Musings of an Obsessive Penguin

He is covered and sick and sweat, but he can’t remember what has happened to him. He sits up tentatively, taking in his surroundings. There are no sharp objects nearby, nothing to make him anxious or wary, but he is. The whole situation screams of danger, but his nerve endings are already shot and the tension in his arms cannot be wound any further. He stands up shakily and makes his way through this dark, damp apartment.

He creeps towards the only visible light, which leads him to a living room. A silhouette is carved into the brightness, a stark contrast against the illuminating brightness of the window. He creeps closer and his breath quickens. There is something that’s niggling at the back of his brain, disturbing and intermittent. He stops. He remembers flashes of pain and violence, a chair being thrown and the scratch of cold stone.  His breaths have quickened. Steps echo as he continues on, reaching a stark white chair. In that chair sits his only secret and he licks his lips. His eyes have dilated to enormous proportions and everything has slowed down to an unrealistic extent. All he sees is a man sitting slumped, arms entangled with the back of the chair courtesy of a few tight rope knots.

Scrawled in heavy bold strokes of red is his message. He doesn’t want to look at it; he can’t look at it. The reality of it all just isn’t making its way through the recesses of his mind. Neurons fire continuously and synapses are almost frozen in time, sluggish with disbelief.

He licks his lips again. Maybe if he tears his eyes away from that message he will be able to breathe. He closes his eyes and reopens them again. Abruptly he chokes on his sob, the sound tearing roughly through his throat by force. He clamps down on his mouth shakily. He has been through so much worse; this really shouldn’t be affecting him so much. It’s just fine. It’s just another dead man. Just another dead man.

He kneels, and chews frantically at his lips, drawing blood as he does so. There are no words. There is absolutely nothing he can say now. No one apologizes to a dead person. But he does anyways. He swallows and he can feel his eyes tearing up, sinuses mutinously filling up.

And there is nothing he can do. So he abandons his pride and he cries. There is no one to see him here, in this dilapidated hovel of a dwelling. So he lets go, and he shows just how much this hurts him. He doesn’t know who has done to this him, but he finds that he doesn’t really care. It could be any criminal that he has bested, any dirty drug lord or crime boss with hatred for the Batman; hell it could even be Harvey Dent. It doesn’t really matter, he finds. Because no matter who did this, no matter who committed murder, it won’t really bring him back anyways.

So he sits there, and he wails into his hands and he feels his face begin to fall apart. His face hurts from crying too much, and he just sits there, head in hands. There is nothing but this moment, and he finds that the limbs of his body are trying to escape in all different directions. He can’t speak. He can’t think. He grips those same rumpled pants, and he knows that this is all that is left. And he can’t stand it.  

His handsome face, that twisted, ugly thing has never looked more beautiful. Because even though he spent most of his life hiding behind that wretched mask, at least he was honest. At least he still retained his mind, kept his own personal sanity in the disgustingly bleak world he lived in. The same could not be said for himself. He finds that as painfully wrenching as this is, there is something horrifyingly beautiful about this. He is very human. He can feel. He was just too late.

He remembers when that same man was so vibrant and disjointed that he practically thrummed with energy. This man, this entity was the epitome of life. He fought and he broke the rules, plowing them down with each new opportunity with the subtlety of a sledgehammer. And oh he laughed. It may be hard to believe it, but he did actually laugh like he meant it. With joy.

He looks up again at that blood soaked chest, at that horribly white complexion, at those wide, blank eyes. And he finds that it doesn’t matter anymore. It really doesn’t matter anymore. There is nothing left for him here, now. So he leaves, and he grips that cadaverous slip of paper, emblazoned with those mocking words, like a lifeline.

Happy Birthday.