Author's Notes:
Many thanks to Tinn Tam who helped me with the poem for this chapter! *hugs*
Chapter 8 Identité
On Cherche la vérité
Dans l’effrayante réalité
Dans mes souvenirs et mes idées
Je cherche une vraie identité.
Mat would wonder, in days to come, why he could not stay away. He had run so far, but something kept pulling him back to the city. And when he got there he realized that it didn’t really matter, because no one here had time to look for him. So he walked the streets, the drab, gray colored streets, and watched.
He watched the frightened people, and the flourishing thieves. He watched smoke that did not come from chimneys rising above the rooftops and he wondered whether the world was coming to an end. He walked and watched until he reached the red wall.
It would have been impossible to guess what color the wall had started out, but now it was red. This wall was splashed with different shades of red. Some of it was from the vandalists’ spray paint and some of it, he was sure, must have been blood. And underneath the wall, lying in a pool of shimmering blood, Mat saw murdered innocence.
That day, he began his count at six.
And he wished time could be frozen, so that someone could see. But time didn’t need to be frozen, because the world preformed the same ferocious dance every day – like routine. But the eyes were always different, and the blood was always fresh; and the blinding, drowning sadness was always new.
………
Jeremiah stood, hesitated, before the familiar door. “I won’t. Not until I die.” that was what he had said the last time he was here. He closed his eyes and tried to push away the thought that she had been the one to try and fix things first. And he had refused.
He was coming home now, and that was all that mattered.
He raised a confident hand and knocked on the door. He did not have to wait long. Soon enough the door creaked open, rather ominously, and he saw the sorrowful face wearing a look of shock and disbelief.
“What do you want?” she asked in a choked, but rather forceful voice.
He took off the cap that was pulled over his eyes even though he hadn’t imagined he would need to. She knew, but he guessed it was denial. He was, after all, dead. But she did not say anything. She just stood there staring until he couldn’t bear the silence any longer.
“Mum,” he began desperately, “It’s me-”
“My son is dead,” her voice was bitter, almost venomous, “I don’t know what kind of sick joke you think you’re playing, but my son died coming home to visit me.”
And with that the door was slammed forcefully in his face. There was no coming back from the dead.
………
This was why he had left, why he hadn’t wanted to come back. The house was filled with an eerie, faded beauty. Like the beauty of ancient ruins and artifacts, like smelling the shadow of something that was once great and mighty. There would always be an emptiness about it, a gap between what had once been a home and was now only a house with its frail physical walls holding it together and nothing more.
Mat walked through the halls and rooms and kitchen and he found things there that tugged at his memories and awoke his senses. His feet felt at peace walking on the familiar floors and carpets and his eyes saw beauty in every scribble on the walls and every little boot and sock. But it was the kind of beauty that tore at the heart and left it in shreds.
He looked into the small square mirror when he reached his room. The same mirror that he had looked in every morning for more than sixteen years now. But Mat did not see himself. He did not see any of the things he had once claimed or even aspired to be. All he saw was a haunted little boy who did not know what to do, or where to go. Even his hair did not know what it wanted to be, the blonde dye was now coming out and it was sticking up at odd messy angles. His face was a scared mess and his hands still trembled. And Mat wondered when it was that he had decided to wear the silly little chain around his neck that might have been cool on someone else, but wasn’t him.
He suddenly ripped it off and threw it at the mirror. He reached out a trembling right hand and knocked all the carefully arranged items off his desk.
Running out of the room, his heart thumping angrily, Mat came to the room at the end of the hall and looked over at the large bed he used to run to when it was dark and stormy and he was six. He collapsed onto the flowery sheets and inhaled the still-present scent of warmth and love. But he was not six any more, and there were no more loving arms to wrap themselves around him and give him peace and erase the nightmares.
………
They had a comforting, ancient sort of smell. Jeremiah looked around him at the rows and rows of books. There must be something recorded within all this knowledge that could help him make sense out of all this. He needed to make sense out of his decisions and his feelings. He also just needed to distract himself from the fact that strong, brave, fun-loving Jeremiah was dead, forever, and he didn’t know what exactly it was that had taken his place.
He spent hours and hours choosing the books. He picked them up off the shelves and cherished that long-forgotten smell. He hadn’t read much of anything willingly since he was a child. Jeremiah would find wisdom and justice here- he had to.
He cracked them open one by one, resolving to read every page, but soon discovered that they were rather irritating. He wasn’t looking for a fantasy or a fairy tale, and it seemed that every other type of book was written to detract rather than attract readers. He wasn’t stupid, but there was something unbearable about reading strings of awkwardly long words, looking for resolve, and finding only more chaos and confusion.
Jeremiah spent days looking through his carefully collected pile of books. He read philosophy and found his vision blurring and un-focusing and his heart and lungs feeling cramped. He read about History and he saw blood and blood and more blood. He read about war and peace and glory and terrorism and he found his mind spinning with contradictions. Jeremiah read and read and read and all he found was big convoluted ways of saying that the world didn’t make any damn sense.
He slammed the last book closed in frustration and stood up. Maybe he did need a novel to escape with. To find some sense in. So he went and looked for one. But all he found there was a reflection of the world. So Jeremiah left the library resolving that he didn’t need to make sense of the world. He just had to make good use of it and do whatever the hell he pleased.
………
He saw it as he was straightening up, a shelf full of books. He remembered being lulled to sleep by Mother’s beautiful voice as she read from those books. He remembered how much they used to cherish their books, and so Mat took a hesitant step towards the shelf.
He stretched his hand out and picked one up. But the words were far away, unfamiliar. It had been far too long. It was too difficult a chore, and no matter how much he wanted to, his mind was too foggy and angry right now to comprehend any of it. Closing his eyes and placing the book on the table, Mat tried to relax. But memories kept flooding his mind and making his head heat up and want to explode.
Memories of lost love and home. Small moments of petty glory and triumph. Memories of the day he had come home and found that he was robbed even of the right to clutch at the dead bodies and grieve.
There was guilt and helplessness. There was grief and anger. There was a small child lying in a pool of her own blood. And he wondered if this was how Jasmine had looked when she was killed. He wondered if it was painful, and a mighty roar erupted from his lungs.
His knees trembled beneath him and suddenly all Mat wanted to do was give in. All he wanted to do was let go and forget responsibility and grief. He needed to ask for help and comfort, but there was no one there; no warmth to cling to, or even smell from far away. But then he remembered that long-forgotten lesson. He remembered being told that there was always someone.
So Mat sunk to his knees, and slowly, gracefully, with a heavenly voice in the back of his mind, he allowed his forehead to touch the floor and Mat begged only for a few moments of peace for his weary mind. He begged to be able to forget that he was being accused of killing his own family; he begged to be able to forget that he really didn’t know what or who he had become. And warmth that tasted like peace coursed through his heart and through his veins.
