Smam
11-16-2011, 08:57 AM
I wrote this tonight after a heavy day of complicated emotions. It's helped a lot.
Kind of a long read but feedback and criticism fuel me.
I've not been writing long so excuse any laziness or typos. I have proof read it but I am only human.
The first time it happened is tough to put in words, that sounds like a cop out but it's true. There is an enormous rush of what I guess you could call fear then it's quickly followed by a similar rush but this time it's more of a euphoric high. It's got something to do with the adrenaline your body releases, which in itself is a whole other interesting phenomenon. Some people enjoy the rush so much they spend their lives chasing it, much like a drug. I would become one of these people.
One night, somewhere on the streets of Sydney, I was attacked. The natural instinct for some is to flee or at least get the **** away from whatever it was that just hit you head with that tremendous force. Unfortunately that wasn't my first instinct. The knock was hard, it shifted my sense of balance and everything was suddenly not where it was. I swung like a mad man trying to connect with anything within range. A rookie mistake but alas I was a rookie.
Any man thinks he knows how to fight or at least likes to think he knows. I'd never been in a fight before but I often thought of myself as being a good fighter. What the **** could I gauge that off? I'd never fought anyone before and I had never done any proper training of any kind. What you expect to see when there is some kind of brawl at a pub or on the streets is something you'd expect to pay fifty dollars to watch on main event, some sort of heavy weight title. It never is. One guy swings like a maniac while the other swing like a maniac. Very few punches are ever accurately landed with the precision some of the pros have. Shirts get torn, people fall over, shoes come off and maybe either party will land a blow that ends the fight, if not it's usually pulled apart and the two walk away looking like a pair primitive fools. After all it is in our nature.
After that first hit I began to swing back, like I said, rookie mistake. The attacker was in control and he had me pegged. I swung, maybe, four or five before I felt the second blow. Thats a 100% hit rate, at that stage it's like Muhammed Ali against a twelve year old. The second blow did it, it floored me like a wet towel. I was down, the fight was over but not for him. He dropped his knee into my chest, if it weren't for my arm taking half the blow he would have split my sternum. “Great” I thought, there goes at least three or four ribs. I could feel them rubbing when he shifted his weight. He was yelling at me but I had other things to worry about. Blow after blow I began to loose conciousness. From that point it's tough to remember.
I woke in a hospital bed, no sense of time. There was no one around and it was oddly quiet, the room anyway. Outside people buzzed by, too busy to look in. I must have sat for around a minute before my head weighed a hundred kilos. A pain ran from my forehead across the top of my skull and around to my left ear. A nurse had noticed at this point. She moved towards the bed and I lost conciousness again. An hour later I woke to the same nurse checking something. She greeted me and asked the general questions, “how are you feeling?”, “can I get you anything?”, “are you comfortable?”, “do you know what day it is?”. The last question bothered me a little. I thought “no, I don't” then I thought “****. What happened? Am I dead? No, the afterlife couldn't be this ****ty” I didn't even know if I believed in one. It was Saturday when I got in the fight, so I took a wild guess. “Sunday” I said.
“Tuesday” she replied.
“Hmm”
“You've been unconscious for at least 48 hours”
What do you say to that?
“You suffered a severe fracture to your skull, 8 broken ribs, fractured eye socket, broken jaw, nerve damage....”
She went on.
I stopped listening at broken ribs. I went back to the feeling of them rubbing together, it made me twitch then everything hurt.
“Jesus Christ!”
“You need to lay still”
“**** yes I do.”
“There is a morphine drip attached here”
She gave me the morphine button, I immediately hit it about seven or eight times. I understand how junkies get hooked now.
I sunk back into the bed. The nurse tried to tell me some more but I was out of it. Me mind crept backwards into some sort of movie theatre, I replayed the last memories of the fight over and over. I watched this man as he pummelled my face into nothing. I saw his eyes, fixed. It was terrifying and I loved it.
I spent the next 3 months confined to a bed with pins and needles sticking out of 70% of my body. I was ****ed but I couldn't stop thinking about the fight. What the **** was wrong with me? This man, a stranger, beat me to within an inch of my life. He put me through the worst pain imaginable, he shattered my face, my ribs. He destroyed every sense of being a man that I had and I wasn't mad. In a way I was thanking him. Part of me wanted to go back and beat the **** out of him in hope that he might get the same enlightenment I had. I would sit on top of him, like he had to me, and pound his face until I heard the blood curdle in his mouth then pound it some more, I'd break his jaw and shatter his eye socket. Maybe he'll feel like this? Do other people feel like this? There was that movie but those guys were pussies. Maybe he wouldn't understand. The likely hood wasn't very high.
By the end of the fourth month I was out of rehab. I could go back to my life, to my apartment. My fish were probably dead though but that didn't bother me. The cab ride was peaceful, for the first time I didn't give a ****.
“How are you mate? You look a little roughed up.”
My impulse was to smile, so I did. I could tell this upset the driver, he shifted in his seat and cautiously moved his eyes back to the road.
“ Get hit by a car or something, did ya mate?”
“Nope”
I looked to the driver and though about his face. How easily it could be broken, how soft and fragile it was.
He caught my stare which shook him. He could tell I was thinking about it.
“How about I drop you off here mate? We'll call it even. I'll get you another cab?”
