Apathy, You Heinous Beast

     The sky above the nightclub was dead. Like the color of one of those old TV's turned on to a extinct channel. It wasn't particularly ominous in the way that it sounded like, that was just how it was. Spent. Foreboding. It wasn't an isolated event, this was how the sky looked, how it felt like ever since I've come. I've heard it always like that, ever since apathy had slowly showered everyone in the city, enveloping them in the sense of the not yet, not fun, and the not too wonderful. As I got out of the cab I looked straight, making a point to look straight, knowing if I ever looked any other way I would succumb to the indifference of the hookers not trying to make money as much as relief themselves of loneliness and the homeless trying, in vain to find someone else to believe in them, anyone, even themselves, indifference that I feared would take over me. I head in the back, the front was crowded with people, teens trying to have a night to remember, adults having a night to repeat, and senile trying to have a night to forget.
     I stepped in and immediately headed to the bathroom. I always did, I needed to. The dirt and grime would gradually grow, become insurmountable with every action to where I couldn't even look through mirror without grimacing in disgust. Wait. No. No that was a lie. I couldn't care less about what I looked like. I was trying to wash off the feelings, the remainder of uncaringness that took control of everyone else, things that would only take a matter of the smallest infraction for me to follow. But it was impossible to do, because the second I got out the feeling would hit me again, then I would need to wash my hands again, and then I would go out again and the same cycle would hit me before I too succumbed to the indifference. Then no, not the bathroom, backstage.
     I pulled headphones out of my pocket and switched my phone onto some music channel. It didn't matter which, it didn't matter what, I just needed the music. I didn't particularly like the music which seems particularly ironic to the people that would pass me backstage but I didn't care, it helped with one thing. It drowned everything out, the noise, the feelings, the hope. Through some of the gaps in the curtains I would watch the people. Not the performers but the audience. I knew the performers, they were the same as me, trying to use music as a faucet to escape the dullness, but never being good enough to do so. I liked the audience they all had something different about them. Don't get me wrong they were the same detached freaks as the rest of the town but each had something different about them. Some were happy with the music, just looking for something to focus on. Others were dragged there and others were just there for the beer, but what made them interesting was the vast differences. It made it fun trying to embody myself in their life, because it made it one second less where I had to be a part of my own.
     The manager walked up to me and crouched down to get to my level. "D, you ready?" This was it, the crossroads that I was at yesterday, the night before that, and the many nights preceding, confused without a road map or anything else to guide me. When faced with the unknown you have two options, the first, the one that most people do is turn around and head back. The second was obviously the one of honor, to strike ahead and shed more light in the face of darkness. I hadn't felt honor in a long time, and the feeling wasn't coming back now. I shook my head and saw the hope falling from his face. He didn't try to force me, he knew he was fruitless, but instead he asked why I wouldn't when I had good songs and could sing and play well. The crowd out there, the people in here, the public of the town were all apathetic. Of course I could sing well but the people of the needed- no I needed something more. I needed to sing something that could help them, help me break out of this careless cycle. I wanted to sing something that would make someone feel something. But I couldn't. I wasn't good enough.
     I left the club, there wasn't anything left for me there. There never really was I suppose, no matter how much I wanted, there wasn't anything different from the first day of hesitation to this today of reconciliation with it. I decided, once and for all I would set a wall between me and that place. It's kinda funny, boundaries were created as beautiful things, between the ocean and the shore, the mountains and the plains, the valleys and the river. But today I would set a boundary and those people. Well, not the people, I could imagine they felt as frustrated as I did, but a boundary between all of us and our conscience. The wall between man and mind's mind. The border of man and his greatest weapon. One that can only come down with the death of the other.