The Abyss

When you stare into The Abyss, The Abyss stares back into you…

When you look away from The Abyss, it lowers its eyes, blushing.

While you’re in the washroom, The Abyss’ friend, Loneliness, comes over to our table to ask on its behalf whether or not you’re single. I tell her that yes, you are, though I point out that you may not be ready to get involved with something as serious as The Abyss considering what you’ve been through in your recent personal life.

Loneliness tells me that The Abyss is an adult anthropomorphic personification of nothingness, and as such that it can make its own decisions with regard to its personal life, that I shouldn’t worry about it one way or the other and let the two of you make your own decisions.

And I concede that Loneliness is right.

The Abyss has existed since before the dawn of time itself, and It will exist long after the universe has winked out of existence one star at a time, if there were anything capable of dealing with the enormity of your emotionally stunted bullshit, your drinking and inability to commit and your unwillingness to admit that you’re ever wrong, it’s The Abyss. And you, much though I question the choices you’ve made up to this point, are also an adult, and though I sometimes fear for you I know I can’t actually step in and live life on your behalf.

I can barely handle my own problems, after all. I have my shit together by a thread, and I’m clinging to that thread for dear life, I can’t be expected to fix you.

Much though I might want, I can’t fix you and it would be death to try.

You would be a pyre upon which I burned myself to death, if I let you…

So, when you come out of the bathroom, Loneliness, The Abyss and I are sharing a table, laughing over drinks.

The laughter is forced, you can tell it’s forced as you join us, it has that “whistling past the graveyard” quality that all forced laughter does its best to avoid. But you join us anyway.

You and The Abyss hit it off immediately, as though you were meant for one another, made for one another, and when the two of you leave together I can’t even pretend I’m surprised.

It just seems so natural, the two of you. As though it were meant to be, as though your whole life was pushing you toward The Abyss, and as the door swings shut behind you, I force myself to hope for the best.

Yes, this might just be a one-night stand brought on by the stresses of your recent personal life, a night of profound existential despair that, come morning, you can walk away from and start the work of putting your life back together, but I can’t help hoping it’s more than that.

Because I saw the way the two of you were together, you slumped over your drink, The Abyss looming over you, enclosing you, protecting you, and I think that if you play your cards right you could stretch this chance meeting with The Abyss out into a lifetime of ennui.

If you play your cards right.

I know it isn’t the life you’d wanted, but I suspect that by this point in your emotional development, or lack thereof, it’s the best you can reasonably hope for, and certainly all that you deserve. So as you go off, together, I cross my fingers for you and hope for the best.

Myself, I spend my night in the embrace of Loneliness, and hope as I do that future nights bring better things. But that’s okay.

Loneliness is the sort of company I’m used to, I can weather it gladly that you might have The Abyss that you want.

I’m a good wingman that way.

On Fear...

Fear is the mind killer, it only holds us back.

We can’t let it influence us, control us, for to do so is to lose track of that which makes us human.

Our hope.

Our ambition.

The willingness to make grand leaps of faith.

And without these things, what have we? What are we? What can we possibly accomplish in this too short life?

We have nothing, we are nothing, if we give ourselves over to fear.

Unfortunately, tear gas, truncheons and bullets kill the body, and without it, the mind dies too.

And so our fear, for now, remains...

The Me I've Made My Peace With

I am nothing.

A cipher.

An empty suit.

A thing of sound and fury, carefully calculated to signify nothing, calibrated to allow the viewer to read whatever he or she may want into me, without ever staking out any meaningful position of my own.

In this way I’m never held accountable.

In this way, I’m utterly forgotten the moment I step out of the room.

I try so desperately hard to be liked by everyone I might meet that I never manage to matter to anyone I might meet.

However much they might like me while I’m there.

And whilst this fact does kill me, I understand that it’s nobody’s fault but my own.

Because I am the captain of my ship, the master of my destiny, and if I’m too fucking cowardly to stand up and say “I’m real, I’m a real fucking person, and I matter too!” then who am I to complain when nobody knows it.

