Mayhem

It is only once you've lost everything that you're free to do anything. Δ Δ Δ Δ

[toxichumanwaste]

The only trouble is I don’t really know where to go from here. I mean, I have money now, but it won’t last long and I know I shouldn’t be concerned about it, but I am. And even though all my stuff is locked up in a storage container, it can’t just stay there forever. And I really don’t know what to do with myself. I’ve been drinking too much and smoking too much. I’ll probably cough up a lung one of these days. I don’t even know what I like except for maybe flowers and girls. I don’t really know if I actually like smoking and drinking and fighting. Mostly I just like the way they make me feel. Drugs do that too, but I don’t want to get into that because drugs cost money and when you run out, the feeling’s all gone and you’re just left lying around not feeling anything. 

I tried a few things when I was a teenager, but they always hollowed me out, leaving me lying in bed for days. I used to tell my mom I wasn’t feeling good. At first she felt bad for me, thinking I was sick or something, but after a while she figured I was just faking to get out of going to school or doing whatever. I still remember her yelling from the bottom of the stairs, storming up the stairs and into my room where she’d yell some more and threaten to tell my dad. She did a few times. It was always the same routine. He’d get home, come yell at me to “get myself together” and when I wouldn’t respond, he’d yank me up by the arm and hit me. Sometimes I’d cry. A lot of times I wouldn’t. But you’ve got to know, my father wasn’t really the hitting type. He never hit my sisters or my mom. He might’ve kicked the dog a few times, but that’s it. Maybe he did it because he didn’t want to have a loser of a son. I guess he always imagined me to be perfect and when I wasn’t like he imagined, he just wanted to try to fix it. 

My parents were so proud when I went to college and got a degree. I wasn’t happy there. I would have rather been painting or something, but I didn’t want to disappoint them. They probably wouldn’t be too proud if they saw me now, drinking and smoking all my money away.

God, I just want to fucking sob like a baby. I don’t know what the hell to do because my whole life all I’ve ever done is what my parents wanted. I’ve always been too much of a coward to do anything good for myself. All I’ve done is tried some drugs, drank, smoked, and hated myself. I haven’t even loved a girl properly. I’ve never taken a girl home to my parents. Not once. I’ve never even been to one of those awkward dinners with a girl’s family and been told by her father to watch my fucking manners. Nope, I’m just a big coward that sneaks over to her house when her parents aren’t home so we can fuck. It’s pathetic. 

I’m such a fucking pansy; I just paint and go to art galleries, hoping I won’t be recognized by anyone. Even in foreign countries whose languages I don’t even speak, I’m fucking terrified someone’s going to be like, “Hey, Cliff. I didn’t know you come to these sort of places.” and then tell somebody else they saw me there and then the whole world’s going to know that Clifford Lloyd likes to paint and go to art galleries. As a kid, I used to hide my paints in a hole in the back of my closet. I damn near threw up every time my mom started picking through my closet, looking for something. Probably the only thing I actually kind of like and I’ve been hiding it all this time. I’m a fucking joke. 

I’m just so damn upset and I shouldn’t be. None of this is any fair. I quit the fucking job and now everything is supposed to be okay, but it’s not. I don’t know what I’m doing.

[toxichumanwaste]

I quit my job. I moved out of my apartment. All my shit is locked up in a storage container to rot. I picked up and ran away to another city. I won’t mention which one. I don’t want anybody to know me. I’ve never known anybody who really gave a damn about me anyway. I gave up my shining shit life, throwing away the stability of a job and the comfort of a familiar place to go home to. I don’t know if it was really the “right thing” to have done, but I had to do it.

I was too comfortable. I was too alone with too many people around. It made me sick. I’d come home from work and I’d puke. I did it before I left in the morning. I kneeled before the toilet at work, and came out wiping my mouth on my sleeve while somebody asked if I was alright. I quit eating after a while, but that didn’t stop the dry heaving or the upheaval of nothing but water. I was disgusted with myself. Still am, but it’s not as bad. I lost a lot of weight because of it. I bought a new pair of pants from a thrift store. They’re the only ones I wear. My old clothes make me sick. And the pants fall down.

