《Far But Not Further》 Chapter 1. Scene 1. Help support creative writers by finding and reading their stories on the original site. Scene 2 Scene 2 ¡°Even if I wish for it, that feeling won¡¯t disappear. It¡¯s the payment for staining the existence of someone beautiful.¡± ¡°Even so the more I have to keep going, I don¡¯t have to seem weak, this way I won¡¯t be pitied, and other¡¯s won¡¯t be stained by my inferiority.¡± I stand up from the darkness of the alley and walk slowly, with my hands inside the pockets of my jacket. ¡°This is stupid. I should repent, not make myself comfortable.¡± But I am too much of a coward to do so, I am unable to torture my hands with the cold of the winter that is about to end, and spring will soon arrive. ¡­ The walk is lengthy, roughly 10 kilometres walked slowly by foot in this cold of about 3 degrees Celsius. I had to reach the train station to get back home. I take the train and walk 20 minutes on foot from the station to reach my house, residence of my family. Taking out my keys and opening the door I expect the same mundane family, the same normal family that I always had by my side, sitting at the table, eating and watching TV in silence. I told them beforehand how and why I was late. I lied about going out with friends and sleeping over in a motel at the end of the day. I sit at the table in silence with a tired face, I ate the soup in front of me in silence. I didn¡¯t have to wait long before a question arose from across the small table, my mom, was speaking to me. If you discover this tale on Amazon, be aware that it has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road. Please report it. Her round face was curious, as the loving mom of someone that often stays locked up in his room she gets curious and refreshed whenever I do something else. ¡°-So, how was at your friend? Did you drink?¡± the question had an air of curiosity and slyness behind it, she knows damn well I am 18 and can drink. But the situation is different, I drank like an alcoholic, went clubbing, and fucked a woman that I do not know out of pure coincidence. And I can¡¯t say it was luck, having me feel this shitty from it. But I replied quick, I didn¡¯t hesitate in my conversation with her. This way, she won¡¯t suspect anything. ¡°-Yeah, I drank quite a bunch, I still feel the hangover a bit.¡± was my reply. ¡°-Then I expect you will learn and drink less next time, right?¡± she asked, smiling. That was no question, it was her way of saying I shouldn¡¯t do it too often, for my own health. ¡°-Right.¡± ¡°-Are you still going to the climbing gym?¡± back on her questioning. ¡°-Yeah.¡± My replies tend to become blander the less interested and tired I become, in this scenario I really wanted to just eat my food and quickly head into my bed and take a power nap. And so I did. I cried myself to sleep because of some depressing thoughts I had. After a 2 hour nap I wake up, and slowly make my way to the bathroom. After I come out of it though, now feeling refreshed after peeing all of that alcohol out of my body I get greeted by my mom which was waiting at the door with a message for me. ¡°-Get to sleep early to today, we will go to the church tomorrow.¡± was her message. I nodded a bit in silence, thinking on how to phrase my words to reply to her. After a few seconds I give my only question. ¡°-Even if I don¡¯t believe in God?¡± ¡°-Even if you don¡¯t believe in God.¡± That was the end of the day, knowing damn well that the moment I will enter that church my existence will be a liar, deceiver, or even just a masked clown to many. To enter a church as an Atheist might not be much, but the moment I will start making a cross with my hands I know that this soul of mine will be doomed with a strong sense of insecurity. ¡­ I wake up, I eat, I dress up simply as if I would go to a supermarket for groceries, and stand silently to whole 30 minute drive to the church that I so fear I won¡¯t be able to repent from what is about to happen. The car stops, the place is rather simple, not many decorations, not an aesthetic church either. Just a plain building with a small cross on top. Walking to the door was fine. Grabbing the door¡¯s handle was fine. Pulling the handle downwards was fine. Pulling the door towards me was fine. The door was open and that is great. My first step inside was filled with guilt. It was the guilt for deceiving the Christians around me. My second step was filled with insecurity. It was the insecurity of being worthy of staying inside, of guarding myself of the cold from the cool morning air. My third step was filled with dread. I do not want to be here. I do not want to deceive these people. I do not want to show myself in a place like this ever again. ¡­ The next steps were empty of emotion. I shut down myself to not hurt this body of a monster in front of my family. God did not exist in this church as god exists for humans, and I can¡¯t possibly be human. Scene 3 I need to try harder. To