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Chapter 2: Chapter 2: A Gray Awakening (narrator)

"Roman, wake up!"

The senile voice, raspy and hollow bounced around the walls of Roman's empty house. So hollow, but the loud sound awakened Roman, in his silent domicile.

"<i>What</i>!"

Roman woke up in a sweat that had drenched his clothing, his sheets, and his pride. With his age he found himself weakening, his head was not completely right, he still saw himself as young, ripe, and cheerful. Moments like these reminded Roman of his age, and the fear of the spine chilling dream had caused Roman's weak bladder to break under pressure, drenching his bed in what he thought was only sweat. Roman forgot, forgetful Roman.

Roman sat up to see no one there, he was not pleasantly surprised at the stench that came from within the covers. Maybe, Roman thought to himself, Maybe I have a fever. Roman stood up and hobbled his frail elderly legs to his bathroom. The years had piled on him like bricks, curving his spine and gravitating it down in a spectacular curve, a curse that caused Roman back pain every morning. The kind of curve that ached through his body, echoed through his house, the echo was reflected back to Roman. It was on mornings like this he was reminded of his age. Romans eyes gawked at his distorted elderly figure in disgust.

<i>I'm a disease.</i>

His figure felt hollow, and his body echoed as if he was a shell of what his youth once was. An empty shell, hidden under the sand, under the water, in the deep dunes of the ocean. A lonely, lonely shell. But Roman was not a shell at all, he was unhappily aware of his existence as well as his fleeting existence. In the little time that Roman had left of his life, he had become almost like a hermit. Although the purpose for his solitude was not religious, it was because he believed the world should not have to see such a hideous monster. There was no particular reason as to why Roman had become this decaying, desolate creature. No reason other than time. The former Roman, a vivacious, young, and tactical man, worked as a doctor. He had seen many hundreds of people dying, whether from diseases, old age, or freak accidents. Death had never scared him, he saw so much of it. As a doctor he had questioned his morality, it was almost as if he had held it in his hands. It held a figure and as age wore his bones he became one with mortality itself. He had allowed his body to succumb to the inevitability of that which would curve, deform, and cause him to sulk, to sink but never seeming to drown. His life, his youth seemed to flash before his eyes in his age as he realized the kind of man he was. The kind of man he would grow to be. He, although smart, had been a handsome man. A man who climbed through society on the promise of his looks, like a power, even into his late fifties he had kept his youthful charm. Until he reached the age of 59. He realized that he had begun to get a crippling pain in his back. It seemed as if to make him convulse and cripple, he realized that keeping his youth was causing his body, the lines in his cheeks, the stretched wrinkles on his forehead, his wearing strength, and he realized he was growing tired. Unfathomably tired, tired of his promise of beauty and youth. He realized that he used to be able to relax the tense muscles in his face, in his legs and arms but now he was holding on to his youth for dear life. His relaxed disposition, his ability to allow the success into his life had now grown weary. He realized he was not happy because he was holding on to something he no longer had. When he began to let go, he realized how much he truly despised the gift that was age. He loathed every wrinkle, the discoloration of his now almost pale blue face. His head, now shedding his pale silver, growing lifelessly white. Brown, rotting warts began to enveloped his lengthily slim spine. He was a 'monster'. He began to feel disgusted with himself, so very disgusted with his bodily figure. He was so embarrassed, so abhorred with his moldering, but once smoldering physique.

Romans crippling body was covered in scars, deep scars. They reminded him of what he was, a ' hideous creature that did not deserve the light of day'. Roman had blundered through a tsunami of the grimy solvent that was his age. First came the waves of denial , a forced youthful character he seemed to be putting all his energy into. In attempt to keep his legacy as a man of youth, wealth, and power alive. Then the tide rolled higher onto the shore as he began to succumb, to relax and allow the world to bring it's next gift. As he allowed time to take the wheel of his life, it spun Roman much, much to fast. So fast in fact he had almost forgotten that he was spinning. He was entirely absolved in the illusions of his disfigured age. Encompassing his life's purpose to protect himself from ridicule of his age. Flood waves soon rolled into the town of Ramons mind as he began too tumble further and further into the depths, the oceans of his mind. As he had begun to realize that he was losing his charm Witt and charisma, that the muscle on his bones was almost shriveling and he was becoming frail and weak. Now spiraling into the unescapable depths of the ocean, he had begin to drown, the fluid in his brain leaking, suffocating his frontal lobe and drowning him with forgetfulness. He knew nothing about his own witty or Charm, nor his Job, all he knew was the pale, aged, sickly face that had haunted everyday. Since any of the days he can remember.

Roman had decided he was sick of his own reflection. He decided to use the black paint he used on all the windows to protect those around him from his monstrous age, to protect himself, he hobbled himself through the mountains of molding and rotting trash. As if he was trying too get through the amazon, which a stick in one hand and a flash light in another. With the years of living solitarily in his house, Roman realized how incapable he was, unable to clean, someone had always done it for him. Most of all, incapable of empathy, thus far all his loved ones had left him, in a pit of what now looks to be, sorrow, agony, and guilt. Although, filled with wit and charm, he never used either of these things for the benefit of others. He was a sly sort of man, the kind that would drop his 'glasses' at a bar just took take a look up a girls skirt. The kind of man that would sleep with his boss, or two, or however many he needed to to get by. His looks had given him the obsession of intimacy. The ability to not only be intimate but to seduce, and soon betray. It started out as a method, a tactic, and soon it had become a game, it didn't matter who was playing. What really mattered, was to do what was asked of him. He almost began to enjoy this game as life went on. It fueled him, giving him reason. Giving him a drive to control the higher power, no matter what it takes to do it. In his age, he realized his humanity, something he had never considered. When he retired, Roman began to drift. Slowly but surely losing his sanity. Seeing, people, cars, creatures, monsters that were never really there. There really was never any way to tell. He simply tried everything in his power to forget about these monsters and somehow make them go away. They whispered cruelty's to him, forced him into his own tyrannical universe in which, his conscious was the leader and him the subject. He was made to do everything, believe everything and understand everything from the perspective of this conscious that was unattached to him, yet directly affecting him. He had become his own monster.

Roman reached the Kitchen and found a half filled bucket of black paint. He ambled down towards it and picked it up gently as to not make a wrong movement and hurt his back. Holding the flash light with his teeth he steadily walked back to his bedroom. He placed the bucket infront of the mirror and stared solemnly at his reflection for the last time. He grabbed the brush out of the bucket and out stretched his arm, and pointed a circle around the place his head reflected, then he painted the curves of his arms, spine and eventually he had covered his hands in paint. He painted with lengthly aggressive strokes. Strokes that splattered all over the tile, the sink, all over his sleeping gown. His hands were covered in the cold goopy paint, the sharp smell of the substance stemmed to fill hides nostrils, and his lungs as he took deep breathes in and out. the chemicals swaddled him, and he grew greatly comforted by the darkness that surrounded him. It swaddled him as he fell into a deep ocean of goopy, sludgy paint. he drifted away from his mind and into the subconscious.

Alone, and far far away.


CREATORS' THOUGHTS
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