I didn’t sleep much either. Most nights I dozed off while some late night advertisement buzzed in my ear and the TV screen glowed from the wall. Some nights as I sat on the roof of my apartment building, I pondered drug overdose or jumping off the roof over a cigarette. 

One night, I got roaring drunk and tried to buy something that’d kill me, but it was late and I was drunk. I didn’t know where to go or what to do. I cried and screamed at cars to run over me. At some point, I threw up all over myself. I woke up on the floor of my apartment with vomit down my front and a pounding in my head. Before I could even clean myself up, I threw up and cried some more.

Not long after that, I quit my job. It was only a matter of time before I killed myself or someone else did it for me. I couldn’t be a backwards capitalist fucker anymore. I refuse to wear a goddamn suit and tie and get up early for a fucking job that makes me feel like hell. I just can’t make myself do that anymore. I won’t do it. I won’t make myself miserable so I can make more money so I can buy more stuff that I don’t really need.

I’m currently living in a mostly empty shoebox that’s so small, the smell of fresh paint on the walls is strong enough that I’m probably constantly high. I have enough money saved from that goddamn job — I never knew what to do with it — that I can get by for a while. I mean, I have everything I need; I have a bed, clothes, and paint. And smokes and liquor. It’s more than enough. 

I know I should be nothing but nerves, looking for a new job, letting my family know what’s happened to me. I never even thought about all those calls — the phone ringing in an empty apartment — unanswered. The frown as the voicemail clicks on the first time. The sigh as the phone is set back on the hook the twentieth time. It’s just that I really don’t care at this point. 

[cruciats]

[pizzasplash]

[a-moment-of-clarity]

[disporum]

[ksung]

Resurrected Cultist

[ksung]

When they don’t sit immediately, he pretends not be offended.

Oh, but blood is boiling. Fingers are twitching into the familiar form of fists itching to smash into an equally familiar face even if they don’t deserve the pain, and he doesn’t deserve the satisfaction. Sunggyu waits patiently, seconds ticking by like minuscule time bombs detonating at the feet tapping against carpeted floor. The woman who claimed the seat before clucks and mutters as if the world is against her (when in fact, it’s just a man who discards morals like playing cards), ripping spewed luggage from the floor and muttering something about how her damn taxes should do more than this.

“Nice night, isn’t it.”

Sunggyu laughs immediately after parroting their phrase behind him to annoy her, then glances toward Cliff again. “Not nice enough for the train to leave on time. You’re lucky.”

Previous guidelines slant against his tongue, and settle over the immediate insult lying in wait. It quells the storm in his veins, halts him from goading Cliff into an argument, and he rolls his shoulders back. They don’t know each other the same way they had years ago. There’s blood on both their hands, and they no doubt witness the stain of a friend’s on his; a project gone wrong, spiraling into a mess of corruption before a man died. It’s his own doing, and maybe he wanted to claim it again. Maybe he’s proud of instigating the fall of a brilliant system for fists with no where to swing, when they sparked the rise of a glorified franchise.

Rule one—

"Can’t smoke in here." Yet he shakes out a cigarette as if regulation can’t touch him. Hypocrite might as well be tattooed to the back of his tongue, before he offers one with the pack tilted in their direction. He’s breaking rules, but not the ones they had both adopted so many years ago.

"It’s a shame, right?"

Offering them such a thing, he wonders if their Korean had improved, or if they even knew what he was spouting off in the first place. The last time they were together, Cliff had struggled with the basics, and he barely managed coherent English. They communicated through fists, and identical pipe dreams. He doesn’t ask, because that’s shedding light on a past that had burned with a budding society of bloody faces and internal degradation ripped to the surface of skin. Truth is ugly, and the beginnings had been beautiful. 

"Pleasure trip?" He almost snorts after his own question, but doesn’t because there’s a lit cigarette in his mouth and the sharp intake would have him choking on acrid smoke. You didn’t willingly travel to Guro-gu—you ended up in its railways, lost in concrete subways, and jammed between crowds clutching to your own pockets to keep out wandering hands from snatching your wallet. “You’re all suit and nice shoes. My guess is no…Business?” A brow cocks, and he taps fingers against his own briefcase. He doesn’t give a flying fuck.