try to be human. To belong here. A monster. What do humans do? What bonds them together? Fun, pain, misery, pleasure? Lust? Drugs? Something that makes them forget their pain. I wonder if drugs are stronger than my lust. My lust was certainly weak. Maybe drugs will indeed make me feel better, more natural into humans, more connected to them through a shared experience of intoxication. But where can you find them when they are so often closed off by law? For that, I have an idea. My uncle is a doctor, I will go by him, pretend off some symptoms of pain and he should give me a receipt for painkillers. Said and done. A few days later on a Saturday I go by him, pretend some symptoms and he hands me the receipt. Success. I go by a pharmacy that is further away from all that knows me and buy some decent painkillers according to the receipt. I move myself to a secluded place, an abandoned warehouse, perfect to be alone. According to the label of the container I should take a pill twice a day, but obviously you don''t do shit with such stuff. I take 7 pills at once and shove them into my mouth, a certain overdose but I am not sure if they would kill me or not but it certainly get- to me-. And fuck it feels so unique, so intoxicating, I can''t describe it. The dizzyness comes in to play and I slowly lose my balance, my feet wobble and collapse with my knees into the hard concrete. I don''t feel the pain but I see how the skin is scraped, and blood is slowly coming down my foot. Stolen content alert: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences. I try to stand up to check it better but lose my footing and fall sidewards, hitting my head against the wall and scraping my scalp against it''s filthy brick layering. I can''t even react, my head feels like it''s about to explode, my body is numb and I don''t feel any pain at all. Good thing my hair is long, I can use it to hide the blood. As I lay down on the ground, with my back onto the cold concrete I glance at the container, now standing sideways on the dirty flooring of the building, the pills spilled all over the place, it makes me wonder if I should take more. I don''t know how I should feel right? Is it good? Is it bad? No, I know for sure it''s not enough. I need more. I hardly move my body to search with my hand onto the floor for my pills. They are scrambled around the container. Dirty as they were, grabbing 3 pills from the floor and taking them to my mouth was something I managed to do. Their voices called for me. I heard them! "Ah- the feeling is awesome." I say scraping my fingers against the concrete, crunching some pills with them until the skin of my fingertips starts tearing off and sticking to the concrete. My fingers now rendered into a bloody mess, imbued with the painkillers and dirt. It makes me want to lick it. To drug myself some more. So I gladly open my mouth and lick all the powder that I am able to from my blood, all the chunks of painkillers, all of the full sized pills I didn''t manage to break up against the concrete. I couldn''t resist doing so. The pills took down the pain, the sense of survival, I was able to hurt myself-, no, I was able to destroy this wretched body without any cowardice in my actions. I enjoyed destroying my own body for the fuck''s of it. It''s addicting enough it will probably become permanent. ... That was 3 weeks ago, and I still didn''t feel anything else like that. I wasn''t caught drugging myself and I managed to lie about my whereabouts. It wasn''t disgusting. I didn''t dirty anyone else with my presence. I caught a glimpse of self destruction. Something that made me feel good. Not having to touch someone else through lust, not having to deceive others either. Just pure solitude and loneliness brought by isolation and self drugging. I can''t do much right now. Drugging wasn''t enough either. Whatever I felt there I couldn''t feel again now. I took 15 pills at once 3 days ago, and I felt nothing, I took 5 more and felt nothing. I took 6 more and I ended up collapsing from overdose and stayed unconscious into the same warehouse for a few good hours. Drugs can''t do it anymore, alcohol can''t do it anymore, smoking can''t do it anymore. There is nothing I can do to lay down the displeasure. My hobbies are useless to what they are supposed to do to my happiness. Drugs became useless, sex became useless, smoking became useless, alcohol became useless. At this point, I am becoming unsure of what brings me happiness. Ah...I could hurt mutilate myself even more. Chapter 2 Scene 1. I read books, draw, write, study and learn whatever catches my interest. I climb, play sports, engage in casual chess matches. I even drank, fucked and drugged myself to the point I felt like I couldn¡¯t leave such stuff behind, that I had become dependent on them. Yet, none of those fill awesome anymore, none of it makes me feel alive anymore. I am not even brave enough to take my own life, how much bigger of a coward