Belial's Teachings

BELIAL’S

TEACHINGS

Vlad Tudosie

Copyright © 2017 Vlad Tudosie.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored, or transmitted by any means—whether auditory, graphic, mechanical, or electronic—without written permission of the author, except in the case of brief excerpts used in critical articles and reviews. Unauthorized reproduction of any part of this work is illegal and is punishable by law.

This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, names, incidents, organizations, and dialogue in this novel are either the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

ISBN: 978-1-4834-7647-6 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4834-7646-9 (e)

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Lulu Publishing Services rev. date: 10/24/2017

I

ENCOUNTER

It was dark and cold. I hadn’t had much human contact in the past two years. I hadn’t had sex in more than that. I hadn’t been outside since I couldn’t remember when. I had forgotten how the touch of sunlight on my skin felt like, the sensation of fresh air filling my chest with aliveness, the melody of a breeze gently touching the rustling leaves of a tree. I’d never suffered from agoraphobia as some people accused me. Nor was I obsessed with indoor activities such as playing computer games until the game itself would send me to bed, afraid I would die from being overexposed to a screen of continuously dying-resurrecting fictional characters, like many people do nowadays. For me, to avoid crossing the perimeter of my own, cheap-rent, freezing hell flat was not a question of choice, but of self-preservation.

For as long as I’d been in that flat the blinds had been drawn without exception. Also, I had omitted to pay the heat bill intentionally over and over again to match the surrounding atmosphere with my inner, depressive state. I was the only one guilty of setting up such a décor which could drain the life of even the darkest figures, no one else. I’d been told several times in the past that getting over bouts of anxiety and depression must be done with lots of laughing, going out and quality time spent with people that cared about me, all ideas whose fake resonance irritated me profoundly. Following these recommendations would have felt rather forced than natural, and only made me retreat deeper into my shell. I wasn’t even sure whether I suffered from anxiety or depression. It was rather something I liked to call meditative isolation, intellectual reclusion or simply avoiding assholes.

My whole life had been a roller coaster of emotional connections, with its ups and downs, except this roller coaster had had an unusual amount of free-fall sections. As anybody with a minimum interest in amusement parks can tell you, such a ride leaves you almost always with a feeling of dizziness, high blood pressure and a strong desire to never return again.

Having had countless troubles and disappointments involving human contact, I could not see how my presence out into the open could benefit me or other people. I used to have several drinking episodes after I’d stop blaming others for my situation and start thinking it was simply me who wasn’t suited for social life, assuming that drowning myself into a pool of cheap brand spirits would be the perfect solution to my confused state. I ended up believing that the problem had always been, in fact, me. With each failed relationship, each lost connection, each glass of whiskey, it became clearer to me that my place was nowhere else than between four crumbling walls that would someday, by the grace of the Lord, give in and put an end to my godforsaken life, something I could never bring myself down to doing on my own.

I used to sit all day on a wooden chair that wasn’t even mine, at a desk that wasn’t mine, working on a notebook that I had gotten from work, so one might say that that also wasn’t mine. The only things that were mine were my ideas. I used to earn my bread by writing philosophical bullshit for a local newspaper. I had them send me my paycheck through the mailman, which I didn’t even sign for on my own. I ended up without the money a few times, but violently complaining about my situation with no real intent to reaching for a solution was well worth avoiding the whole ordeal of calling in the police and having to deal with another round of people having no real interest in my well-being and putting up a whole show to make me believe they actually cared. The only human interaction I had left was one sweet old lady in her 90’s who also happened to be my neighbor, possessing excellent abilities in terms of copying one’s signature and with a deep concern for a ‘poor, sick youngster’ like me. Missis Kowalski, who seemingly had both better physical and mental conditions than I did, would bring me all the groceries that I needed twice a month and helped me with paying the rent, utilities and other stuff of that sort. Must have been the Polish genes keeping her so strong and lively at an age by which most people would have already died for five times in a row, minimum. Even if I had asked her to buy me the cheapest products she could find at the store, at the end of the month, I would be left with just enough money to afford a new pair of socks. That was pretty much all the worth of my ideas. Survival and a pair of socks. I could decide to take the drinks out of the equation, but they perfectly fit the definition of ‘survival’ for me. Then, there was this particular cheap drug I had her get from my high-school ‘buddy’, just another person that had betrayed my trust in a way I would have never imagined, accusing me of being the school’s dealer in front of the principal. Funny how the tables turned and I had to resort to him for the same drug with which he had gotten me in trouble. Still, it was cheap and effective. I had no idea what it was, and I liked the way it could make darkness appear colored, looking like rainbows shot out of nowhere. A great percentage of it must have been dust, because I could never seem to overdose on it and die a heroic death, but I had begun coughing and sneezing quite often since using it. I knew my lungs weren’t in the best of shape because of it, but I thought I could compensate through the lack of smoking in my life. It was my belief, which I lived by, that men weren’t made for putting long things into their mouths. And, frankly, I could never grasp the concept of drawing something different from air into my lungs without then coughing up to the point where I would literally feel my guts working their way up into my esophagus.