Towers with busted windows and smashed support beams stain the back of his mind. It’s as if the sight of them reminds him of the the satisfying way blood tastes between grit teeth, smashing out what grinds away at your bone, and gnaws at the frail corners of your sanity. Repetition is a horrible disease, paired with complacency and a broken system. He cares for reaching into that violent vision again. It would be difficult to accomplish, when he’d ended the life of their best friend. Mistakes earn lasting repercussions, and convincing them he was sick with guilt would be the kicker. 

"Unfortunate," he says instead. Fucking boring, he actually means.

So Sunggyu laughs after this as if it’s funny, but he’s not laughing at the fact a ‘stranger’ is playing in Korea with nice shoes and a pretty shirt on their back. He’s laughing, because he aches for former circumstances, and won’t speak a word about it.

[toxichumanwaste]

He could have lived out those Judo-Christian morals everyone seemed to ingrain in (or shove down the throats of and for failure, deal harsh tones, hours of solitary confinement on the stairs, and swats on whatever body part looks most vulnerable and worthy of attack to) their children, but it was a dark, starless night outside those windows and his body ached for cool sheets or a punch in the mouth, so he disregarded the woman, the victim of the darkness, preferring to linger on the prospect of bruises to match his navy blue suit. A simple action could have saved him, perhaps, but he has long since been too far gone to ever be saved. Especially from himself. Broken bones are his redemption and his damnation. Achievements are made through blood. Hope is a mere social construct; ultimately, unnecessary. 

Silence is his reply to the laughter — that maniacal, psychotic screeching considered an expression of glee — Perhaps all humans are quite insane to perceive something so hysterical as supreme happiness. But he’s beckoned by the shaking of a cigarette box like a dog just kicked with a bone held before it. As his slender fingers pluck out a cancer stick, he knows he’s just subjected himself to a night of careful conversation which so easily becomes something else entirely — a crime to society committed in the dark in some empty alley or behind a long closed bar between two individuals shrouded in the absence of stars and a night with no moon, both trembling in anticipation as beads of moisture collect upon their bare skin. 

This is so fucking stupid.

His lungs burn with smoke as the end turns to ash, flicked off into the aisle. Ever so slowly, the night unravels, so carefully, like a child sneaking into the kitchen in the middle of the night, yet he knows what he’s done and he doesn’t give a damn. Images of blood, bone, and a cracked open head enthrall him. He sucks them in like smoke. 

“Damn shame.”

It could have answered any of the pointless little attempts at conversation, held for appearances and feigned normalcy, and out of habit. A proper conversation would have be futile anyway. He’d decided long ago it was better to speak little in foreign languages. Speak little, only listen. It was really the only time one could get away with silence without total alienation and the scorn of those who felt personally victimized by his quietude. It was assumed he was embarrassed of his poor language skills or he merely did not speak enough of the language, but in reality, he merely sought the comfort of silence and to be left alone. This case was no different. Besides, neither of them really gave a damn about each other. When you just want to destroy yourself, nothing really seems to matter besides the detonation. Even the shattering of the self is a mere by-product. 

Asshole. Asshole. Asshole. I swear I would break this little shit’s neck if I didn’t think he might just sit right the fuck back up and laugh. If he didn’t, I swear, I’d eat my cigarette. I’d eat the whole damn thing burning down my fucking throat. That’d be a real fucking cigarette burn. 

Hatred for an individual was an interesting phenomenon. This smirk wearing criminal had ruined everything. The gall of this parasitic fuck was unbelievable. He was a murderer. A cold blooded, life ruining murderer whose actions, in his mind, had no effect on anyone besides himself. The blood he spilled had burned the retinas of the smoke-clouded foreigner. It’s just not the sort of thing you forget. That apathetic fuck didn’t feel guilt, it was so plain to see (not like it's worth anything; guilt's nothing but a by-product, a damn well deserved by-product), but guilt wouldn’t bring a man back, and the urge to continue that shared secret put on hold remained. 

