Seven Sins: Seven, #1

CHAPTER ONE

We are all flames waiting to be fed

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Her fierce and angry soul hides amongst the beauty of her light. She’s deadly and contagious as she blazes from person to person, burning all that she touches. She roams without a shadow and she doesn’t want to be seen. She lives in the form of humanity and it’s hard to tell. It’s hard to tell who is infected with her evil and who is not. Fire, it’s a dangerous thing.

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Seven days ago

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I stood over him and watched as fountains of blood gushed out from where his limbs used to be. He was choking on a thick, dark, molten of red that erupted from his mouth as he glared at me, his face filled with cuts and grazes and more of this liquid that streamed down his skin. He watched me as I watched him, burning amongst the lava that poured from his body. It was time to put his torture to an end, he had endured enough.

I leaned towards him, grabbing him by the curls of his hair before dragging what was left of his body through the pool of blood that was seeping from him. He took one final look at his son before I drove my knife into his throat. Blood trickled down his neck as I pushed the cold steel deeper, slicing it open whilst moving it across him as though I were an incompetent butcher. I felt the damage I was causing as the weapon ripped into his skin, tearing through his nerves. His groans silenced as I took back my knife. I laid him to rest and waited for the darkness in his eyes to fade before taking a step back to evaluate the mess.

The level of creativity behind this new piece of artwork had exceeded all others. Blood splattered along the walls and ceiling, and blanketed the marble floor of this man’s living room. It dripped down the corners of the coffee table and spread across the French doors that opened into the garden. Shards of glass were scattered across the room while bits from ornaments and lamps glittered in pools of this dead man’s blood.

He had put up a good fight but had still been defeated. I stood there and watched my creation. My masterpiece.

The sound of his baby’s cries snapped me out from my paralysis. It was time for me to leave and for the cleaners to come. I walked away, wondering what this man had done to deserve this death.

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Today

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Bad things happen to good people. Take that in for a moment. Inhale it like a cigarette and let it whirl around inside you. This is the kind of thing you hear every day. What does it mean, bad things happen to good people? I wonder. What does one have to do to be crowned a good person? What does it take to be considered a bad one? Who decides what is good and what is bad? Who makes that judgement? Who has that right?

I’m lying here with nothing but my ugly thoughts sprinting through my mind as if running a relay. It’s dark in here, here inside my mind and I can’t help but ask myself, where did I go wrong? When did I turn bad?

Sometimes my thoughts get the worst of me and I wonder whether I was unfortunate enough to have had an amateur wire up the mechanics of my brain rather than the Man Himself. I wonder whether the same amateur had worked up the story of my life. A twisted and sadistic one at that. The kind who’d wave a floating ring at a drowning man. The kind who’d give that man hope but have no intention of saving him. We’re playing the devil’s game and it’s one where hope doesn’t belong. You’ll see it when it’s too late. When you’ve stepped too close to the fire, when you’ve been burned by the flame.

Those flames will take away your freedom, your voice and they’ll make it theirs. They’ll stick a target on your back until you get stung. That sting will turn into a bite, and a bite, a cut. With each strike, those cuts will get deeper. Deep enough to hold the gasoline that they’ll pour over you. And then they’ll take a step closer until you’re a flame. A flame, like them, burning in the shadows looking for your next feed.

What do you do to stop a fire from burning? You kill it. You deprive it of oxygen and you suffocate it. Or you let it burn. You let it spread.

Self-defence. That’s what it is until your actions become immoral. But what else do you do when the fire keeps burning? When the knives keep piercing? When the bullets keep firing? You allow yourself to get shot or you eliminate the shooter. By then it will be too late because you’ve made your move. You’ve committed your sin because you felt the wrath of theirs too many a time. Only this time, you’ll make sure you don’t get shot again.

You’ll surround yourself in armour and you’ll leave your guard raised. Protection becomes destruction and it’s no longer self-defence. By then you’ll be considered a bad person because that’s what you become when you look out for you. The darkness will cave in and that’s where you’ll prefer to be. In the dark, like me. That way you won't get torn. That way you won’t bleed.

Except you will, because you’re not the only one out there with a weapon. You’re not the only one out there protecting your own back. Too many people burned. Too many people scarred.

Am I a flame? I wonder, but I already know. I got too close and now I’m one of them. An angry flame that has spread like a bushfire turning everything in my path to ashes. That’s what we’ll all be soon. Nothing but ashes. Nothing but dust.

The outcome will be bad for all of humanity because whatever good that is left in this world will slowly disappear. No matter how much good you do, one bad thing is all it takes for you to knock off that halo from your head and replace it with the devil’s horns.

How can you tell the difference between the good and the evil when eventually we will all become the same? It’s human nature. To kill or be killed. We were supposed to be like this. We were supposed to be bad. Whatever that is.

Two days of confinement is all that it has taken for me to see the reality of what this is. And after forty-eight years of believing I had been doing good, it’s taken me two days in this bed to realise that I was just a small flame all along. A small flame waiting to be fed. Just like everybody else.

CHAPTER TWO

Do all criminals start this young, or is it just me?

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Sugar sprinkles over shame as the chocolate melts down the sides, hiding what’s beneath. It’s the sweetness of these guilty pleasures, like taking candy from a baby. So wrong, yet so right.

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Today

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‘Morning, Mr Jackson. How are you?’ she asks.

‘Breathing,’ I whisper with whatever energy I have. Irene feels sorry for me, I can see it in her eyes but she doesn’t know me, she doesn’t know what I’ve done.

