Dr. Kepler sat in his chair, unthinking for a time. He'd been petrified by by the things he saw and everything he avoided to think of. But he couldn't let go of his memories. They were his, he thought, and he owns them and keeps them, no matter the cost.
But the truth was far darker. They'd stuck to him like the leeches they were, feeding on him in a cycle that pained him so much. And so far they'd become fat and happy little leeches, for they were so effective on a man like Kepler.
"Stuck like pigs, they were, you know." He spoke to no one betwixt the shadows that lined his face. "Dead, rotten pigs at the very dead end of the well that I shoved them down. Fat, disgusting pigs that wanted more of my genius each day. But I wouldn't let them have me!" His fist slammed the desk as he started to vomit out his thoughts, provoked by a deep hunger to confess.
A bitter cold ran across his shoulder in that moment. "No, no..." , he said, "I wouldn't let them. I had to stay whole, be myself. Protect my invention at all costs..." And there it was. Between anger, hatred, and passionate death, was he, twelve years of age, his deeply regressed child-like fear of the unknown.
"Didn't even know em'. What they wanted, really..." His words arrived mumbled and out of focus, a symptom of an absent mind- and so was the tear that rolled down his face. "But I knew they were dangerous. Knew I had to get rid of them. Yes... had to,"
He rolled up the papers on his desk with one hand. On them were inscribed his plans, his invention, he called it, a device that would change everything.
But he wouldn't be there to see it change the world. He wouldn't be there at all, to protect himself, he thought. To keep himself safe.
It took little effort to push the trigger before his gun sat neatly in his wilted hand, and a bleeding, crimson-red hole in his chin appeared where the barrel used to be.