As the blood dripped down to the floor,
getting the thick white carpet wet and stained, the man just looked through the
window, contemplating the lights of the city that had been his home for so many
years. He hadn’t been born there but he felt as if he had. He had always felt
like someone from the city and not the son of a farmer. Either way, it had all
lead him to that moment in his life and he realized by looking at the city that
he was all alone, as he was on the farm all those years ago.
His name was Alan and his blood was very dark.
He barely felt it sliding down is hand, his fingers, falling almost silently to
the floor. The dagger he had used, an old antique he had bought on a trip to
Vietnam, laid in the sofa. It was clean because his blood had not rushed out
from him but had rather been very slow to come out, as if his body was trying
to hold on to life as long as it could. But he had decided his own faith and
there was nothing that could save him from it. There was no turning back.
His apartment was very large, with five
bedrooms, each with a bathroom. The kitchen had a lot of space to do all kinds
of recipes and the cabinets added an almost never-ending amount of storage
space. The living room was the part of the apartment where he stood, barefoot,
looking at the twinkling lights of the city below. He had other antiques all
around the house, including on his dinner table and the small lobby where he
had greeted so many of his so-called friends and family.
There was no family anymore. Helen had left
months ago. She argued it was because of him, because he failed to touch her as
much as she wanted too and hadn’t really been a sweet and caring husband during
their short marriage. He had a different point of view to the matter: Alan knew
his wife had been sleeping with someone, almost from the first day they had
been married. He had pictures and even a couple of witnesses. But he wasn’t the
kind of man to play all his cards at once.
By the way, what she had said was the truth:
Alan had never really loved Helen. The real thing was that Alan had never cared
for anyone in his life. He had been born into a poor family with two sisters
and three brothers. That house did not have any love either, just
responsibilities. He had learned from a young age that what mattered was to
work like a horse every day of your life to make some money and to be someone.
To make people tremble when they heard your name, if possible. And Alan had
dedicated his life to achieve exactly that.
His eyes were beginning to go foggy and he
stumbled bit, almost banging his head against the window’s glass. But he didn’t
fell down; he remained where he was, his blood dripping still. He felt thirsty
but he didn’t even try to go to the kitchen for something to drink. He just
stood there, remembering how Helen had thought she had the moral high ground
when they argued for the last time. She was an overly dramatic woman and he
asked himself often why he had chosen her and not another.
Well, that had a rather simple answer: she had
been there when she was necessary. Helen was the daughter of a wealthy man,
very well known in the business circuit. As Alan was climbing levels, he
realized he had to have someone by his side to be supported by others. For some
reason, people still mistrust someone that has chosen not to have a family or
even not getting married. And Alan was one of those but he had to fake he was
just like them. So he met Helen and eventually married her.
The relationship lasted for less than three
years. During that time, she slept with another man at least three of the seven
nights of the week. Other three nights she spent at her family home, where her
father and mother would shield her against her “horrible husband”. Only one
night a week she spend it in her actual home, where she bitched and moaned at
everything because that was the way she was, always trying to end something she
had agree on building too, whether she remembered or not.
Alan was not the kind of man to fall in love
or have lovers. He had never hired a prostitute or even visited a strip club.
He didn’t feel any of those urges that are the norm among men. And no, he
didn’t felt it either for men or other living creatures. He didn’t really have
any perversions of the mind or of the soul, at least not related to his
romantic interests. That was because he had none. Love was not one of his
priorities in life. It had never been like that and it would never be.
It was probably the reason why, after living
his farm at a young age and thanks to his own efforts getting a scholarship, he
just left his family and never saw them again. They tried to contact him
several times and he even checked on them she had checked on his wife, but
every time he got information on them he realized he wanted them far from
everything he had. His family was greedy and could be summed up as a group of
awful people, stepping on each other to climb little bit further. They were
awful and Alan did not want to have anything to do with them,
With no family and no need or urge to love or even
to fuck someone, Alan had always been alone. Because, of course, friends hadn’t
been a priority either. No friends had meant that he finished high school and
college much faster than anyone else. It had meant for him that no money was
thrown into useless things like alcohol or drugs, instead he did the best
investments possible and got much more money than he had always needed. Friends
would have only been a distraction.
He had always been alone and he had always
been fine with been alone. Those long and luxurious trips he had gone to in
order to get half of the things he had on his house, had been done by himself.
He had no guides and no nagging wife telling him anything. He had enjoyed the
purity of those places and he had even felt he belonged to something greater
than him, something he had never reflected on in his life. Knowing the world
changed some of his preconceptions on people and the world.
His family was not religious so he had never
learned what it meant to have faith. His wife was supposedly catholic but he
had never seen her got to mass or say something in that regard. When he
traveled, he discovered that spiritual side that had never really been in him.
He started having many ideas about it and would spend long nights trying to
decipher his own sense of religion and faith. For Alan, it was something
fascinating to discover but he never really became a fanatic. He knew when to
stop.
It was during that study of faith, when he
realized the kind of life he had lived. In general, nothing too bad could be
said about it. His business movements had always been clean, he had tried to
provide for a wife who hated him and had attempted to save various artifacts
that he thought could be lost if he didn’t buy them and put them on display in
his apartment. In his mind, he had done many good things and nothing that could
be classified as “bad”. But he was very wrong.
He had lived a sad, pathetic life, alienating
everyone from it. Religion showed him that living with others improved a person’s
well being, it improved their lives in ways he had never even thought possible.
His life had been lost to material things, to what does not remain.
Realizing he had done nothing with his life,
that he had decided not to give any of what he had to an heir, Alan decided
fast and firmly, as he had always done. He grabbed his precious dagger and cut
his wrists the best way he could. And then waited, because there was nothing
left to do.
