, but found nothing there.
“Seth, did you see that?” Benjamin turned to look at Seth, but found that he had disappeared as well. They had both vanished, what had happened? Where did they go? Benjamin scrambled back into a corner, completely confused and bewildered by the absence of life around him. What was happening? Suddenly RIIIIING! RIIIIIING! Benjamin’s phone began to ring on the counter right beside him. He quickly reached over and picking it up, answering before looking at who was calling, he needed to speak to someone, anyone, he need to hear a human voice.
“Hello?” Benjamin asked.
“Hey, Benjy. Sorry, I got your message earlier asking to come over, but unfortunately I’m out of the state at the moment, sorry.” It was Seth’s voice. He wasn’t here, he was never hear. He quickly dropped the phone and ran over to the guest room. There was no blood, no rug, no knife, and no body. None of it had happened, none of it was real. He fell against a wall, confused, bewildered, and disoriented. What was happening? Was he going insane? Was wrestling finally starting to destroy his mind with constant stress?
Whatever the reason, Benjamin felt weaker at that moment, than he had in years, feeling maybe that the future of his victory wasn’t so certain.
