Erased

By Shani Coleman

"How do you feel?"

The psychologist peers at me from her overly cushioned chair, and I can tell what she is thinking. She is trying to figure me out; my erased green eyes, my emotions…or lack thereof, my manipulative personality. I harbor the violence of the sun and the emptiness of every monotonous tragedy of a soul that encases my world.

I stare back at her with pale, corpse-like vacancy. "I don't."

I am Syn. But, that's not who I am. It's a title; an excuse to exist. I am non-existent. I am the living dead. I am you. I am them. I am not myself. Ever.

"You don't what?" She's asking me, her eyes magnified behind her dense glasses.

"Feel."

Psychopath; A person with an antisocial personality disorder, manifested in aggressive, perverted, criminal, or amoral behavior without empathy or remorse.

I am not psychotic. I am dead.

She's writing something down now, sniffling and sighing out silent judgement. I gaze out the window, watching featureless people drift by. To me, no one has a face; an independent identity. It's just one drowning world of identical strangers. I muse about my mysterious absence of soul. Why I can't love, or sympathize; grieve or socialize. I want to. I don't want to. I have no reason to. I am indifferent. I am furious. No one likes having no control over their own mind. It's our only link to true freedom. Without mentality, what else is there?

"Syn, do you know why you're here?"

I don't say anything at first. Yes, I know why I'm here. I'm here because my silence is misunderstood, and my abilities were grossly underestimated once upon a time. I'm here because I'm unapologetic and without guilt about my serenely brutal nature. I'm here because of the hand print I painted on the wall with his blood…

"Syn, did you hear what I said?"

My eyes flash momentarily, before dimming once again to solid stone. "Social Standards."

The psychologist raises her eyebrows in bewilderment at this. "This has nothing to do with 'Social Standards'. This is about humanity."

I feel my switch blade against my thigh; cool, smooth metal. In my bubble of a life, it's the only thing that's real. It contains my only solid emotion; anger.

She continues. "What you did was a wicked thing, Syn."

My lips curve into a coy smile as I look over my shoulder at her. "Poisonous as the Dead Sea."

I can't help but be amused at her obvious horror towards my dissatisfactory mind set. She's a psychologist; she should be used to people like me. But then again, what is that, exactly? She tries to hold her professional composure.

"Would you like to tell me what happened?" she asks, squinting at me from over her thick, square spectacles. I laugh bitterly, almost mockingly, turning in my chair to face her.

"I think you already know what happened, Dr. Greenberg."

She lifts and lowers one shoulder and tilts her head slightly. "I don't know why you did it."

I close my eyes and when I open them, they hold the light tranquility of a small child. "He thought he could talk down to me."

Her eyes are narrowed in utter confusion. "So you felt you had to… cut off his tongue to… what? Prove him wrong?"

I shake my head slightly. "Show him his place. I could swallow his soul."

Dr. Greenberg leans back in her chair and sighs. "Why do you say that?"

"I'm God." It's only slightly sarcastic. She doesn't take me seriously, anyways.

"Syn, are you religious?"

"No." My voice is soft and void of expression again. She writes something down and I can't help but bristle slightly.

"Why not?"

"Why should I be?" I snap and then instantly, I'm calm again; sedated. She changes the subject. Crossing her legs, she taps her pencil against her chin.

"Do you have anybody you can talk to, Syn? Friends? Family? Someone whom you can vent your thoughts and feelings to?"

I take note of the fact that she can't seem to stop saying my name. It's as though she's trying to convince myself that I'm a person instead of a creature with no soul to speak of. She thinks that I couldn't possibly be inhuman. She's wrong.

"I don't speak of the devil" I reply smoothly.

"What's that mean?"

"No one sympathizes sin."

She nods slightly, her eyes going blank with thought for a moment. I blow her mind. I can practically see it erupting through her skull. I know what she's going to say; Antisocial Disorder. It's becoming a cliché to me now. I've heard it so many times; it's lost its meaning entirely. Sociopath is becoming my identity. I am Lunatic, Nutcase, and Psycho. I am Maniac, Mental case, and Schizo. All I have been referred to as, remembered by, and answered to. But still, I am not myself.

I am not human.

My pulse is false, my blood is stale, and I am completely numb.

"I think some time in the ward is a good idea, Syn…." the last words of another faceless statue. In seconds she's on her back and my knees have her arms pinned to the scratchy carpet. My hand muffles any pleas for mercy she may have uttered in rancid desperation. My distaste towards her struggle brings my switch blade to her throat.

"This is why I could swallow his soul," I muse, slowly twisting a lock of her hair around my index finger. "In these last moments of your life, I am God."

I sit up straight and stare down at her with venomous hatred. "No one knows the worst fear in the world like I know it," such fear is foaming in her terrified stare. "I know it better then I know myself."

I press against her neck with the blade as I lean forward, causing a trickle of blood to ooze out from under the metal. My lips brush her cheek as I move them against her ear and my voice is a ghost in the still air.

"Jesus prays to Syn."