Child in a Man Costume

We made eye contact, from across the room his eyes glowered just as fiercely as I thought they would. Dark and endlessly taunting, they danced in their own arrogant pseudo confident strides as they stripped you down to bite-sized morsels, taking who you are apart piece by piece, working the small blocks between his fingers, watching the gleam of the fluorescent lights shimmer off the smooth luminescent surfaces.

I hate him, although it seems unfair to use a word as familiar and ergo desensitized as hate when hatred is only what I see looking back. A proper loathing doesn't form in the eyes, it stagnates in the heart, or more realistically,the gut, where it festers and stagnates into something abominable and altogether inhuman. I couldn't help it, the way his hair never stayed in one place, constantly shifting just like his loyalties, his beliefs flopping on the deck, retching as the motion sickness settled into its tiny quivering form. The way his stare turned blank as he lost his hold on this realm, drifting into some sweet euphoric escape in which he leaves us all to this undeniably cruel and hopeless reality we are forced to withstand. I felt the illness of my own enmity swell until I felt physically hopeless with dread.

I wanted him dead.

I don't feel anything when I say that. Not one toe twitches when those eerie words slip from between my lips. I want to feel his blood turn cold and freeze over, his veins becoming icicles, sharp and bitter as his words. With every step he takes, an insult echoes off of the walls with each dull thud and bounces between my ears.

And now with his arm wrapped around some unfortunate victim he breaths shallow breaths that need the occasional sigh to fill his pointless guilt so that for one pure second he might be able to fool himself into believing he's half way likeable in any sense of the word.

After all, he owns a mirror, he sees what I see.

He is a child in a man costume, chirping away like a baby bird just before he plummets out of his nest and takes his final resting place; feathers, sidewalk, and blood all intermingle to celebrate the end of the incessant twittering. Instead of facing his realities and accepting the world as it is, he clings desperately to false truths and perilous lies that lift him farther off the ground. He calls himself a realist even when he feels the overwhelming negativity flowing like pressurized flames beneath his veins. He is a child, a kid standing on another kid's shoulders.

He is an escapist. Taking every desperate dive into fantasy, every reckless roll into delusion and fantasia and mirage and reverie. He sleeps as if he'll never wake. He wakes as if he just wants to sleep. He disgusts me, enrages me. But now his gaze is leaving mine. I turn away, open the door, and walk away from the empty room, the mirror mocking my every step.