I said nothing. The fear poured out of him like some fountain you'd find in the driveway of an italian crime bosses mansion. It raised the hairs on the back of my neck.
“I don't want trouble mate”
The smell got more and more intense, the windows fogged. The sweat was pissing out of him. I was surprised a man could carry that much liquid.
I reached for my back pocket. He squeezed himself between his seat and the drivers door.
He was crying.
I pulled my wallet and took out a fifty dollar note. I placed it on the dash. It was more than enough to cover my trip, which in total might have worked out to be around ten to fifteen dollars. The moment between me placing the note and him taking it felt like an hour.
He took the note, drove and didn't say another word. It was peaceful.
The fish were dead. “**** them” I thought. There was a thin layer of dust on everything. It were moment like this that I'd wished I wasn't in a foreign country so that my mum could at least come around and clean once a month.
My guitar was out of tune and the neck was warped. The spot it sat in must have had some heavy sunshine during the day. It didn't bother me, at that time music meant nothing. It was just a series of vibrations that I didn't need. This was an odd feeling, prior to my enlightenment music was my passion. It meant everything to me. Without it I couldn't operate now it was nothing. Maybe my mind had taken a step backwards. Maybe the damage was more than just physical. A little section of my brain that held onto things like passion, hobbies, interests, love, hate was no longer connected. Severed. Cut off like a monk banished from his temple. This didn't scare me, it excited me. I had reverted back to what life must have been like before civilisation. **** the internet, **** your hobbies, your interests, **** your girlfriend, your wife, your children. I didn't care for that. I didn't need it. What I needed was to survive.
Surviving in Sydney is easy. Four million people do it. There are supermarkets, police, hospitals, charities. Even the homeless can do it. There is rarely a sense of threat. People have it easy, they complain about the heat, traffic, no good movies, the internet is slow, my boyfriend doesn't understand me, my girlfriend wont suck my dick. All bull**** problems.
Whatever you need is around. It may cost money but then thats easy to get too. Work at a cafe, a bar, a book store, get the ****ing government to pay you, enough people do, whatever the ****. Time to leave.
My flight landed at Galeão International Airport, Rio de Janeiro. People say Rio has one of the highest crime rates in the world along with an impressive homicide rate. If anywhere in the world was going to give me what I needed perhaps I'd find it here.
I spent a week not knowing what to do, I'd watch the streets from the balcony of some deadbeat squaller I'd found. I watched the kids deal drugs, there was nothing to it. Not like the complicated systems you'd find elsewhere. The kid who had the money had the drugs too. He had a group of maybe three or four other kids who would act as look outs though. They were young too, I'd guess around twenty to twenty five. I weighed the options in my head, assessed the risk, proper survival. Could I get away with it? They did have a decent amount of money on them, somewhere between five hundred and a thousand dollars and I was going to need some kind of income.
Perhaps the urge came from a childhood filled with bull**** action movies. Stories of heroes defeating the villains, although I didn't look at it like that. People do this ****. They rob drug dealers all the time, it's one of the inherent risks of that line of work, the fear that at any point in the day it is possible someone will attempt to rob you and, if need be, end your life right there and then. Being so young maybe they didn't see the danger, they are after all invincible. This was my catalyst.
I managed to get my hands on a small revolver. Naturally it had no serial number and I could feel the raw power it had, I felt death flowing through it. A feeling so strong, so primal, so comforting. Comforting not because it could kill but because it could protect. It's one thing to hold a pistol it's another to hold one that has taken a human life. I knew this one had.
I spent another few days and nights watching the dealers. I learnt everything about them, I even began to recognise their customers, the regular users. They were the lowest, they had nothing, no survival instinct, no passion to live or maybe they did. The life of a drug fiend could be considered as ultimate survival. Addiction is a son of a *****, it consumes you. You'll do whatever it takes to get that next hit. When you think about it Junkie's are resourceful. They don't work, some of them have no homes, they have nothing except the drugs and we all know they cost money so where does the money come from? A number of places I guess, none of which i'll bother going into but I would say they have a decent sense of what survival is, maybe not in a primal way but more of a “keep the machine running” way.
My mind was so focused, nothing phased me. I needed to be one hundred percent on the game. If I slipped up at all I could be dead, thats not survival. I sat in my apartment for a good hour thinking. Reflecting on what needed to happen. Every plan thought out, ever angle worked, each scenario considered and dealt with. The pistol sat opposite me like an obedient dog.
When I stepped into the back alley of the apartment time seemed to slow. My heart raced, the adrenaline began to flow, the feeling was back. That same feeling.
I turned the corner of the alley and moved into the street, passing under a street light. I walked with purpose, meaning.
Four hundred meters. They hadn't noticed me.
Three hundred meters. One was watching.
Two hundred. The dealer had noticed now. His weight lent on the fence behind him.
One hundred. He shifted his left leg, dropping what was his support on the fence.
Fifty. He looked over me with a sense of superiority. He put himself way above me.
Ten. He saw my face. A smile.
I reached around to the back of my pants and felt the pistols grip in my hand, it swung around to my front and pointed directly at his **** scared face.
He looked into my eyes and I looked back. I thought of the cab driver. I could smell the fear. He called for his muscle but they were gone. It was him and me. The street was bare. All we could hear were the distant sirens, a dog and the sound of a nearby bar.
