Week 25 - Blood

Blood

Matthew Ryan Fischer

Spots on the wall, moving, and dancing about. Blood, dripping down his back.

Jonathan smiled. He was alive. He felt the overwhelming abundance of life and he drank it up inside.

Blood. Dripping. Rolling. Sticking. Sweet disgusting beautiful blood. Life in liquid form. He could sense it. He could always sense it. It was one of the gifts. He could feel it there. He was sure he could smell it, almost taste it, if he just closed his eyes and concentrated enough. The blood wasn’t his, but it was his now. He owned it. He controlled it. He was its master. And the blood would give him its most precious gift.

Spots on the wall. Little things. Blurred, but now focused. It had been dark but suddenly now he was fully awake. He was aware of all that was around him. The first thing he saw were the spots on the wall. Little things. Out of focus. He was sure they had been something more, but their life had been snuffed out. Crushed. Stepped on. Smashed dead. So many things over so many years smashed dead. What was one more? A hundred more? Did it matter anymore at this point? They were just the remains of that which was gone, that which could never be recovered or had again. He was blissfully aware that that was the case. Infinite finality. And he had been the cause.

He smiled at that. He felt power, somewhere within that. Somewhere, he was God, and his arrival harbingered death.

Sebastian by birth, but he had since changed to Jonathan because he hated his parents for many reasons, the name being the least of them. Jonathan because he had read it in a novel and he felt it suited his baser nature. Sebastian of history had been a saint, dying for his pointless convictions, and as far as Jonathan could tell, he was no saint, nor did he have any desire to become one. Sebastian would never do. Jonathan fit better. Jonathan was a dark name. Darker was better. Darker was always better.

Sebastian had been fascinated by death from an early age. There were two constants in the world, birth and death, and it was fairly obvious which one of the two won in the end. Death overwhelmed the strong, it stole the young, it felled those in their prime. Death was tricky and sneaky and it couldn’t be beaten. Death came for all and all the same. No one could deny that. Death was fair and Death was even. Death was justice. Death didn’t care if someone was grand or poor or weak or strong or brave or a coward. Death was equal. No one could say that of birth. Birth played games, it picked winners and losers. Birth could plan destinies and choose fates, but Death would eventually overwhelm all. That was true power.

True power was what Sebastian was after.

He found kinship in a book about death. A diary. A journal, depicting the path to enlightenment. He believed he had found a brother, a comrade, a mentor. The book taught him the lesson of life versus death and power over his fellow man. The book showed him who was the master and who was the slave. Sebastian had no plans on being a slave. The book told him the secrets of the power, the ways to harness it, the only way to gain control. And Sebastian believed what he read and read about the man in the book named Jonathan. Character Jonathan spoke to him. Not the author, but the character. He spoke to him in a way that no stranger in life ever had. Life was not Jonathan’s fault. It was the fault of those around him. Power and position and money and fame were all within reach, if only he had the courage to take it. If only he was willing to reach out and take it from another. Sebastian read it all and took Jonathan at his word.

And so he took the name to honor his favorite character and thus Sebastian disappeared and Jonathan was reborn. Birthed from his own death. Reborn, better, stronger. Reborn with the purpose to kill.

Reborn Jonathan wanted to feel the power for himself. He took a life. Strangled it right out of existence. His fingers ached and the muscles in his arms were sore and he was short of breath by the time it was all over. But he felt nothing. There was no release, no energy, nothing different at all. It made no sense. He had done as he was supposed to do, what the book told him to do. He had taken a life. But his own existence was no different.

He gave it time, but that did nothing either.

Jonathan didn’t understand. Nothing worked the way it was supposed to. It was all laid out, clear in front of him. He had his plan. He had achieved his goal. But his rewards were missing. The spirit inside him, their soul destroyed. It was to be his. Their fate, their destiny, their reward. All of it was supposed to be his now. His to do with as he pleased.

And yet, he was denied.

He had been promised, in intimate detail. And he had followed through. Precisely. He had done exactly what he had been told to do.

And yet, nothing.

His friend had lied and his friend must be punished.  But his friend was only a character and as a character only spoke the words he had been told to speak. He only spoke the words that his writer had told him to day. Jonathan the character couldn’t help it if he had betrayed Reborn Sebastian-Jonathan. The secret was still out there. The good life was his by right and it could still be granted. But not by some character in a book. Not by the blood and death of the innocent and the stranger. The journal, the confessions, the truth had been written by a man. And that man needed to be punished. That man needed to be held to account. Geoffrey Doyle wrote down his sins, his sinister skills, and Jonathan had read them and expected payment.

Jonathan smiled at this. He hadn’t failed. Not yet anyway. He hadn’t failed, he had been failed. Failed by a man that kept the true secret for himself, while only writing down false promises. But Jonathan could make amends. He could get it right. He could learn the truth this time and reclaim that which was rightfully his. Whether he was aware of it or not, Geoffrey Doyle had written down a promise to Jonathan. It was a promise of power, a promise that was going to have to be kept. Jonathan would see to that. Oh yes, he bloody would indeed.