Starving control

Inner darkness makes bad decisions sound bold, interesting, not at all like the reality of darkness. This is darkness as in the inside of one's eyelids. Darkness maybe descends daily, when one ought to be thinking about important matters like the lab safety protocols necessary to keep his position as a microbiologist. Nate wanted to keep his job, he truly did.

He just had another desire he struggled to ignore. Nate wanted to cause pain in another living being. He had no real idea why or when - no, thinking that would be a lie. Nate knew exactly why, he just didn't want to think about that. But part of him had this fantasy of owning a pet just to neglect it, watch a lizard turn from happy and in search of the warmth of his body heat to starved, hardly able to lift its head. Nate would never actually adopt a pet, but he sometimes frequented pet stores anyway, look at the already mistreated reptiles and imagine first caring them back to health, then watching them deteriorate again. Logically, Nate knew the natural life span of certain pets would allow him to engage in that sort of power trip without abusing animals, but logically Nate also knew ethically he was horribly wrong with his fantasies. He shouldn't even be thinking about tormenting domesticated animals when so many wild ones were dying, when his day job consisted of breeding bacteria in hopes of altering the sex disparities caused in certain wasps.

Wasps were Nate's life's work. Wasps were not too different than Nate - they laid their eggs inside of other insects' babies, and when those eggs hatch they hollow the larva from the inside out. Nate felt like his desires hollowed him from the inside. He was rotten, even though he never did anything based on his imagining. A better man wouldn't imagine such depraved horrible thoughts.

He just wanted to feel in control but he had no real control over much in his life. Nate went to work and did whatever the experiment required him to do. The thoughts about taking the scalpel and instead stabbing it in his boss the next time she demanded a nitpicking demand tempted him, like when she asked he reword the methodology section of their paper since they changed parts of their methodology instead of doing experiments before writing the paper about the experiment. Nate didn't care enough to risk jail time. He wished he could stop feeling so much anger, frustration, irritation, but he didn't know how to stop. Except indulging in his fantasies occasionally replaced his anger with self loathing, guilt, fear at what thinking these thoughts meant about his morals.

Nate would never act on them! He wouldn't! So morally, he had no reason to feel so much guilt except maybe he did. The internet could never decide if thought crime existed, but sin definitely did, and if lustful thoughts were sinful, surely wrath-filled thoughts of creatures weak with hunger were too. Nate was sinning, but as long as he hated himself more than he hated everyone else, he was problematic, sure, but safe enough to be around. Nate didn't talk much. He didn't dare write about what he thought, although on occasion when everything became too much he would read about other people who wrote about toxic relationships wherein one dominant personality controlled their partner's every aspect in life, including food. The amount of consent said partner gave to this varied. The guilt always became worse after Nate read these stories, because now he wasn't just thinking horrific thoughts but indulging in actions that further normalized the horrid thoughts he already had and added new ones.

Luckily, Nate couldn't think about anything but work while he worked. He was lucky to have a job that took such an amount of thought and effort, as he maybe would have succumbed to the desire to write horrible power dynamic stories of his own if he was given a more mindless task to engage in for money.

He had a friend, Ben, who had a boring office job doing just that. Nate would often get on the train after work and check his phone to find five, eight, a dozen texts or discord messages from Ben. Nate would reply and usually Ben would still be on his phone, commuting home from his job he had been so bored with that he had sent Nate whatever random thoughts popped into his head.

Nate sometimes wondered how different his friendship with Ben might be if he could trust Ben with his thoughts. Maybe he could, he wouldn't know because he had yet to try. He was just terrified Ben would hate him or be afraid of him if the other man knew just how insane Nate's fantasies could be. Ben had two pet rats, and while Nate would never hurt them, he only knew that because he never would agree to petsit them in the first place. Nate didn't trust himself so maybe Ben would rightly fear Nate if Nate told him why he always turned down his requests rather than hiding it behind the fact he didn't know much about rats and didn't want to unintentionally mess up. Well, that wasn't untrue. Nate just also didn't want to intentionally mess up either, which would mean messing up his entire friendship with Ben, or lying if Beb learned of the rats' conditions and anguishedly asked why.

No, Nate's texts with Ben mostly consisted of asynchronous venting about their very different jobs or wishing to take one another's place, video game plot lines or Ben's latest fanfiction he wrote about the game they both played and Nate's comments on it if he hadn't commented on the fic itself.

Sometimes, Ben's fanfiction could be violent. Nate's favorite were the psychological horror character studies, usually of villains, only they were usually written when Ben was in a dark place emotionally so Nate could never actually compliment the works the way he would had he read them in the wild. Nate was still Ben's most frequent commenter, however, and Ben occasionally complained about that too.

Look, I appreciate you man, but sometimes strangers online provide more of those neurotransmitters my brain craves, you know? Nate knew. He knew that feeling all too well - it was the feeling he had when he indulged in reading horrific gory fiction about animals. Someone out there understands these desires and emotions, has them and the courage to do what I can't, to express it.

Maybe Nate should try writing, he thought one evening when window shopping at the pet store hadn't been enough to sate his control-starved mind. Maybe he could ask Ben hey if I wanted to try writing, where should I start? Or ask to collaborate on a story with him.