When you're crippled inside
His has been a life of much shame. He can't even guess himself what it must be like to live the life
of a human being.
The thought lingers in his head. It buzzes persistently, as if it were a bug flying in circles around his brain. He wonders if he can get it out of his head by banging his head against the wall, but he sees away from that idea.
Instead, he continues to wander aimlessly, as he had intended. The seemingly endless halls of Hogwarts stretch before him. The hallway is completely deprived of any human, only Dazai present. His eye lingers on any surface he comes across, the shadows of the night give him both a sense of peace and enigmatic anxiety. He will never understand why, though.
The easiest way for Dazai to explain himself, is by describing himself as a mere shell; something empty, that may have been a human at one point,but is no more. Something with no heart, only a heart-shaped emptiness unable to be filled, that will never qualify as a human being. He is simply put disqualified as a human being. He exists of numbness only, unable to experience emotions like any person is supposed to.
He wonders, how people do it. How do they feel saddened, hurt, joyful? How does one experience love? He asks himself more often than he would like to admit. The only thing he has ever loved are roses. He likes roses, they bloom in all four seasons and die four times over. It's the only thing that comes to mind when he thinks about 'love'. With what uneasiness lies in being loved, he wouldn't even dare to experience that feeling if he could. To him, love is at best knowing that you are being looked after. That you are cared for.
He walks, continues to walk. Each step makes his clothes shift ever so slightly. He has his black coat, gifted by Mori himself, haphazardly thrown over his school's cloak. Both are black, drowning the boy in dark fabrics.The quietude is eerie, yet pleasant. He doesn't like the silence. It terrifies him to sit by himself quietly in a room. He feels frightened, as if he might be set upon or struck by someone at any moment. But he likes noise even less. Noise is always annoying, aggravating. It makes him want to claw his ears off and plug the holes in his head, instead of letting those sounds vigorously scrape the inside of his head to scraps. He will never know how people can handle noise. It's a terrible thing, truly.
He comes to a halt as something seizes his attention. His one eye flicks over a familiar door. He approaches it, deeming it safe.
He lets himself in and indifferently enters the room on the other end. The gang's office, as it has been dubbed.
And he just stands there, in the middle of the chilly room. He remains standing on the spot for a few awfully long seconds before moving to the couch. A smile unwelcomingly tugs at the corners of his mouth, he sighs and then plops down on the couch and deflates. Tension that held his shoulders stiff seems to cease. Exhaustion embraces him as if it were a bitterhug. It almost feels, to him, as if it were a cancer that spread throughout his body, unable to be removed. A disease of self that runs through his blood. Something fatal to the soul, never ending. Every attempt on his behalf to get this sickness under control has failed. It won't go away, no matter what he does. It is simply there, eating away at him.
And it's not the type of exhaustion that one might have after an awful night's sleep, or a long day of doing hard work.
It's the kind of exhaustion that alters the brain, a parasite to the mind.
It takes away that motivation to do useful things.
It takes away the energy to perform daily tasks.
It takes away the ability to get out of bed. It makes your body feel heavy, as if it were lead.
It takes away the will to live, to continue life. It makes you wish for nothingness, for an end to it. It makes you yearn for a way out. Dazai has always seeked a way out. He looks around the room, which is simplyworthlessly existing now that no one occupies it. That emptiness tastes foul in his mouth. It used to brim with life, any time he was here. Even if no human was in sight, Egg would keep the place alive. Now she, too, is gone and the space is left unused.
His eye aches, still, and Mori has yet to send him a letter since Dazai's return to Hogwarts. That thought is off-putting, because he never does knowwhat that slimy doctor is thinking. It could be that Mori is fine with his sudden disappearance from that party at the Malfoy's, but it might as well be that the man is less than pleased with the latest turn of events. The fact that he has yet to receive a letter only gives him unwanted uncertainty. And Dazai despises not knowing something.
