Desire

 

. It guides our entire lives. It tells us which path to choose, how to act, what to follow. It made me who I am today, who I have become. And it will always be that way.

Always! That word takes on a new meaning now. I used to say: "you will always be stupid," "I always win, I am always right, I always have what I want." It's strange how we overuse words of such power without even realizing it. I ALWAYS dreamed, thought, and imagined in my head how it would be, how it must be. God! How wrong I was!

No. God has nothing to do with it, I won't involve Him. If I had known then... But anyway, it probably wouldn't have changed anything... Although maybe I would have been scared? Fear. That's another word of power. I didn't know what it truly was until I saw it in her eyes. Yes—she felt true fear. She was so beautiful. Young: 17, maybe 18—no more. She had shiny golden hair, so delicate, so fluffy. Until...

Until blood matted it into a red scab, drying to her skin. Disgusting, terrifying? Her gray eyes stared at me, at mine. She wasn't afraid of pain, wasn't afraid of death, wasn't even afraid of me. She was afraid of something completely different.

Her day was supposed to be like any other. She got up in the morning, put on makeup, ate breakfast. She read a few pages of an old book with yellowed pages (only one chapter left). As she left the house, she shouted, "I'll be back late." She didn't return. She went with a friend to a long-awaited party. So many plans. There was a boy there: tall, handsome, the one. She started talking to him. He was so sweet, so wonderful. It was getting late, she had to go, go home.

Late, but only for her. Too orthodox parents. She was coming home alone, in a hurry. She didn't want to be late; why worry her mother? She took a shortcut to make it faster, but she was unlucky. She remembered childhood stories: the darkness by the wardrobe, the wind outside the window, the shadow of a chair behind the bed. Superstitions, stupid beliefs, fairy tales, crappy movies. Yes. That's what she was afraid of. It made her feel stupid. Why hadn't she believed sooner? Too late. It wouldn't have helped anyway.

One last thought. Did she regret it? Life—too short, worried parents waiting by the evening lamp, her sister waiting for her evening kiss? No. She regretted not saying yes, not staying, not wanting to wait.

People. So simple in their stupidity, so complex in their genius.

How much longer? Three hours. So much more to wait. Time. Ridiculous. You created it yourselves, and now you hate it so much. Man is afraid of what he doesn't know. Stupidity—he's afraid even of his own shadow! The wise used to say: "Leave something behind, and you'll live forever." Eternity itself is a masterpiece, but you have to know how to use it.

A person is born. Ten years are spent doing nothing. Ten more years are spent learning. Then they begin to think, to comprehend eternity. Three years pass—eternity fades into the background. Now the moment is more important, work, family, love. Love—what you have so adored is destroying you so much. Someone once gave a man a cup of love's nectar, and he, drinking too greedily, choked on it.

Two hours, an hour. Fucking stupidity! Time is like a thought—it either lasts and lasts, or it penetrates like a shadow. A shadow—the dark companion of my torment, the sole witness to my crime. I have what I wanted. It's coming, another one...

Who am I? A child of darkness? A creature of darkness? How I hate such terms! It's as if the day had thrown me out of its world. And the truth is, I had thrown it out of mine. I longed for silence, and now that I've finally achieved it, it seems to me that the loudest scream holds more peace than this... Nonexistence.

Another night. Which one is it now? Why do I need to know! Mortal habits. They count forward because they don't know the last of their numbers. I wonder if they would count backwards if they did? Probably not. They like to deceive themselves. Even themselves. I don't count, I've stopped.