I was there, in a very cold winter night, just so my parents stopped bothering me. They were not going to decide if I could or couldn't do what I was doing. I couldn't care less if they said that it was "of loonies". If I was going to stop doing it it was going to be for my own will, and not theirs.
That's why the sentence surprised me for a moment. But surely it was just the first step in the brain wash system applied in the group.
I was there late, so nobody could dare to think I was interested. When I sat, the woman that had the word was talking about how bad was she feeling lately, then she mentioned how difficult it was to stop doing it. Stupid woman, everyone can stop whenever they want.
A couple of people said almost exactly the same thing after her, and I wondered if it really was worthy to be there just to avoid a couple of lectures. At least speaking in front of everyone wasn't a requirement. I put the hood of my sweatshirt up and looked inside for my headphones my backpack, I wasn't thinking to put up with a new version of the same stupidity.
While I was listening to music so I could stop thinking about it, an endless number of people continued the cycle of taking the stand, picking the microphone up, and saying something that I'm sure wasn't much of a novelty. In the silence between one song and another, a male voice achieved to leak into my ears.
"... first time I come here… I know somebody that does it… everytime I saw him I wanted to kill him… Kill him…"
I looked to the front and I saw a person with a hood and a scarf standing in front of the microphone.
"... Then I realized. There was nothing to do. Nothing. I couldn't stand his face in that state… But not kill him… No… Not dead. No, no, no…"
His voice sounded disturbed, but not as if he had done it… it was more like he was dying to do it. He had his hands inside his pockets, but you could see the tension on his arms.
"... all the family worries… all the world worries… I worry so much. So much…"
The man bent forward and gripped the podium with his hands. He was sweating. "That's of loonies", I remembered my mother saying.
"... I was only upset about his face… without his face everything would be fine. Everything fine. Right?"
Everyone was silent. Then the man showed us his palms. They were full of blood.
Without knowing what to do, I started looking to the people around me, some of them were taking out their phones, most likely to call the police. The person in charge of the group walked to the man with obvious intention of stopping him in the case he wanted to run away.
"Where is that person!?", shouted someone from below, while covering the mic of his phone, probably already connected with a policeman.
The man waited for the attendant to be a step away. Then he just simply took off his scarf.
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| Illustration by +Asuka Elric |
