Warning: Mature

.................................................

I have a problem

A serious problem that I don't expect many to understand.

You must believe me with every bone of your body when I say, that whoever I have tried to tell about my problem, has either thought of me as a lunatic or a pompous jerk trying to flaunt my luck in their face.

Luck! Luck?  Luck they say.....

What luck? My life has been nothing but miserable ever since that day...the day when I let my depravity get the better of me. I suppose , there is neither much to be gained by making half-hearted confessions nor to be lost with being wholly transparent  to you all about what is already done.

 I only pray that you stay with me till the last, before imparting any judgement that is bound to arise ever more vehemently with passage of time.

2 Weeks Ago

My name is Sylez Vasco and I have been a professional NEET for half an year, since my old man kicked the bucket.  I wasn't sad- at least not as sad as anyone else might have been in my situation . In fact , I was relieved despite my initial surprise upon learning the true reason behind his death.

He had been a heavy drunkard and worst kind of womanizer. From the early age of five from which I could recall my earliest memory of his fiery red beard and hard-boiled egg-shaped head, I had known him to be nothing else. Not a day used to go by when the trails of smoke , the murky smell of liquor inviting all sort of freaks and screams of my wailing mother didn't used to echo within our four walls .

Unlike my father who had always appeared to be in his late forties , my mother's pale white face seemed akin a young lily, her cheeks untainted from any crease ,  lips beautifully crimson red and her blackened charcoal eyes despite all the pain they ate out of his blows , lingering with innocence of a maiden. 

Why she tolerated such an uncouth man whose flesh served as mere prison for a ravenous beast was beyond my comprehension? When I was little , I often used to deceit myself into hoping that it was for my sake, borne out of her motherly affection to protect me and she couldn't bear to digest the anguish that would be caused due to our separation.

But as I grew older, I could only curse myself enough for having entertained such folly.  I had been so entranced by the vulgarity of my father - his lack of shame in bringing new woman to satisfy his groin and partake in that devilish pleasure which remained his sole reason to chug bread down his throat , that I failed to or deliberately omitted from my awareness how lonely I truly was.

My sweet young mother or so I used to think, when she wasn't crying or bearing the brunt of his  daily sleaziness, would often climb up the bed, tug at his robe's end like a slave in olden days trying to evoke her master's attention. It wasn't a pleading cry or revengeful ire in her eyes that she wanted to convey in those delicate moments.

In those still of time - there was an unmistakable longing - a passionate craving of kind familiar only to those deeply in love though naturally there was none to be found here. But one look at her eyes would make you think otherwise and the beastly man was more than happy, while carrying on his forceful blows on her to ravish her capitulated body.

In those brief moments of her unconditional acceptance of his vagaries, he found enough joy to temporarily mend his ways and let go of the greater filth of wine and lessened his visits to brothels.

But only two years after I had begun to harbor some kind of happy reconciliation between this unfeasible duo, the beast deeply seated inside the man happy with undeserved truce at cost of chained bird- rose to surface again and he was back in dens of devil where his true soul laid bare for hell's secured candidates to see.

The thrashing had never really stopped but it came back more ferocious than ever - yet the poor woman kept on, steadfastly holding on to some ideal I couldn't see so vividly to appreciate or emphasize. Maybe I was in the wrong for having forsaken her to fate, even though I myself was of no age to make him even wince or have a little fright of terror in darkest of nights.

But all my residual sympathies that still laid reticent for that woman who happened to give me birth, vanished as soon as she made an undue sacrifice.

I can still faintly trace the outline of my younger siblings in her arms, right upto the moment their head loped to side , lifelessly kissing the ground , her face emotionlessly unaware , staring like a dead corpse at something invisible to eyes.

If only that day, I could have mustered enough strength to run up to her, question her empty soul , maybe those wailing wouldn't still agonize my conscience so much as they do now. In any case, she croaked her last breath not much after the incident , as if eager to pass on the accursed gift to me.