The pistol swayed lightly as I looked down my arm to the end of the barrel and into his eyes. I knew there was a language barrier but we were somehow strangely connected. We were essentially telepathic, there was no need to talk. He reached slowly for his pocket. I stopped him and shook my head. That wasn't the pocket he kept the money in. He knew I knew. He reached for the pocket the money was in. He slowly took it out never breaking eye contact. For a brief moment I broke away from his eyes to look at the cash, rookie mistake.
In an instant the cash flew into the air blinding my vision, I felt a hot feeling in my chest and I fired. The sound of the bullet was muted. I couldn't see until the cash had fallen to the floor. Against the fence slumped the dealer. The bullet had passed through his neck and hit an artery. Blood was gushing and it quickly filled the pavement and ran off into the gutter. Coughs and splutters shot little spurts of blood on and around me. He was still alive but for how long?
My chest was hot. As I looked down I noticed he'd stabbed me. Blood trickled from the wound. It didn't hurt, yet, but I knew it wasn't serious. I cupped my hand over it.
I watched as he bled out. It took longer than I expected. I did nothing, I held my wound and just watched. I felt nothing for the kid. No sense of remorse, no guilt, no pity. This was the life he'd chosen. This was one of the harsh realities. Who knows, he could have been a rapist a murderer. He was a drug dealer what else had he done? I might have done society a favour. What other bull**** could I conjure up to justify this?
When the last breathe of air left him I felt that rush again. It ran up my spine and into the back of my skull. It confused me for a moment. Was this something I took pleasure in doing? I wasn't sure. I hadn't gone there with the intention of murder but I was fully aware that it was on the table. I knew that deep inside I wasn't getting some sick pleasure from the killing itself but there was an overwhelming sense of being alive. Surviving the way it was. Kill or be killed.
When I returned to the apartment I put the cash in the sink, some blood was on the bills and I needed to get it off. The pistol sat on the sink next to me. After the money was clean I cleaned myself. I cleaned my wound and sewed it together with a sewing kit I'd had for a long time, this was survival. Everything I wore had blood on it, they had to go. Everything went into a plastic bag. After the shower I cleaned the pistol. I reloaded the missing shell and checked the sites. The pistol was a piece of **** but it had done the job.
I didn't sleep, the adrenaline ran deep. By sunrise the body had been found and police and paramedics were at the scene. I was questioned. Their english was broken. But I explained that I hadn't heard the shot. The police rarely get anything from the neighbours because of the consequences it might bring if they do speak up. This meant that there wasn't likely to be a follow up and the murder would be written off as a drug related case and added to the thousands of others similar.
This scared me a little. It made me think about how life gets to this point. Drugs are powerful. They hold much more than street value. With them comes a whole other world. Corruption in politics and police. In a world where no one earns any money the lure of drugs is quite strong. For some it's all they know and will ever know. For others, more greedy ones, they see quick money and tend to forget about the high risk. These ones are the problem ones. They consider themselves big dogs and have a tendency to disregard territories, alliances or pacts that some neighbourhoods have. These ones don't last. Whether or not that kid was one of these I will never know but he was aware of the risk.
But this wasn't my main concern. For now I knew it wasn't safe for me to stay around. I needed to get out. I had my rush, my “fix” and in a pure sense it was instinct to get out of there. Who knew what would happen next. The most obvious would be that the kid would be replaced with another and life would go on exactly how it was before the only change would be that perhaps they'd arm them now with something that packs a little more punch.
I didn't have many belonging so it was easy to leave. I made sure that no one had seen me leave too. With the cash I got myself to another neighbourhood a decent ways away from the last and by afternoon I had another apartment no nicer than the last. The neighbourhood seemed to be more alive than the last. There were a few bars on the street and the beach wasn't too far.
My expenses we running low so I was able to survive off the cash for a while. One of the bars I'd been going to regularly had a position vacant for bar work. My instinct would normally drive me a thousand miles from the thought of it but at the time I guess I felt I needed some security and after all robbing dealers is something you can't do frequently, sooner or later you'll catch the wrong one or someone will track you down and bam it's over.
I worked in the bar for several days before my mind started to wonder. I thought I'd be able to overcome it, to beat it some how but the yearning for that survival was too overwhelming. I needed that rush again and when he came in I knew he'd be the one I could get it from. He was an arrogant traveller. A dumb tourist, which I guess some of the locals would consider me, but this guy was more than that. All he could do was talk about himself, all the women he'd had, all the places he'd been, the drugs he'd taken, the encounters he'd had with “rough” people. **** this guy. He was everything I hated and I knew just how to provoke him. When the bar closed and he was asked to leave he confronted me. He was alone which was a bad idea. His “companions” had gone hours earlier and left him. I ****ed with him until he was ready to go, things were heated. It was only a moment before he'd take that fatal swing, not fatal for me though. He was just about to do it when the bar manager stepped in and broke him away from me. She knew what was going to happen, she wasn't stupid. She made me stay inside while she took him out and put him in a cab. She came back in.
“Arsehole”
“I was ready to hit him”
“I know”
“People like that need to be reality checked”
“Not here”
Somehow I felt that she knew what I meant. I doubt she had that same urge that I had but I know that if it were somewhere else the story might have been different.
