S1042B

I look up.

There's the sun, shining from above us all. Just as it did on the day I killed Mother.

Something screams. It doesn't sound like anything I've heard before.

I would compare it to the cry of a wounded animal if I were compelled to do so.

It doesn't matter where I go - it's always there! It won't leave me. I'm never alone! This voice, it - it - it won't look away from me!

Ohh... how the sunlight prickles my skin... how horribly... warm...

I thought I could be alone in the darkness of my room... Just for one precious moment of solitude... Without anyone watching me... without pinning me with their gaze...!

Hnnh... I... Even now, I feel it...! The gaze... The sun...! The voice...!! It keeps following me!! Stalking me ever since those long, dark days... and the painfully bright nights came and went... It's here, even now... Closing in around me...!

It... understands me... It... AAAAHHHH!!! It's pinned me... with nails... and hammers...!!!

The gaze... the gaze boring into me... I... see now... It's you...! Don't look at me! Stop following me!!

Mother bursts out of the room with enough force to knock the door off its hinges.

As her body writhes and spasms, something bursts out of her.

Meursault...! That gaze that watches me... it's... it's mine...! It's becoming mine, I'm being watched by my own gaze...!

I can't... I can't... Has it finally come for me, the final nothingness...? Oh, yes... I tried... I really, really tried my best...

I'm not even permitted... the briefest of moments to breathe... It's all over now... It was never going to -

I can't run... I can't breathe... I can't do anything, Meursault...!

Mother...

No...! Meursault, my son!

Before I hurt you, before I - Before I gouge out your eyes, you have to...

Oh, I'll end up killing my boy!!

Come, while compunction still strangles me... while the guilt of a failed mother who will kill her son holds me back... Oh, I never wanted this, this maternal love... Do it, kill me now!

You're right, I never chose any of this...! These feelings, they're, they're all just biology - chemical reactions in my brain instilling me with these emotions... just because I was born as this creature... a human...!

AHHHH!! Stop, please stop... Those eyes are hammering their nails into me... I am... watching myself...! No, I don't want this... I don't want you to understand me...

I just want to... breathe... I can't live anymore... I can't live like this... Knowing that someone is always watching me... Fixed by their gaze...

Meursault, dear... please let me nail the role of my son onto you for a moment...! If you're human... if you're something that came out of my womb, then kill me!

Kill me, Meursault... You're my son... It's the least you can do for your maman... Meursault...

Though I did not hear anything that sounded like crying from Mother, I judged that she was.

... Is she? She is wailing and screaming, yes. But is that enough to be defined as crying?

The ray of sunlight on my mother almost made it look as though she were laughing. From a different angle, she looks to be moments away from true liberation. Then...

The stems of my thought beget stems that beget stems that are finer still. A lively bloom of compunction in my heart, creeping toward my judgmental, disobedient brain.

Mother takes a step toward me. Then another.

Every step taken is a step removed from the form of hum - no. I mustn't define what is human. Mother is afraid of the gaze. I must not fix and nail my mother down. I mustn't judge... so I stop.

Stop thinking about it, Meursault - kill that thought! Just kill me!!

The same chains Mother and I used to regard slither from the ceiling.

Despite the chains that have entangled her, Mother continues to take her steps toward me, through the pain.

Her hands reach out to me, then enclose around my neck. They begin to strangle. A puff of exhalation, a reflex, ekes out of my throat.

No more judgments, okay? Just... act. It's the... only way to... save... yourself...

.......

I grab the chains that have fallen on Mother - and pull.

The being not in the shape of Mother but the one I have defined as Mother thrashes violently.

Mother thrashes violently.

I act to relieve my mother from her suffering. I act to kill my mother. As a son should.

Ghk... Kergh...

My fingers strain around the chains as I pull. I hear Mother groaning in pain.

Mother not in the shape of Mother thrashes violently. She is trying to kill me.

Earlier, Mother in the shape of Mother screamed at me: "kill me." Did Mother truly wish to die, or did she -

I do not judge. I act as I'm told. I pull on the chains as far as their tensile force will allow me. I pull more. I pull beyond it.

I sense a gaze. The same gaze Mother was afraid of. It is watching someone. It is watching me.