For as her eyes darted around one last times before the lights faded out from them in search of the demon she had kept herself sold to, whole life, and being unable to find, cried bitterly, there was an eerie gleam in my eyes.

She stopped. Her tears stopped then all of sudden. The woman who could never ever stop from giving in to her impulses stopped and faded to lifelessness right as her eyes met mine and saw the expression on my face- an expression I could only imagine to be of something not befitting a son.

My father, strangely enough stopped frequenting his visits to any brothels altogether after it - his only companion being the pint of wine that he still used to chug ever dutifully down his throat. Having lost his old passions , he started to stay in an inebriated stay ever more strongly and for longer duration.

The only reason I even managed to survive so far was because of the my much fortunate contact with my aunt , who played the role of caretaker both my mother and father couldn't be. Yet she had but little money herself being a divorcee so in the end, I never really managed to rescue myself from being witness to his fits of anger during periods of sanity where he felt even more obligated to let me know how my breath was being paid for by his sweat and bread.

So naturally when I heard of his death, I was sure to make my bets on his liver breakdown or excessively high blood pressure but the autopsy result surprised me with the relevation that his liver wasn't at all damaged and in fact better than a healthy non-drunkard and he had died rather due to a sudden heart attack, as if he had never even touched a bottle.

Not at all damaged! 

Just like that, that old man had managed to give me something more to agonize about again. So he was never really drunk and faked it his whole time . But that also meant for all his passion and violent outbursts, he had no compulsion or loss of sense but rather pure desire straight and clear.

In any case, I had to drop out of college after his death. Petersburg was by no measure a cheap city so any aspiration of obtaining a college degree after his death was like getting a snail to walk faster i.e. impossible.

The rent became increasingly hard to pay with time so I started to venture into the parts of city that old me wasn't even aware , existed throughout my nineteen years of living . I found an old squalor in a ghetto-like area where rent came cheap and crime spree was all-time high -any prospect of good company being a distant dream.

Left all alone, cooped up in a lackadaisical part-time job as a cashier and registrar at local grocery store,  there were few ounces of pleasure a poor sod like me could even fantasize about indulging in.

When my clock used to run out, far late in evening , when stars started to dimly fade in as little blurry dots through tempered sky of Petersburg , soiled with black smoke from neighboring run-down mills,  the day's exhaustion used to wash my back like the pretty spouses I had heard to do same for their husband in the far East.

But I couldn't beseech myself for being the lonesome fool, wretched of fate to live a life of vain for right when my shift ended at dusk, the workmen of nearby mills who had come to city with their own virgin hope of earning enough dough to send back to their sickly brethren in village , used to cover the streets like skanky rats let loose from their cage.

But wait before you become derisive about my buffooneries and hold contempt in your heart.

I daresay, there never has been a rat far more filthier than me in form of man so for this sickly corpse burning still with life , the presence of these old union-guided rats was no short of long-sought relief for my lonely heart.  Without even knowing a rouble's worth about their live, I used to join them at table, content in keeping up the pretense to enjoy their dry jokes and anecdotes so miserable, told off as warmest part of their lives, that they would have made any kind soul's ears bleed out of pity. 

They were a quarrelsome bunch - thug, rowdy and rascals of worst kind, having no qualms in making a scene before noblest of company which seldom used to pass by , looking at them like some ignoble beasts defiling the earth. 

Yet, among them were those from whom I found enough strength to flap my lips without a damned care in world. Having found a new visitor willing to stay in their world of debaucheries, they were quick to show me with a youthful gleam in their old sunken eyes- their pack of treasure consisting of soon-to-be expire tobacco, half-empty old monk bottles.

But I had to refuse. My soul was drunk on as much depravity as theirs but even so I couldn't join them whole-heartedly in their idiosyncrasies.

Save one accidental rogue I happened to prostitute my fellowship to , none of them came to know that as to why a man such as me was still repulsed by the smoke, why the putrid smell of liquor  used to constantly make me recall all those ever-fresh memories of swearing whenever I felt the alcohol's pungent up my nostrils,  that growing up come what may - but my hands wouldn't embrace those bottles in a million years.

