Inhibition

[Cactus]

((Claudeson Bademosi continued from Valediction)) The rain barely stopped for an instant, and all night long, Claudeson Bademosi wondered if praying was even an appropriate course of action. After what he'd done to Bryan Merryweather, it didn't seem right. Besides, if God hadn't turned His back upon him before, he certainly would have now. But none of that mattered anymore. It was the same refrain, hour after hour, raindrop after raindrop.

God didn't exist.

They were alone, and this life was all they had. Fighting through it, and suffering as they made their way to the end was an indignity that the terrorists had foisted upon them. At least if they were free and had eighty-some years to toil at whatever, time wasted was on the individual. Prolonging the inevitable was cruel.

So all throughout the evening, that was the justification that his mind created for his actions. They made him miserable, no question of that. When he had pulled the trigger and watched Bryan's face explode, a part of him had died along with the generous teenager. The part that lived by the Ten Commandments, that knew that not killing was the first of God's rules, that saw the light in all of God's creatures — there was that fictional creation again — that part of him died. Whatever darkness had been spreading within him seemed to be all that was present at any given time.

Claudeson barely slept that evening.

Every time he closed his eyes, he saw the awful visage of Bryan's death. It was burned into the back of his eyelids, forever with him. Whenever he opened his eyes, he felt the self-loathing, the feeling of inexorable hatred of the lies that he'd been taught his entire life. He despised his own beliefs; the way that his mind was wired. He hated himself for what he had done, and especially for what he knew he was likely going to do.

He couldn't stop now. It destroyed him to do it, but Bryan no longer felt any pain. There was no longer a place in this world for Bryan Merryweather, and someone like him was never going to manage to survive long enough to return home. The genial teenager hadn't been capable of going that extra mile into depravity.

Ending his existence had been merciful.

How else could he see it? If he looked at it as the announcements would later describe it, he could have never lived with himself. The terrorists were bound to describe it any which way they liked, paint whatever picture suited their narrative. It was almost as though they were crafting their own doctrine, the basis of their own religious text. They were zealots, following whatever leader they felt could take them further towards their mission. It was foul; Survival of the Fittest was a cult and their captors were their followers. All of what remained of the majority of his existence was an abomination. He was here to suffer, for the last of his days. It was an unfair situation pushed upon people who by and large, did not deserve the indignity of having to fight for their lives.

So that was what he would do. He would help.

He would do good.

Claudeson would save as many people as he could.

After all, they only had a small amount of time before the universe moved on without them.

Having slept underneath a tree, shivering and barely getting any rest, Claudeson looked down at his heavily pruned fingers.

"I hate you."

His voice was shaken, soft and nearly broken. Days before, he might have sobbed at the pain he was in. Now, he embraced it. The pain reminded him that he was still alive; a fact which he was forgetting more and more.

Darkness surrounded him, and finally, he had stopped fighting it.

((Claudeson Bademosi continued in Hoo-hooo's there?))