That particularly fateful day, I was out of ideas. The only things I had ever thought were mine were slowly leaving me desolated, desperate as I struggled to wipe the haze binge drinking from the night before had left upon my ‘brilliantly philosophical’ mind, as Mrs. Kowalski enjoyed describing it. I decided to take a walk around the room, which was at that time the only form of fitness I knew, in hopes that the blood flow to my brain would improve sufficiently for me to come up with a breakthrough concept to write about. I couldn’t bear the thought of losing the only job I could ever take, not because I was so passionate about what I was doing, but out of fear of not affording the alcohol and illicit substances that kept the illusion of nightly euphoria alive for me. Life felt like enough of a burden for me and now I was facing the prospect of not even being able to trick myself into thinking otherwise. As a young boy, I would always judge people around for drinking, smoking or taking various pills to enter a state of lethargy which they deemed enjoyable. I thought they were trying to act cool in front of their peers. Little did I know back then about what one may feel deep inside, hidden from the superficial level of eyesight and general, everyday perception. All human beings, good or evil, rich or poor, smart or average, are fragile and break easily when confronted with repeated disharmonies in one of the most natural things on earth, human bonds. These same, broken individuals then cast their anger onto other untainted souls, trying to gain some sort of superior position in relation to them, thinking they would feel better by pumping their image in relation to another’s, until they realize they’ve just made their lives, and others’, worse. And so, the spiral keeps following a downward pattern, until all we’ve got as a species is hurting each other.

After a 10 minute walk around the room which left me exhausted and had probably depleted all of my energy for the day, I collapsed into my chair, supporting my head on my desk, slowly drifting into a state of acceptance which was quickly followed, as I reckoned it would be, by a mix of anxiety, denial and outright terror. The feelings of fear and sadness have a habit of feeding upon themselves. You just cannot get rid of them, you must let them consume you in order for them to be consumed. Trying to resist only leads to a build-up. As you think they are going away, a bigger wave filled with such emotions hits you, until the only option left is to drain their vessel of energy, yourself, with a scream, a punch in the walls, or perhaps allowing your inner baby to release its tears.

No matter how hard I tried, I could never bring myself to a state of inner peace. A few years before, I had assumed that learning to control my anxiety would add to my well-being and improve my socializing abilities. Thus, my decision to resort to meditation. Yet, there was something about the stillness such an activity inferred that only made me delve deeper into my stormy sea of thoughts. Perhaps there was something I was doing wrong, perhaps the type of meditation I had chosen was not suitable for my needs, or perhaps it was bullshit and would have never worked anyway. I couldn’t even imagine standing face to face with a human being, let alone actually get out of the house and find a yoga instructor to help me figure this whole thing out.

After the vortex of negative emotions subsided, I decided it was time for an 8 hour slumber that would, in my idealistic opinion, refresh me fully and turn me into the lean, mean, five-paragraph-article writing machine that I was. In reality, it was my daily, simplistic way of delaying the inevitable: that I would crack under pressure again.

For some reason, though, that particular day, I could not fall asleep as usual. The room felt colder than on winter days and the darkness contained in it turned almost pitch-black, regardless of the daylight’s subtle presence on the margins of my blinds. My head felt light and dizzy, while my eyesight was playing for me a spinning image of the room, making me question the integrity of my glasses. I had a hard time tolerating things of any sort that would hamper one of the few activities I truly loved, sleeping. I figured the solution to my problem could only be resorting to the second object of my unconditional love, alcohol. After all, ‘the more loveliness, the more benefit to me’, I thought to myself.

Reaching out for my last bottle of the cheapest strong drink Mrs. Kowalski could find for me, I shockingly discovered it had been emptied completely, without me ever even having touched it. It was truly an astonishing experience for a low-life, drink-obsessive guy like me. I would have had to wait two full weeks for my next paycheck, so it felt like being self-forced into some sort of short-term AA experience, without one of those counselors who watch cheesy movies with you, in order to help you cope with withdrawal syndrome. I wasn’t going to just sit and allow the situation to turn me into its victim so I exploded out of the chair and figured I could somehow