Recorded Books Inc. - Roomanitarian

Table of Contents

Sometimes I light fires. Not because I have a thing for fire. Not because I like the smell of a wood burning. Not because it makes me think of autumn, or the cooling of the air, or the shortening of the days or the crisp nights. I just like to light fires. I use random things from the house as fuel. After the fire has really had a chance to get going, I extinguish the flames with water so that a mixture of steam and smoke rise. I inhale the smoke and steam and pretend Ive torched someones house and am now standing with everyone else watching the firemen get the blaze under control. Sometimes its my house I am torching, sometimes it belongs to someone I know, sometimes its a strangers. Like a lot of sociopaths, I kill animals. I look in peoples windows. I steal their mail. Just something to do. That is why I light fires. And since this is the end of things as they have been. I am moving behind the tree line and will be fading from the world as most know it to be. I think its time to say goodbye to some things. Its time to terminate things. Its time to maim things so they remain alive long enough to get finished off by predators at dusk. Its time to close accounts, let the end be the end and be done.

I have been dragging my past with me like its a dying comrade and were trying to make it back to the beach after a mission gone terribly wrong. That was my youth. Like the Bay of Pigs. A piece of shit mission. Everyone knew it when they went out on that one and I knew it when I went out on mine. A bad mission. Old maps, faulty intelligence, no clear objective. Years after it was over, I blamed others for what it wasnt and what it could have been. At the time, I didnt think to blame anyone. One of the blindsides of youth is that you dont value that which is in great abundance and cant imagine things being any other way. Youre only aware of what was, rarely of what is. Its a waste of time to blame others for anything. I should have seen it coming or dealt with it properly the first time. Its why some people kill their parents. Your father fucked you up? Is he still alive? Why dont you break his neck? You could stab him so many times youd pass out from exhaustion over his dead body and slip in his blood when you finally left the scene. You could exterminate him from your thoughts, hes as good as dead and you dont do time. I had to do this with memories of my youth at a time when most of my life was ahead of me and not behind me as it is now. I had to hack its fingers off, it held on hard. Now thats all over with. A lot of things are over with. One could say that when something comes to an end, its only because something else is beginning. That may be true, if you play with crystals and worship the moon. For me, its always been about the mission and when its over, its death until the next one starts. I dont need love. I dont need friends. I need the next thing. I need the next reason to keep living. For a long time now, I have been in maintenance mode. I feed it and keep it in shape so it can deliver as well as expected with the accumulated wear and tear now being a performance factor. Every day, I get rid of something. Every day, I terminate a memory. Every day, I throw something out. The less I have, the less has me. The mission was bitched from the start. Thats why I took it. Its why bad-end missions get taken all the time. The last thing you want to do is come back. The last thing you can do is come back. You can come back and live in the lie you have created for yourself, the lie that immediately surrounds you upon missions end. I lived it for some time. Damn near killed me. I acknowledge zero community, zero peer group. A lot of people I knew have died. Some had it coming, some were old, some had bad luck. When some of them went, it hurt. It hurt badly and long. I realized that the hurt was from holding on, from straddling past and present and feeling the psyche tear. Ive heard people say that pain and sadness are part of life and its cowardly not to face them. I think thats an idea for idiots. Do you hold onto a hot coal? Drop it and move up the trail. I let the memories die. They are plants I dont water. They are chained up dogs that dont get fed. If I didnt do this, I would have killed myself years ago. I cant think of one single thing to live for but as long as Im here, I might as well keep moving. The mission takes my mind off the fact that life is meaningless. When I am not out on it, I am here, throwing things away, seeing how much less I can live with, waiting for the next distraction. Youth and self-importance are gone. Need for human contact is almost gone. Now and again theres something, an echo of past need, an old weakness. I just let it starve to death. I threw out my walkie-talkie today. Theres no one to walkie with and nothing to talkie about, is there? How are you? How are you getting along? Feeling alright? Fuck you. People ask these questions because either their lives are so inconsequential to them that small talk saves them from the pain of having to know something new or because they dont have the guts to exist without comparative analysis masked in time wasting verbal exchange. You always go to someone else for self-help. You need company for self-abuse. How am I? Here until Im dead. How much pain am I in? As much as I let you put me in. Kindred spirit? No such thing. Good to go? Gone.

Sometimes its hard not to hate you for your bovine, slow-eyed acceptance of servitude. Somethings wrong alright. Its you. Like the dullards before you, there will be no spark of awareness and therefore no cowardice. Just the time, the payout, the slow bleed. The safety in huddled, stupefied numbers. You are owned and it makes you feel safe. You have always been on time that was loaned to you at steep interest rate. When they come to take you out, you never ask why. You will pay. Can you imagine what its like for the poor, who work too hard for far too little? Who have known hardships you could never fathom? Who know pain as well as you can spell your name? Can you calculate how long and how silently they have suffered at your hands? Can you find the number of people you have sacrificed, whose lives you have destroyed, whose families you have shattered beyond repair? Do you understand what that means? They never get over it. They never get better. Every day, their lives are awful and they know exactly where to lay the blame but somehow, they will always blame themselves. Do you know what parents consider themselves when they bury their sons? Failures. Will you admit that you never knew what you were doing and you were never ready to give what you made others give? That you are and always will be a coward? A weakling preaching strength, who sends in the best to do the worst. You said you were going to lead them and let the chips fall where they may but you already knew where the chips were going to fall. You lied. You didnt lead. Youre not a leader, you never were a leader and you will never be a leader. You gave orders. You ordered them into blind runs, into horror, disfigurement and death. They believed in the promise and the reward that you knew they would never receive. They paid. And now its time for you to pay. Now its time to send your children into the heat and the horror and the fury. No doubt your god will protect them. No doubt they will go, for they too believe in the promise you deliver in your hesitant, faltering speak. The words of an idiot who leads the deserving into the undeserved. And for this you will pay. Horror will visit you for the rest of your life because you have blood on your hands. Every life you have destroyed, every family you have torn apart, for all you have ruined in your stupidity and ignorance, you will pay. Yours is a study in underestimation. You underestimated the strength of those you purportedly serve. You thought they were all like you: intellectually lazy and easy to manipulate. You tried and quickly found that there were millions who see you for what you are and came back at you with righteous rage and hatred. Your cronies, who tried to wave us away with manipulated statistics and outright lies, underestimated the unrelenting tenacity with which we held onto the truth and the power of good. You and your sycophants could scarcely believe how much truth and freedom means to us because you think everyone is like you: compromised and without honor. You underestimated our belief in justice and how far well go to get it and what were ready to part with to make sure you are stopped. And for this you will pay. And when the hyenas rip you to shreds and break your bones in their teeth, they will be consuming a coward and they will not care.