Scarleton Series I : Before the Cult by Sandy Masia Page B

starts,” Macfearson explained, the campfire illuminating his
pale face. The truth is there was no way of knowing how or when it
starts, it is something that you notice. It is there but cannot be
put to a timeline, neither beginning nor end. I knew what he meant.
He was speaking of the moment you start noticing it, not
necessarily when it starts because no one can know for certain if
it really did start, no one could remember. “You grow up in a house
where you are always an absent member of the family. They forget
you, at birthdays, the store or even when you at home. The only
time they give you attention is when you have done something really
bad. ‘Silly boy!’ they call you. Your father gives you a beating
and sometimes you don’t know why. Sometimes you can’t remember why.
You do stupid things like drowning puppies and dissecting your pets
so you can better understand what makes them tick. You don’t
understand why but you are driven by energy, a certain curiosity
that always lands you in trouble. Your mind is on a different lane
than your peers and so are your senses. You feel so confused and
out of place. By this point you cannot tell if you are the mistake
or you make mistakes. You are just a dumb child, dumb burden of a
nuisance,” he paused, his face contemplative. Somewhere between
trying to figure out the best way to articulate what he had forming
in his mind and deciding to continue, not out of lack of words but
a state of being overwhelmed by a whirlwind of surging emotions.
Memories as nostalgic as a black and white portrait of a childhood
never lived. The mind buries such things (sometimes in a form of
delusions and illusions) making it hard for one to recall because
it knows their danger and pain. Perhaps that was the reason of his
pause, discerning and delving for the bitter truth. He gazed at me
for the first time since, forwarding his intense aura. Tragically
vulnerable and battered he was, exhausted on site by the weight of
his demons. “Then the neighbour’s kids won’t come play with you.
When they about to play a game of soccer or cricket you never get
picked for the team. If they do you don’t stay long in the field,
they kick you out. Then they start teasing you, calling you names.
You are always a subject of ridicule and annihilation. Annihilation
because they make you disappear. Makes you feel invisible. Then you
isolate yourself, you get used to loneliness not because you desire
it but because it is all that makes sense. At least in that deep
nothingness nothing can hurt you but the problem is that the
emptiness craves to be filled, it eats at you. Of course, right now
your parents are relieved of all the complaining parents because of
the trouble you cause. From then on your life exists on the
periphery.
    “Then you start
noticing the feelings. They have been always there but all this
time you did not see it, you only needed time alone with yourself
to notice them. You start seeing things, realizing things. You get
it, right?”
    I nodded. I was
losing my composer, this was an uncanny experience. In my life I
had never met someone who understood. Someone who truly knew…
    “It is like you
are at a wrong place. A false realm of reality…like the angels had
made a mistake when delivering your soul to a body. That your
existence is a mistake. You feel like wrongly human. The wrongness
consumes you…an emptiness that eats up any human emotion you have.
A nothingness that shouldn’t have any effect at all, because by
definition it is non-existent. A ghost that you can only
see,” he stared at me gravely. I had an impression this was one of
his pauses again that he needed to tell me his story without a
reply of any sorts. His inner face had revealed itself, all the
toiling, agony and loss. I became deeply sad just looking at it.
Then his eyes became teary. “You begin to wonder what the point to
all of this is. Who are you? What is the nature of your existence?
Why existence at all?