Furthermore, Madam Pomfrey seems to not be at Hogwarts still, unlike him. Winter break is almost over, and yet she's nowhere to be found. As far as he knows, she should be present at school, though her where-abouts seem to be unknown.
She has gone to Yokohama in search of him, that much is clear to Dazai, but a lot could have happened in the time that she has been gone for. Yokohama is no ordinary city, neither are its people. She could have learned any type of valuable or possibly dangerous information, and if she has grasped onto something, anything at all, she might just be as good as dead. Because she will be an annoying uncertainty in both Mori and Dazai's plans, one way or another. Mori might get rid of her, or even ask Dazai to dispose of her himself.
And no matter how much he will try and deny it, he has found himself in a situation where he has taken a liking to the matron. Mori has told him over again to not get attached, and yet he has found himself too comfortable in her presence.
Though that doesn't mean that he won't do what he's been ordered to. He's an executive now, he has to. If she becomes too much of a liability, she has to go.
He sighs. He feels so useless, being left in the dark. As if he were thrown into the depths of unpredictability and has to swim back to the shore with his eyes closed shut.
Everything has been weighting down on him more than ever before. The promotion to the position of executive has not helped one bit. He's simply tired of being a pawn in this God-forsaken game. He feels like a doll, being toyed with however Mori pleases, being controlled by the doctor's slimy hands. As if Dazai were a mere object, beingplayed into the palms of dubiety fate.
Mori has always been a master of equivocation, a hoodwinker at heart, much so that Dazai cannot read the man's true intentions at all.
He has always thought of people as transparent, but Mori is barely a man as is.
It makes his blood boil with rage, nevertheless shame and guilt bubble just beneath the surface. Life is simply too painful, the reality that confirms the universal belief that it is best to not be born at all. He has no choice. He is a person with no reason to live. He knows his lot. Yes, it would be great to die one day sooner. Every day he has deceived himself, unlike anyone else who is incapable of deceiving themselves. Anxiety is trapped in the depths of his heart, like a formation of black clouds that he is unable to break free from.
He has deceived himself by putting on a mask, by building layer over layer until he had forgotten who he himself even is. He has gaslit himself in believing the lies he has told everyone else, to the point that the told lies overshadow even the hollowness within him.
He doesn't know how to feel, but he knows how to act. Yet there subsists a feeling of helplessness, as if it were utterly impossible for him to go on living. Painful waves beat relentlessly on his heart. A terrible emotion- should he call it an apprehension? - wrings his heart, only to release it and make his pulse falter and chokes his breath.
Maybe he should just die, today. He has always told himself that he cannot die yet, that he is still waiting for someone. He doesn't know who,who on earth is he waiting for, living every day? For what sort of person? Maybe who he is waiting for isn't even human, he has never liked humans anyways. He dislikes humans, no, he fears them. When he meets someone, and he greets someone, greetings he doesn't want to make, he has always felt unpleasant, as if he were a horrible liar for acting, and he would wish he were dead. Perhaps it's not worth waiting, prolonging the inevitable only to allow him to suffer a little longer.
And then the desk grabs his attention, made of hard wood it stands sturdy. More so than Dazai feels. What more so piqued his interest is the old-styled lantern that stands on its surface. He walks over to it and picks it up with gentle hands as he observes the object.
It's made of a small glass bowl put together nicely in a dainty iron frame. A used candle finds itself within the bowl, the yellowish wax clumsily splattered on the glass as if someone had blown too hard to extinguish the once small burning flame. Dazai can almost imagine how that small flame had once flickered lively in that transparent globe. Just as it was doubtlessly meant to be.
He ignores that thought completely, however, as he smashes the object onto the floor with as much force as he can muster.
Pieces of glass go flying as the sphere hits the floor first.
The frame hits the floor as a close second, the iron uselessly crashing onto the floor as it clangs and clatters before rolling a few inches away from Dazai's feet.
