And The Beat Goes On...

I call myself the Restoration Man. Doing so amuses me. I find what I can to fuel this amusement of mine. To keep the flame burning is to banish a little of my dismay at a cancerous world that is coughing and wheezing its way to oblivion.

The good are supposed to die young. I say these words and then I let them fall to the scorched earth so I can kick them around. Another game. A casual search for meaning in a world where meaning is bleeding out. 

There was a time when I told myself it didn’t need to be like that. And before then I used to say it doesn’t need to be like this. At some point I divorced myself from the proceedings, left the stage and sat in the back row of the empty auditorium to watch a show that must go on but somehow doesn’t know the words for the next act.

That’s why I am here. To help everything along. I cry encore! and the actors struggle on.

I am told that I made a wish. Never have I been afforded the courtesy as to which of my wishes was granted. I know I made more than one wish. There was a time when all I had was wishes. Empty, forlorn prayers in the stead of the substance of hope. Clutching at the final straw as I drowned in rivers of despair. 

Never did I wish for death. But I did wish that I no longer had the supposed life that was constricting tighter and tighter around my heart, mind and gut so I could no longer breath, nor see, nor move in any direction that might have gifted me some semblance of respite.

We are all far more than the physical manifestations that we obsess over. Death of the animated sausage is a simple affair. I took to calling us all animated sausages once I’d gathered a wealth of empirical data pointing to the fact that we are all colossal dicks. All of us without exception. We have access to limitless knowledge and we have an inbuilt moral compass that tells us clearly what is right and what is wrong and yet we all trot off the beaten path and shag chaos for shits and giggles. 

We are the meaty equivalent of the latest smart phone being used to wipe our arses. No, that’s attributing far too much credit to any of us. We smear. And we fling. And we sneakily wipe our shitty fingers on those we lovethe most.

This is the price we pay for having broken the rules in paradise. Back then, ignorance was bliss. Now its hell. Hell steeped in an overwhelming shame that none of us ever deserved, but we accept it all the same. We swallow it hook, line and stinker like the weak and fearful sheep we really are.

Sometimes I give a little speech like this in a bar or a pub. I take care to lower my voice and share the way of the world with an audience of one. I find the reaction it evokes entertaining. Doesn’t take much to awaken the ego and experience the fires of arrogance and anger. More so in those I choose to share my world view with for they are the damned and they are my business.

The granting of my wish transformed me. I was imbued with a kind of magic. Thanks Freddie, I’ve borrowed this song of yours and I play it on a loop in my head. You make me smile with the magic you bestowed upon the world. Your music centres me and reminds me that there is good if only we will look upon it and see it for what it is. That is what art is there for. A reminder of how we should be. The collective conscience we readily disregard. Relegating the life buoy to a feeling that numbs us as we go under for the final time.

I am a magical creature. In the aftermath of my rebirth I struggled with the madness of it all. I railed at the madness I thought was my burden. That’s me to a T. The desire to take on the sins of the world and walk into the desert to save every one of you sorry sinners. Took me a long time to learn that that is not my place in this world. These are not my sins. And this is not my madness.

And yet in my renewed being I have come closer to my hopeful being than I ever was. I save the world in my own, unique way. We’re all supposed to do that you know. You do you and the world is a better place. Some of us overstretch ourselves. Most of us don’t bother stretching at all. But we say we do. We put effort into an act. More effort than if we just knuckled down and lived.

There’s more dying in this world than there is living. The squandering of life appals me. Always has. That selfishness does not occur in the loneliness of a bedroom or at a rickety desk in a forgotten corner of an office. It’s out there in the midst of the world and takes from others. That’s the bit I cannot stomach and will not abide. 

So many murderers! I call them Lego Murderers because they take their victims apart brick by brick whilst singing of an existence that is dark fantasy. They too are magical creatures. Ugly and twisted sirens calling humanity to the rocks of damnation.

This is a war of attrition and every one of those Lego bricks is a fragment of life that this world desperately needed in order to survive the chaos that would consume us all. We are God’s biggest wager and we teeter on the edge of eternal loss. He bet this world on us. The indulgent, faithful Parent patiently watching us make our way in this life. Knowing that we have all it takes to succeed. Including Him.

Watching your children fail is a painful endeavour. Witnessing them succumb to the eternal darkness in acts of abject betrayal of you and your love is pain beyond enduring. Once I saw how it was I could not escape my portion of that pain. I use it as my engine room. I have dressed it in passion so that I will never relinquish the task that He gave me when He breathed magic into my very soul.

If you feel that my perspective on this world of ours is far-fetched I would that you bear witness to my conversations with the lost and damned. As I breathe truth into their faces they flinch and snarl like cornered animals. For that is what they are. Dangerous predators who know their nature and what it is that they do to their victims. They are devoted to the destruction of this world and painstakingly deconstruct the souls of innocents who constantly reach out with love. 

Love consumed by hate. 

Good versus evil.