Go fuck yourself. 

The remark about his shining leather shoes and two-button navy suit induced nausea. He could taste bile. Time put distance between him and the unspoken crimes of the night — the heaving chests and bloodied faces — but the strip of fabric hanging around his neck like a noose never loosened, no matter how many times the nausea flooded him and his feeble stomach gave in, no matter how close his skin hung to his bones. Shame made his skin burn beneath the fabric of his oxford cloth shirt. He was a two-faced capitalist businessman with a genuine leather briefcase attached to his hand and there was nothing more embarrassing than that. 

Of course it’s fucking business, you little shit. I could kick your ass right here if I didn’t know better than that. Fucking Christ, at least I have some fucking decency. Fucking prick, fuck you. Fuck this fucking train and this whole goddamn area. Fuck this goddamn suit. Fuck this goddamn tie. 

Sighing, he loosened his tie, slouched into the seat, and took a long drag from his cigarette, waiting for the nausea and the rage to subside. Time has made him patient. He’ll have what he wants.

“What’d you say we get a drink?”

His tone leaves no room for misinterpretation, nor does the smirk stretching across his face. There’s an unmistakeable twinkle in his eye, but so quickly shrouded by a cloud of smoke. 

[toxichumanwaste]

I have ʀᴀɢᴇ in my fists and self loathing stuffed into every crevice of my body. I’m seen as an ant and I think of myself as one too. I used to set those 𝕔𝕣𝕒𝕨𝕝𝕚𝕟𝕘 armies on fire as a kid. I’d like to do the same to myself. I could vømɨŧ. I’m battered and beaten and there’s eyes all around. They don’t where I’ve been. I’ve been knocked up by self hatred like a defenseless street walker. I’m pregnant with nostalgia, ready to give birth to 𝓻𝓮𝓰𝓻𝓮𝓽. I feel pathetic for feeling too much and thinking too little. What the hell am I doing?

[yimmyayo]

[fuckyeah-filmstills]

[vhs-evcore]

[tat-art]

[toxichumanwaste]

It was bound to happen. You never really know when, but it always happens and you’re never ready for it. I’m the type of guy to mind my own business. I watch the world around me from my own personal bubble of distance and quietude. They don’t even know how they get under my skin, invading my quiet little shit of a life. Girls. 

This girl. Oh god. She’s a knock out. She’s a punch in the face that breaks your nose and pierces your brain, killing or, at least, vegetating you. You’d think my face was paralyzed because I can’t keep my mouth shut. My jaws are hanging on the hinges and my brain is fried. Oh god, girls like her kill me. They just bring me to my knees and kill me. I would bring this girl home in a heart beat. No. No, Cliff. Don’t. I’d take her to dinner and forget how to chew and choke to death. I’d only be upset about not getting to look at her anymore.

If you could see her you’d know. I can’t give justice to the way her brown hair that wants to be blond falls over her shoulders with words. I could string together all the most beautiful words and it’d never be enough. It couldn’t even brush her tinted red lips. Photographs couldn’t capture the way her long, firm legs hold her as if she were sacred. By God, she is. She really is. 

I tell myself to look away before my heart gives out or my legs collapse beneath me, but I don’t. I just can’t. I feel myself melt whenever she catches my lingering eyes and smiles. If you check the ground, you might find me in a puddle next to my shoes. 

She’s gone soon enough. They always come and go, lighting me up and putting me out like a half smoked cigarette. The girls I’ve gone with in the past followed the pattern. They were beautiful, made me crazy, and left. I’m lousy and awfully appreciative of beautiful girls. Every once and a while, one’ll come around that makes you weak in the knees like a clumsy little kid and sets you on fire. It just happens. 

I’m tragically desperate. Beautiful girls plague me all the time, making me wild and infected. I’m a big loser. I just can’t think of much else than running my hands through their hair, twisting my fingers around those long locks sometimes. Smooth skin and how good it feels to just draw circles with the end of my finger on soft legs. Oh God. And their sweet voices and smiles that just kill me. They always smile so sweet, the skin bunching up around their eyes and you know you’re a dead man even before their smile breaks into laughter. 

