You must be this old to enter the Dungeon

25) Reflections on a haunting guilty conscience and other ways to pass an afternoon.

All my life I had slowly learned not to care and to choose not to even know about other people’s problems since nothing, and no one, ever really changes. They just take and take from you until you’re hollow inside.

I turned off that part of me, and from then on, no one could make me care.

I did what I liked, I felt what I wanted because no one could tell me what to do.

“Now they’ve forced it into my head... Concerns for others.”

Others always let you down. Took what they wanted from you, and then left you with nothing.

“I embraced it. I took the numbness and made it mine. No more pain, no more betrayals… no more caring.”

I twisted around and leaned back against my son’s old water stained dresser.

Then I just sat there for a while, ignoring the whines, and the gentle knocking from down below.

Dammit. The girl has thumbs. She can get to me.

“Should have locked the damn door.”

Down below I heard the screen door creak as she opened it up, and then gently closed behind her. A moment later I could hear her footsteps came slowly up the stairs.

Wrong she.

Beryl settled herself at the top of the stairs, her back against the door frame of the other half of the upstairs that she had used to call her ‘Sewing room.’

Sometimes even she had needed some alone time.

“Are you aware that there is a little naked girl with green skin silently crying on your front steps?”

Damn, she’s crying… No. Stop. Don’t think…

“I wasn’t sure if I was going to have to cut you down from a rope Harold.”

A rope? Oh... “Light fixtures ain’t strong enough. Can’t get a rope around the basement rafters.”

She slowly nodded. “You always said going out by your own hand would be letting the bastards win. So what happened?”

I looked over and glared at her. But I didn’t say anything. My troubles were my own business.

She waved down the steps as if shooing someone away. I heard claws on the floorboards and another whine. “Fate. That’s my Talent Harold. Combined with the Seer class, I get Quests that give me points.”

“Today’s Quest was keeping you alive.”

I took a moment to think about that.

"Well, at least you didn't come here for me. I'm relieved."

If she still cared about me… Then I would have to care back, isn’t that how it works…

I pressed the base of my palms against my forehead and pushed my head back to thump against the wall. Stop thinking… Stop Thinking…

“What’s going on in your head Harold?”

Talking isn’t thinking, I let it out…

The burden of what I had done to the coyotes, turning them into something that had needs, just like people.

My own mind turning against me…

Beryl closed her hands tightly… “I want to rub it in, but my own Insight has gone up by four. So I know where my own feelings are coming from. And I don't need to indulge my sense of spite right now…”

Heh. So she does still have feelings for me. Hate I can handle, it’s so… simple, and honest.

“You are by nature a caretaker Harold. You took care of your uncle as his mind began to go. You took care of his house. You cared about your job and hated your bosses for not letting you just do it without constant interference.”

She sighed. “You took care of me when I grew tired of the men in my life becoming abusive after they had gotten what they wanted from me and I decided to attach myself to a man whose… worse nature I already knew and decided that I could live with.”

I closed my eyes. “Until you changed your mind.”

Turning her head away, she wiped at her eyes. “You changed as much as you would allow yourself to Harold, to change anymore would have required trusting me to never hurt you. I pushed you to your limit, and realized that was as far as you could go.”

She whispered. "It wasn't enough for me anymore. If I stayed I would have kept pushing, you would have kept snapping at me and we would have both been miserable."

I laughed. “So instead you just left me behind to be miserable on my own.”

My ex tightened her lips and glared, before closing her eyes and taking a deep breath. “You were miserable from the day Reed betrayed his wife and child. Nothing I could do or say was going to change that.”

“So yes, I abandoned the sinking ship to save myself. Hate me for that if you want, but you don’t get to blame me for giving up on us when I knew you had already utterly given up on yourself.”

...we sat in silence for a while, until I couldn’t stand it any longer and tried to change the mood.

“Insulin... No one told me I could stop taking it, and I was told to set my own dosage. A good sized shot without any need for it and a nap with the beasts locked outside so they wouldn’t eat my corpse should have done the job.”

She stared at me, jaw open.

I shrugged. “Figuring it out, what I would have done after you went and brought it up, distracted me from thinking about other things… Burning out all my blood sugar would have given me the death I wanted. Bitter.”

Got no idea if that's how insulin worked or not. Doc said to take the stuff, so I did. Finding out how something worked that I didn’t want to think about wasn’t how I do things.

She slowly shook her head at me. “Back to my point Harold. You take care of the things you care about and they all have failed you in the end. Your parents who kicked you out once you were old enough that they no longer had to care about you. Your uncle who took you in and became an invalid. Your job that the bosses kept changing on you… Your wife that left you.”

“You aren't special Harold. Everyone loses everything they care about in time, one way or the other."

She stood up slowly and took a moment to catch her balance with one hand on the door frame before brushing at the back of her dress where she had been sitting on the filthy floor.

"They didn't need to win by driving you to end your life, you did it for them by cutting out your own heart.”

Turning her head, she looked me in the eye with a sad expression. “It was nice talking again. Like back when we were just two people working together back at the factory. I’ve missed those days.”

Then her face hardened.

“But if I may suggest, as the only one left who knows you, if you won’t care about the ones who care about you out of love, or duty… do it out of spite. If the care goes both ways they’ll be stuck with you.”

Looking down the stairs she carefully began to make her way down.

“And the kitchen has somehow gotten even worse since I left. Stop reusing the plates and utensils you old fool. It’s unsanitary.”

Huh. That’s more like it.

I heard the screen door open again. “Alright girls, go get him.”

The sound of tiny feet and paws raced up the steps before the screen door slammed shut behind her.