“Go home” she said.
“Are you right to get home?”
“What do you care?”
I said nothing. I took my bag and headed for the back door.
“You can walk me home”
“Excuse me?”
“You wanted to walk me home.”
“I asked if you were right to get home”
“I know what you meant”
She was right, I didn't give a **** about walking her home, I had other intentions. Sex was on my mind and she knew it. I hadn't had sex since being here and in light of recent events it would have been wrong to deny that side of the primal instincts.
I waited another ten or fifteen minutes while she locked up and put the empty glasses into bins. When she was ready she grabbed her bag. I was sitting by the back door leaning against the wall. As she passed she jumped on me. Her body was pressed hard against mine. At first I was cautious but then it kicked in, the primal instinct. That need to ****. I lifted her feet of the ground and she jumped into my hips throwing her legs around my back. We crash onto the pool table and our clothes fell off. I was inside her and she could feel it. I pushed deep and she convulsed I did it again and felt her squeeze around me. It was right, both of us were in the moment. From the moment I was inside her I was in control. It was so raw and primal. I felt that rush again, it ran from the base of my spine right to my skull then back down again. As I came she did, it lasted longer than usual. Every muscle in my body tensioned then let go releasing hundreds of endorphins into my body. I took a moment to recover. She hadn't moved but she was twitching. Her hand rest on her forehead and her eyes were closed, she breathed heavily. I touched her hips and she spasmed. For a moment I thought I'd hurt her, for a moment I was worried. The first time I'd worried about another person. Her convulsions lasted another minute and she eventually sat up. She put her clothes on and we said nothing. Pure lust.
She moved to the back door and and held it open, waiting for me to leave. As I stepped outside she closed the door behind me. She locked it, kissed me then walked away. I stood for a moment and thought about what had happened. That was it. Was it? Is that how we should live. If you strip it down maybe it is. Some people believe there is more to life than reproduction, maybe there is. I don't know but if you look at it and really strip it back relationships, love, marriage they're not in our blood, it's not instinct to spend the rest of your life with one person. We are designed to spread our seed, to reproduce. But then whats the point of that? Are we working towards something? For me the need to be true to myself was important. I wanted to experience life the way it was intended. I wanted to fight, I wanted to honour my instincts and tonight I did. It was right.
I didn't bother returning to work. I felt I'd gotten what I needed. I packed and moved again. At this point I had a bit of cash and decided that I wanted to spend it. I wasn't into material things but I had to urge to buy into it. I bought a computer, a stereo, a big TV. What the **** do I do with this? I spent nights in bars getting drunk and high. I slept with women. I was doing exactly what that **** wit at the last bar was doing but I didn't give a ****. It was my instinct to do it and I was honouring it.
After a few months I had settled into a crowd of rough people. Drugs were everywhere, they had so many illegal operations going on I couldn't keep count. I was earning big cash organising the transportation of **** here and there. It didn't bother my moral concious that I was supplying drugs to people, the majority of who where addicts and would probably die by it. It was their fault they were addicted. Their weak minds had let them have just “one more”. They were scum and didn't deserve the right to life. **** them.
I spent months earning money, buying houses and apartments, jewellery, cars, boats, sleeping with women, having parties. I wouldn't sleep for days, sometimes weeks. The ride was wild and I wasn't getting off. My survival instincts were getting weak and I was too busy to notice.
I was starting to get the attention of some bigger dogs. At the time I didn't realise it but I had a target on my back. Locals didn't like the idea that I'd been so successful. They weren't impressed with my show. The clothes, houses, cars boats. It was all bull**** to them. I'd lost sight. Paranoia set in. Part of me thought it was just the drugs and maybe I should lay off, but something more told me I was right. My survival instinct, that feeling that I'd managed to suppress. I ignored it for too long. I'd lost track of it. I'd forgotten what it was. I knew that a part of it didn't stand up to societies morals but that wasn't a problem for me.
I knew it was a bad idea to get into the limo. Things weren't right. The night hadn't been right for sometime. People were watching me, the conversations were short and blunt. It was as if everyone knew something I didn't.
The drive went on for a long time. Two men sat opposite me, they had women under their arms and things were getting hot between them. It was nothing out of the ordinary. I poured myself a drink from the mini bar and drank it nervously.
“Where are we going”
“Back to the hotel” one of them said.
“Which one?”
“Our one.”
“Which one is that?”
“Relax man, were going to keep partying”
“I'm alright, I think I'd rather go home” I said.
“No, no no, stay a while. Come and party”
“No, look take me home”
There was a pause.
“Alright” one of them said.
The window between the back and the driver slid down. He ordered the driver to take me home.
I'd dodged a bullet. Who knows what was waiting for me at the party. I thought, get home, pack and get the **** out of there.
We stopped at a set of lights.
The locks on the doors popped up.
They swung open.
A man reached in and grabbed me. I struggled with him, the women screamed. I was grabbed from behind and torn from the car. As I was tossed from the car I felt the same hot sensation, this time against my throat.
I fell to the floor.
The car sped off.
As I lay in the gutter with blood oozing from my neck I felt nothing. No sense of adrenaline, no survival instinct. I failed to survive. My judgement was clouded and I showed weakness.