He gets down on his knees, too overwrought to notice the shattered bits of glass embedding themselves in his thin skin. Laughing to himself humourlessly, he grabs a fistful of sharp shards.
Everything is pointless, his life is nugatory, so why should he even think of moving forward if all will be lived in vain? Every experience is joyless, every moment he lives with this ceaseless depression and pretended apathy.
His hand stings and it makes him look down at his palm as if he hadn't quite noticed the dozen cuts littering the surface of it yet. Each cut creates its own beads of bright red, the fresh blood pooling together and trickling off his hand in slow but steady drops, dotting the floorspace below as it continues to dribble slowly.
He stares, and stares at his hand even when his eye refuses to focus. Through his blurry vision, he can still make out the redness of the mess clearly. He smiles mockingly at his pathetic state as he throws all shards but one besides him. The pieces deemed useless multiply tenfold as they shatter upon impact, the blood coating the edges splattering onto the floor at Dazai's side.
The one left, he takes between his index finger and thumb, pressing onto it hard enough to drain his fingertips from most of their colour. He closes his eye tightly.
Please, just let me die.
He then opens his eye. He doesn't think twice before he pulls his left sleeve up to his elbow and pushes the sharp glass against the bandages currently between the shard and the pale skin of his left wrist.
Not even a moment passes before he puts pressure on his wrist and forces the glass through his bandages and skin as he drags it all the way up to his elbow. The glass effortlessly slices through both.
The deep slit splits his skin in two, but the gash is barely visible as it immediately fills with blood and overspills. He gazes at his artistic work even when his hands shake uncontrollably. He feels feeble, put he urges his left hand to take the glass piece anyways, even if only for the sake of pressing it against his other wrist weakly. He bites his bottom lip as he creates another cut, that is definitely shallower and yet too bubbles with blood quickly.
And then he just sits there and stares into nothingness, the shard now forgotten on the floor as it lays in a steadily growing pool of shiny red blood that spreads across the floor and soaks into his clothes only to seemingly disappear in the black fabrics of his pants and coat.
His mind has gone quiet, and yet he feels terrible. He aches. A sudden anxiety builds up in his chest and squeezes his heart; it, in turn, beats rapidly, almost painfully so. It feels as if it might break his ribcage open forcefully to allow itself to flutter away.
Dazai doesn't even dare to attempt to stand up, the light-headedness already muddling his mind enough. He feels dizzy, and sluggish. His skin has gone cold, and even so it's soaked in sweat. It gets uncomfortably hard to breathe. He makes an effort to take a deep breath, but it feels as if his lungs refuse to work. He cannot help but wheeze any time he draws in a breath, as if his body refuses the oxygen it is offered. He finds himself struggling.
He isn't afraid of death. Of course he's not.
And for all that, he feels ill at ease.
His heart beats in his ears as it all the same swooshes blood through them loudly.
Blood rushes out of his body, too.
He feels cold yet clammy.
Rattled.
His life is not worth stressing over, he's as good as dead anyways. His body is a mere shell, his inner self non-existing. He's but a walking corpse, deserving to die. he's fine with dying, and yet he gasps for air desperate to fill his lungs with anything at all. But it feels as if his lungs have forsaken him.
Why does he keep trying? Why does he battle the inevitable? His body is broken beyond repair, his will to live has long since been vanquished, his mind long since been shattered.
Dying is the sole solution, he knows. So why does he feel like crying out for help?
He sighs, shakily.
He feels numb, his arms unmoving by his sides as he sits bend over on his sore knees. He feels an unfamiliar wetness build up in his eye, and unwelcoming tear escaping and finding its own way down his pale cheek. He chokes on his breath once, then twice, and he breaks down sobbing before he knows. Sobbing over bygones, because he has been unsavable from the start. His vision blurs before it disappears completely. He only barely experiences the feeling of falling over before his consciousness slips as he slumbers into an abyss.
And one though crosses his mind just before he hits the ground.
Please, don't let me die.