Black [Lancelot]

{I'm falling, falling, falling, falling.
Might as well fall in}

I'm hopelessly dragging myself through a cloud of black smoke and I'm making no progress. When have I ever made progress? Pitch black tendrils wrap around my throat, forcing their way into my lungs like ash from a bonfire. Every tap from my footsteps is followed by a dry rasp from deep inside my throat and the bottom of my lungs. Four years I've been forcing my way through a the smoke screen of my sanity and four years I've made no progress. Maybe that's because as I walk from the factory I don't have the courage to look straight ahead - only down; for fear that another day finished is just another illusion and boss will call me back to mould another hundred bars of soap.

Besides, I don't have to look up and strain to see through the black smokescreen that masks my sanity. I already know that the stars of the night's sky weep their emptiness from above - as if a mood was contagious. I don't need to look up to see that about fifty meters in front of me there will be a cluster of buildings waiting for me to bob and weave through them at the end of the street. The four year old black smokescreen blinds me to what's important but it will never blind me to the insignificant.

I sigh, my head dipped to stare at the ground and my chin planted on my sternum, I can't remember the last time I held my chin up. Every step feels heavier than the bottle of whiskey waiting for me back at my apartment. Not even the cold call of the bottle can hasten my step or quicken my pace. I may as well be stagnant. Bitter chuckles escape from the bottom of my lungs - I've been stagnant for four years.

It's easy to conclude that every step is only the illusion of movement, I've never been able to properly move through this black smokescreen that masks what's important. Every step that takes me closer to my apartment, every step that makes the call of the bottle louder - it's all insignificant because it's all routine.

If anyone could see me now, with my chin planted on my chest and walking like ten thousand bricks are piled on my back, they'd scoff and shake their heads. This can't be Tate. I can hear it now. The boy who used to walk with a spring in his step, a smile on his lips and what seemed like a systematic sample of girls on his lap. Oh how times change.

Animus once said that this world was grey and for once I can see something that is wrong with that statement. It's too kind. Even it was grey I wouldn't be able to see it behind the smokescreen of black, bandaging my eye to everything important. For once I cannot see the truth in what my brother says; what he called grey I can only call black.

My movement is automatic as I stop and turn to the right. It's almost mechanical. I'm blinded to everything significant but never blinded to the routine; I don't need to look up to know that two more steps and I would have went head first into a wall. If I turned right and taken ten more steps I would have knocked over a trash can, turning left would take me to the road where my apartment is situated. Three more heavy steps and I can feel my freedom restricted because two walls flank me.

I don't need to look up to know that.

Suddenly, I stop for I hear something not in the routine. I lift my head up, not for the desire to better myself, not for the desire to see through the black smokescreen and not for the desire to freedom. I look up because the desire to see who or what disturbed the unshakable routine of four years.

Still, I see the screen temporarily clearing to reveal a figure, a silhouette not too far from me. "What?" I instinctively ask, my throat drier than a desert and my heart pounding like a drum in my chest.

Silently, I hope it's a robber who will shove a knife in my heart and take my possessions - black smokescreen and all.