If I were not rattled from my late night tea session with myself (and a lack of other companions to join me from their sulking) by the fragrance of flames and their ashy spit, then I would not have known that Lucien had noticed my excavation dig of his terrible memories from when he was sixteen years old and decided to dispose of them because they were really that terrible, and I don't blame him, to be honest.
A lot can change in eight years, including one's impression of another, one's impression of strangers, and one's impression as the world as a whole, and though Lucien is a man to highlight his past, he only highlights it when it suits him, not when it beat him to a pulp and made sure he survived just near a flatline for the collateral that will last forever, just hanging on by a string that he wish he could either snap or climb if it were possible. The most average of men will only showcase their accomplishments and hide their faults, but Lucien Carr is far from average, yet he still hopes to deify himself no matter what, going to great lengths just to preserve how other people see him, and now that he's crumbling, that's becoming increasingly difficult.
Despite being extremely stubborn to the point where I cannot persuade him to my side of any claim, Lucien is somehow not diligent enough to hide the extent at which he is falling apart, which may be a side effect of that weathering. I would've thought he would be more desperate to conceal any emotion that is shamed by society when it is only as flagrant as tears, but all he does to cloak the fact that he's dying is tell me that I'm being nosy and that nothing is wrong with him, when he constantly talks about how true writers noted for their passion are never okay, because passion is derived from experience, and emotions are a living hell.
So I went to bed without another word about it, because if I offered any, they would be scorned just like they would be scorned at any other time in the day, and that was that, and I suppose it was a mistake to leave Lucien unsupervised, but I believe he's had enough, and I've done too much for him.
But as Lucien awakes with a sort of drugged up heaven in his lungs, all of his goals have been diminished, the last fragments whose majority was stolen by depression now stolen entirely, in order to leave one last thing on which to focus: leaving the apartment without being caught.
With that choice already deep in his mind, he can only say goodbye as his last parting, the best thing he can do. Eyes thatched with concern, he sweeps his vision over my slumbering figure unaware of what is about to transpire, and he leans down to deposit a final kiss in the thicket of my hickory hair. I subconsciously reach towards him, discharging the tiniest of sounds, but Lucien wills himself to proceed and abandon me.
It appears that now all Lucien wants to do is not be caught in the act of doing something he shouldn't be doing, which he probably should be caught in doing so someone can protect him from its repercussions, but Lucien is as intractable as ever and won't settle for protection when his mind is a criminal perpetually on the loose and is unable to be detained by anyone except the owner of that mind who arguably doesn't own it anymore, and it seems that Lucien is too weak to detain that criminal, so his life has been flipped into a pan of hecticness and disorder until he can only stick to one goal at a time, and he will do anything to achieve it.
Lucien knows every inch of this house, has carved his possessions into it with a meticulous guard so that he can locate everything and pretend as though he isn't obsessive about it, and because he knows every inch of this house, he knows where it moans under his feet, where it screeches against his touch, where the noises reverberate from and can give him away as he slips out of the house without the knowledge of the roommate who is quietly slumbering in the other room. Lucien knows both how to play the instrument of this apartment and how to mute it, a skill that is quite unnerving to his roommate, because it can ensure that Lucien will sneak away at one point, and that one point is now.
Lucien, a man whose personality can be described with the salient point that he loves broaden his life, loves to explore as well, and it is through this that he can locate every nook and cranny in an area once studying it enough, a much shorter process than people unlike him, and while some people would admit through teeth barred by politeness that they don't think it's a useful skill, others are amazed to see how handily Lucien utilizes it, and he's utilizing it now, in a life or death situation in which he shouldn't be but is because he follows the stream he constructed for himself, not the stream already there that expects him to feed off of it as if he's desperate, and right now he is desperate, so his skills are aiding him in releasing himself of that desperation in the only way he sees possible, the only way he wants to follow through with.
Of course, he wouldn't have to be utilizing his skills of exploration in this way if they were adept enough to solve the crux of his melancholy, meaning if they were adept enough to locate where Lucien's mind has gone, then he could help himself regain it and wouldn't now be utilizing his skills to sneak out of the apartment to fucking kill himself, but wishful thinking is only supported by the man when one intends to act upon those wishes, so the location of his brain is ultimately rejected by what is felt in his soul.
The apartment is dark, the moon sighing heavily into the air yet never blowing its tendrils of light towards the building, making Lucien's task of escaping the house all the more arduous when he can't see for shit, so he decides to flee the house without grabbing so much as a jacket to instead parade through the streets in shorts and a t-shirt as thin as his patience with life.
No one is walking outside at the moment and probably won't be until it's the day, which is understandable for the time of one o'clock in the morning when the rational people are all sleeping in comfort and not making mistakes as a danger to society like Lucien is. There is only the stray car zooming past yet not as quickly as they would if it were light outside, like they're cautious of the secrets lurking in the ebony dust of night, and maybe they should be, as there's about to be a tragedy draped like a proud banner in the halls of Paterson history.
