Lucien Carr has known a lot of things throughout his lifetime, but the only thing he knows now is that he needs to get out. He needs to rummage through every item and toss out the unnecessary ones that will in no way benefit his death. He needs to lace together a ribbon of his ending in the bible that is his life, praised by many and misinterpreted by all. He needs to escape this prison that should be his paradise, this cesspool of sin and delusion. He needs a way out, and in his mind, an organ keen to versatility, the closet in his bedroom holds just the recipe for the kind of disaster he craves.
Lucien's roommate has no idea that he's currently on the hunt for a means of escaping, a tunnel in a peculiar form of flimsiness and pliance, an antidote to twenty-four years of self-destruction, a parting, and it is Lucien's goal that his roommate will remain to have no clue about it, even if that roommate is in the house with him at the present moment, unsuspecting yet capable of catching Lucien in the act at any point in time if I only just looked far enough, though it's not like Lucien's complaining about his newfound freedom in the slightest, just that his paranoia is becoming sort of a duvet for his normal caution, and it's relatively exasperating.
It feels as though every second he's whipping his head around to see if anyone has barged in on his farewell extravaganza that only he should be a part of because he doesn't owe anyone the majesty of watching him begin to rot, and every second there's nothing there besides the door to the bedroom, keeping its distance yet peeking at Lucien as much as it can without allowing the rest of the apartment to do so in its vacancy. This is all that clouds Lucien's head right now, not even the excitement of his mission, just the fear of being caught by people who will halt his duties to pretend like they give a shit about him when it's only them trying to spare themselves from the agony of loss. He tries to shake the feeling, but soon it becomes like an energy drink, urging him to proceed faster than ever to his grave, and though drugs are a tricky weapon, this paranoia one is pretty convincing.
The closet calls out to Lucien from its tidy spot by the door, closest to would be my side of the bed and farthest from the window where the stray cat hasn't appeared yet this morning, and immediately Lucien ambles over to it as if he's an instinctual neanderthal and the closet is a delectable ration unseen for weeks.
Peeling the closet's double doors away from each other like he's a cartoon princess in the middle of a song about how their life is changing for the better bursting onto their first world balcony, an array of clothes bloom in front of Lucien's bloodshot eyes, some of which is mine and most of which is his, because somehow this disheveled mess thinks fashion is the key to persuasion if you play it right.
Over the months of living by himself in this ruddy old apartment after skipping college and toting his dagger of a middle finger everywhere that bigots could find him, Lucien has amassed quite the stock of clothing articles, confident of each and every one. For relaxed days of sipping tea on the weekend without his library manager to scold him, he has selected sweaters and spunky t-shirts regarding grammar and philosophy (which his relatives all abhor, especially because he takes such pride in them), sometimes flannels if he's recently bought a candle that sets the mood for it, as he's all about aesthetics. On other occasions, Lucien prefers dress vests and dress shirts, which he often times unbuttons a bit like the heartthrob of a pirate movie, and this getup is usually accompanied by a tie when the shirt is fully intact, fabricating a gentleman out of a wreck.
All of these items could be potentially useful in Lucien's mission, but nothing screams out to him like the ties do, each of varying colors and patterns and materials but each of the same capacity to kill, strangle, pen the last pages of the novel that is Lucien's life, exactly what he needs now that an old flame has burnt him, and before he even realizes it his hands are grasping at the items, snaring them from the hangers and drawing them in to him as if they'll depart if he doesn't.
Ties are the perfect weapon, because with all of this paranoia blanketing the artifacts of Lucien's mind, he can't be caught ripping up bedsheets when he's not a self-proclaimed artist, as anyone could decrypt their purpose, primarily after Lucien's recent attitude. The noise of tearing sheets is a sonorous one, one that would alert his roommate to the soon to be murder scene, which is the event that has been clogging Lucien's brain since he ventured out on his quest for suicide. In addition, if Lucien decides that he doesn't want to go through with this after destroying the bedsheets, his roommate will be more suspicious of him and will probably have him on suicide watch by the end of the hour. Ties, on the contrary, hold an excuse that is admittedly rather wobbly but more plausible than the bedsheets. Lucien could claim that he's assessing how many ties he owns after perusing the shelves of his closet and noticing that he sure as hell has a lot, and this behavior is somewhat normal for the man, as Lucien is erratic and living his entire life out of the box, so his actions shouldn't be that questionable in relation to every other wild thing he's done.