My eyelids were heavy, then my body.
Kind of a long read but feedback and criticism fuel me.
I've not been writing long so excuse any laziness or typos. I have proof read it but I am only human.
The first time it happened is tough to put in words, that sounds like a cop out but it's true. There is an enormous rush of what I guess you could call fear then it's quickly followed by a similar rush but this time it's more of a euphoric high. It's got something to do with the adrenaline your body releases, which in itself is a whole other interesting phenomenon. Some people enjoy the rush so much they spend their lives chasing it, much like a drug. I would become one of these people.
One night, somewhere on the streets of Sydney, I was attacked. The natural instinct for some is to flee or at least get the **** away from whatever it was that just hit you head with that tremendous force. Unfortunately that wasn't my first instinct. The knock was hard, it shifted my sense of balance and everything was suddenly not where it was. I swung like a mad man trying to connect with anything within range. A rookie mistake but alas I was a rookie.
Any man thinks he knows how to fight or at least likes to think he knows. I'd never been in a fight before but I often thought of myself as being a good fighter. What the **** could I gauge that off? I'd never fought anyone before and I had never done any proper training of any kind. What you expect to see when there is some kind of brawl at a pub or on the streets is something you'd expect to pay fifty dollars to watch on main event, some sort of heavy weight title. It never is. One guy swings like a maniac while the other swing like a maniac. Very few punches are ever accurately landed with the precision some of the pros have. Shirts get torn, people fall over, shoes come off and maybe either party will land a blow that ends the fight, if not it's usually pulled apart and the two walk away looking like a pair primitive fools. After all it is in our nature.
After that first hit I began to swing back, like I said, rookie mistake. The attacker was in control and he had me pegged. I swung, maybe, four or five before I felt the second blow. Thats a 100% hit rate, at that stage it's like Muhammed Ali against a twelve year old. The second blow did it, it floored me like a wet towel. I was down, the fight was over but not for him. He dropped his knee into my chest, if it weren't for my arm taking half the blow he would have split my sternum. “Great” I thought, there goes at least three or four ribs. I could feel them rubbing when he shifted his weight. He was yelling at me but I had other things to worry about. Blow after blow I began to loose conciousness. From that point it's tough to remember.
I woke in a hospital bed, no sense of time. There was no one around and it was oddly quiet, the room anyway. Outside people buzzed by, too busy to look in. I must have sat for around a minute before my head weighed a hundred kilos. A pain ran from my forehead across the top of my skull and around to my left ear. A nurse had noticed at this point. She moved towards the bed and I lost conciousness again. An hour later I woke to the same nurse checking something. She greeted me and asked the general questions, “how are you feeling?”, “can I get you anything?”, “are you comfortable?”, “do you know what day it is?”. The last question bothered me a little. I thought “no, I don't” then I thought “****. What happened? Am I dead? No, the afterlife couldn't be this ****ty” I didn't even know if I believed in one. It was Saturday when I got in the fight, so I took a wild guess. “Sunday” I said.
“Tuesday” she replied.
“Hmm”
“You've been unconscious for at least 48 hours”
What do you say to that?
“You suffered a severe fracture to your skull, 8 broken ribs, fractured eye socket, broken jaw, nerve damage....”
She went on.
I stopped listening at broken ribs. I went back to the feeling of them rubbing together, it made me twitch then everything hurt.
“Jesus Christ!”
“You need to lay still”
“**** yes I do.”
“There is a morphine drip attached here”
She gave me the morphine button, I immediately hit it about seven or eight times. I understand how junkies get hooked now.
I sunk back into the bed. The nurse tried to tell me some more but I was out of it. Me mind crept backwards into some sort of movie theatre, I replayed the last memories of the fight over and over. I watched this man as he pummelled my face into nothing. I saw his eyes, fixed. It was terrifying and I loved it.
I spent the next 3 months confined to a bed with pins and needles sticking out of 70% of my body. I was ****ed but I couldn't stop thinking about the fight. What the **** was wrong with me? This man, a stranger, beat me to within an inch of my life. He put me through the worst pain imaginable, he shattered my face, my ribs. He destroyed every sense of being a man that I had and I wasn't mad. In a way I was thanking him. Part of me wanted to go back and beat the **** out of him in hope that he might get the same enlightenment I had. I would sit on top of him, like he had to me, and pound his face until I heard the blood curdle in his mouth then pound it some more, I'd break his jaw and shatter his eye socket. Maybe he'll feel like this? Do other people feel like this? There was that movie but those guys were pussies. Maybe he wouldn't understand. The likely hood wasn't very high.
By the end of the fourth month I was out of rehab. I could go back to my life, to my apartment. My fish were probably dead though but that didn't bother me. The cab ride was peaceful, for the first time I didn't give a ****.
“How are you mate? You look a little roughed up.”
My impulse was to smile, so I did. I could tell this upset the driver, he shifted in his seat and cautiously moved his eyes back to the road.
“ Get hit by a car or something, did ya mate?”
“Nope”
I looked to the driver and though about his face. How easily it could be broken, how soft and fragile it was.
He caught my stare which shook him. He could tell I was thinking about it.
“How about I drop you off here mate? We'll call it even. I'll get you another cab?”
