Strained Emotion - Overture.

Ladies and gentlemen, tonight, I will be your Bruce Banner. Today, the gamma rays will be singing for you. He came again today. This time, I silenced him by raising a weary hand. I am getting stronger. I don't think it's the therapy. It was only a month ago that I woke up in a cold sweat, in the stairwell of my school in the middle of the night,with no idea as to how and why I was there. My dreams are getting darker. Or what Epicureans would call Dark. I'm glad I found my Pericles. I dream of huge, unending stone walls. My hands feel the cold stone. Then, through an opening on the roof, I see the moonlight illuminate a figure on the ledge above me. He is dressed in a blue shirt, open at the collar. I can see that he is muscular, because of the bulge in his forearms. He looks at me. I can see that he is handsome, almost reminding me of Marlon, but just then, he smiles. It's a cold smile, and it leaves me shivering. He tells me he is me. I stare uncomprehendingly. He tells me I'm weak. In need of a brew. His potent blend. I wake up. It's a dream. Relax. A bad case of nerves, I tell myself. I smile cheerlessly.
I have discovered a side of me that's not quite well-off. It looks inviting. But is not. Go away, Tartar.
I sit upon the cold, sequined chair. The shrink twirls his pen around his finger as he looks at me, and enquires after the progress of his patient. I'm much less defiant now. I feel a strange calm come over me, like it does when I'm debating or when I'm emceeing. He pushes his gold-lane spectacles further up his nose, and adjusts his wiry frame to sit more comfortably. I imagine his face contorting as he makes love to his wife. Does he ask her how far along is she? Does he order her to scream his name out loud? Does he come inside her? The thought is disturbing, and I ignore it. All I want to do is to go home, curl up on my bean-bag, and listen to Jimmy Page caressing his guitar with his finger, or watch Chris Gayle swing his willow or turn the page of yet another Kafkan novel. He tells me whether I'm taking my medication. I answer in the affirmative. I look away. I mumble 'Bathroom Break' and excuse myself. I walk mindlessly, and catch a glimpse of my face in the flyblown mirror. I look tired, but I can see that smirking existentialist under the surface, chortling at my inability to live up to my expectations of myself. Why do I not feel? No. No. No.

Cerelacker.

She rubs some ointment on my temples, motioning to the petrified intern to grab my ankles as she fastens my legs to the iron cot. I can feel leather on my skin, and it's not very comforting. Conviction, conviction. As she reaches across me for the needle, the bulge on her front brushes against my cheek. I pull away, disgusted.

Ah, she says. Puberty didn't quite teach you what to expect,did it?

I look at her and smile weakly. There are a million things I want to say to her right now, but all I can do is whimper and tug at the electrodes. Textbook irony, I think to myself. My mind is playing ball with itself. He'll be back. And this time he won't be happy. I choke on my saliva and grunt in a weak show of discomfiture.

The nurse says the doctor will soon be with us. Bless the bastard. He's a fuckin' queer. The way he snaps his fingers when he talks reminds me of Nino Valenti in The Godfather. These closet homosexuals have nothing better to do than watch nubile male bodies writhe in seamless agony, while they cheer as they get the closest thing to the replication of a gay orgasm. Anyway, I am not in the mood for satirical puns. The hospital gown makes me look like a cross between James Frey and Elizabeth Perkins.

He arrives, smiles to show his gleaming white teeth and gushes over his patient (me) and how good he has been. What a dandy. He signals to the attendant to flick the switch.

The waves hit me. Scooping out emotions from my brain like I'm a fat bowl of Häagen-Dazs. I can see spots of green and blue materialize in front of my eyes. That means I'm hallucinating.

Then, he comes.

He's sitting with one leg crossed over the other, like a caporegime. He's wearing a tux - not a very clean one though. Smiles at me oafishly. Freak,he says.

Fuck you.

