Thoughts on a Dark Night

The city sleeps under my feet. It’s dark and unusually quiet. Only the soft night breeze makes a low, sinister, moaning sound. Like a corpse calling. It’s a humid sticky summer night, but the breeze is cool and it’s calming my frantic nerves.

It’s at nights like these that my mind tends to wander, trying to get out of my control. 

And it should. 

Because it needs sleep and it needs rest. It’s been 3 days since I have slept and there is nothing in this world that I won’t give up, right now, to be able to sleep. Just for some time.

Well, this self-inflicted torture in not new to my body or my mind. 

In the past, I have bruised myself, suffered concussions, broken my ribs, burnt myself, almost got myself killed a few times, lost my loved ones and suffered immeasurable sorrow.

So, why have I endured all this pain and suffering, you ask?

I believe it’s for a greater purpose. To save people. Save mankind from evil disguised as good and from evil menacing as evil. The world is full of sorrow, grief and madness and I believe I have to do whatever I could to help the people who are helpless.

Because there was a time when I was helpless.

The night that my parents died on the cold black streets and all I could do was watch, as the living breath escaped from my mother’s body, as the heart stopped its rhythmic beating in my father’s chest. On that dark, cold night I watched them die.

That night I felt fear, I felt shame, I felt helplessness and I never wanted to feel it again. I never wanted anyone to feel it again.

That is why I became what I am.

Often these days, I wonder if I made the wrong choice that night and chose the wrong path. Often these days, I imagine myself going back home that night and taking charge of my father’s company. Making him proud. Becoming a good man, a good businessman, maybe a cop or a senator. Help my city and my country in a different way. A different way.

But then again, my mind becomes muddled and it asks questions I cannot answer. Did I really have a choice that night? Could I really choose a path that I wanted to take? Or did the path choose me?

Writhing to have my revenge on the guy who killed my parents, I followed him down those mean streets, dark like a serpent’s hole. I came upon thousands of guys like him. Guys who felt no regret, no remorse to plunder, kill and rape. Naturally, I tried to stop them and as I did, I kept getting dragged further and further down that hole. Until, I myself became darkness.

So again, did I choose to go down that path? I guess I no longer know or care. I guess like most defeated people, I have accepted my fate. I have accepted who I am and what I have become. Like most other people, I imagine and hope that I had become someone else, but I can’t go back and change things now, for I have come too far from that fork in the road.

Whatever choices I have made, whether by free will or pre-destined, I have to live with them. No one else can understand what I am going through and no one really cares. 

I alone have to endure this pain. 

I alone will have to persevere and sacrifice. 

Perched on this rooftop on this skyscraper on this dark night, I alone will have to walk my path. Because I alone am Batman.