I said nothing. The fear poured out of him like some fountain you'd find in the driveway of an italian crime bosses mansion. It raised the hairs on the back of my neck.
“I don't want trouble mate”
The smell got more and more intense, the windows fogged. The sweat was pissing out of him. I was surprised a man could carry that much liquid.
I reached for my back pocket. He squeezed himself between his seat and the drivers door.
He was crying.
I pulled my wallet and took out a fifty dollar note. I placed it on the dash. It was more than enough to cover my trip, which in total might have worked out to be around ten to fifteen dollars. The moment between me placing the note and him taking it felt like an hour.
He took the note, drove and didn't say another word. It was peaceful.
The fish were dead. “**** them” I thought. There was a thin layer of dust on everything. It were moment like this that I'd wished I wasn't in a foreign country so that my mum could at least come around and clean once a month.
My guitar was out of tune and the neck was warped. The spot it sat in must have had some heavy sunshine during the day. It didn't bother me, at that time music meant nothing. It was just a series of vibrations that I didn't need. This was an odd feeling, prior to my enlightenment music was my passion. It meant everything to me. Without it I couldn't operate now it was nothing. Maybe my mind had taken a step backwards. Maybe the damage was more than just physical. A little section of my brain that held onto things like passion, hobbies, interests, love, hate was no longer connected. Severed. Cut off like a monk banished from his temple. This didn't scare me, it excited me. I had reverted back to what life must have been like before civilisation. **** the internet, **** your hobbies, your interests, **** your girlfriend, your wife, your children. I didn't care for that. I didn't need it. What I needed was to survive.
Surviving in Sydney is easy. Four million people do it. There are supermarkets, police, hospitals, charities. Even the homeless can do it. There is rarely a sense of threat. People have it easy, they complain about the heat, traffic, no good movies, the internet is slow, my boyfriend doesn't understand me, my girlfriend wont suck my dick. All bull**** problems.
Whatever you need is around. It may cost money but then thats easy to get too. Work at a cafe, a bar, a book store, get the ****ing government to pay you, enough people do, whatever the ****. Time to leave.
My flight landed at Galeão International Airport, Rio de Janeiro. People say Rio has one of the highest crime rates in the world along with an impressive homicide rate. If anywhere in the world was going to give me what I needed perhaps I'd find it here.
I spent a week not knowing what to do, I'd watch the streets from the balcony of some deadbeat squaller I'd found. I watched the kids deal drugs, there was nothing to it. Not like the complicated systems you'd find elsewhere. The kid who had the money had the drugs too. He had a group of maybe three or four other kids who would act as look outs though. They were young too, I'd guess around twenty to twenty five. I weighed the options in my head, assessed the risk, proper survival. Could I get away with it? They did have a decent amount of money on them, somewhere between five hundred and a thousand dollars and I was going to need some kind of income.
Perhaps the urge came from a childhood filled with bull**** action movies. Stories of heroes defeating the villains, although I didn't look at it like that. People do this ****. They rob drug dealers all the time, it's one of the inherent risks of that line of work, the fear that at any point in the day it is possible someone will attempt to rob you and, if need be, end your life right there and then. Being so young maybe they didn't see the danger, they are after all invincible. This was my catalyst.
I managed to get my hands on a small revolver. Naturally it had no serial number and I could feel the raw power it had, I felt death flowing through it. A feeling so strong, so primal, so comforting. Comforting not because it could kill but because it could protect. It's one thing to hold a pistol it's another to hold one that has taken a human life. I knew this one had.
I spent another few days and nights watching the dealers. I learnt everything about them, I even began to recognise their customers, the regular users. They were the lowest, they had nothing, no survival instinct, no passion to live or maybe they did. The life of a drug fiend could be considered as ultimate survival. Addiction is a son of a *****, it consumes you. You'll do whatever it takes to get that next hit. When you think about it Junkie's are resourceful. They don't work, some of them have no homes, they have nothing except the drugs and we all know they cost money so where does the money come from? A number of places I guess, none of which i'll bother going into but I would say they have a decent sense of what survival is, maybe not in a primal way but more of a “keep the machine running” way.
My mind was so focused, nothing phased me. I needed to be one hundred percent on the game. If I slipped up at all I could be dead, thats not survival. I sat in my apartment for a good hour thinking. Reflecting on what needed to happen. Every plan thought out, ever angle worked, each scenario considered and dealt with. The pistol sat opposite me like an obedient dog.
When I stepped into the back alley of the apartment time seemed to slow. My heart raced, the adrenaline began to flow, the feeling was back. That same feeling.
I turned the corner of the alley and moved into the street, passing under a street light. I walked with purpose, meaning.
Four hundred meters. They hadn't noticed me.
Three hundred meters. One was watching.
Two hundred. The dealer had noticed now. His weight lent on the fence behind him.
One hundred. He shifted his left leg, dropping what was his support on the fence.
Fifty. He looked over me with a sense of superiority. He put himself way above me.
Ten. He saw my face. A smile.
I reached around to the back of my pants and felt the pistols grip in my hand, it swung around to my front and pointed directly at his **** scared face.
He looked into my eyes and I looked back. I thought of the cab driver. I could smell the fear. He called for his muscle but they were gone. It was him and me. The street was bare. All we could hear were the distant sirens, a dog and the sound of a nearby bar.