can I be? I don¡¯t think I can reach at any lower point than how I currently feel. These hands that dirty others and disgust me. This face that will deceive anyone including itself. Why should I keep on living when all I do is breaking the humans that love me. Why should I stop lowering myself on the food chain so much? Am I victim? Of what? I am no victim, I never had bad stuff happen to me. I never had a shitty life, I was blessed with everything. Good parents, awesome siblings, decent life away from poverty. Such a hipocrite, ain¡¯t I? Indulging in pleasures to later regret them, digging my own grave through my own will while deceiving to others as it being accidental, or me being childish. I am childish. A future that was meant to be great, a potential as if for a divinity, all wasted on a creature called ¡°me¡±. Unauthorized use of content: if you find this story on Amazon, report the violation. Whose future have I stolen? Whose body have I stolen? Was I even born from them? From such awesome parents, from such awesome humans? A monster like me? All I can do is to isolate myself from them, from their lives and their love. As long as I keep on waling my mind will keep falling down to the knees. Collapsing of an inexplicable feeling of protest and inferiority. Whose mind have I stolen to break it apart. Whose heart have I stolen to love beings above myself. Whose hands have I stolen to dirty them. Whose mouth have I stolen to sput out lies from it. Whose legs have I stolen to bring him to his knees. Whose dick have I stolen to pleasure myself without meaning. Whose eyes have I stolen to take away his view onto this world. And whose body have I stolen to destroy it at this moment? I will keep on running, I feel like I have to do it to push myself away from the very thoughts that poison me. The more I think the more I destroy. The more I touch the more I want to remove my very own tactile senses. I am not human and will never be. My mind is filled with thoughts and reasons that make me unworthy to be human. I can¡¯t keep living like a human. I can¡¯t keep staining them with my presence. I will rescue them. From myself. And such I grab essentials to run away from home, like a teenager mad on their family. The school backpack will do it¡¯s job to carry my stuff. I have none to greet so I will just leave straight away. With my phone, a downloaded map on it, a charging block and cable. Besides that I brought in with me a few lighters, a flashlight and spare batteries, canned food and water. A knife and clothes, headphones at full battery with music downloaded and a train to catch. I bought a one way ticket to the furthest north station and keep it ready. I have a bunch of hours before I am deemed as missing. The more I look at my face the more I want to remove this identity of me. But for now, all I can do is move forwards as far as I can. I listen to my favorite songs as much as I can before my headphones die. Though, trains have plugs so I ended up charging both my headphones and my phone to 100%. I get off at the destined last station and cover myself with a cap and a mask. I want to avoid mirrors, windows, anything that will make me look at myself. Before I keep going I had one last thing to do, I need to change my face because what it is as it is now, all I can say is that I am deeply rotten, and this face, isn¡¯t doing anything to show that. Chapter 2 Scene 2. Broken Shards I had entered a supermarket and bought myself some disinfectant.To change my appearance I would require something sharp, but not deadly. Something easy to get but also cheap and untraceable through conventional methods. A shard from a broken bottle, but not any random shard. One that is thin and sturdy, sharp like a japanese knife to cut easily through elastic material. To start off, I will search through some of the back alleys, rummaging through recycling bins and grabbing the higher quality bottles to later on break in a secluded area. The back alleys still are rather populated so if I break the bottles here I would attract too much attention because of it''s sounds. Using some bags and backpacks I store a dozen of bottles and head over in the outskirts of the city to break them inside an abandoned house. Smash, after smash I throw each bottle against a wall, covering as much space of the floor as possible with broken shards. Out of roughly 17 glass bottles I had to break each one and choose one single shard. I had to move carefully, the broken shards crackle beneath my feet, my hands touched tenderly each and every promising shard that I could see. Some were good so I had kept them. Any shard that managed to make a small cut on my finger was saved for later. At around 18:00 I finished the search with 3 cuts on my index finger. 