They never feel they need to know it, because I never bother to explain it properly to them.

I shouldn’t need to, if I’m a real person with real feelings to which attention must be paid, people should be able to figure it out on their own.

However, it’s nobody’s fault but mine that I deliberately cultivate an image wherein I’m no such person.

Because if every moment of my life, every action, every word, is an artfully designed construct, and every emotional beat I send out into the world, every feeling that I feel when I know that eyes are upon me, every joke and laugh, every moment of rage, yes, even my naked, hopeless, impotently furious moments of self-loathing, here upon the stage, are a put on, designed for the benefit of those who I know are watching, then it’s natural that they might think there’s nothing more to me than that.

An artful fiction, to be enjoyed and then safely forgotten.

Nothing more than a collection of witticisms and mannerisms, all gloss on the surface, surrounding a core that, at the end of the day, is found to be ultimately, inarguably empty.

But in spite of this, don’t worry. You’ll like me.

Because my greatest weakness is also my greatest strength.

And the fact that I am, on a fundamental level, incapable of connecting meaningfully with another human being means that, on the shallowest of levels, I connect with literally everyone.

And my desperate, pathetic need to be liked means that, in the short enough term, I am very likable.

And, at the end of the day, I’m so fucking fun at a bar that it would make you cry…

Meanwhile, at a local haunted house...

I know how you got here.

At least, I can hazard an educated guess, based on my own experiences.

You and your idiot friends learned about this little house, a ways off the beaten path but still easy enough to find if you bother to look for it. You heard that nobody’d lived here for years, and when you dug around for more information you heard about the murders that took place here, too long ago for anyone who might remember firsthand to still be around to ask about.

They dared you to spend the night in the “haunted” house, and you agreed, and now here you are.

I know this, or can guess it, because that’s what happened to me.

I wasn’t murdered here, that wasn’t me. The family that was is still around, somewhere, but I’m just some guy, who’s idiot friends once dared him to spend the night here, who found the ghost and, petrified by its ghastly visage, panicked and ran for the door, only to find it locked upon my arrival.

I pounded on the door, screamed in fear and agony and, after what seemed like a dozen lifetimes spent lost in a terror that I’m sure must’ve at some point driven me insane, sank to the floor, my heart giving out from overwork as the world slowly, finally, went black around me.

I died in front of that door, and when my friends returned for me in the morning, they found my body there, mouth still frozen in silent scream, cold and dead and very, very pale.

Yes, as pale as you’re looking right now.

And in a moment you too will, no doubt, break for the door and find it shut to you, and as you throw yourself, over and over again, against it in a desperate and futile attempt to find your way to freedom, I want you to know, I’ll feel no pleasure at my victory. It will bring me no joy.

No, in fact I’ll feel tremendous guilt at the role I play in scaring you to death, guilt that, were I not already deceased, would no doubt haunt me to the grave.

But there’s nothing I can do about that. I haunt this place, and you entered it, and such is the way of these things. I could no more let you pass the night here unimpeded than the family could let me loose when I came here so long ago.

I wish I could make you understand, this isn’t personal. It’s just what I am now, appalling though it is, and much though I’d like to I’m not capable of going against my fundamental nature.

Of course, are any of us?

No matter. I can explain all of this to you afterward, once your body has ceased and you’ve calmed down a little. We have all the time in the world for conversation, after all, we’re going to be here together a very long time.

Once you’ve passed over, I’ll introduce you to the others, too. They’re anxious to meet you, it’s been so long since anyone’s ventured inside this house, we’d worried that the legends surrounding it had finally warned people off for good.

We’d missed the visitors.

That’s part of why we’re so glad you’re here.

You’re sure to add a little life to the place…

Weekly Prompt Story: Never Fear

http://podcasting.isfullofcrap.com/2012/11/11/weekly-challenge-342-fear/

Never Fear

By Christopher Munroe

“Never fear!” Captain Remarkable exclaimed as he crashed through the skylight, knocking out Doctor Preposterous with one punch.

And so, I didn’t.