The pistol swayed lightly as I looked down my arm to the end of the barrel and into his eyes. I knew there was a language barrier but we were somehow strangely connected. We were essentially telepathic, there was no need to talk. He reached slowly for his pocket. I stopped him and shook my head. That wasn't the pocket he kept the money in. He knew I knew. He reached for the pocket the money was in. He slowly took it out never breaking eye contact. For a brief moment I broke away from his eyes to look at the cash, rookie mistake.
In an instant the cash flew into the air blinding my vision, I felt a hot feeling in my chest and I fired. The sound of the bullet was muted. I couldn't see until the cash had fallen to the floor. Against the fence slumped the dealer. The bullet had passed through his neck and hit an artery. Blood was gushing and it quickly filled the pavement and ran off into the gutter. Coughs and splutters shot little spurts of blood on and around me. He was still alive but for how long?
My chest was hot. As I looked down I noticed he'd stabbed me. Blood trickled from the wound. It didn't hurt, yet, but I knew it wasn't serious. I cupped my hand over it.
I watched as he bled out. It took longer than I expected. I did nothing, I held my wound and just watched. I felt nothing for the kid. No sense of remorse, no guilt, no pity. This was the life he'd chosen. This was one of the harsh realities. Who knows, he could have been a rapist a murderer. He was a drug dealer what else had he done? I might have done society a favour. What other bull**** could I conjure up to justify this?
When the last breathe of air left him I felt that rush again. It ran up my spine and into the back of my skull. It confused me for a moment. Was this something I took pleasure in doing? I wasn't sure. I hadn't gone there with the intention of murder but I was fully aware that it was on the table. I knew that deep inside I wasn't getting some sick pleasure from the killing itself but there was an overwhelming sense of being alive. Surviving the way it was. Kill or be killed.
When I returned to the apartment I put the cash in the sink, some blood was on the bills and I needed to get it off. The pistol sat on the sink next to me. After the money was clean I cleaned myself. I cleaned my wound and sewed it together with a sewing kit I'd had for a long time, this was survival. Everything I wore had blood on it, they had to go. Everything went into a plastic bag. After the shower I cleaned the pistol. I reloaded the missing shell and checked the sites. The pistol was a piece of **** but it had done the job.
I didn't sleep, the adrenaline ran deep. By sunrise the body had been found and police and paramedics were at the scene. I was questioned. Their english was broken. But I explained that I hadn't heard the shot. The police rarely get anything from the neighbours because of the consequences it might bring if they do speak up. This meant that there wasn't likely to be a follow up and the murder would be written off as a drug related case and added to the thousands of others similar.
This scared me a little. It made me think about how life gets to this point. Drugs are powerful. They hold much more than street value. With them comes a whole other world. Corruption in politics and police. In a world where no one earns any money the lure of drugs is quite strong. For some it's all they know and will ever know. For others, more greedy ones, they see quick money and tend to forget about the high risk. These ones are the problem ones. They consider themselves big dogs and have a tendency to disregard territories, alliances or pacts that some neighbourhoods have. These ones don't last. Whether or not that kid was one of these I will never know but he was aware of the risk.
But this wasn't my main concern. For now I knew it wasn't safe for me to stay around. I needed to get out. I had my rush, my “fix” and in a pure sense it was instinct to get out of there. Who knew what would happen next. The most obvious would be that the kid would be replaced with another and life would go on exactly how it was before the only change would be that perhaps they'd arm them now with something that packs a little more punch.
I didn't have many belonging so it was easy to leave. I made sure that no one had seen me leave too. With the cash I got myself to another neighbourhood a decent ways away from the last and by afternoon I had another apartment no nicer than the last. The neighbourhood seemed to be more alive than the last. There were a few bars on the street and the beach wasn't too far.
My expenses we running low so I was able to survive off the cash for a while. One of the bars I'd been going to regularly had a position vacant for bar work. My instinct would normally drive me a thousand miles from the thought of it but at the time I guess I felt I needed some security and after all robbing dealers is something you can't do frequently, sooner or later you'll catch the wrong one or someone will track you down and bam it's over.
I worked in the bar for several days before my mind started to wonder. I thought I'd be able to overcome it, to beat it some how but the yearning for that survival was too overwhelming. I needed that rush again and when he came in I knew he'd be the one I could get it from. He was an arrogant traveller. A dumb tourist, which I guess some of the locals would consider me, but this guy was more than that. All he could do was talk about himself, all the women he'd had, all the places he'd been, the drugs he'd taken, the encounters he'd had with “rough” people. **** this guy. He was everything I hated and I knew just how to provoke him. When the bar closed and he was asked to leave he confronted me. He was alone which was a bad idea. His “companions” had gone hours earlier and left him. I ****ed with him until he was ready to go, things were heated. It was only a moment before he'd take that fatal swing, not fatal for me though. He was just about to do it when the bar manager stepped in and broke him away from me. She knew what was going to happen, she wasn't stupid. She made me stay inside while she took him out and put him in a cab. She came back in.
“Arsehole”
“I was ready to hit him”
“I know”
“People like that need to be reality checked”
“Not here”
Somehow I felt that she knew what I meant. I doubt she had that same urge that I had but I know that if it were somewhere else the story might have been different.
