The Unfinished & Unpublished Works of Émilien Béringer

[Everything Else]

“WRITE WHAT YOU KNOW.”

    And so, the poor writer awoke with paper stuck to his face, the ink of last night’s draft stained in his cheek. He felt upon his waking a sharp pain that blossomed through his skull, from the very back of his head to the space between his squeezed-shut eyes. Like an animal come to rest did that terrible feeling plod in circles, settling into the cavity where his brain ought to lay, descending further down until it made a pit in his stomach that just kept hollowing out, twisting into knots as it went deeper and deeper.

    He felt sick; he knew it was of no fault but his own, for such things are beckoned by a fool’s reckless inebriation, and he was certainly a fool. With a groan did he pry himself from his desk, a damp spot left by his sweat—and in one horrible lurch, he bent to the side and retched, left pale and trembling by the end of it.

    Unsurprisingly, the writer received a notice of eviction by the end of that same day, for who else roomed beneath him but the landlord of those very tenements he called home? Thus, as it had always been, and perhaps how it shall always be, he was street-bound once more, alone now and forever, left to squirm, anguished, like a salted snail in his circumstances, those borne of this wretched city and its wretched ways, of which he could decry for hours—nay, more! He could decry those wicked circumstances for days, months, well into years…

[Everything Else]

    Anger. That is what I know; I must do away with the contrivance of narrative and write truthfully, from the heart, for I fear it bursting should I continue to smother all that churns inside. It is anger I know, and heaps of it—there is a white hot rage that festers deep within me, rising to meet the bloodied dawn. A common belief putters around, that anger is this dark thing, a void, a pit, a black shadow, but I disagree. I believe anger is a light; it burns as brightly as one, and it is known to illuminate certain things that may not have been noted before, akin to a torch swung towards a dim, dusty corner. It is like the sun in that it cannot be looked at for long, as the sheer magnitude of it is fit to blind the unprotected eye. Anger, then, is bright, blazing, a flame as it is so often depicted, the thing from which shadows are cast, not a shadow itself.

    You could cook a full course meal over my anger, it is a stove so hot. Feed a family with it; by that alone, you would be doing more for the people than our failure of a republic. Every day I am made to witness the frivolity of the nobility and their sycophantic followers, watching them as if through a barred window, shunted away and left to wither like the rest of my fellow poorfolk. Make no mistake, it is not with envy that I revile them—rather it is a righteous fury, all-consuming, for it starts with a pain in my heart and radiates throughout my entire body, tingling with too much warmth in my fingertips. I am not a violent man except to myself; like an animal I rattle the bars of my cage, I throw myself from wall to wall until there are bruises that blossom across my skin, and I bray with the anger of a people.

    Writing is the only thing that keeps me from a terrible descent. I write, and write, and write some more, and for what? I will never be known. My name will never rest with reverence upon someone’s lips, and though that is not all I write for, it is yet a worldly desire I am unable to banish easily. But I am a coward—I hide from the chance to make a difference, relying upon just-revolutionary-enough rhetoric so as to avoid arrest, for I have no want to die so soon. I am only twenty years old, by Ezra, and I am wasting away in the streets! How can we call ourselves an enlightened nation when it is on the bones of misfortune we are built? From where does that audacity come, that earnest belief that we are better than any other? It makes me sick, and I have been sick already this week, which I do not wish to be again.

    To speak of sickness, this “publication” I have chanced upon. I am struggling for once to put my thoughts into words, and yet, I feel this pull inside of me to say something. Not just for my own eyes, either; for the eyes of others, perhaps even the entire city, though that is an admittedly frightening prospect. I may try my hand at a pamphlet nonetheless…

[Everything Else]

These writings are fevered and nigh incoherent, scrawled in the middle of a long night.

    Very inspired tonight, made so by this grand experience, what an incredible feeling I wish never to let go of. All throughout my body. So warm and slow and all-encompassing it is, this expanding of the self to take up each corner of this little room. He is here with me and he is just wonderful; a wonderful man, a wonderful companion, wonderful, wonderful, wonderful. My heart trembles at the sight of him. I care so deeply and so quickly that I frighten myself, but I need not be frightened now. So much to feel elsewise tonight. So much, so much, so much, and most of it him.

    I see the lines in the ceiling and liken them to the lines in my hands. The curve of the window is the curve of his back. I could do this forever, I think; lock us in this room and throw away the key. Forever, for-ever, for ever, what a word that is, the sheer vastness of it. Forever. It feels good to write. Forever and ever. By Ezra, I am hungry…

[Everything Else]

    To witness their frivolity firsthand was more enlightening of an experience than it was enraging. Perhaps that is due to the company I kept; he has a mind for mischief indeed, but he held my attention with good affection and great conversation. I was nonetheless shocked by their dizzying disregard for anything but themselves. While they danced, drank, and dined, there were people a mere two quarters over either starving to death that night, or meeting their end in some alleyway with a knife in their belly. Now, I am no better—I too partook in the festivities, mostly the drinking, but I do believe that of all the people in that ballroom, barely five of us might have cared for what could have been happening over yonder. I hate that it is a “yonder” to begin with. In truth, some small part of me hates myself for even going that night, for the reason was so damnably selfish, but I digress.