The street looks immaculate today, perhaps too immaculate, devoid of the usual trash, undisturbed by rain water, blank of the leaves that are cascading to the ground all throughout the fall but not on this street for some reason, and it's not so much that the street is too clean, just that it doesn't feel right, like an inexplicable wrestling match in your stomach, but that can easily be remedied with blood upon its melanoid textiles, no? That offers a sort of balance, an accent well adjusted to black and all dark colors, a streak to stir up conversation, a solution to all of Lucien Carr's problems.
There are rarely any escapes as fulfilling as this one, as they solve each and every one of Lucien's issues by killing him instantly with the murder weapon an oncoming car, and maybe it's cruel to shove a manslaughter or a straight up murder charge on someone he doesn't even know, but that's the least of his concerns when he's dead, and he doesn't believe in any afterlife except for the worms wriggling their way into one's casket, knocking and knocking and crawling where they don't belong, but Lucien doesn't belong here, either, so fuck the consequences, right? That's a bit of a consolation to someone who needs it but rarely ever receives it, with all of the falsifications shoved onto him that he's supposed to accept, that don't mean a thing to him, that are only displayed so that the giver can pretend like they did something in the world in order to soothe their guilty conscience, a typical human being as sordid as the rest of them.
Stepping in front of a car makes one's death seem like an accident, which may be true if it actually were an accident, but Lucien has been set on suicide since David Kammerer, a heartthrob turned to an abuser, returned to Lucien's life and set him off like a ticking time bomb, and in a few minutes his time will be up. But since Lucien is so opposed to letting people know that he's not all right, despite showing clear signs of depression and paranoia, stepping in front of a car will alert the public to the lie that it wasn't his fault, rather the fault of the driver that will hit him, however cruel and unfair that is to someone who just happened to get caught up in an assisted suicide, because it's what Lucien needs to assure his few friends that he was doing fine and was only struck inadvertently.
The mourning style is different, too, and though Lucien hates mourning of any type, claims it to be a waste of time for people that won't come back from the grave or wherever they are in the pursuit of a happier life without the selfish person that wants them back, Lucien would prefer the mourning style of a car accident, because the stigma, if any, will be redirected towards someone else instead of him. There will be no one, except maybe Lucien's roommate, that will blame it on suicide and spew out those pointless, bigoted phrases about the inverted mortality phenomenon. Lucien hates anyone who would willingly show up to his funeral to insist on that futile mourning, but he cares about his roommate enough to step in front of a car so I don't have to spend the rest of my life wondering why the hell he killed himself and if it was me who urged him towards it, as if that should be my first arrogant concern when my friend is about to fucking die intentionally, when that death has been the prospect to which he's been looking forward since a few days ago and hasn't ceased looking forward even now.
And because Lucien is up to his knees in excitement, a sentiment that is growing still, it is strenuous to wait for a car to race by, a car that he can narrowly jump in front of to perhaps lessen the driver's criminal sentence from murder to manslaughter as if they deserve either one. Almost three minutes pass before Lucien spots a car humming in a dilatory ballad in the distance, three minutes caked with apprehension and the slightest nuance in Lucien's decision about whether he wants to experience the vibrancy of life or have all feeling of anything wiped away permanently, nuances that are overruled every time but continue to scratch at the door to Lucien's cognition.
The car nears him, the driver totally unaware that they are about to be restrained in a lawsuit regarding a person they don't know the first thing about, but soon they will be aware...very soon, in fact, in about three seconds, and in those three seconds, life bursts with its enchanting color, everything under the sun and everything destined to destroy it, everything pulling and grasping and releasing all at once, hands cupping items as they too are cupped, an infinite string of proportional relativity, all aspects of time and matter packed into three seconds, right before Lucien delivers the move to end it all.
There is no hesitation as Lucien seizes what he has yearned for since the ripe age of sixteen, all piecing together like a puzzle that started out as nothing but a desire, now an elegant display of accomplishment, of drifting into the darkness whose hue is imaginary yet vivid like nothing Lucien has ever seen before, like no living human has ever seen before, but there's no time to contemplate this, as it's all over now.
He cannot see himself anymore, his identity stripped away, but he can see who he used to be, first charming and then a mess and then charming and then a mess again, like his life is a repetitive cycle of delineated ups and downs instead of random fluctuations in the grid of time, but that life is through, with the contact of metal upon flesh, mistake upon mistake, cause upon effect, manslaughter upon remedy, everything Lucien needs.
"Turn out the lights now, Lucien, honey." A soft voice, puckered by the sourness of amnesia yet sweet as ever, like clenching a bit of the past and furling it into a heart.
"Okay."
~~~~~
A/N: I've been fortified against the death threats my writing causes so whatever just bring it on and make it interesting
monism: the belief that there is only one principle of life
~Dakotattle-tale