“Go home” she said.
“Are you right to get home?”
“What do you care?”
I said nothing. I took my bag and headed for the back door.
“You can walk me home”
“Excuse me?”
“You wanted to walk me home.”
“I asked if you were right to get home”
“I know what you meant”
She was right, I didn't give a **** about walking her home, I had other intentions. Sex was on my mind and she knew it. I hadn't had sex since being here and in light of recent events it would have been wrong to deny that side of the primal instincts.
I waited another ten or fifteen minutes while she locked up and put the empty glasses into bins. When she was ready she grabbed her bag. I was sitting by the back door leaning against the wall. As she passed she jumped on me. Her body was pressed hard against mine. At first I was cautious but then it kicked in, the primal instinct. That need to ****. I lifted her feet of the ground and she jumped into my hips throwing her legs around my back. We crash onto the pool table and our clothes fell off. I was inside her and she could feel it. I pushed deep and she convulsed I did it again and felt her squeeze around me. It was right, both of us were in the moment. From the moment I was inside her I was in control. It was so raw and primal. I felt that rush again, it ran from the base of my spine right to my skull then back down again. As I came she did, it lasted longer than usual. Every muscle in my body tensioned then let go releasing hundreds of endorphins into my body. I took a moment to recover. She hadn't moved but she was twitching. Her hand rest on her forehead and her eyes were closed, she breathed heavily. I touched her hips and she spasmed. For a moment I thought I'd hurt her, for a moment I was worried. The first time I'd worried about another person. Her convulsions lasted another minute and she eventually sat up. She put her clothes on and we said nothing. Pure lust.
She moved to the back door and and held it open, waiting for me to leave. As I stepped outside she closed the door behind me. She locked it, kissed me then walked away. I stood for a moment and thought about what had happened. That was it. Was it? Is that how we should live. If you strip it down maybe it is. Some people believe there is more to life than reproduction, maybe there is. I don't know but if you look at it and really strip it back relationships, love, marriage they're not in our blood, it's not instinct to spend the rest of your life with one person. We are designed to spread our seed, to reproduce. But then whats the point of that? Are we working towards something? For me the need to be true to myself was important. I wanted to experience life the way it was intended. I wanted to fight, I wanted to honour my instincts and tonight I did. It was right.
I didn't bother returning to work. I felt I'd gotten what I needed. I packed and moved again. At this point I had a bit of cash and decided that I wanted to spend it. I wasn't into material things but I had to urge to buy into it. I bought a computer, a stereo, a big TV. What the **** do I do with this? I spent nights in bars getting drunk and high. I slept with women. I was doing exactly what that **** wit at the last bar was doing but I didn't give a ****. It was my instinct to do it and I was honouring it.
After a few months I had settled into a crowd of rough people. Drugs were everywhere, they had so many illegal operations going on I couldn't keep count. I was earning big cash organising the transportation of **** here and there. It didn't bother my moral concious that I was supplying drugs to people, the majority of who where addicts and would probably die by it. It was their fault they were addicted. Their weak minds had let them have just “one more”. They were scum and didn't deserve the right to life. **** them.
I spent months earning money, buying houses and apartments, jewellery, cars, boats, sleeping with women, having parties. I wouldn't sleep for days, sometimes weeks. The ride was wild and I wasn't getting off. My survival instincts were getting weak and I was too busy to notice.
I was starting to get the attention of some bigger dogs. At the time I didn't realise it but I had a target on my back. Locals didn't like the idea that I'd been so successful. They weren't impressed with my show. The clothes, houses, cars boats. It was all bull**** to them. I'd lost sight. Paranoia set in. Part of me thought it was just the drugs and maybe I should lay off, but something more told me I was right. My survival instinct, that feeling that I'd managed to suppress. I ignored it for too long. I'd lost track of it. I'd forgotten what it was. I knew that a part of it didn't stand up to societies morals but that wasn't a problem for me.
I knew it was a bad idea to get into the limo. Things weren't right. The night hadn't been right for sometime. People were watching me, the conversations were short and blunt. It was as if everyone knew something I didn't.
The drive went on for a long time. Two men sat opposite me, they had women under their arms and things were getting hot between them. It was nothing out of the ordinary. I poured myself a drink from the mini bar and drank it nervously.
“Where are we going”
“Back to the hotel” one of them said.
“Which one?”
“Our one.”
“Which one is that?”
“Relax man, were going to keep partying”
“I'm alright, I think I'd rather go home” I said.
“No, no no, stay a while. Come and party”
“No, look take me home”
There was a pause.
“Alright” one of them said.
The window between the back and the driver slid down. He ordered the driver to take me home.
I'd dodged a bullet. Who knows what was waiting for me at the party. I thought, get home, pack and get the **** out of there.
We stopped at a set of lights.
The locks on the doors popped up.
They swung open.
A man reached in and grabbed me. I struggled with him, the women screamed. I was grabbed from behind and torn from the car. As I was tossed from the car I felt the same hot sensation, this time against my throat.
I fell to the floor.
The car sped off.
As I lay in the gutter with blood oozing from my neck I felt nothing. No sense of adrenaline, no survival instinct. I failed to survive. My judgement was clouded and I showed weakness.
My eyelids were heavy, then my body.