Calmed by this notion, a wave of paranoia drips from his cognition (though still stationing the majority of it in his mind just in case), and Lucien instantaneously is relieved of the kickdrum firing relentless in his heart.
Expeditiously, he assembles the ties into a line, fastening the ends of each together and tugging on every knot to assure himself that they're secure and won't tremble and fail him when he needs them the most, and soon enough there's a train of about fourteen ties, his favorite number and far from coincidentally, a quite impressive lot that reeks of Lucien's mismatched aestheticism that he says broadens the world both in its courage to be unconventional amidst its peers and the courage to be unconventional in a set of beauty.
When everything seems to be in order, Lucien gathers the ties in his arms with the intentions of then slithering them over his neck like a snake ready to kill him with its venom, but before he can follow through with that action, his plan is thwarted by none other than the roommate who cares too much.
I have no idea what I'm witnessing, if I should even ask when I know that Lucien will only accuse me of intruding on everything, but from the looks of it he's too shocked to form any expression besides that of a deer in the headlights, and this minor detail about him suggests that he was doing something that he shouldn't have been doing, and one way or another I'll find out about it.
Lucien is cryptic enough that his motives remain vague no matter what, reveling in this crypticness and never telling me what the hell it is that he's engaging in, or if it's even safe by his own numb standards, but he doesn't have to tell me anything this time around, because I'm fairly certain that I can conjecture what he's building here, and it's not so jovial.
My astonishment orchestrates a gasp in my lungs, glues a hand to my mouth as I stare surprised at the mess on the bedroom floor who still hasn't recovered, and through this all I can only shape one sentence that sums everything up pretty well, a sentence that pains me to say. "You're sick, Lucien."
All my companion does is install a narrow tunnel into his eyes, a conviction like no other. "Isn't every writer?"
"Not every writer tries to hang themselves with their fucking ties, Lucien," I scold him, alternating between distress and the lion soul of a mother. "When will you understand that this isn't normal, even if lots of writers endure it?"
Many writers are forced to trudge through the hell of depression and attempted suicide, and those excursions flavor their words with realism, but that's something one can accomplish only if they are alive, not if their suicide succeeds. It is well known throughout the worldwide community of writers that melancholy is like the pervitin of literature, but any overdose is horrifying and unbalanced, ruining the vibe, an Lucien should know this, as he's the master of proportions and psychology. This is simple, especially to him, yet Lucien can't seem to understand it for whatever reason, and I don't know if he ever will.
"This is just expanding my world, Allen, nothing more."
I can't remember the days when Lucien was actually influential over my disposition towards him. He used to be able to expel credible excuses, but, like his body and mind, that ability is deteriorating, and he's left with the shoddy inheritance of words riddled with bullet holes from a father dead in a war, but everyone who has ever met Lucien Carr knows that he is as intractable as a bull moose and as thrifty as nature, so he makes do with what he has, no matter how scrappy it is.
"Dying ends your world. That's something even a kindergartener can comprehend, and you constantly show that you know more than a kindergartener, so why can't you get this through your fucking head?"
Unwilling to retract his opinion like always, Lucien shrugs. "Well dying is an experience, so by definition it can broaden one's existence."
Lucien is so stubborn that he will not back down from anything, including death, and I'm not sure if I can help him any longer. Maybe he's just doomed, and maybe he's written a tragedy for himself, and maybe his story will be adapted into a play in which people can misinterpret his ambitions as rigorously as they please as I, the old hermit who actually knew the man, scowls at the back of the theater with the pointless knowledge that he preferred tea over coffee and that he always felt the most alive on Sundays during church hours and that he would rather be forgotten than artificialized but has been ignored by the new proprietors of his tale, and all of that is unbearable to me, because I won't even retain the courage to speak up about the injustices draped upon a man who deserved so much more both in life and in the afterlife of unchallenged fallacy.
And in theory, all of this is avoidable if I could just reach out to Lucien, but God knows he'd never allow me to do anything close to that, and one day soon he'll die after prolonging this morose attitude, expressionless even while choking, and I am certain that he won't regret the fact that I'll blame myself for his adamancy and meander through the conflicting emotions layered right after each other so that they can trick me and never clash, something I am totally unprepared for, but Lucien doesn't care. He's never cared, but he made me care, and I'm really starting to hate psychology.
~~~~~
A/N: this is all moving so quickly but shit Lucien sure as hell is impulsive so
materialism: the only thing that truly exists is matter
~Dakotrapqueen