Dread the Dead Man
Where am I? What have I done? I killed a man last night in a bar fight. The night before that, a woman.
**Note for frequent readers: Dread the Dead Man is being posted this week (9/2/22) instead of Mr. Daark chapter 7. Even though posts are usually prewritten stories, I require a lot of time editing longer pieces to assure quality in my work. Chapter 7 is longer than most (~3600 words), and I think we all deserve a short break. I hope to be able to post chapter 7 next week (9/9/22), but if that is not possible there may not be a post for that week. Thank you for all your avid readership.
The more punches I throw, the less I feel the impact. I am but a mere puppet in a larger game of violence. I say that like I’m being controlled, but what I mean is that we are all puppets controlled by urges.
I killed a man last night in a bar fight. The night before that, a woman. This world is no longer about good and evil. Feelings aren’t factored in at all. This world is full of bastards and fatherless children and evils you can’t imagine. All of them strive for something, and I find there are none that I can work with towards a goal.
I find myself waiting up at night with manic thoughts. I always want to move. I never want to stop. That’s why these people end up dead. I can’t sit still while they party drunkenly and obnoxiously. I just want them to be quiet so I can depress my senses enough to sleep. I don’t care where I sleep. I just want to pass out somewhere. It’s been three days without sleep, and I imagine it’ll be three more before I ever get to sleep.
Sometimes I pick these fights in the hopes that I die. Don’t you understand that when you’re urged on and on forever that you become dark, bitter, and hateful? Don’t you understand how you can lose all regard for human life in a matter of irritated seconds?
I sit and watch a drunken woman stumble, pushing people out of the way to reach the bathroom. I watch a pill dissolve in her drink after falling not-so-stealthily out of a man’s hand. The fucking fool could take her home now. She’s drunk enough. But he’s making sure she doesn’t remember him come tomorrow morning when she feels like she’s been rubbed raw like a rug burn on the inside.
These are the things you see when you’re trying to stop thinking and nothing works. You ask yourself what you’re supposed to do when you see evil. You ask yourself if this guy’s any worse than you because you are true evil. You kill without remorse as your punches become stronger night after night like you’re getting a full workout. You are God-cursed. You are the most aware person in the bar, and you know it’s going to happen every night. You know the pressure in your head will keep rising until you commit another atrocity.
Before I can stop myself, the drugged drink smashes over this guy’s head. I grab his shirt. Pull him closer. Kick his knees in. Right fist. Left fist. Right, right. Left. Flying punches that just won’t stop batter up his face. His head goes back and back and back, bobbling, trying to keep afloat. I just don’t stop. He doesn’t fight back. He can’t fight back. My throat feels dry and bloody from the exertion. I grab his neck and bash his brains out against the floor.
No one reacts. No one takes notice. Even the bartender is too inebriated. This isn’t my crowd at all. I need to stop coming back here. I need to stop killing. I need to fall asleep so I can wake up in the morning.
Is any of this real? I ask myself between heavy breaths. Surely someone would have stopped me. Surely someone would have noticed. Am I back at my lonely stool? Yes, but that doesn’t mean it didn’t happen. He’s dead on the floor, and the world is too drunk and high to care. This is reality. This is the waking nightmare I can’t escape. No matter what I do, I’m stuck in this dream world where no one is real, and no one is responsive.
Am I God to these stumbling creatures? Is that why they let me kill and get away with it? Is that why they will not scream?
I must leave. I must find somewhere new to take refuge from insomnia. These bars are too unreal, too noisy. I can’t stand how they live. I can’t stand what they do.
Dashing out into the night, I move like a crazed man. I run and run, but I never feel tired. My head feels light. Hunger creeps up on me. But I never stop. I don’t know where home is. I don’t know if I ever had a home or what my home might look like.
Daylight strikes me. It is the only thing that dares to touch me. I am alone. I know no mother, no father, no creed, no unity. All I know is myself. All I know is that I have existed for a long time.
I think God is an egoist like me, and that is why we must suffer. There is no helping us. Anything good that happens, happens by random chance. All our anxious suffering happens because we were too foolish to remain as animals. Because of this foolish mistake, I am cursed to forever think.
I stop running.
There’s a sign, a billboard in flashing lights. It’s me. I’m on the billboard without a shirt, and my hands are in big red boxing gloves. Come see Dread the Dead Man in his fight against The Devil, it says.
Three days without sleep. But what came before that? Why am I a boxer? Was I always a boxer?
A crowd surges around me, chanting my name. “Dread! Dread! Dread! Dread!”
They push me around towards a building with three pairs of doors. A classic boxing coach in a track suit with a towel over his shoulder grabs my arm and takes me to the locker room to prepare for my fight.
In a snap, I’m dressed in shorts and boxing gloves. Then the coach pushes me onwards by the shoulders. Down the aisle. Past the yelling crowd.
The announcer yells through the mic, “And here we have our challenger, Dread the Dead Man! 165 pounds, low muscle, but he has the spirit of a killer. Dread has only been in hell for three days, but he’s ready to challenge The Devil for the title of God’s greatest enemy.”
I enter the ring, and I find myself across from a cloud of darkness with thousands of individual eyes peeking out. The cloud hovers above a stool, like it’s sitting down.