I was almost perplexed as to why I kept on cherishing the ideals of that much naïve boy who knew hardly anything of the suffering this world was pre-designed to inflict upon man, even when I was merely reduced to a filthy rat in human's clothing. 

But the reality was far plainer and simple: I chose to and I couldn't part away with it, as much as I longed to, for to better entertain the company of wiser rogues who made me feel far more homely than my birth-giver woman or wealth-pouring father.

Yet, you must ask , as to what source of pleasure a man such as me could have desperately hung to , when having capitulated so firmly into the ring of these rogues who sought to get their sensual pleasure at all cost , as if to somehow balance the odds of beating and servience they showed for their big masters.

And who, I say with my head at stake, save the Lord in Heaven, eternally partaking in voyeuristic pleasure of watching all his children wallowing in their miserable existence or living like clueless sheeps bundled with joy, unaware of fall to come, can ever resist the sweet nectar of that sensual pleasure which flows ever so infinitely from the bosom of mother earth.

You loathe me!

You curse me! 

Ha! You dare say, I seek to blemish the purest of your soul with taint exclusive to my own ...

Your gaze wanders around , longing for something even filmiest of cloth to warp your eyes with, feeling sinful having even peeked into the devilish thought of a man you had hoped to be far better or perhaps you find no joy or sadness, inexcusably designating yourself to be apathetic to my say.

Yet, indifferent or empathetic, saint or sinner, old or young, woman or man, idiot or sage - all long for it unquestionably - the only variation lying in the way they subtly express or obscure it.

During the winter, when the gentleman of fine class happen to momentarily cast a glance at the homeless cobbler cursing away to himself, in his incessant mumblings, their eyes are filled with a strange gleam of pride before the repulsion etches their unwrinkled face.

Pride? Such a strange ring it has, for both men of conscience and lack of.  All the moral exhortation of priests seem to have been reserved for it though they condemn it far more times than any other vice save the one which grabbed my neck, leading to my unfortunate circumstance forcing me to pen this loathesome tale that reeks of no joy for both the listener and this wretched writer.

The men of honour carry their smile , being able to feed on lack of it in others rather than having it because of abstaining from temptations their hearts yearns for, far more badly than us ignoble beasts. 

Oh, how many times I have seen the holiest of them on verge of despair , like a broken toy reaching their ruin but just before the soul could kiss their flesh farewell to be with the humble Lord they claim to serve so dutifully without any expectations, some old monk would come running up to them, whispering lines that are bound to give exalted joy to them for all eternity. 

The monk paves the way,  for those harbingers of light from a world so holy our sinful eyes can only dream of seeing, so as to best witness the dingy corners where filth such as us strive and fester in nest. In his heart there is still no pleasure , no questions beings answered that had made him fall to such state of fragility but seeing the ruinous state of us wretched and our agony brings him a relief that no saintly promise of Lord could give them and back they go, merrier than ever, their lips still parched red with our dry blood , but constantly preaching without error about how condemnable is pride.

So to these worldly people who so-serve world beyond as well, I dare confess once again, with utmost lack of shamelessness and profound absence of any humanly regret,  that this wretched ran unquestionably and unhesitatingly into the arms of mother of all vices or so I realized to be , the vice perhaps condemned most by the holiest of men beside pride and those who unfailingly kiss their cross before withdrawing for night and yet the one which has perhaps been at root of what was believed easily to be noblest of venture:  Lust.

It is something far more primal -easily traceable and entertainable by infidels- the depressed and the elite class and perhaps precisely why something far more easy to condemn and obscure under the blanket like an unmarked forest for virtuous. They will look at one with scornful eyes - eyes so contemptible as if love was never felt in them if you dare utter any words they have expressly flagged as 'unholy' or gesture any act they have deemed 'immoral' - in the very house of their Lord- the very Lord they suppose to have designed everything with all his wisdom and gracefulness, so to protect that omnipotent supreme from being defiled or transgressed by his wretched sinners.

