It's Not Going Anywhere

He was thoroughly convinced he was not a good person. There were moments--recurring, and often so--that seemed to prove this conviction. There was that moment (how long was one?) when he had popped that girl's balloon with a pen, vindictively, instinctively, and with such satisfaction that if the girl had several more, he would have gone (hypothetically, against and contrary to the fact, the history, but of such sure conviction that he called it true--made it so) on a(n) homicidal spree of flying rubber and ink. Her mother, standing by, innocent as the child, was so shocked, her mouth was a agape. The accomplishment fell to bitter ruin with the tears of the child. She must have been six or seven, the age where one can comprehend evil and fear, but had no idea that these things were real. His heart sank. He wanted to cry with her and apologize, but it seemed pointless. He should not have done what he did, and the regret could not be washed off with something as common as an apology. A carnival (for that is where they were, and the clown from whom the girl received the balloon, a few yards away, clucked bitterly, condescendingly at the scene before him) was simply not a carnival with a girl crying. But, ironically, and he noted this with the pen still protruding from his clenched fist, sword-like, he was simply saying farewell to the sins of the flesh. Destruction of oneself and others (and, by extension, their property) was a sin of the flesh, ingrained and part of the human condition, and though there was no lent--and hence, no purging, he... he could not justify it. He walked over to the clown, made a gesture to the jester, which the clown understood immediately. The jester gave him another balloon, the same color, and he gave it to the crying child while the mother stood, anger aging her skin with a thousand wrinkles. Why did he do such a thing? Why did it feel like victory? Why did he feel so bad afterward? He did not know, but only knew that there were more moments, and, incidentally, more incidents which proved his utter worthlessness to humanity.