Scribbles #5
Demons
Life was something that he just let happen around him. The weather changed, people were happy, making plans, complaining about the news. He didn’t… not really… care? He was on autopilot while everything happened around him. With a body in the present and a mind that found itself more often in the past. The frequency of these episodes scared him. He’d finally been caught up to, karma was chewing him up and it had started with his mind. Demons. Sebastian thought of his little sister. She was in no way weak, if anything he thought she must be made of stronger stuff than him with how much abuse she’d suffered at the hands of their father. He’d hated the man, certainly, but he didn’t feel affected in the same way that Nettie had been. Then again he could be fooling himself in thinking that. Whenever he’d seen his father as a child or young man it seemed to be because the great Sir Augustus felt that his son had done something very wrong and was a shame to the family name. Demons. The man built up years of hatred and where did it all go? As much as Sebastian had thought his blood lust was something of his own, perhaps it could be traced back to this seed of hatred that quite frankly had been given all the water and fertiliser it needed. It wasn’t even a flower of hatred, or a tree, it was a full blown bloody garden of hatred that Sebastian tended regularly and was a slave to. What was he if he wasn’t angry and vicious? Demons. He’d been packed up into the army, and there was no doubt in his mind that Sir Augustus had something to do with his dismissal as well. When he’d finally done something well even that was shameful. Sebastian never felt a need to please the patriarch, in fact he’d taken every opportunity to piss him off. The vicious cycle of not being good enough, acting out, getting yelled at, despising, and acting out again. Being a soldier was the one place he’d felt free of his father. Perhaps that had been a foolish thought given Sir August’s connections, the man kept a watchful eye. Much like someone else Sebastian knew. Demons. The Irishman embraced every broken bit of the sniper. Fed him jobs to slake his thirst, kept him obedient with treats and made him feel something that wasn’t hate. If only for a split second. There’d been a need between them. Sebastian needed that man too much, his brain couldn’t cope with depending that much on someone else. Then of course he’d been removed from the equation and what was the sniper left with? He was needing something that he could never have again. And the need just kept getting worse until he’d burst out in rage. Away from earshot, in the dark Sebastian could kick and scream and shout. Demons. He’d shouted his throat raw, banged his fists until they were bleeding and given himself migraines from heavy crying. But let no one ever know he was a feeling man. The official story was, well, he might as well be a machine. Untouchable by any pressure points. Only able to communicate a semblance of emotion through alter egos that were allowed actual feelings. Could he remember what the word truth meant anymore? Days went by. Seasons changed. Years just happened. He’d lived them, he knew he had. Jobs were done, sated a kind of hunger he supposed. It was more of a routine to keep him sane. Fed and clothed too. He saw new talents. People wanting to bathe in blood. Well, they’d do a good job of it and no one would miss the elusive sniper. Demons. Is it any wonder memories launched themselves at him with the force of a trebuchet and stuck their nails into his brain to make him see them. To make him live them again. The memory of feeding that need, the memory of never even having that need in the first place. Was that… l- no. Not that word. It was just a crisis, not even a midlife one, but a crisis nevertheless. He’d been on borrowed time for too long. Had he always been that shit at dealing with change? Sebastian found himself laughing. Demons. He felt eyes on him, someone looking intently at the strange man sat laughing at nothing. He snapped out of viewing the shit show that had been his life and found himself sat in a booth, alone with the barman in a seedy pub. The man probably thought he was homeless the way he looked. Out of it on something other than beer, what with how he’d laughed at nothing. Always laughing at nothing.
















