Sempiternity (COMPLETED)

II

A wasteland of cold, immoral, unjustifiable decisions and inexcusable crimes.

That was all the world was to him.

Arend Vitalis walked the streets of the large city with his hands in his pockets as usual. He walked with a self-assured, confident swagger, but his body held no such arrogance or self-confidence at all. He walked the way he did, unconsciously and unaware of anything in his path, simply because he believed that he was above all existence in the same manner that a man thought the sun was hot, and it showed in his manner. Anyone in his presence took cues from just his aura alone that he was superior, and that inferiority was all they would ever amount to.

This was not because Vitalis was a conceited man, nor did he go out of his way to believe that he was better than anyone else, but rather because of the particular philosophy he believed in with all his heart and soul. Arend hated everything in existence, equally and strongly. However, in every organism that exists – even a mindless insect – is a strong and unyielding sense of self-preservation. In Arend’s case, although he hated himself as much as he hated everything else he laid his eyes on, there was an unconscious mindset in his psyche that placed him a fraction of an inch higher than everything else in the world. Although it was unconscious, the fact remained that he hated himself a little bit less than he hated everything else around him.

That rule was especially strong as he wandered the city. Its streets were paved in dust and ashes; the horizon, painted with a dull gray palette. Tall skyscrapers, each indistinguishable from the one adjacent to it, rose as if to claw down the sky. Despite their ominous appearance, most – if not all – of the infrastructures lay in abandoned disarray. The population of the city matched the infrastructure in that they all wandered about, full of life yet uncared for and decaying. No organic hustle and bustle existed here, nor did it anywhere on the earth. Only a quiet, slow, constant moan of sound, akin to the weeping of a funeral that never ended. 

He did not remember the name of the metropolis he lived in, nor any of the cities he had lived in before, but he knew the way to his home quite well. It always seemed to follow the same route, he had long ago realized, but this was a mystery he had never bothered to investigate. Of all things, it was a mystery not worth his time in sleuthing. 

The move to this city had come unexpectedly, just as before, and was unjustified, just as with every other time. His parents barely ever spoke to him and never bothered to answer any question he ever had. The only things they seemed to be good at were garnering sympathy from strangers – always the strangers with money – and making sure they survived. They were like animals in this regard, in that they did anything they could to survive. It was amazing how dedicated they were to being professional beggars, but then, it took such hardy survival skills in order to prosper in this world.

 He never saw them work an honest day of their lives, nor did he ever glimpse in their eyes the pride and content that shines in the eyes of one who has a fruitful career and a loving family, yet he had never a day gone hungry, even if they were homeless at the time. And when their business of sorts began to slow down, and it looked like things were about to get hairy for the small family, his parents pulled him from school and they moved to some distant city. The cycle never failed.

They were alive and weren’t starving, wanting for resources, or hurting, but Arend hated it all the same. They lived off the generosity of others and contributed nothing to the society around them. There was nothing they could do for anyone else and nothing any of them did would ever amount to anything. Were they no better than slugs? Is that all that they could hope for, was living such a life? 

 Could that even be called living? 

After a while, Arend had learned not to care about what his parents did or what they planned. He hated his parents with a vicious, burning passion, but in its own way, the aggression was no stronger than the same feelings he had for everything else he held.