My coach says, “Alright Dread, you can do this. Just remember, ignore everything he says and beat the shit out of him.”
The cloud rises to a standing position, and the announcer counts down to the start of the fight. I throw punches, aiming for the eyes, but the cloud evades me at every turn. The cloud of darkness doesn’t throw any punches. It just says things to distract me.
“Quite dream-like, isn’t it? You didn’t even realize you were dead. All those nights, you showed your true self. You showed the reason you’re meant for hell. You run around like a maniac with no memory of who you were when you were alive. All the others evade consciousness, but you realize the truth. There is no outside to this life, no escape from bad feelings and bad thoughts. It always finds them. So, you choose a demon’s life of complete awareness. No filter. Just mania. Always moving. Always trying. When you drink, it does nothing, so you go sober, not even realizing that you’re going to bars without drinking, going there just to kill. Who are you, Dread?”
I land a punch on one of the eyes, and the eye closes and recedes, spraying blood onto my skin.
“I give you this chance to escape, Dread. Run back to the others. Live your new life of killing sleeplessly. Fight every last drunkard until you realize how easy it is, until you realize that you will forever live in a loop of easy thrills and endless pain.”
I get better aim the more punches I throw, and all the violent bar fights have prepared me for this moment. Eyes recede and spew blood, but I never stop. Sometimes The Devil evades my punches, but still, he never throws any punches of his own. He just keeps talking.
“What do you think is on the other side? Do you even know what it’s like to be God’s greatest enemy? You don’t care because you’re worse than me. You don’t care because the past means nothing to you. You could’ve been a kid-raping priest. You could’ve been a world leader who started a deadly World War III. Why do they call you Dread? What did you do to earn that name? You won’t even stop and think because as long as you can kill, you will kill. As long as there’s a top, you will fight to get there. You only believe in yourself, and you hate everyone else too much to live among them.”
My arms don’t get tired. Every punch fuels me. I’m slick with the blood of evil, and I will kill this devil. The eyes recede one after another until there’s only two left. They move around the cloud of darkness in distinct patterns until I punch each one of them at the apex of the pattern.
The cloud drops to the ground. The Devil says, “Finish it if you must, but don’t say I tricked you once I’m dead.”
I twist my body and throw a downward punch into the cloud, and a final squelching noise results from the darkness. Then I am enveloped in The Devil’s darkness.
The crowd of sinners bows to me and says, “Hail Lord Dread!”
Demons grab me by the arms, and I begin to feel a great invisible weight descend upon me. They drag me tired and lifeless up to a wall that reads: “Behold, ye sinners, God’s greatest enemy, doomed to suffer the same punishment forever and ever while chained to this wall.” My arms and legs are bound up with shackles, and I look out at the great expanses of hell.
I see everything at once, and there is nowhere to look where I will not see the evils of man. And it’s like I’m at the bar again watching the loud drunks. But now I can’t fight and kill them to escape seeing what they do to each other. It’s like watching a torture film. It’s the worst thing you could ever see. There is no uniformity to the way they ruin and harm each other, and it’s all such a mess that it hurts the eyes like a painting with loud colors.
Hell is other people. Hell has always been other people. But now the good people are gone, and all that’s left is garbage.
I await my punishment, but it never comes. The restrictive shackles that prevent my movement are punishment enough. As before, I’m hyperaware of everything, and there’s no such thing as sleep in hell. The best you can hope for is to be intoxicated like all the others are, but I don’t get that luxury either. No one comes to me. No demons ask me for orders. It turns out The Devil doesn’t do anything but suffer from a lack of movement and watch over hell.
One day I’ll get the chance to challenge someone for this title. Maybe I’ll do what The Devil did and talk my way through the fight and let them kill me. No, I know myself better than that. I know what will go down. I will fight and kill every challenger, like a fool. I’ll treat it like a holiday, and that’s why The Devil let me win. He knows what I do, and he saw his way out. I can’t give up my position. This is the top. I will fight for nothing. I will fight because I love the kill.
And that’s the trick of it all. My ego and hatred for all others work together to torture me for eternity. This position was made for me. It’s everything I could ever want twisted against me. You get the top, but the view is horrible. You get to kill once a year just so you can go back to your wall. You’re free from other people, but you can still see them.
Dread the Dead Man. Dread the Fool.
This is what they do in hell. They give you what you want. Every foolish, carnal, bodily desire you could ever have will be fulfilled, but still you will suffer because desire was the problem all along. The rich have money in hell, but there’s nowhere to spend it. The rapists have daily sex, and their penises shrivel into grotesque, disease-ridden stumps, barely recognizable as genitalia. All are dimmed and inebriated, but their drunken actions against each other are what bring them the most suffering. And if you dared to be sober, you would see it all, and you would suffer sleepless nights of horrid thoughts. Hell isn’t very different from earth at all. Some don’t even know they are dead. They are so used to suffering that nothing about this set up is new.
Hell is like a dream that loops one event over and over until you can hardly stand to be asleep anymore. Once the repetition sets in, you miss the beginning of it all. You miss when suffering was new to you.
It is all for nothing. It is a cycle without end or meaning. There were many things I could have done differently to avoid this fate. The king of hell is lonely. The King of Heaven is busy. Only now do I understand the fear of death. Only now do I understand everything.