Bad Habit

Jamais vu is like deja vu's less cited evil twin. It's when you recognise a feeling or person but yet are hit with nothing but unfamiliarity. It's like looking at the stuffed animal you grew up unable to sleep without but not feeling any sense of connection to it, almost like as though all those nights you pulled it closer to you in attempts to sleep never happened.

Jamais vu.

There's just something about French that can make almost anything sound very beautiful, even pain. But pain is beautiful isn't it? I see them around all the time, all those people who seem to be living without feeling emotion. You can experience emotion, but pain is the only thing that you can not only experience but also feel, physically. You can feel it on your skin or in your bones. The most important thing is you can actually feel it.

When someone leaves kisses down your neck, what do you feel against your skin? Is it love, is it lust? Is it even real to begin with? But imagine a trail of blood on your neck left by the sharp edge of a knife. Will you ever be able to question the purity of your pain?

When I was seven years old I used to bite my nails. My mother told me to stop the bad habit. I stopped by the time I turned eight. One day she left to go to the grocery store and she never come back. I cried for a while but then my father told me that I had to stop crying. He said it in the same tone my mother used when she told me to stop my bad habit. By the time I turned nine, I stopped crying. Much like biting my nails, I haven't cried for a very long time now.

I stopped crying, not because I have everything bottled up inside, but because pain gave me the closure my mother's love never could. To this day I will never know if her love for me was ever real, but I will always know that the pain that she left me with stung. In my eyes her love is a mystery, it could have been real, but it could have also just been anything but. My mother wasn't there for my ninth birthday, but in the form of the absence that filled the space on the empty dinning chair that evening, she gave me the most beautiful present I've ever received, pain. I questioned the integrity of every shred of affection she had shown me, but never once did I question the gift I received that night.

Pain is simple and in simplicity lies elegance. Someone can talk about their experience with anxiety or depression and you'll never truly understand it. But if someone talks about breaking an arm or a leg you can almost feel it yourself. When a character on the television gets shot, for a second you flinch and just that very second you shiver because you can almost feel it. Almost.

You can give someone all the love in the world, but they may never feel it. But give someone even the slightest bit of pain and I can assure you they will. The first time I planned to make someone feel pain, I was apprehensive. But then I finally saw the look on her face, the look of pain. People can fake happiness and they can even fake sadness, but no one can truly ever fake pain. It was then, at that very moment that I knew I had the opportunity to give people the gift of something real, more real than anything that they had ever experienced in a world of falsities. It didn't matter that I was killing them because they left with something so many people die without having, something real, something that they would never have to question.

It isn't very hard to spot them. They're usually at bars or clubs almost always more drunk than sober. I go to them with the promise of cheap love with a side of tequila and end the night along with their life. I'm not cruel, I'm giving them something that would be the highlight of their mundane lives. I muffle their screams because you don't need to hear them scream to know they're in pain. You don't even need to search their eyes for truth, because like most things, pain, like pleasure is best experienced with your eyes closed. I know that now, because every single time I make the first cut, they close their eyes. They shut them tightly and their glistening tears baptise their lost souls before they leave. But that's just the beginning, I really know I've done my job well when they just stop crying all together. It shows me they're no longer resisting the pain, they're no longer fighting it and moreover they know I'm going to kill them and they're ready. Isn't that a gift too? Making someone accept their death, accept their pain.

Everyone is different, some give up after I've taken out their tongues, some give up once their toes are in between my fingers. But they all do, eventually, they all give up on trying to stop the pain.

Jamais vu.

I always see her for what seems like more than a second, but less than two, telling me to stop my bad habit. But then like always, she leaves and I'm back to looking at a stranger bleeding out to death.