Crossed

Chapter 3, Part 1

He didn't really mind that this sharp, attracting gaze had entered his home. Just a smidge of discomfort. Something about having beauty and not being asked questions. Her forehead glistened in the blue LED's that lit up the kitchen. It was clean. Unlike his. He rubbed his forearm on his own, wiping away some grease. He hadn't showered since last night and didn't wash his face this morning. There were slight spots of acne on his and so it stung like an ant bite as he brushed. His voice almost cracked but it didn't, but there was a wavering nature to it, something very weak. Something broken.

What's your name?

She pulled out a twelve gauge shotgun and aimed it at her jawbone and neck area. He tried to wrestle it out of her arms but to no avail. She got it under and pulled the trigger. Exploding her skull onto the walls and cabinets, and all over his body.

He blinked away the vision. Shook his head.

Poinsettias of black and white replaced the deathly vision, scattering back into color, back into the vision of her standing in front of him, expectant, and for some reason laughing.

He noticed a chain on her neck. It was silver. Silver chains links. Shiny as well. It reflected the dingy gray like the glare of the sunlight through a window.

I'm Dawn, who are you?

The left side of his mouth was twitching, as well as his eyebrows. For some reason lifting his head from his slouching position required so much effort that the resulting eye contact from the action was wearily quaking.

She reached up and rested her arm across his collar-bone and put her palm on the side of his face. She held it there absurdly. She figured this action would be the best possible move forward in the situation of frenzied and outpouring potential. He recoiled at this movement but eventually rested into it. He almost nuzzled into it when a sound came from outside the apartment. The door was still opened so the moment was broken while the two went to explore the noise.

It was the internet guy. He had dropped a cardboard box on the stairs leading up to the second floor of apartments. Upon seeing the two in the same doorway looking at his mistake he grew resentful. Knowing just how easily he could've been the one with her. Knowing just how easily the new man would be able to steal his treasure. Rob him of his pleasure.

The irrational emotion of resentment constructed a narrative in the mind of the worker. He believed wholeheartedly that Austin had deliberately caused his disruption earlier so that she would be available.

His furry eyebrows only showed anger as he stomped up the stairs, remembering and fueling the boiling frustration that was his measly existence.

The wooden stairway rails seemed suddenly as though they were detachable and weaponizable. He dropped the disgustingly heavy box, ripped one off the rail and stormed down the stairs back toward the two twenty-somethings still gawking at his nine-to-five inferiority and made sure that wooden stake bludgeoned their skulls similar to a steamroller flattening them. After cordially directing his fury into something so horribly despicable that it was physically arousing, he would take the two inside.

Once inside he would rape the unconscious woman on the boy's couch, smoke some of his weed, and then leave like nothing happened. There were no cameras in the complex, he would just have to be a pristine liar when the time came for him to be investigated. Or an alibi. Yes. An alibi.

He tripped on the last stair, so consumed in his terrific Ares-inspired fantasization of pure evil, throwing the box across the way and spilling the contents all over the ground. He cursed under his breath. The cogs of thought were still churning though, his meandering aim had finally found something worth attacking. Revenge was sweet, but fomented incorrectly, could be catastrophic.

Ares is a forgotten god. I believe he is the true competitor of Dionysus for control over the mind of the Greeks. For he is the God of war. He embodies the muscle of heat in the mind. Fiery rage is his breath. He breathes on all of his soldiers one and the same. Whenever needed, like in the situation of our internet man. Ares provided a raw, vent-like image to stimulate the delicate nerve endings of his brain by frying them completely off, settling his score with his counterparts of influence he drives, staking nail by nail into the mind of his followers: the individuals with wrath as their primary sin. Unfathomable wrath. Where does it come from? The fluid of Ares.

Cackling maliciously he sits in the clouds. Harboring his power with glee. Investing extra time and especially lack of constraint into the potential forbearers of destruction. A seed of deadliness was planted that day. Inspired by Ares and catalyzed by the influencality of the human spirit. Gods work on our psyches daily, can we become our own? Or will their influence take over?