Hansen had never intended to be such a miscreant. As a matter of fact, for most of his life he'd been a sterling child. He knew how much it pained his parents that he was going his own way, and it hurt him a little that they should be unhappy. No, he didn't really feel sad for his parents. It was more like pity--pity for their ignorance and muddled thinking, pity for their lack of aspirations and pathetic, commonplace lives. Maybe he didn't even care at all. Maybe he even relished their discomfort. It just seemed like he was supposed to care.

His parents, his friends' parents, his teachers. He had foresaken the approval of his peers for the more meaningful approbation of adults, because adults were society. What were his friends? Nothing yet. They didn't fit into the scheme. Only the opinions of the adults counted. He had always lived for their approval, their pats on the back, their smiles of appreciation. He had hoped that someday it would all amount to something. That's what he had always hoped for, something worthwhile. In the meantime he contented himself with the only thing he had, which was their approval, society's approval, everyone's approval. He always strove for bigger approval. Big approval was more satisfying than little approval. Someday he planned to achieve the ultimate approval.

Yet his game was always tainted with an emptiness. How fulfilling can a life lived for others be? His game smelled good, but all he tasted was bitterness.

Society had been around for so long. He figured they must know something about the right way to live a life. He deluded himself with this reasonable thought for years. Anytime doubts crept into his head, he flushed them away with this reasonable thought, maintaining that the collective wisdom of society surely outweighed his meagre intelligence. Very pompous and probably wrong it would be to shape his life on his own. So he shaped his life according to their ideals and their wisdom, fully confident in their ability to deliver him.

As the years went by more doubts began to creep into his head. They lodged themselves more and more firmly. His reasonable thinking could no longer flush the doubts away. He had given them eighteen years. What had they done for him? He couldn't even remember his eighteen years. Or were they even his years? No. That's why he couldn't remember them, why he didn't feel them. They weren't his, never had been.

Now he wanted to live his years, to suck back the years that had been leeched from him. That's all they had ever been, giant leeches with human heads sucking his individuality from him, deriving nourishment and a sick, vicarious satisfaction from his accomplishments. They weren't even his accomplishments though. The weight of all those hanging leeches had directed him, hindering and incapacitating him. They sucked the strength of conviction and autonomy from him and left him to crawl through the muck toward other people's dreams, always riding him deeper and deeper into the quagmire.

In his mind he torched them all, burnt their slimy bodies until they bubbled and their hair singed and they were forced in agony to drop off. He left them writhing helplessly in the muck. Without his nourishment they turned to sucking each other. Leech paired with leech in a neverending orgy of sustenance and debilitation. As one lost his life to the parasite clinging to his tail, he sucked rejuvenation back from the tail of his destroyer. They stayed like this, these human leeches, drinking the life of the other until they all perished. He watched them, laughing, thinking how much like babies sucking on pacifiers they were. Their bodies had grown but they still had the desires and petty aspirations of infants--oral satisfaction was stimulation enough to occupy their minds and bodies and distract them from imminent death.

He came back to reality, but still felt something on his back. He couldn't reach it, and he didn't have anyone he could ask. They probably wouldn't be able to tell him anyway. They wouldn't know what it was. He knew what it was though. His graphic purgation had merely been his imagination. The leeches were real, and still clung. He'd get them off someday. Then he'd be clean.

Clean. Would that be enough? It didn't matter though. Clean was the end, but the end was unimportant. The fight against the leeches was all that mattered, the fight against their "wisdom", the pettiness of their aspirations, and their confounding insignificance.

He would be something beyond it all, he thought. He would be a martyr. No one understands a martyr. No one wants to follow a martyr to his martyrdom. The leeches would drop off of their volition if he carried them toward martyrdom. Martyrdom was beautiful. It was the solution, but it wasn't a solution. Therein lay its beauty, always a struggle, never victory. But he didn't want victory. Victory was so stagnant, stagnant and empty. Defeat was the way to go. Always defeat. Defeat and more struggle. And more struggle.

Back where you came from