And I am balance. I am the thief sent to catch the thieves. God’s policeman. A would be angel tasked with the restoration of balance. Whether I will ever become God’s Watchman remains to be seen. The preservation of divine balance is a fine dream. One that I may never see, let alone be tasked with, for I am a warrior and I was never made for times of peace.

Let me describe to you the nature of battle. If I tell you of one encounter with the worst of you I tell you of all. And they are legion. They are a part of the very fabric of your life. Never kid yourself that you are safe, for you are not. The war wages and you choose to look away. And in averting your eyes you forsake those few who fight for your very survival.

I know what I am talking about. I was once one of the few. I spilled my lifeblood in the pursuit of love and truth. Now I am become God’s Instrument, as there are those who walk in darkness and deny His majesty.

The story I would tell is of my latest campaign. It’s a tired old circle I must walk. I observe the predator at play and know them for what they are. Simple in nature, they are all the same. The chaos they create could be said to be interesting. If you can see beyond the pain and suffering that is.

What I look for are the holes and the gaps. Creatures such as these are made of lack. A lack of light and of love. Hungry maws sucking at the lives around them. I walk towards the dark and I make my declaration of war.

All it took as I turned to her at the bar was two words; I know. 

There was a delicious pause as the words assailed her. Her many defences shattering. Denial slipped, reeled and fell to its knees on the canvas and as it did, she turned to me and attempted a futile parry.

“You know what?” her teeth were gritted and her face stone. I can always see beyond the mask. I am the thief to catch all thieves.

I smiled her smile and robbed her of a little more. Matched her on the battlefield with a careless ease, “eventually, there is always a bigger bully.”

“I don’t…” she began.

But I was waving an admonishing finger in her face now and tutting, “yours is such a pitiful game. A game you play all by yourself as you hurt the unsuspecting.”

She scowled at me and I saw something moving below the features of her face. The thing that she had allowed in to take over with a false pretence of protecting her. Her fear and anger pushing it to the surface. She wanted to end me there and then but could not, because her greatest fear is exposure. She is terrified of the truth of her being brought out into the light. She is a shadow dweller. Darkness incarnate.

“Did they hurt you?” I say it gently and her expression changes in an instant, “that wasn’t fair. You didn’t deserve that. No one ever deserves that.”

There is a softening in her and yet the movement under her features is more pronounced now. The thing within her is raging. It needs control. It’s wants to control her and is furious that it cannot.

These are charming creatures. Death itself has a charm that draws us forth despite our estrangement with it. We are all killers. Survivors with bloodied smiles and crimson gauntlets. I am their end and I cannot be denied. 

I take her hand and lead her from the bar. Her latest victim peers gormlessly as we go. He does not know it, but an ancient part of him sees me well and it stills him. Saves his life. I am saving his life.

We walk to a park. The gate is locked, but such things are no barrier to me. Sitting on a bench together I take a moment and allow her to do likewise. A rare moment of peace. A truce of sorts. When I turn to her, she is waiting. Such is my power. A power that she has used for so long it is second nature, but only ever an echo of my own.

We kiss. Exchanging a passion for a life that has eluded us both for an age. Sharing a connection we can only dream of. 

When it is done, I look deeply into her eyes and find what it is that I have come for. I see her in a way that no one ever has. There is beauty in this. The beauty of her. This is when I show her the life she has led. The myth of a life flashing before dying eyes. Only I play it backwards. I show her all her folly. Subject her to her sins until she is back to a time without sin. We are born into this world without sin and then those we love paint us with theirs.

She is crying silently as I take her in my arms and my mouth finds her neck. I puncture the soft flesh and she sighs as I drink her in. It doesn’t take long. The well soon runs dry and she slumps in my arms. A peaceful end that her victims were deprived of. But I am no monster and wrongs can never create right.

As I gaze upon her, the skin of her face becomes impossibly dark. Her lips peel back in a silent snarl. I smile at the frantic final gestures of my eternal adversary, “night, night Leviathan,” I whisper to the demon that now lacks a willing host.

In the morning, they will find her. A broken heart that could not continue in a world that secretly abandoned her from birth. A childhood of rejection that left her searching for scraps and breadcrumbs of attention. A life blighted before it ever began. She was broken to a point where she would accept anything to fill the nothing.

That’s when he came along and whispered the words she’d longed to hear all her life. Induced her into a contract that he never honours. There is no honour in hell only the impetuous rebellion of a broken child. A rage against an unfairness that does not exist.

Leviathan convinced her to give up the throne of herself and took control of yet another host. A lost soul who longed for love and never found it until I came along and showed her that what she sought was there all along. Within her and all around her. A killing joke to end a life of torment.

We are blind creatures of love floating in an eternal sea of bliss. Oblivious to the truth of our nature and the world we live in. If it were not for beauty I would fail under the weight of the unutterable sadness of being that some choose over the light that shines within.

I am the Restoration Man. God has tasked me with the fight against an unbeatable foe. And yet, in the struggle of my quest I restore beauty to a world that needs it more and more as the jealous darkness creeps up from the depths.