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Most days, #3 spent most his time in a perpetual emotional cycle — feeling sorry for himself, hating himself, hating the world, then feeling sorry for the damned beautiful world — again, and again, and again. Despite how it’d appear, his outward expression was more of habit than of any real vitriol. Or that was how it seemed to himself at least. He much preferred to keep anything feelings that weren’t completely flat and vague and angry at himself for himself; nobody’s business but his own. It was the most he could do and it gave him hope that he was fine with being a bad man. Everyday, he woke up and spat in the world’s face to give himself an excuse to deny himself its kind embrace. The world is kind to men like him but, of course, he would think to himself, it’s got spittle and phlegm all over it! How disgusting it all is.
Today the comfort of routine would be absent as he stepped through the door to his home. It was dead-silent, as it had been for years now, but nothing else seemed quite the same. He thought back to the jury room. He tried not to cry in there. He could cry all he wanted now; the door was shut behind him, he was alone to himself, there was nobody to know if he ever did so. So he tried to cry. Tried and tried. He rubbed at his eyes but nothing came of it. He thought of the way the other men — all far more respectable than himself— in that room, the way they’d looked at him. Each one of them knew all the worst things about him. Which was everything there is to know about him, really.
He thought of his son for the umpteenth time. He was young when he had him. Too young and too caught up in the past. The latter, it would seem, he always will be. Back then, he was angry and rambunctious, just like his son if the last he knew of him was anything to go by. He could only pray that, if he ever saw the kid again, they’d walk right past one another. He hoped the boy was unrecognisable, for the better. For a brief second he wondered if his own father thought the same things when he himself had decided to turn from his first home. He shot that line of thought down as fast as it revealed itself; it was none of his business anymore and it hasn’t been for a long time.
He remembered the first time he held that babe in his arms. He remembered when the idiot babbled his first word. He remembered the day when he came home and discovered that his kid could walk all on his own. He tried to remember the last time he heard the boy laugh. He tried to remember why he hated the sound so much. Usually, these’d be real kickers but nothing would come of them tonight. What on Earth, he wondered, is the matter with me?
He pondered for hours and hours, dug his fingers into the stitches that painted his mind and body. All his patchwork that that other man and torn right open as if he deserved it. He lays out his own stuffing and stares. He lays in bed, impressed with how his eyes can ache so bad without welling up. Finding himself at a dead-end with the tragic story of his family tree, he begrudgingly returns his mind back to the stuffy, stinking jail-cell of a jury room. Of course that brought him face-to-face with an odd dream of a person.
There was certainly something about there.
As far as anybody in that damned room was concerned, they could fully have met an angel in the flesh. Oh, how beautiful that man was. How sweet the message he was sent to deliver was! How that man should’ve smashed every tooth in my mouth he’d tried to rot down my throat! Oh, that beautiful, beautiful man. Far too kind and merciful to lay any real punches on me. Perhaps if his skin met my own, his spirit would be tarnished by the evil and scum of mine and that’s why he didn’t tear me from limb to limb. Maybe those stupid angels’ hands of his would burn straight through my body. How nice that would be. For holy hands to open me up and tinker away at what’s inside until it ticks the way it should.
But, of course, that’s ridiculous. That fool was as much of a man as #3 is. They had an equal opportunity to hurt, love, and feel. In another life, that man’s words would leave #3’s mouth and that other man would throw all the punches #3 does. And #3, in response, would only smile and that would be beautiful. He would come home, and maybe Junior didn’t live at home because elsewhere was what made him more happy. And #3 would be content in that because at least the boy was happy. Maybe he’d have kept his promise to himself and never gave into the curse that made his head hot, his hands calloused, and his heart stone-cold. Maybe he’d know how to truly care for somebody who wasn’t himself.
So now #3 thinks of what he has said. He couldn’t help the small part of himself that told him that he had genuinely wanted to kill that other man. He couldn’t tell if his mind preached a petty lie or the bare truth, he was disgusted by it nonetheless. However this was a part of him and that made him disgusting either way. He wondered if it would ever go away. He wondered if that feeling would persist in his heart if he was dealt a different mind. He wondered if the other man ever felt these things.
Nobody is really perfect, that much is certain. #3 wished that he could spend another day with the other man. Maybe then he’d be shown a part of the other that felt real. Maybe the other man would place his hands somewhere on his body and #3 would see that it didn’t burn either of them. And maybe he would hear the man stutter over a word and see the man’s cheeks redden in embarrassment, and then he’d know that not every line that came from that man’s mouth was rehearsed for his part as the stainless protagonist before a heavenly director. He would smile and perhaps laugh with him and then he would know in his heart that he was fully capable of making a person happy if he so wanted to. He’d trust his hands in #3’s and then he’d know that his hands were still capable of emanating some warmth. The man would look into his eyes and, instead of his own reflection, #3 would see all the colour in his irises, painted in the pigment of a young love-struck artist’s love.
Why, when he heard the other man’s voice, did he only feel threatened? Why, when presented with a perfectly unextraordinary man, did he perceive him as somebody so far above any other? In the moment, it was easy to tell himself that his face was hot from the humiliation, his heartbeat quickened to keep up with the humidity, and his stomach churned from the hate. It was easy to say he only hated the man because they were on opposite sides of an argument. But it was different now. He knew very well what he was feeling and he knew very well what it meant. To some degree, he’d known since the beginning. His mind stopped racing for a moment. He stared up at his ceiling.
He opens his mouth to take a breath in and notices that his face remains dry. As he shut his tired eyes, it was easy enough for him to wish death upon the other man, but he found that he could never mean it. Not with way that the mere thought of that man could quieten his mind and not with the way the other man, in some twisted way, had made him want to change for the better. To be like him. To be the father he always wanted to be no less than his son wished the same. Regardless, he wished and wished it until he fell asleep. What a day it’s been.
Maybe when he awoke in the morning, the meat would meld back onto his bone, stronger and healthier than before. He’d look down at the guts that that angel of a vulture spared. And he’d thank whatever God had sent the beast to cleanse him of his self — and he'd pray with all the sincerity of that standalone juror, too! He’d stuff the, now slightly more bearable, disgusting slop of his brain back into his cranium that the other man really ought to have crushed and smashed and ground. Maybe then it would fix itself up and make him kind.
Maybe that angel would caress his face as he awoke. The preacher’s voice would grunt an unceremonious ‘good morning’, and he would know the man’s every words wasn’t perfectly tuned. He’d feel his heart beat against his own, and he would know that, really, they were both equally human. He’d feel that man’s lips on him somewhere, anywhere, and he would love. And it would be nice and he will have forgotten how to spit.
Perhaps even that was unreasonable. The most he could ever hope to receive is a sniffling nose and a set of pouring eyes. Maybe he’d cry out all the hate in his heart and he’d know something different for once. And then he’d cry for a stupid world that, like a fool, smiled on him despite the phlegm on its face.