Determination

Determination


Autumn wants me persuaded to her conclusion.
She needs cooperation for her plan to vanquish
nightmares, quell exhausting daily battles.
“I’m not like you were, Ellie, unaware of the
possibility of self-determination.  I am, with full
free will, after diligent warning, deliberately presuming
on our friendship with my sincere plea to share your fate,
to be your eternal companion, loving playmate through
all the days and nights.  You have to see, you won’t be
condemning me to damnation.  This is about our mutual
salvation.  Together we can be free, outside, beyond
human evil.”
I compose horrific tumult thrashing through my mind
into a trance of speech.  I must break through her
self-imposed protective spell.
“You have not seen, do not know my true pernicious guilt.
You have not seen countless unwilling conscripts I inveigle,
take from their self-determined lives to continue what I desire
ended, undone.  I do not choose to feed on pedophiles because
they are evil.  They present easy prey.  Their hunger blinds them
to my predation.  I am no hero model for aspiration.  I cannot
be redeemed from ongoing damnation.
You can’t know the forever horror of this existence before you
are in it, direct perpetual experience.  Then it is too late to go
back.  There is no acceptable forward.  You are stuck in violent
repetition.  All of life rushes by without you.
I didn’t care about Geoff.  He was always part monster. Let him
wear out his power fantasy, work out his bluster over eternity.
Perhaps such shadow subsistence would suit his paranoid delight
in isolation.  Yet it is better that he is dead and ended.  The living
world engenders plenty of temporary monsters.  Supernatural
bloodsuckers are superfluous.  Worshippers of violence deserve
their just termination.
That is not you.  Justice would order your natural time reflect shining
beauty, elevation from destructive plight.  You bring out the child from
this monster.  You fill me with adoring care for you.  I cannot be your
undoing.  I cannot create a monster with your face.
No social utility.  No moral purpose.  My only vocation is to take
strangers’ lives.  Deadly parasite, sudden onset disease, serial plague.
You are free to choose healthy work, proud career, well bent energy.
You have power, to will your future, build from well-wrought plans.
You are not compelled to my limitations.  My illness is no cure.  I am
slave to unbearable curse, continuous regardless.  Freedom is not in
that place.  You want power to be, to ascend from degradation.  I can
aid that eventuality.  Let me give safe space to help your magic happen.
What you ask of me is your tragic descent.  You must see your mistake.
You are no fool obsessed with violent hunger.”
Her voice rises, shrill, insistent.
“Oh, but I am obsessed, Ellie.  I’m obsessed with rage, with revenge;
but more, I’m obsessed with clarity.   They will never let me be that
magical self-willed anything I put my mind to impeccable work of living
art you remind me is who I am meant to be.  They’ll only let me, force me,
to be their whore – legally wed or on the fly, against whatever will and fight
I can project.
I am not like you were, raised to obedient slavery so no will could emerge.
I know my mind.  I feel my rage, my indignation, my sadness so deep I am
drowning.
Hold me, Ellie, tightly.  I’m spinning out.  But this is not some temporary
reaction to violation, illuminated vulnerability, quiver of shame, quake of
fear, shudder of weakness.  This is about reality.  This is about that interminable
empty fight that I can’t, I haven’t got the grit for; it’s not here, in me.
You can’t keep me safe. You can’t keep me sheltered here, untouched by
out there.  You can give me the power I need to protect myself.  We can stay
together, save each other from feeling outcast, apart, eternally alone.  We can
tell each other stories, share disturbing emotions, make it all alright because
that is how we transcend.  Our noble work is the meaning we give each other.
Believe me, this is no momentary whim.  I have thought this through.  Let me
convince you.  You know you want this, too, me, us, together forever.”
Autumn will not accept my experienced report.  She is fixated on the picture
her trickster imagination fashions.  It comports so well with her compulsive
desire to escape surmised mortal fate.  She sees in her view that I am
immovable, dug in, as dawn again approaches.