But I was also an adamant man , craving for attention of my fellow friends, whether by begging or adopting a farce , if need be, stopped only by swearing of my past. But if I was truly bounded by all the silly little oaths I was forced to make impulsively at expense of my sickly father, then there wouldn't have been a man far more slave to his past than me. I would have relished at the thought of sharing in the depravity of my soul along with others for sake of pleasure yet always stopped short of it at last second. 

Having already forsaken my much desirous longing for drink and smoking, I only had the option of being a lustful wretched like many others left inside my clean heart seeking to soil itself for long in all kinds of dirt. But I had a moral check which I had vowed to never transgress, having brought up and lived the life I had, so the very thought of being a womanizer and frequenting taverns searching for some new woman each night to let out my passions on, disgusted me.

The very thought of it was so revolting as I could imagine far too lucidly if I ever came to even do so , my mind will be clouded with memories of that sick old man whose face used to be amused as he engaged in his perversions with those woman before my mother .

My friend Kozshkin Vastyanovna understood my agony at once, the only wretched to whom I ever really confessed my true troubles and at once came up a devilish scheme my rotting brain could have never thought of , in hundred years. 

It was so simple, so clever and so obvious that the moment I heard him whisper into my ears that evening , I almost kissed his hand thanking him for the path to sensual perversion that my heart had come to yearn for , ever so deeply with each passing day. 

Just like a sinner fed up of his sins and having realized his wrongs urges desperately for some light to enter his despicable life and show him the way to follow , I had also yearned desperately for some devil to come into my life, to show me the way I could become his slave without tarnishing the vows that I longed to keep as debt owed to angels who happened to raise me up in house of devil throughout my childhood.

From the very next day, Kozshkin started to hook me up to all sorts of obscenity and vulgarity I had thought to be impossible to venture into my life as he accessed yet another unknown parts of something I had been using for far too long as well, the internet. 

Information after information running endlessly in form of satire, literature, pre-mediated recording , films, animations, moving arts - there seemed to be no end to the depths of the vouyerism internet had offered me into the private live of others or to intimate myself with fantasies I never really knew even most immoral wretched grappling with lust could have .

Very soon,  rather than stopping by to engage in some chit-chat and casual conversations with those wretched for whom I had ever stepped into this world of vice, I started to seek opportunities to get out more early, to coop myself in my small quarters, feasting my eyes on new forms of temptations and pictures to derive more and more sensual pleasure that I could only imagine at end of each session.

But when the sky is the limit- then what exactly can stop a man from advancing descending lower and lower into the hell, under belief of ascending furthermore to the heaven. And I?

I was in heaven. At least as heavenly as I could describe my thoughts to be. It wasn't just about the sensual pleasure or the progeny of lust but rather the euphoria of managing to stay in filthy life as my old man did but without ever being a source of pain or nuisance to anyone else, without ever being a reason to make his children cry or his wife suffer to point of no return but turn as mere in-waiting servant longing for his attention.

It was incomprehensible joy of being able to reject the world and life that he lived, that I had forever despised and being able to derive far more pleasure from the vice he used to frequent. I suppose, in that manner, even I was a wretched captive wanting myself to prove to the dead master that I was no longer in his bounds.

But the thought didn't really bother me as much. Or at least even if it did bother me, my navigation into the worldly vouyerism had furthered so much that I couldn't care much for anything else but how to ever keep replenishing the momentary joy I had left last time in each new session.

I was indeed correct, in my belief that being depraved as I was, I didn't injure anyone else but I had failed to realize the kind of wickedness that a man's heart is ready to entertain and accept , in case such as this, all for sake of beastly pleasure. Just months later, I had quit my job fully - all my good senses if they had remained getting sold off for few more hours of being able to stay glued to my screen to keep dabbling more and more into the depravity that collective humanity had yet left to show me.

I sat down now , scrolling and scrolling down infinitely beyond measure of day or night , simply to get more variety - in search of never arriving stimulation , to perhaps allay the fear that no temptation that any human has ever sought to entertain in worst of his moments , in depraves of his moments which he happened to feed here for all to see could remain unseen .

