The Cloud of Inner Conflict

The feeling was unnatural, he simply could not accept what was in front of him. In the exquisite light of his own making, he was seeing the world through fresh images of positive indifference. Simply as it should be, he mused, as a dark cloud began to descend. It was these statements that made him consider how he was transcending all else. Too often he traversed this consciousness, only to trip at some point.

He had gone forth and conquered; his prize was the sure sum of the extraordinary efforts in rising to face an adversary in a fatal engagement.

Fatal, the word rose at the back of his mind; end.

And there it was, as he stared at the neatly compact “reward”: twenty thousand dollars, cash.

For others in his line of work, for the punishment he had put himself through, this would not have been worth the rigours. But for him, this was not a miserly amount, even with the training regime he had gone through. Yet something felt amiss in these calculated considerations.

He pondered on it: It’s what it has cost me. Not the toll of what I have had to go through, but what is happening now.

He knew the fall was coming. He knew he was crumbling. The question forcing its way from his mouth: ‘Was it worth it?’ He muttered it to himself; no one else was in the darkening room. He had been left once more to fend for himself; by himself; against himself.

It wasn’t as if he couldn't keep pressing on in such a manner, it’s that he didn’t want to.

What have I become? he kept questioning and mulling over what had occurred. The room became bleaker, seeming to collapse in on itself, trapping his sense of reality.

He stared at the “reward”. It was elegantly placed in front of him. Tidy, crisp bills that appeared far too immaculate, far too perfect. He sneered, turning his attention away from it, frowning in contemplation of what he had “achieved”: the exact outcome for which his training had propelled him towards.

The effects of the physical effort could be counted simply, but the psyche was beginning to show how much it had been shattered.

This is what it is to get what you want?

The deflation of his self, that chaotic force of destruction he exuded. He knew only one way to counter it: a focussed creative output.

He pulled out his little, black, Moleskine notebook gingerly. He’d always been attracted to the idea of being able to write, to express a world he knew intimately, a world nobody else could see. There was a delight in opening the finely made journal as if it were a sacred parchment, his works being condensed into a form akin to other notable Moleskine writers – at least that was how it felt. Feeling was everything in this matter. Perhaps that was the problem, for someone trained in such deadly arts, to feel was a most heinous element and needed to be done away with.

“Swirling waves torment”, his words etched into the page. It was not how he wished to start off. ‘How cliché,’ he grumbled aloud, acknowledging it wasn’t providing him with the usual levity.

A haiku every now and again would lift his spirit. That fixated concentration which provided a release from the manacles of his mind.

The night air was humid and beginning to build into an electric force. The stark room, with its thin walls, allowed the sound of cicadas to rummage through the barrier of his world. The breeze flowed smoothly through the slightly ajar window, but had little effect on the increasing pressure. He preferred the freshness of the outside to the staleness indoors, yet he was stuck in this place through his own acts - but mostly his stubbornness.

He elevated his mind, off from this plane, into the emptiness he felt comforted by. That void, where no tangible thing had to exist, where he did not have to exist, where he did not have to be.

Breathing in, his battered body recoiled slightly from the expansion, making him aware once more of his physical being. He held the breath. The brief moment of respite cleared him enough to observe inwardly.

I think like this because it is only human to do so. Good, bad, it makes no difference in the end. I am traversing this existence like any other. I am no more important than any other. I am part of the whole; significantly insignificant.

He was relieved for that sparse moment.

He breathed out.

What I have done is of no importance in the grander scheme of things. Whether it was written or not, it is done. The reactions of others, positive or negative, they have no bearing on me. I have to move forward. That is the only natural path to take.

With his breath still expelled, he opened his eyes, believing he had wrested control.

Sitting cross legged in front of the little black notebook on a small coffee table, he raised his hand to take up the fine-tipped, blue pen once more. It shook violently.

He was almost overcome by an anxious anger at his body’s persistent ignorance to his mental predicament and its needs.

‘You keep this up, and I will make sure to break you,’ he said to it.