3 cuts, 3 shards. All deemed worthy. But now I had to find a place where to start the process of dehumanization. I needed water, something private but also insignificant where I could leave some blood droplets behind and unnoticed. My idea? A club. The chaos in there is great for this kind of thing. So I grab my bags, hide my shards, show my ID and then pay the entrance to the club. By this time there would be a shit ton of drunk partiers. I had to blend in a bit, partied for my last time, groped a woman''s ass for the last time, even if she wanted me, wanted to let her lust onto somebody, it didn''t have to be me. I lost all lust, and interest in physical attraction, not even her plump ass on a thin body wouldn''t make me feel a tiny bit aroused. I had already become less than human inside. I seeminglessly guide her to another man''s arms and let the 2 humans let out their lust. I enter the bathroom, take out the cloth pieces First and put them inside the sink. Then I begin washing the broken shards with the disinfectant, afterall, we don''t want infections. If you come across this story on Amazon, it''s taken without permission from the author. Report it. The shards are ready, clean and very sharp, almost tempting me to cut my wrists instead of my initial plan. But even if I gently rub the sharpness of it against the wrist, slightly cutting my skin, my cowardice made me stop nevertheless. I licked, the cut on my wrist, the blood tasting different compared to when it tasted back when it was infused with the drugs and dirt. This time, the taste was bland and meaningless. A superficial cut, but that was enough to prove it''s gonna be reliable. With everything now prepared, I look at the human body that I had possessed for the very last time before I leave it behind without it''s future that was supposed to be mine, but now becomes of something else. I grab my lip from the inside and pull it outwards, stretching it in the process. It had to be done so it would lose it''s elasticity and become easier to cut. About 2 cms above my lips I gently press the shard from outside into the skin, trying to penetrate it gently, my cowardice was leading me into a slow pace. It is painful, maybe even eye watering painful, but a monster isn''t allowed to have pity, and so he isn''t allowed to cry and deceive the ones around him. If the piercing action barely left and drops of blood on my outerskin, the moment it went through and almost touching my gum, the blood began dropping rapidly from the shard. It landed on the cloth piece I prepared, slowly enveiling it''s once greenish color into a dark red. I got used to the pain, and now, have started to rotate the shard to drill the hole and widen it. From this point on all that was left was to cut across my lips to remove chunks of skin and lips to expose my gum and teeth. I slowly move the shard across in a horizontal direction, slicing through the upper skin sloppily and making a huge chunk to fall down off my face. It fell onto the cloth piece, may I say it''s disgusting simply because it''s my skin that fell off. I cut off my skin from the top lips, leaving me with a curtain of blood flowing into my mouth and dirtying my lower teeth with it''s red color. I swallowed my own blood multiple times. Now, it was time to cut the lower half. Exposing the red teeth from my jaw took the same actions, the same technique and the same pain lacking of whimpers or tears. It took courage, and cowardice at the same time. The cowardice of not killing myself, and the courage of on giving up my humanity. Men and women pass by me, quickly bypassing me and locking themselves in the bathroom stalls to moan and whimper as they fuck all night. The sound of them brainlessly having sex was reassuring, I now knew none can notice me devouring my face off it''s human side. After I finish, my teeth and gum were visible without any lips covering them. The human side of us showing emotion through our mouth expressions was gone. All that was left were empty eyes and unreadable teeth. Before I go I had to do something painful for one last time. I had to disinfect my teeth using the alcohol based disinfectant from before to prevent infections. Pouring the liquid into my palms and slap it onto my teeth and gum, the sting of it painful and burning. Every time I spread it the worse it gets, my eyes would slowly become teary and my gum swollen and irritated by the liquid. By this point my parents should be worried and probably might declare me as missing. I had left my humanity behind, together with all that was of me in the past. I would even pronounce myself dead as I killed the one known as "Roderick Karmish." And became nameless through and through. It was painful and exasperating, but for me to free the world from my existence, I think that it''s worth it. My mouth is still stinging but I had to go away and move far away from here, while not being further away from my own reality. I would need to cut my hair as well later on, but for today, this is enough. I put my mask on my face to cover the mutilation and throw away the rags dirtied by my own disgusting blood. I had succeeded. I have become a monster.