Catharsis

Even with the ugly scars beautifying the left side of my face, I don’t really have a tragic story to tell. No devils are hiding under the demonic appearance, either. There was never any angst or darkness or anything like that. Even though there is some mental pain stemming from the nightmares. As far as I was concerned for most of my life, the scars were there because of a fight I had with another kid who shoved me into a glass pane that exploded, lacerating me all over. A childish miscalculation that had cost the kid who did this a lot.

Even with the scars, I have led a decent life; I got the degree I wanted and I work in my dream job. Made the best friends in the world. I married the love of my life, and I have got a kid on the way. Even with the nightmares and agitation and hyper-alertness, life is good. I am not a violent man. I have a lot of unexplainable anger, but I usually just curse it out.

Not too long ago, I couldn’t remember shit before the age of ten. A blank period in my mind. Completely gone. Not that it mattered. Life was good. My parents were the best anyone could hope for, and the kids at school were supportive. Even with my scrambled egg of a brain, thanks to my supportive environment, my confidence was always fine. I was never conscious of my appearance.

Even when the wounds healed faster than expected, I was in a lot of pain. Sleep used to be a fucking nightmare. Literally, night after night, for I don’t remember how long I’d see these fucking terrifying visions in my sleep.

They were all the same, always the same.

Every time, I’m lying on the ground surrounded by shadowy figures. Sore and exhausted, with everything burning and my inside screaming. Tears running down my face, snot and mucus abstracting my breathing. The fear of death washing all over me like pins and needles running across my skin as one figure draws closer and closer before it is actually standing over me. My chest feels as if it’s about to collapse under the weight of the world, and everything fades for a single moment.

The feeling of flames bursting from under the skin of my face forces my eyes to open again. I can only watch in horror, immobilized by it, as one of those ominous figures is digging its talons into my skull.

The pain wakes me up every time, screaming bloody murder. It feels so real; it felt so real. Every single time, the sensation of my flesh being torn open with a methodical precision pulsates violently through my head. I could only compare it to experiencing a botched lobotomy wide awake.

My therapist, at the time, kept insisting that the nightmares were just my mind rationalizing the accident, as we called it. I had gotten into a fight with another kid, and he didn’t think about the ramification of shoving my face into a glass pane hellbent on smashing both to bits.

Therapy didn’t do shit for me. It didn’t help with the nightmares, and neither did the meds. What helped me was music, though, the darker and more uncomfortable the better. It helped me get all my negative feelings and thoughts out. It helped burn out the tension formed through the nightmares. The auditory hell I subjected myself to was a shining light that illuminated my path through my own internal hell.

That’s how I ended up listening to the Devil’s Record. Forty-something minutes of the display of the worst humanity straight out of Halmstad. The epitome of all negativity compressed and packed into a neat little auditory package under the wraps of fine musicianship. What a fucking record, an absolute masterpiece. My sister-in-law recommended this one to me, and I’m glad I took up the offer, even if it wasn’t my usual cup of tea.

It took me a while to actually listen to it, partially because of the hype she had built around the damned thing. I refused to believe this thing was as good as she said, but when I finally got to listening to the record. All I heard was the truth and nothing but the truth.

The record starts with a corruption of the first stanza of Hughes Mearns “Antigonish”; “As I was going up the stair, I met a man who wasn’t there. I saw him there again today. I wish; I wish he’d go away”.

Oh, how this stanza resonates with me; that night, I was hiking with a beer bottle in hand while listening to the Devil’s Record. The music completely submerged me in a sea of darkness conjured by the charm of violins and the frantic humming of cellos breaking distant sheets of glass when a barely human creature popped up from out of nowhere, almost. He tapped me on the shoulder and when I turned, I couldn’t help but notice the pitiful state of this guy. Tattered clothes loosely hanging onto a thin, skeletal frame, sores all over his face, and a smile revealing lots of missing teeth.

I pulled out one of my headphones once his lips moved. He was asking for some change. Something about his face wasn’t right. It was making me anxious. And not because it was a meth-head. I’ve seen plenty of those before. It was something else. I told him I had nothing to give him.

Guess he didn’t want to take a no for an answer. Guess he needed another hit, so as I turned to walk away, he grabbed my arm. Maybe he wanted to rob me, maybe he was just off his rock, I don’t know. I don’t care. All I can say is that it was a grave mistake on his part. He pulled me closer to him and, as I spun; I saw his eyes.

Those fucking eyes, I’ll never forget those eyes, they’re burned into my memory. It all came back when I saw those fucking inhumane eyes of his. Six kids piled up on me. Beat the ever-loving shit out of me. Fuck knows for what reason. Some kid bully shit. A scream roared in my headphone, turning into a rolling howl, as the memory of me being pinned down on the grass by two fucks while a third one sat on my chest with a shard of glass in hand. The left side of my head came on fire as the memory of one of those fucks carving up my face finally resurfaced. Three other shits were watching the carnage, cheering on their friend to maim me.

Fear crawled up my throat, and as it reached my mouth, it turned into venomous anger. The creature holding onto me was barking unintelligible noises at me. I tightly clasped my hand around his coat. He was the one who held my legs when my face was being carved.

Pain, terrible pain overwrote any semblance of sense in my mind finally pushed me over the edge. As the sound of Beethoven’s Moonlight Sonata echoed in my ear, I began smashing the bottle onto the man’s face. With each stroke of the glass shard in my mind, I landed a matching blow to his face.

Fortunately for me, after a few blows, my hand must’ve slipped, and I ended up breaking the bottle across his head. The sound of broken glass returned me to my senses, and I let go of the bloodied man.

He fell to the ground, muttering something. Blood poured down his face and into his eyes. They were the eyes of a man afraid for his life. Once I saw the fear in his eyes, my anger turned to terror. My vision began spinning, and I started trembling. Chills ran down my spine as I stared at what I had done.

There was only one thing I could do, and that’s what I always did. I did my best to act as if I wasn’t feeling anything. I just spat on the ground and walked away. The whole time, the haunting images of that god-awful day bounced around inside my skull. Slowly but surely chipping away through my usual act.

Once I was sure no one was around to see me, I finally broke down. I collapsed into a fetal position and began crying.

And I cried until my head fucking spun from the tension. The pain I felt that night was… I don’t even have the words to describe it. It was the most immense and overwhelming feeling I’ve ever had. Pure suffering in its most complete and utter form.

And even though now I know what happened to me, my pain remains constant and sharp. There is no catharsis. I gain no real deeper knowledge of myself, and I know I am quoting American Psycho here, which is kinda funny because, unlike Patrick Bateman, punishment did not elude the six sick fucks that scarred my face. No… They all spent a while in juvey and besides that…

Four of them are dead, as far as I know. One was caught diddling kids and was locked up, and didn’t make it long behind bars. Another had a bit of an identity crisis and ended up on a rope. The sadist who carved my face pushed his girlfriend too far and ended up with six bullets in his head and chest. The fourth died from some aggressive cancer.

The two still living don’t have much time left either, one’s homeless meth head who probably has a faceful of gangrene, and the sixth one is the one who told me about all of this… Turns out the result of what they had done to me weighed a little too heavy on his poor soul and he turned to the bottle to handle the guilt. He fucked up his liver and is now in urgent need of a transplant.

I found this out completely by accident on a trip with my wife to the hospital. What’s more, I’m a compatible donor, and he was very apologetic, but I’m afraid he isn’t as remorseful as he claimed to be. I think he just fears for his life, now that his mistakes have caught up to him.

Otherwise, he wouldn’t wait until I unintentionally ran into him on his deathbed to fucking apologize.