Conscience

Conscience

Our house used to be a home. Now its just four walls that confine every drop of sensibility within. I’m not sure where I went wrong. I don’t know why I kept the shades pulled down and the lights off. We tread through our lives like cats over water. Never wanting to get emotionally wet.

We use to be people, now we’re just breathing cardboard cutouts. Jessie always was looking for something. It didn’t matter what. Jessie just wanted to know everything. Not just to be right, Jess wasn’t like that; the reason that knowledge was so important was that knowledge kept things balanced. The only thing more significant in Jessie’s life was me. Unfortunately, Jess hadn’t learned how to judge character. Not that I was a bad person or anything, but I could have never stood up to the standards that I would face, once Jessie had the everything balanced.

So my plan was this, to make sure that I never let Jessie balance all the way out. Now you must be thinking that I am some big bad monster but I’m not. I loved Jessie. But I knew what would happen. I have seen how knowledge can corrupt. Jessie had such a good soul. I just couldn’t let that happen. It would have been so easy for me to let it happen to any one else, but not Jessie. Jess had too perfect a soul.


Fuck…What was this obsession with knowledge all about? Why do you have such a love affair with knowledge? Being smart won’t change the way you are, just the way you look at things. You’ll still just be the same ignorant person on the in side.

Then silence fell upon hearing ears as I followed Jessie in to the back room. Only I hesitated for an instant. Trying to justify those harsh words that had just spewed from my lips. I knew Jessie better than that. Jessie was good. Brilliance would have fit like a glove. So why…how…could those ignorant words flow so elegantly across my tongue, like the flick of a wrist turning off a light, I just shot down not a beautiful mind, not an elegant mind, but a wanting, needing mind. A mind like a hard sponge, waiting for water, ready to soak up every last drop of knowledge that the world was willing to give. Damn that jealousy. That ruthless monster turned my blue eyes green.

Picking up my melded thoughts I trudged back to our bedroom, hoping with something evil in my heart that I would find Jessie face down on the bed, where I could comfort and exude my sadistic power once again. Saying something like “Oh don’t worry it will all be ok.” But Down the dark hallway once more I heard silence. This silence wasn’t the regular silence. It was what I think most people hear right before a horrifying crash or something like that. All I could hear was nothing at all. Nothing. Nothingness. But I saw everything. The colt that Jessie had begged dad to buy, the smoke bellowing from the barrel, and the spray of bits and pieces of Jessie’s pride and joy spewed all over our wall. Over my favorite picture of Elvis in black and white with his slicked back hair and gnarled lip, over the wall that we had painted ice blue last summer just because it was our house and we could, all over my life which within an instant had turned into reservoir of the love and blood, gray matter and hatred which was my conscience.

No time for tears now. No time to think. I was never very good at that anyway. That was Jessie’s task. No time to kneel, to sweep Jessie up in my arms, to feel life’s blood flowing, like my ignorant words had, all over my body. Jealousy has now turned my blue eyes red. Life now would be paralyzed by that over flowing pit. Conscience, what a commendable thing. But to live now with its weight upon my shoulders, well I’m no Atlas, so… I pray for Jessie’s courage, and as I gave up the ghost and damned it to hell. Once again I heard that beautiful noise. Silence…Nothing but…