Twenty eight years old and you’d think I’m still a high school boy. It’s tragic, really. 

When my sisters used to invite their friends over, I couldn’t help but thank the big guy upstairs for three sisters. Girls were always sweet to me. I think they knew I loved them. And by God, I did. I loved them since I was a fine young boy dressed by his mother on weekends in the little shorts with boats sewn into them. There’s days when I find myself missing those precious little shrieks and giggles resonating from wherever the girls were, holed up somewhere in the neighborhood, not running around like us dopey, overly energetic boys.

When we got older, we’d sit on the curb, talking about important things, like girls, passing around a cigarette, thinking we were hot stuff. We were stupid, hormonal boys. And all we really gave a damn about was girls.

It wasn’t long before we all started going with girls. Again, we were stupid, hormonal boys. I think we all got dumber the older we got. I, for one, got into the habit of telling all girls I was with they were beautiful. They’d smile a bit and look away and do that thing that all girls do: they’d deny it. That’s always made me sad. They couldn’t see themselves like I could. They were all beautiful to me.

I held their pretty little hands and pet their hair. I kissed them and I loved it. I loved them. Their lips were so soft and they always seemed to smell good (this is still true). Some were gentle and soft voiced, others were loud and wild that took me by the collar and pulled me along and damn near drove me crazy. I loved every second. 

Nowadays, I’m a lonely bastard with nothing but a bank account and a section in my closet for dress shirts. I see beautiful girls and all I do is sigh. Those sweet girls with faces like suns that make me shudder are always just out of reach, and all I know is occasional flings with people whose faces are lost in the blur of alcohol and self loathing. I come away empty as ever with a headache and lips worn raw. I don’t know how I ever let it get so bad that all the suns are too far to reach.

[guccididntwearchanel]

[melisica]

[toxichumanwaste]

I wish someone would just throw me in a river and drown me, holding my head down, their fingers weaving through my hair as my screams are muffled by the water filling my chest. I want my lungs to gasp for air and my brain to realize this is it, there’s no coming back. I want to fight until the blackness consumes me and everything hurts so much I can’t even feel it anymore. I want to fall to the ground and land with a deafening thud, my chest cavity caving in on itself. I want to bleed. I want to break. I want to burn holes in my flesh. Scratch the tender flesh of my back off until there’s pieces in your hands. Tear at my lips and bite them off. Leave me with the taste of blood and let me cry until my eyes run dry. Put bullet holes wherever you touch and tear out the shards with your blood stained fingers. Rip out my hair, crack open my chest, snap my bones in half. I want to be destroyed. Let me break. Let me shatter. Let me burn. Anything is better than aching. Anything is better than being caught between life and death in that awkward little stage of contemplation, walking around with a noose around your neck that nobody can see. 

It’s one of those nights again where I feel like setting myself on fire just to feel the burn. I’m self destructive, I know. I accepted that years ago. I know I’m probably going to die young and it’s going to be all my fault. It’s going to break my mom’s heart, make my dad disappointed, and make my sisters cry. They’ll call me a tragic young loss and I’ll make headlines. Guys that used to know me will shake their heads, remembering who I was. Fast forward and I’m forgotten. Just another decomposing body in the ground. It’s all we really amount to.

There’s absolutely nothing good about this feeling. It’s like white-hot rage, self hatred, and adrenaline all at once. It makes me feel sick to my stomach and all I can do is ride it out. I writher on top of my sheets, aching for sleep. The rage makes my skin hot and beads of sweat roll down my spine, forcing me to tear off all my clothes to cool my searing flesh. I’m crippled. I’m naked. I’m aching in every way possible and I want to jump out the window of my working class high floor apartment and splatter all over the fucking pavement. Trust me, I couldn’t make this stuff up even if I wanted to. 