In a manner of speaking, it was entirely unfair he should treat his swollen hand with such disregard. It was what had been so instrumental in the pursuit of his “achievement”. And yet, by almost obliterating it in such a pursuit, he had seemingly lost what he considered the greater ability - even if it did not provide him with anything more than a sense of wholesomeness and fulfilment.

Fulfilment, it was an odd consideration, as he stopped short of putting pen to paper. Why did he choose this path in the first place? Why be a destructive force rather than creative one? Simply put, he was good at what he did, and getting better at it too. People who knew him lauded his growth, his massive strides in climbing to the top of his line of work. Yet this other side of him, the one where a blank page stared up at him, stroking an intense desire to dance to a different drum, it remained a deep secret that he dared not share.

He felt the sudden urge to think about the other guy, but would not let himself meander into that darkness. He ought to leave it for that other side of him that didn’t feel, that didn’t have to feel. For right now, he was faced with countless possibilities to elevate himself from the misery of executing his own plan to such an extreme degree; others may have found it righteous to forge ahead with a design and complete it, but he did not.

Overcome with simmering tension, his hand jolted as if in boiling water. He grimaced, grabbing a glass of cold iced water with his other. It was as if the adage of the balance came to life; that what happens to one side will be mirrored on the other. In this simple example, the damage he had inflicted on one side of his body seemed to carry over to the opposite.

The glass rattled around in his hand, spilling the clear liquid on the table.

‘Damn it!’ he cursed.

Manifesting his rage in a single, clinical motion, he threw the glass at the wall, shattering it into pieces. The sound of the crash pierced his hearing, blurring his vision. His body began to spasm as he thrust himself backward for some relief. But it reminded him of the other’s fall, a fall into a permanent sleep.

‘No!’ he growled. ‘I can’t think of that!’ And he didn’t. But it still gnawed away at him, still butted against the wall of his obtuse resistance, trying to let itself be examined.

He raised himself up, sitting as straight as possible. He knew once he started in that direction, there was no stopping the calculated steps towards an out of control spiralling. There would be no way back.

‘Switch off!’ he yelled at his senses, trying desperately to clear all thoughts and not have to be present.

He felt his blood rising. Clenching his fist, he tensed. But nothing could come, he could do nothing.

The lined pages stared up at him.

A stuffy night is difficult to calm oneself even under the best of circumstances, so with nerves at snapping point, there was little that could be done.

He remained as tense as possible, clenching his whole body against an invisible foe, hoping some respite would come and knock him down. In this way, his mind concentrated on the blankness in front of him, the breeze rasping past him, the bugs continuing their nightly preoccupation.

I can beat this feeling, if only I knew how!

Suddenly a roar shot through the Summer evening’s chime, as thunder broke the night. Almost immediately, sharp droplets hit the ground outside, dimming the cicadas' song. A heavy deluge from the open heavens reverberated a melody upon the roof.

He released his body, listening to the sound, becoming mesmerised by it.

Minutes became hours and passed without him moving, without him thinking; hypnotised by the elemental force.

The constricting room and the outside surrounds simply stopped in time, and he was left in the riven of his own making.

...

A buzzing sound broke his transfixed mind. His fragile state shaken to the foundation. He let it slide. However, a few moments later, a buzz again. Waking himself to reality. What is that!? he questioned. Slowly, as if waking from a deep sleep and beginning to recognise his own perceptiveness as a being, he answered his question: his mobile phone.

He didn’t dare look at it, he couldn’t deal with the outside world right now. But as he stared in its direction, and with the light of the screen dimming, five words stood out: “still alive… likely full recovery.”

He broke. His tort, pent-up body started to convulse as if the tension had been severed, allowing, after what was an inordinate amount of time, to be free and relaxed.

He tried to laugh, but it was tears that came. He was free!

In that instant he realised he would have gladly given the reward for such knowledge. Or moreover, for the whole of it not to have occurred.

What others thought of this, he could not care less. He had been given another chance, given himself another chance; he had been spared an ultimate outcome for his path of destruction.

With that knowledge, with that empowerment, he knew now was the time to take a new course.

Taking up the pen in a swift movement as if he were a surgeon, he began to repair himself. Tears falling to the page, he had been saved.

Swirling waves torment

Rain calms raging sea’s conflict

Dark cloud lifts within