    The reality of our fragile little lives came crashing back in later on in the night. I struggle with it now, the weight of what I have been told. I have tried to write around it, to think of anything else, to breathe in any amount of air that may cleanse my withered mind, but it is to no avail. We will all die too soon, and it frightens me. I wax poetic about life in the moment, but it is a front; a carefully-constructed farce, erected like a wall around my heart. I am afraid of death, of dying. I am afraid of feeling like I did when I lost Amélie. I am afraid of dealing that feeling unto anyone else. I am afraid of many things, so many things, and I will be afraid of these things forever. What’s worse, I think another small part of me yet is afraid of living, and to that I say “really, Émilien, you have outdone yourself with hypocrisy.” At the very least, I will gladly take fear over anger any day.

    Within the next five or six years, I predict my body will be found lifeless in the gutter. Perhaps I will be forgotten; perhaps I will be remembered, but not fondly, and of those two outcomes I do not know which is worse. There is a third, even more terrifying prospect, one I hesitate to even speak into existence, much less write. One day, I suppose I will be brave enough to put it down on paper—but that day is not today. I must wrack my mind, anyway, for something of substance to write, something stirring, for this warmth in my breast is not only borne of their love, but the aching call to say more while the people’s eyes are open…

[Everything Else]

Notes. Messy, messy notes, following a single train of thought to its stopping point. Here are the seeds of something new.

    It will be narrative. Grounded, but with some foray into the abstract. A mirror held up to life, to reality, the reflection cracked and ugly. Inspired by some events in my own life. Perhaps a biography, or—no, that would make too much of me known. So who shall be the protagonist? What sort of character may I concoct? One not overly similar to me, but not too different, either, for I do not wish to impede upon any others’ experiences, nor do I wish to write beyond what I know. Shall it be written in the first person, or the third? Much to think about. So much to plan for, to build the bones of and drape the muscle and skin thereupon. Will my prose be enough? Will I be enough?

    To be “enough” is an arduous task. I can only hope this idea, half-formed and vague as it is, may come out the other end of my mind a vessel of the truth so often hidden from the eyes of those who need to see it the most. Perhaps I ought to start with our dramatis personae—the names and faces of those who will people my stage, these yellowed pages I so desperately spill out upon. That is as good a start as any. I have never written a book before, despite my years of writing in narrative, but perhaps that is due to this feeling of being chained to writing from the audience's perspective. So it shall be in the first person, from the eyes of not simply the protagonist, but the narrator, whose inner monologue may be allowed to ramble in this format, which I tend to do often…

[Everything Else]

    I have always been an anguished man. I cannot remember a time in conscious thought that I was truly happy; I have always lived in the shadow of this republic’s failings, this towering edifice of hatred. I have always known, I think, that something was wrong. There was never a time in my childhood that I thought anything was all right, for too many of us were dying, and I could not close my eyes to it. We live in a system that actively reviles us. We are treated with little difference to cattle, sent between workhouses like farms, until we are thrown to the butcher’s shop and land beneath their knives. And there are those who try to rescue us, I know, but they are either too late, or too little.

    The machine bleeds. We are the blood; we too are the vessels, the bones, the muscles, but most importantly, we are the slow-beating heart that squeezes itself to death. Troubles of the heart are treated first, but never to the point of complete recovery, and that is where we are now. They make meaningless concessions and force them down our throats like a tonic, knowing full well that it only slows that inevitable death. Indeed, if we continue like this, I wholeheartedly believe that our society will collapse—it almost seems to want that to happen, considering the fervor with which it hurtles towards such a dreadful fate. We do not need revolution, but reform, true reform, starting at the very top and whittling its way down; if I were a politicking man, I would define those reforms here and now, but I find that I am more suited to “what-ifs” rather than “how-tos”. I hate that about myself.

    I think the pursuit of a long-term goal will aid me in fighting off this black depression. I am still trying to write my book, as I have a direction for it now, but I am unable—or perhaps unwilling—to start. I question how much of my life I would like to adapt; what I would like to twist a certain way or leave as it is, and how I would like to do any of it. Thoughts of my sister rise like a spectre and settle heavily on my chest when I mean to sleep, and she comes to me from the corner of this small office, wading through the dark to stand beside me. I can move my eyes, but not my body. I try to look at her face, I try to remember what she looked like, but there is nothing concrete anymore, just features half-remembered and vaguely defined. It was not until I beheld Nàdia’s painting that I could see her eyes again, the way they would swallow all light in the absence of it. Cold as they are now, they are comforting in some sick way, though I am harrowed to look upon her in that awful state. And she is just like I found her…