I know it's not fantasy, but!

[Birinair]

EXTREME ACTION
This is a true story, or at least as true as any story can be, told by an actor in the tale. It deals in deceit, but not as you would imagine the kind of deceit perpetrated by one person on another, but the kind of deceit that we, all too fallible beings that we are and remain, are prepared to perpetrate upon ourselves. I am the main character of this story, and that is only right, because we are each the main characters in our own story. If I stray from the point it is because I sometimes remember the pain I felt and exorcise it by relating this to you, but be advised that everyone is real and the descriptions of them true, or perhaps, at least, accurate through my eyes. You will come to know me, by the words I write, and the sentiments I present. But at the time these events begin I was ordinary, I had no special attributes, nor did I display talents that others did not possess. I was not rich nor was I poor, and I was neither particularly cruel nor especially kind. In short, I was one of the quiet faceless ones, who do not draw attention to themselves, but pay their taxes, and slowly move through life avoiding extremes of any sort. Strange it is therefore, that I should succumb to the sort of deceit that leads to extremity of action.

But then, on a summer afternoon of dusty daydreams, when time slowed and the heat was thick and heavy as syrup; it begins. At the end of a long day, a weary seafarer sailing on a sea of futile hopes in a ship running before the winds of imagined necessity, a prisoner of want disguised as need, dreams of freedom. A television freedom of paradise islands, with beautiful people and lazy days. A freedom encapsulated by a thirty second commercial. And it does not matter whether it advertises a fabulous tropical drink (manufactured under licence in Newcastle), or a chocolate bar eaten by a woman who devours it as if consummating some glorious sexual act of love (or perhaps I am too romantic; lust). A lottery win freedom, an inheritance from a long lost eccentric uncle freedom; not the work long and hard and get away once a year for fourteen days in drunken stupor and go back to the same old grind, glimpse of freedom. As I stare through the window, watching the trapped expressions on the faces of people walking by with the burdens of their lives made heavier as the sun beats down upon them; she passes by. She, it is the only way to refer to her; with her obvious love of life, the hurried way she walked, the busy look of everything she did, there could be only one ‘she’.

She stood out from the crowd, she was free, she didn’t need a tropical paradise, not even a chocolate bar to be free. It could be seen by the way she walked and swung her head from side to side, looking at everything around her as if it were a rapturous surprise. It could be seen from the constant change of expression from wonder, to joy, to wry amusement and back to wonder. She looked like the most enthusiastic tourist, a visitor who cannot begin to come to terms with the splendour of the brave new world to which they have travelled. She was a remarkable tonic on a day where lethargy was the easy path. Just to see her was to find a glimpse of true freedom. A freedom attained without the acquisition of large amounts of money, a freedom that did not rely on distant travelling to gain exotic wisdom, a freedom that did not even require a close encounter with death just to make you aware of ‘what you have got’. The freedom was the realisation that the world could be looked at through new eyes each day. The freedom that comes from knowing that your destiny is your own to fashion, that life can be looked as series of possibilities, not just as a series of problems. The freedom to say I will make my own way, and will not be bound by the way others make for me.

I then begin to realise I am not, nor have I ever been, where I want to be. My crippling lethargy, my shallow breathing big lunch torpor, is not because it is a sultry summer afternoon, but because I am a servant of greed, a slave of the consumer society, so intent on keeping up with the Jones’s I have forgotten how to keep up with me. I know no longer what it is that I want, only what I am expected to want. I have no freedom; the freedom I have dreamt of previously was just another form of captivity. The trap of wanting to have ‘experiences’ instead of really experiencing life. A television advert version of paradise instead of the Garden of Eden that can be created from just appreciating that the world is a wonderful place.

