War of Attrition: A story

[damien]

ISSUE #4 - APPERCEPTION

I returned home, amazed at how well things had gone. Sure, Scarlet took a beating, and I was concerned for him, but I came out of it completely unscathed, and I felt pretty good. Good enough to go back to work. I made myself some food, read an article that I had seen earlier and didn't have time to do more than peruse at the time, and then finished my day off with some target practice. I could never bring myself to shoot at the head of even the practice dummies; the thought of killing a human was just too much for me. So, I stuck to my body shots, and got pretty good at it. Hell, I could hit a dummy right in the exact center of the stomach 5 times out of 5. But I still haven't been able to bring myself to use that on a human.

The next day, I got to work a little earlier than usual, feeling inordinately good about everything around me. The world stopped looking red and blue to me and came back to its regular, vibrant shades that I had so direly missed seeing. The world returned to the ordinary to me, if only for a few hours, but after not seeing it for it's wonderful, luscious fervor for so long, it seemed truly extraordinary to my tortured eyes. I was skippier than a 5 year old on a 5 hour energy all day, printing things out for people, getting them coffee, making conversation with the assholes that I normally never associated myself with. I think I had gotten less work done that day than I normally did in a half hour, but who cares, because it felt good.

And of course, in my childish spout of energy, I even asked Janet out. Sure, she was the nice girl (who didn't treat me like a lunatic!) who's desk was a stone's throw away, and she was pretty sexy too, but I hadn't really considered a relationship until I blurted the words out. Oh well, she said yes, and I had a hot date for Friday night! I got a whole lot more excited than I really should have, but hey, no one was going to stop me after I pretty much emoted enough for a full three months by the time lunch rolled around.

But of course, I'm me. I'm Nick Givens, the guy who apparently gets only one strike before he's out. I wasn't allowed to be happy, because that would mean that I would be able to develop a stable, healthy psyche again. No, I'd been sentenced to a lifelong heaping of torment followed by despair and if that wasn't enough, some affliction to top it all off. An hour or so after I had arrived home, I received a knock on the door. I opened it to find Dupin, and he didn't look like he had good news. I invited him inside, but really only because he looked like he had the kind of news that you tell someone to sit down for.

http://i152.photobucket.com/albums/s...mi22/Dupin.png

Me: *nervously* So... what's going on?

Dupin: Not a whole lot of good. I've had my associates keep their eye on you Nick, and we're convinced that you have a tail. 
Now, this isn't exactly a low level ninja we're talking here; this guy is serious business. 
We've only ever been able to see him twice in the last two weeks following you, and even then, only for a moment.

Me: Umm... alright. So am I gonna have to go under protection now or something?

Dupin: Well, that he's followed you around for the last two weeks and hasn't acted on you is both good and bad. 
The good is that he doesn't want you dead yet, so your life doesn't look to be in much danger, but at the same time, 
the longer he plays cat and mouse, the stronger of a chance there is that others get hurt.

Me: So then what are we going to do?

Dupin: I'm afraid there isn't much we can do. This guy has already attacked one of our associates, 
who seemed to get a little careless in his watching of you. He acted, and next thing we knew, our guy's in a coma. 
So he doesn't want you dead yet, but he also doesn't want to risk anything at all being seen.

Me: Well, is there anything that I can do, to help with the cause or something?

Dupin: Yes, that's why I'm here. I need you to tell me more about why you felt like you were in danger in the first place. 
I know you said that a strange figure in black broke into your house, and our accounts of seeing your tail could possibly lead us to the same guy. 
So, I need you to tell me everything Nick.

And I remembered. For the first time in a very, very long time, I allowed the memories to stroll back into my thought process. And boy, was it torture; it had seemed that the only way to get past it was to completely ignore and suppress it, and being forced to recollect it proved my theory to be true. I told Dupin about what the figure did to my parents, to my house, to my life. But when I got to my sister, I just froze. I just couldn't say the words anymore. I broke down in tears, not because of the fact that my sister was dead, but because she was dead because of me. I knew it, and that figure probably knew it, and it tore me up. I took a second to regroup, and then I told Dupin that the figure took the bat from me, knocked my unconscious, and then when I woke up I found my sister dead.

I knew it wasn't true. It was just a fabrication that I made, perhaps to make myself feel better, perhaps to make sure Dupin didn't think I was a terrible person, I don't know. But Dupin could see that I was shook by my memories. He thanked me for telling him, gave an awkward attempt at consoling me, and then saw himself out.

And I let that small thread that was holding my two sides together rip apart. I completely broke down, crying my eyes out, punching holes in the wall. A year of therapy and rehabilitation, undone in one 10 minute recollection of suppressed memories that I had hoped would never have to come back. I looked at my house, all of the disgusting colors thrown about sloppily. I closed my eyes, and opened them, and the shades of red came back. I I grabbed my handgun and shot the head of every training dummy clean off. Then I threw on my mask and grabbed my weapons, and walked out the front door.