The banality of fight or flight and human condition - Short Story

Hello community. Here is a story that revolves around the conflict of free will, a subject that I will try to implement in every post as possible. Of course, not always under the same scoupe. I hope it's not too gruesome, and you can enjoy it at least for reflecting and thinking about all the aspects of life. Here it goes:

There was, beyond anyone's expectation, a young boy thinking about his unavoidable demise, when he witnessed the murder of his father. Surviving the night seemed implausible, when the druged and random person decided to enter in a physical conflict with his father for overly asserting his animalistic instinct of desiring the boy's mother maybe too much.

This thought, came back later in his life, when he fought back a robber that wanted to take advantage of a drunk lady.

-Exactly why would you do that? -said the robber while taking out a knife after cleaning the blood out of his mouth.

-What are you doing staying in there? Get out of here already! -yelled the man that was once a child, to the drunk and calm lady.

-Are you kidding me? The night is feeling wonderful right... aigh now. Besides, this sad junkie can't take anything of value out of me.

-Yeah? Well maybe tasting your body will prove as a valuable experience -the robber replied.

The man, Austin, felt uneasy. He remembered his deceased mother. And immediately after that, he felt like he was going to die. He stopped having his adult body. He felt a child again. Anxious. Perspiring. Shaking. Cold. Unable to move or to speak. But with an undescriptable strong signal in his mind telling him to get out of there and live.

Did that momment had to be the end of his journey in life? He wanted so much more out of his own actions. He wanted to experience so much more stuff. Life didn't seem like something that could be override by this limited feelings of despair, and nonetheless, there they were, taking everything out of Austin's sight.

Maybe, maybe it was alright to do the same thing he did back as a child. Let her mother, and now, the drunk lady, to be raped. What was going to be different if he tried to change it? He would have suffer more. Right? There was no reasonable justification for him to go and put himself in more danger that he was already at.

-Stop! Take your hands off me! -said the lady now on her knees, being held by her hair, with her chest now out on the open.

-Yeah, that's more like it. I am done with how priviledge you women think you are, while people like me are suffering to not starve each day.

-What are you talking about? You don't starve. You are just inmoral and idiotic, without any kind of education whatsoever! -interrupted Austin.

"Crap. How did I manage to say all of that?" He asked to himself.

-What the heck was that? -The robber dropped the lady on the floor with brutality.

He started approaching. Austin couldn't take out of his head the burnted images of the corpse of his father laying motionless on the street, and finding his own face on that lifeless body, as the proper depiction of the next five minutes.

-I am... I am not the same as before! -screamed Austin to the robber.

-And what do I do with that, ah? -said after stabbing Austin on the liver.

Austin fell. The pain started to raise up. What was the point of such an isolated conflict, that wouldn't amount to anything? What did he wanted to prove? He did not know clearly on his conscious mind, but deep down he felt some relieve. Maybe he could now apologize to his pregnated mother after her suicide and to his murdered father. But he would fail everyone else in his current life. It was not like his overly tragic past defines him completly. He was as flawed, as tempered, as irrational as the next guy. He was nothing special, because this things happen everyday, every second. But there were things at stake here. Not for the ulterior meaning of his life, but as a living proof and history record (even if no one make an actual record) that as individuals, we are more than what we appear to be. We are more than what it is known or understood about ourselves, and yet, we are simply a digit in the large number of beings residing this old but trustworthy planet.

-Life... wants life -Austin muttered.
-Yeah, I want to have the lifeful life of them all! -the robber exclaimed laughing and opening his arms in content with himself and his power over the situation, right before losing conscious and falling over his face.

More blood was coming out of his mouth after hitting the floor. Austin looked up and the drunk lady had struck the robber with a heel of hers. All the muscles on her face were yelling disgust and unapproval towards the now unconscious man. She proceeded to search for something in his pockets.

-What... are you doing? -said Austin, holding back the blood coming out of his wound.

-What does it look like? I am robbing him. He won't need it.

-Why?

-Because of this. - She took the knife out of the robber hand with a tissue she had in her purse and stabbed him in his neck leaving the knife there. She sat.

Austin was shocked, he tried to forget his pain to focus morally on what he just witnessed.

-Are you going to end me too?

-It depends. Do you want me to?

-What do you mean?

-You are pretty bad. You shouldn't move, and my phone is out of battery. This dickless dead ass faggot didn't have any on him. Do you have one? Because if you don't, you are done for. The closest hospital is 400 miles away, and we are in a low tier neighborhood. In fact, what are you even doing in here? You don't look like someone who would visit this surroundings. I just came out of a rubbish establishment full of scumbags who wanted to fuck me.

-What... were you doing there?

-I don't know. I wanted to let go. Maybe getting fucked wouldn't have been half bad... I am digressing. Do you have a phone on you or not?

Austin hesitated. He wanted to trust her. But he wasn't so sure if he wanted to keep going. Maybe it would end up as a pointless effort of sustaining him alive, and he would be wasting everyone's time and resources for that. It was too risky, because he felt done with his life the moment he went to that street. "Good thing", he thought, that his phone was muted.

-I don't. -He smiled and stopped trying to cover his wound, laying back on the street.

-Then you are a dead man -She stood up and put in her purse the money and other belongings of the dead robber.

-Are you... leaving me here...?

-Am I suppose to take you to your graveyard? I don't know you, and probably will forget about you.