She walks into my space uninvited with a bag and I assume she’s here to change my catheter. I’m mortified that it’s come to this as she holds it up to confirm. She knows. She can tell by the look I’m holding on my face, nothing short of disgust as I close my eyes and pretend it’s not happening. This embarrassment, this torture, what man wants this? What man wants his dignity taken away from him? What man wants... Fuck, Irene!

‘It’s okay, it’s okay. I’m sorry, Mr Jackson, let me move that for you.’

What are you doing, Irene? Just get away from here. I don’t need my catheter changed, I don’t need your assistance and I don’t need you to tug on these tubes.

‘It’s fine.’ I mumble in pain, keeping my inner voice imprisoned within me.

‘That’s better now, isn’t it?’

No, it’s not. I tighten my eyelids to hide the discomfort that’s flowing through me while she continues to tug on the tubes.

‘There you go, Mr Jackson,’ she whispers as she inches away from me.

The sponges on the soles of her trainers creep to the other side of me and I release the tightness over my eyelids. Her hands feel warm like the summer’s sun, unlike the morphine that she’s injecting into my veins. They both feel good and I don’t remember the last time I’d felt the touch of another human. Human. I wonder if I have the right to call myself that.

‘There, all done. I’ll be right here if you need anything okay, Mr Jackson?’

She moves to Mr Kahele in the bed beside me as I stare into the darkness beneath my eyelids, allowing my thoughts to get the worst of me.

Does it make me a bad person? Or does it make me human? Maybe I’m just a monster. When your master asks you to gouge out the eye of your next victim to save your family, what do you do?

I see them. I see those eyes every night. Blue, green, brown. I don’t know their names and I don’t know what they did to deserve the torture I was ordered to give them, but I see them. The ones who’d put up a fight and the ones who wouldn’t. Every time I close my eyes, I see theirs.

I glide my fingers across a smooth leather wallet that I’ve been keeping beside me. But it’s not the wallet I want. I want my family. My nieces Skye and Bella. I want a spoon full of homemade jam. That’s the scent of luxury. That’s the scent of riches. I want the aromas of strawberry jam and marmalade dancing up my nostrils with the perfume of fresh bread to spread it over, all whilst being seated at the dining table with Mum, Grace and the twins.

I look at a photo of them through the window of my wallet. My nieces are identical with thick, jet-black hair sweeping off their shoulders, their sapphire eyes deep inside two perfectly shaped ovals. Their teeth are white like pearls, beautifully framed by their rose coloured lips. Bella’s birthmark drowns within her dimple just like her mother’s used to. I imagine this is how Grace would have looked had she lived past the age of twenty-one, but I guess drug abuse can do some fucked up things to people.

I see a lot of her in them. Their faces are long and thin, cheeks protruding more than they should with a shy dusting of pink brushed over the peaks of their otherwise pale cheeks. Their noses are sharp and pointy but I don’t draw attention to it. I always did wonder whether they’d got it from their father. Never mind.

I close my eyes and wonder why they haven’t come to see me yet. The waiting game makes my days and nights in here drag, and there’s nothing I can do to kill time except think.

Discomfort squeezes my chest, remaining loyal to me as it embraces me firmly but it’s not the kind of hug I need right now. The blood that had seeped through this bandage has dried over but I know what lies beneath is worse. They’ll come and change it soon, this bandage, but I don’t see the point. I don’t see the point in them doing most of the things they’re doing for me, but they do. I’d like to think I deserve it, but I know I don’t.

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Twenty-three years ago

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Skye and Bella had dug a hole by an apple tree at the bottom of the garden, filling it with wild berries and bits of grass while taking turns to spit in it. They’d been cooking up a range of dishes, showing off their culinary skills in their purple dresses and matching hair-ties made from Graces’ old duvet cover.

‘Looks like the twins will put Mum’s cooking to shame.’ I turned to smile at Grace as the sound of her laughter fluttered into the air.

‘Doesn’t look like we’ll be getting jam for a while.’

Disappointment masked the softness in her voice as she followed my line of sight, and we watched as Mum scrounged for strawberries that weren’t there.

‘I’ll pick some up tomorrow. What else are brothers for?’ I winked at her but she looked away.

The colour drained from her skin as she adjusted her curtain of hair, allowing it to fall over her face. I knew my sister, I knew there was something wrong. I knew she was hiding a secret and I knew she wanted to tell me. I should have asked her, I should have tried but I guess I was too busy re-calculating and shuffling around costs in my head so that I would be able to pick up some strawberry jam the next day.

Today

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Who knew that the troubles you have when you’re young are only a taste of what’s to come? Twenty-three years on and I still can’t bring myself to forget that day, the last time we were all together. I realise now, that some of my best memories are the ones I once believed were the worst.

Memories. That’s all I have left. Memories of all the good I’ve done and all the bad too. The kind that brings me regret, making me wonder what it would be like if I had done things differently. If I had pretended to eat Skye and Bella’s dinner, if I had helped Mum with the strawberries, and if I had asked Grace what was really happening behind the falseness of her smiles.

But I guess you don’t think about those things when you’re worrying about your incomings and outgoings not being aligned. When you’re worrying about looking like a failure because you can’t afford to put strawberry jam on the table for your family. When you’ve spent almost all of your teenage years dreaming of being a millionaire but life’s circumstances have taken you so far away from even being comfortable. You do what you have to do and see where it takes you.

What I did landed me here, lying in this bed stuck inside this overly bright room with three other men who are in a similar position to me. Death comes to us all but for the four of us here, it will come sooner than we’d like.

I wonder whether these men let society get to them too. It sickens me, all these expectations, all these stereotypes and gender roles that