I can’t even scream. Not in a poetic, mouth dry, tongue stiff, mouth clamped sort of way, but like... Can you imaging what the neighbors would think? (Jesus fucking Christ I sound like my mother) I mean, hearing somebody’s (totally awkward) sighs of pleasure and whatnot is one thing, but a rage-filled, grown man’s scream in the middle of the night? Christ, I’d have the police beating down my door before I could even feel better about myself, and I really fucking doubt the police force is going to sit down with me and ask what I was screaming about. I’m not six years old anymore and I’m not living with my parents. Hell, they’d take me in half naked and rabid like some kind of animal. They’d have to fucking tranquilize me. 

Alcohol makes it worse. I want to choke myself with cigarettes and burn holes in my flesh with their burning ends. A good fight could save me, but there’s no way of knowing if I’ll find one. Disappointment might lead me to the middle of the road, where I’d wait in hopes of a drunken fool to shatter my bones and wipe my blood across his windshield. Or I might travel to the nearest railroad to let a screaming train and crying conductor decapitate me. 

I don’t have any friends. The only people I ever gave a damn about disappeared like smoke and left me to live out my shit life, restless and headed towards collapse. They could have fixed this. They always kept me stable. God, when I was with them every blow to the face, every nitroglycerine wrapped building, every human sacrifice was like morphine. It was better than any drug my adolescent self had ever tried. Semiconscious blurs of sterile white and the buzz of human activity even in the early hours of the morning before the sun had even bothered to show its face was my euphoria. The aches and pains were nothing but hangovers and the bruises were my drunken tattoos. The pain felt so good there wasn’t even any need for sex, which these days is nothing but an insistence of my stable marriage to life. 

I constantly need something to do, I think that’s my problem. I’ve never been able to sit around doing nothing. It’s never been a “I don’t want my life to amount to nothing” sort of deal. I’ve already accepted that most lives don’t make much of an impact on the world, and I have no right to think mine will. I just hate to feel bored or like I’m wasting my time. I mean, I could be doing things that’d be so much greater in comparison to wanting to hang myself with my tie. I mean, really, it’s gotten that bad. I never even imagined myself to be one of those guys that considers off-ing himself. I know I shouldn’t complain because my problems are minuscule in comparison to other people’s, but still.

I keep myself going knowing that one of these days I’m going to quit this shit job and wander through the wrong ends of cities looking for leftover guys like myself. I wouldn’t even mind finding a group of hardcore women looking to slug it out like we used to. God, that’d be like walking in on heaven itself. Even if they kicked my ass right out the doors, I’d love every second of it. 

Maybe one day I’ll sell everything I own and move into a toxic waste part of town where the walls are so thin you can hear your neighbors’... well, you know. I won’t need anybody. I won’t need them to keep me in line. I’ll fly solo until they’re beating down the doors, begging to join me. Yeah, they’ll come looking for me. I won’t let them play me like this. I won’t let them make me wander the streets for them like some beggar. No... No. I can make it on my own. I’ll be better than they ever were. I won’t be some pathetic suit monkey crying over his job and sitting in Church basements searching for enlightenment. I’m not waiting for anybody to save me. I’ll save myself. Goddammit, I’ll save myself and I’ll burn everything down while they’re sleeping. Just wait. Just fucking wait. I’ll do it and I’ll do it better than anyone ever could. And cut off my balls if I ever become a misogynistic asshole like them. Fuck them, I’m going to recruit some kickass women and it’s going to be beautiful. I’m dead serious, I’m going to be so much better than they ever were. And fuck sleep. I’m on the verge of enlightenment and nothing’s going to stop me. And I have no idea if this is adrenaline or what or if I’ll even remember this tomorrow. Jesus fucking Christ I’m going to collapse. I’m gonna-

[toxichumanwaste]

I just don’t care. Why is that such a big deal? It’s stupid to pretend like you care about things that you really don’t. I don’t want to talk about stupid stuff like the goddamn weather and my fucking job, but god forbid you tell anybody that. It’s like some big offense to them, like you pissed all over their candy-coated life. Jesus fucking Christ. I thought honesty was a good thing, but I guess not because nobody seems to want it. Everyone’s such a faker.