I am afraid. Mother who does not look like Mother cannot go to work tomorrow because her appearance does not align with the definition of what a human looks like. She cannot participate as a member of society. Then the being defined as Mother is gone, and a newborn something has taken her place.

Then perhaps that being is not Mother after all.

The waves of remorse take hold of me. Of guilt. Compunction. The same emotions that were nailed into me at the birth of my existence, as Mother had said, surge uncontrollably.

Then perhaps that being is -

I stop judging. I stop thinking. Until I am no longer a subject of anyone's attention, until silence comes - however long that takes - I pull the chain.

.......

.......

The chain broke.

Mother who does not look like Mother, Mother, the thing that was Mother, is motionless on the ground.

Then... the curtains open.

Sunlight shines through, and the Voice -

I shut my eyes, but the light penetrates the lids, filling my vision with hot red. Whispers. Heat. Kindness. Nausea.

Existence is unbearably discomforting. Freedom, terrifying. Definitions, arbitrary and fragile.

What, in this life, could be the proof of "me", then?

Memory? Experience?

Neither. What I thought, what I choose to accept...

... is the now.

I feel... the moment. The now.

Defendant. State the time when you murdered your mother.

Before I realized it, I was brought before the court. When did Mother breathe last? I felt the warm slickness in my palms. Blood from the torn skin.

I lost track of time. Mother lost track of time, too. Mother had stated her wish to die, clearly and desperately.

But they ask persistently - when did Mother breathe last?

The dead thing was defined as Mother, but it wasn't Mother. It was something else.

My chains broke not long after Mother died. My chains broke long after Mother died. Or maybe Mother died before my chains broke.

I killed Mother today. Or maybe it was yesterday.

They responded with unanimous outrage. They claimed that I did not understand the gravity of my actions and cited that as evidence of my ambiguous, dithering reply.

.......

I said nothing in response. They were already hammering the nails into me at that point, and I had already made the decision to remain bound.

Defendant. State your reasons for committing the act.

I had no way of knowing. I would have liked for someone else to state that in my stead.

I killed Mother? But I thought I killed something that was no longer Mother.

Mother was always afraid of the gaze. When she realized that there was no escaping the gaze, she instead desired death.

The sunshine transformed Mother into a form that was no longer recognizable as human, and I wrapped the chain around Mother's throat and brought her to death.

.......

Answer!

Shrill cries tore at the eardrums and mercilessly beat upon my ears.

The collective gaze of the eyes from the second column on the left to the fifteenth column on the right bears down upon me.

From eighty-nine index fingers and eighty-six throats pour a deluge of grief, fear, hate, revilement.

Questions shaped from various emotions slowly smother my breathing.

It's just that...

The sunlight... was overwhelming...

The sunlight was overwhelming, that's all.

.......

The courthouse is silent. The sunlight continues to whisper in my ears.

Just as it did to Mother's.

The sunlight spoke of warmth and blinding, prickling radiance...

... and I trembled with fear, which brought with it a bout of migraine.

I gave up on trying to express these thoughts in words.

They weren't actually curious about what I thought, anyway.

The court hereby sentences the defendant, Meursault, to...

I felt dizzy.

I will dare to judge, act willingly, and if I am wrong, I will change. But I will move forward.

I was afraid of speaking my mind, and following through, because there was no way to know what was right.

A world without certainties is a world without answers, and cast upon this answerless world, I was just so afraid of the now that -

But I reach out with my hands anyway. Even if I am afraid.

I reach out toward the sun.

Ma puce... they'll pin you with nails and leave you behind, just as they did at the courthouse.

I don't care. That is within their freedoms.

But if I believe that they have misunderstood me...

I will speak again.

They'll misunderstand you again.

Then I'll speak again.

I'll gladly be wrong again and again, misspeak and be misunderstood countless times.

Even if the entire premise was wrong, even if everything is just a passing illusion...

Based on my sensations, I will judge. Based on my sensations, I will speak without hesitation.

So that's your answer, ma puce.

So that's your answer, Meur.

So...

The kind sunlight, with heart to spare for all of existence, the irresponsible sunshine...

This light that pursues me, it's...

... noisy.

So...

Shut up.