-And the man who you took his life away.

-Yeah. Specially him. He wasn't even human.

-And me? -He coughed.

-Do I know you?

-Did you know him?

-It's different.

-How... is that?

-Look, do you really want your last minutes of consciousness be about this?

He gazed upon her. He reflected. He wondered about if she was just replying with any second thoughts, or if there was more into her worldview.

-What.. difference does it make... talking about this... or about french fries? Neither of it... will matter or have any more... significance that I gave them...

-Well I am sorry for you, but I should hurry before another prick try to put his dick inside me. -She started walking past by him.

-I always wondered... if my mother didn't fought back... because she liked being rape...

She stopped. She didn't turn back, but didn't do anything else. By paying enough close attention, one would notice her accelarated heart beat and profound breathing.

»I was just... randomly walking. I stopped having any purpose or intentions in my mind. But that's just what my me thinks. We are more than the monkey who never stops talking inside our heads. Fuck, this hurts a lot.

-What... is your point? -She asked without moving.

-Maybe... I didn't let go, as you put it. It was around this suburb that my mother got raped. The odds of finding the rapist are... infinitesimally small... and that's why I wasn't reasoning about doing it. I just did it. Without knowing it.

-You came for revenge?

-No... I came... because I felt, I always knew... I should have died that night, but I didn't...

-You, didn't live your life because of that?

-That's what I hate the most about it all. I did. I enjoyed myself. I had hangovers. I fucked other girls. I laugh a lot. Wasted time doing... -Austin choked and lost the energy to kept his eyes open.

-Stop talking. Rest, boy.

-Aus... tin.

-Rebecca. -She turn around to look at him. And she saw a sorrowful child, missing the love he once had.

She stood there, until he stopped breathing, and left, not until taking something of use. It was a difficult road to her home. She had to ignore a lot of mallicious men, and was heading towards one, but after meeting Austin, she felt courageous. She wasn't wise enough to have the notion that, sometimes, courage is a response to insticts. And these "insticts", are a lie, told by a fearful body, hoping to be wrong.

When she opened the door, there was his father, watching T.V. She sat on his side, and he was feeling horny. She tried to talk with him about Austin, and this, annoyed him. But he was feeling merciful, so he ignored his bother and started kissing her. They, as accustomed, got passionately naked and had relationships for the rest of the night. The TV and the cat were witnesses as usual.

After the multiple intercourse sessions, the father felt talkative, so he told her that Austin's story reminded him of an incident with Rebecca's brother, Vinick, who she barely has seeing because he is older than her and for as long as she have had a decent coherent memory, he had live outside of the state. This made her curious and asked about the exact whereabouts. This bothered him again so he hit her. She stood up, ask for forgiveness and he got out of the bed to leave the room when she took the knife out of her purse and sliced her father's fat throat. The blood rained. This made her sick and she vomited over the corpse.

Rebecca took a bath, and decided to let go, taking a new life out of the state. With the little money of her father, she traveled. It took a few days for her to find her brother, in a really dangerous place, where he was quite respected. He told her about the story of Austin's mother's rape, because everyone in the suburb knew about it at the time. He described how horrible the event was for the little boy who's mother kept yelling "Austin" over and over while being fucked by a madman, and shamelessly putting expresions of pleasure because her son was looking at her with a boner and a suffering face. He couldn't help it, but was ineffable troubled by the mixture of experiences he was having at the same time.

"The dude ran away and nobody ever knew anything about him ever again. But we were kinda aware of the subsequents events surrounding the boy and his mother. She didn't wanted to accept what she did, the pleasure she felt, and the desire that she now had for being fucked by her son. This draw her insane, ad after resisting so much, she accepted herself and fucked with the kid. They say she never got to be as happy and fulfilled as with that action, so she killed herself after getting pregnant. And you met Austin? Holy fuck, life is full of surprises".

She explained to him what her life has been about, the sex with her father, and all of this made him really sad and angered. He told her that she had his economical support whenever she needed it, but she refused. She wanted to start completly over, but first needed to cope with her murders and Austin's story.

"We were similar. We were both fucked by our parents. Without any purpose. But, neither pain, nor pleasure comes into this world through our perceptions by meaning. They just are. The feeling of realization that comes from peace and satisfaction is an illusion. There is no particular end to the means of our lifes. But he, he still lived as himself, completly abstracted of what made him ̔he ̓, it was despite that or, even more amusingly, because of it, that he lead a life that was not determined in it of itself by that past. By who he was. And still, it was that beginning that determinated how his existence would reach its conclusion. This is a lot to take in. I don't know what to learn from this. Or if there is anything to be learnt..."

Quite a few years passed by... Rebecca still felt odd.

-Life is incredibly and pathetically... absurd -said Rebecca while smoking a cigarette in her home, after being confirmed that she had STDs.

-Mommy, mommy. Look what I found on the backyard! -pointed out her child with exciment, while running towards her.

-Now, now. Call your dad! We wouldn't want to not share this discovery of yours together! -She laughed.

-Right at it! -And went running again.

She sighed. "But I guess it's not so half bad... while not alone".

Questions whether one ends alone regardless of everything or not, were going to trouble her on the subsequent days. And her emotions where going to cloud her reasoning until the very end. That is the misery of troubled and damaged people. Such as ourselves, and the ones who are even more.