I asked Laura in the secretarial pool out the next day, then marched into my boss’ office and demanded not only the raise that’d been overdue, but two extra weeks paid vacation. Laura and I will be spending extra time and money base-jumping in Brazil. I’ve always wanted to go, to try it, but I’d been afraid.

No more. As the Captain said, from this moment on I’ll never fear.  And my world will be richer for it…

Panic Room

The world is a more dangerous place today than it’s ever been in history.

I mean, obviously it isn’t.

My parents grew up during the Cold War, and lived with the specter of nuclear annihilation hanging over their head for decades, never even knowing what it might be like to be free of that constant threat.

My grandparents met while doing their part to fight a war that burned most of Europe to the ground, and so did my great-grandparents.

Still, in spite of how demonstrably safe I am in my suburban home in Canada, it FEELS more dangerous today than ever before, doesn’t it?

I’ve heard theories that this is due to the nature of news coverage and the need to fill 24 hours a day with news-like programming that draws enough viewer attention to sell advertising, but I don’t know if I have an opinion on that...

What I do know is that the world feels dangerous, more dangerous than it’s ever been.

And so, I’ve had a panic room installed in my home.

I know, I live in a safe neighborhood in one of the safest cities in the country, and the crime rate’s been consistently trending downward for decades, even with the recession, but I can’t be too careful when it comes to my personal safety.

I’m worth it.

I can’t really afford it, but that’s a matter I’ll deal with when my credit card bills come due. Or when they start calling me with warnings.

Or when they turn the account over to collections agents.

In the meantime, panic room!

It’s absolutely fantastic, I’ve spared no expense. It locks from the inside, obviously, and there’s no way to get somebody out of it if they’re unwilling to go.

The walls are reinforced with concrete, but covered on the inside with thick foam padding to prevent any sort of injury occurring.

The room is well lit, but completely free of furniture. When I’m inside it I’m there alone, with nothing but my thoughts to keep me company.

And late at night, when I can’t handle some aspect of my personal life, or when the dangers of the modern world start to get to me, I can get out of my bed, creep downstairs, lock myself inside my brand new panic room, and freak the fuck out to my heart’s content…

Fear

There are fewer things more delicious in this life than the taste of fear.

Especially the fear of an innocent.

At least, that’s the premise of my new Food Network series “Taste the Fear”.

We bring in the freshest of ingredients, as well as people who have no idea they’re on television, and while my sous chefs do the prep-work for each week’s delicious gourmet dishes, I chase our “Special Guests” through an elaborately constructed death maze, threatening their lives with a variety of weapons.

It’s not exactly legal in any of the countries in which the show airs, but we film it on a cruise ship on international waters, and there’s no evidence that our Guests are kidnapped from any specific nation.

Foot Network lawyers assure me this muddies the legal waters enough that I’ll never be prosecuted. But even if this weren’t the case, I’d do it. It makes, after all, for incredible TV.

And moreover, it’s true.

There are fewer things more delicious in this life than someone else’s fear.

And at the end of each episode, when we eat that week’s Guests, their fear makes them taste sublime….

We Have Nothing to Fear...

Fear’s the real killer.

It’ll paralyze you if you’re not careful. The slightest little thing, harmless on it’s face, can be magnified by the subconscious mind and manifest as the most paralyzing sort of terror.

It’s for this reason one must remain vigilant, ready to face one’s fears when needed. And must make oneself available to help others when they need to face theirs.

So, when the time came to overcome her phobia of spiders, I buried her alive, in a coffin full of spiders.

And now she no longer fears spiders.

Next: To address her newfound fear of me…

Fear

I can taste your fear.

I feel it pouring off you in waves, and I hunger for it. It’s what I came here for, why I do what I do. For your fear. Thick, black and salty, I know I must have it.

I will have it.

I drink it in, wave after wave, and it’s delicious. Your terror gives me life, gives me reason, and I take all you have, leaving you empty, a shell, drained of that which once seemed so important to you.

And so nourished I depart, and you go forward into the world, reborn.

Fearless.