Then, he starts to shake as the pain hits me. The veins in his wrist start to bulge, then burst, spraying me with his blood. I am shaking in my cot. Electricity courses through my neural pathways. My synapses start to fizzle. Random memories appear and disappear. Sentences from books I have read do their last tango. The depolarization begins. Dendrites snap. I scream. Silently. Because the electrons are stopping salival flow. Wordless, my mouth looks to my arms for expression of pain. I'm flailing about wildly, my thighs hitting the cold sides of the cot. I can see women I have slept with - he has slept with. I can see places he has visited. I can see people with whom he has talked. They are all looking at me with mild disinterest like I'm vermin. So that they can get the cricks out of their legs and stomp on me with their dirty boots. God help me. You poor thing, I can hear the nurse say. She holds a handkerchief to her mouth, dabbing away her lipstick in one fluid motion. I look at the attendant and he looks like the piss is filling his pants. My eyes roll back to the top of my head. Everything goes quiet. It's over.

I am looking through the eyes of someone else.

You only regurgitate once.

I feel like throwing up already. The street I am walking through smells faintly of carbolic acid and soap strips, but I keep walking. My footsteps can hardly be called discreet because I feel them echoing through the night, rendering everything else quiet. My gait is unsteady - I have no idea why - and my shirt looks like it had seen better days in the garment factories. I wipe my forehead on my sleeve and stop at a crossroads, unsure of which road to take to get to my destination. Then, I check myself - do I really know where I am going, or is this another pointless exercise I have to undertake to get rid of my little fragilities? I am horrified that I don't know the answer. Then, something happens which makes me want to scream but my voice is muted by a force unseen.

I see myself coming out of every house around the intersection, every shop, every unguarded alleyway, every abandoned parking lot. Like clones. Only that they have derisive grins on their face, like my predicament humours them. But, no one speaks a word. Suddenly, I feel the blood returning to my legs and I run. I run so fast that my sneakers do not make a sound. In my ears, I hear a familiar song playing. It comes to me in wisps of sound and thunder. Nine Inch Nails - Just Like You Imagined. Soon, my legs start to go limp, and after a while, I find myself disgracefully hurtling to the ground. I see the asphalt rushing to meet me, and I let it hug me. For now.

When I open my eyes, I find myself looking at a pair of well-fitting Italian shoes. My eyes trail upwards to see the owner of the feet and let out a small groan. It is him. He kicks me in the face a couple of times and then steps back to appreciate his handiwork. My lips are a tattered mess, and my right cheekbone is (possibly) broken. I cannot even scream for help, because he's kicked me in the neck, and my larynx refuses to co-operate.

'You're a man in a box. You are so weak that that I do not even feel any pity, like a lab-rat who you know will play in his cogwheel unless you feed him another lettuce leaf. I do not even know why I despise you or all that you stand for. You were always sure no one could get to your ivory-tower existence, that no one could defeat you except you. Look who's on the ground now'.

He kicks me in the stomach, and I hear the familiar sound of bone giving way under metal. I look at him, and I can taste the blood that is now trickling from the corner of my lips.

'Look at yourself. You're a mess. Did no one ever tell you that your accountability is almost down to zero? Anyway, I have a small present for you. Look'.

I follow his finger, and I gasp. Slumped against a wall are torn, mutilated bodies of women who I cannot recognize. Their stomachs show hundreds of lacerations, and the skin on their limbs is so badly mutilated I can see yellow bones wink at me in the moonlight.

'You know who they are? You slept with them, promised them you'd stick to them come what may and then you fled, afraid to be brought to terms with your commitments. Those are the charred remains of all that is left of them. Tonight, you decided to kill me. You thought you could do away with me and neglect the part of your life that needed to be cut out. I helped you pick the scabs and now I'll kill you. Slowly. Painfully. Isn't reality kicking in already?'.

He lifts my bloodied chin and takes a knife to it. The world goes black.

When I come to, I realize I'm in the middle of a cemetery, clutching my chest. I'm lying in the all-too-damned foetal position. All around me, the tombstones stand like toppling dominos frozen in time. He's gone. For now. Where on that little tetrahedron of time did I lose my balance? I am not sure.

Back-flip and doubletake.

Kurt Vonnegut died today. This is not good news,is it,Billy?