I would beg for your forgiveness but it will be like ringing the temple bells against deaf ears at this stage but accept it as token of my gratitude for even having the strength and sanity, you good souls, to arrive so far . I seek not to pensively pen down every immoral venture or thought that happened to cross this filthy rat's heart or mind in most deplorable of his moments. 

I trust the wickedness and wisdom enough, even in the noblest and most innocuous of you all, so I feel no need to soil your ears further with any express declaration of what I may have sought or ventured into, leaving only enough for you to gauge all that needs to be , to accurately judge the ruinous state of man who stands before you now.

So once I was done- having sacrilege all sense of moral boundaries that a man may have been presumed to keep in society of nobles by respecting none when to derive any sensual euphoria because of this mother vice, my friend Kozshkin who came back and looked me up and down, his eyes naturally drawn to the hundred of images far too filthy to describe to any gentle soul but enough to sensually arouse the beast I had been turned into,  his eyes turned into horror.

At once, he grabbed me by shoulder, his face pale white and a deep blush of red as if pain-stricken with some unasked guilt at my expense and cried out. "Oh, Sylez! How could you? How could a man so kind and pure as you to even dine upon immorality for sake of simply be part of us wretched fall so low that I feel like a noble gentlemen stepping into this den of devil you seem to have turned your house into? 

Did you not feel an ounce of shame? An ounce of regret? Why do you not turn your head away, Sylez Vasco? Has your sense of shame fallen so low that you feel nothing even when my eyes have to bear witness to sacrilege to your honour and defilement of this holy earth?  Not an evening used to go by when you first came to us, that you could stop speaking ill of your ravenous beast of feather and look at the what you have been feeding on, Vasco?

 All sorts of abuse, devilish acts condemnable by any civilized society, if done in any part of world to any woman and you are laughing off it? I dare not utter the filth you watch so naturally in your screen , but I must, if even in tiniest of hope to evoke some remaining shame in your heart. Look at the moral transgressions you entertain , Sylez Vasco? Beastality, incest , lolita, corpse, gruesome ....oh , my eyes have never felt as sinful for simply being as they have today.  Take a good look at them. If you still have no shame in being a sensual beast having mortgaged your senses for lust rather than pleasure of senses , then why do you still shy away from heeding to my simple request , Vasco? 

Oh, you say those depraved things I see are just an act- a film and much not even real, simply filled with a man's art rather than actual flesh and blood or living soul? You say, not only you but much of the world dances joyfully in this corruption. I see. I see. That makes it all the wonderful then, doesn't it? Come, grab my hand and let's go to that accursed altar forbidden by all Fathers. If you truly have no qualms in watching abuse and getting pleasure off it all because it is a gimmick charted by the devils in human clothing, then have no qualms in your heart as well , Sylez Vasco? 

Let's pray to Satan to keep your groin you have come to value more than your soul , ever more infinitely entertained by his magic. I will make sure to beg with all my left honour and sell my soul, if even need be, and he shall you show only illusions of every kind of torture you hear about him do in the Holy Books? Then will that also please you, Sylez Vasco? 

Will you also then be able to laugh it off, lick your lips , all for sake of that sensual pleasure because it is an act? If so, then what isn't an act? Are our miserable wretched pitiful lives ever set to fade away into insignificant ashes along with reminder of our presence both in this world and the world of heavenly Lord far pre-occupied with all his endless sons and daughters not an act? 

What stops you then, from running amok to every spot where misery lie and have a hearty laughter as you watch the last of soul wriggle out of those dying fools wallowing in their regrets? 

Answer me, Sylez Vasco? Why do you not say anything? You have sunk furthest into hell or so my still saved soul can at least imagine, so what kind of Wretched's curse still haunts you now that you keep your lips sealed? 

Tell me all you harbor in your heart if there is one left, Sylez Vasco. I am far too impatient to wait , but disgusted enough to simply leave as you remain, my friend."

.............................................