My mind rebels and the anger grows inside me. I am angry at the world, angry at my parents, angry at my school that placed me on this ‘hamster wheel’, going nowhere but breaking my spirit and my body to get there. I am angry at the system that keeps me running on the hamster wheel. But most of all, deep down, the most vicious anger, the anger that turns my mouth dry and my cheeks hot, the anger that makes my stomach tighten, the anger that hates, the anger that subdues and subsumes reason; that anger is reserved for me. That anger is because I could not see the futility of the hamster wheel. I am wild with rage at myself for not seeing the truth that survival is not living. I am incandescent with fury that, I have allowed myself to become a tiny element ensuring the survival of the political economy. And, at that moment when my wrath is at its height, I realise I have it within me to become free. To be like she is, to finally get off the wheel.

Just as ‘she’ passes, " Make your way to Dunne and Keppler, they want these documents immediately" Alan, my immediate superior and controller of my daily life called out. Paradoxically he was giving me freedom with these words of command, because in response I vent the volcano, I explode with fury, and thirty five years of bowing and scraping, of obedience and subservience, of not being me and not living for myself, focus onto Alan. My fists begin the assault, and I see the mixed expression of fear and bewilderment on Alan’s face, it excites my fury to greater heights. Why doesn’t he know why I am doing this. How dare he not realise that the punishment I mete out is condign, what lack of conscience allows him to believe he can take his part in mutilating free souls without retribution to follow. He has taken his place stealing my liberty from me day by day, he should know he has to pay and accept his penance with gratitude. He has a place on his own hamster wheel, but he has complied with the rules, doing his own little bit to make sure I remain on mine, he must pay and be grateful his debt is cleared. From that righteous indignation I break out of the shackles that have bound me, I am a wild beast unleashed, and I take pleasure from my actions. Not from the pain I cause Alan you understand, but from the release I begin to feel. With every punch to his face, and kick to his body I feel shackles falling away. I am calling out “I am free” as I rain blows upon him. He has stopped trying to fight back, he has even stopped trying to defend himself, but on I go using my limbs as weapons of destruction. And as I slowly break Alan’s face and body, as his poor limp form dissolves into a bloody pulp, I feel the freedom. The rage subsides, all around me are shrieks and screams I suddenly feel the hands that have been trying to restrain me from my terrible intent. I stand up and I begin to laugh.

The Court said I had to be detained in a secure mental hospital, the Judge was almost apologetic for taking my freedom from me. He hadn’t of course I am now free more than I have ever been because I live inside my own head. ‘But the deceit’ you ask, ‘where was the deceit?’ She who triggered my escape, the happy soul who expressed true freedom, the cause of the joy I saw on her face, was winning a three week all expenses paid holiday to the Bahamas. So she wasn’t free, but I am, I am.
THE END

[birdandbear]

A wonderful story Birinair! Beautiful use of metaphore. I especially liked

A television freedom of paradise islands,

I think it needs a little editing for clarity though. Especially the second paragraph. Although it was beautifully written, it came across as a little incoherent to me. (The second paragraph, that is.) And maybe a little more fleshing out of the glimpse of the girl.

There is a little known movie called "The Legend of 1900" starring Tim Roth, that has a very similar scene. 1900 is a piano player who is born, lives, and dies on a ship, without ever setting foot on land. As he is cutting his first album, a girl walks by the window. The most beautiful girl he has ever seen - possesed of the same sense of possibility as your girl. He sees her out the window, and his music changes to reflet how he sees her. The camera follows her from one window to another, and then she is gone, only the final sweet chord of her haunting the air. And his life is changed forever by the sudden awareness of his own self-imposed imprisonment.
One of the most powerful scenes I have ever seen on film, and an altogether brilliant movie. I highly recommend it to anyone.

Anyway...your scene reminds me of that one, and I think if it were colored in a little more, it would be just as powerful. And I really liked your ending. Just for purely personal aesthetic purposes though, I would do it like this:

She who triggered my escape, the happy soul who expressed true freedom - the cause of the joy I saw on her face was winning a three week all expenses paid holiday to the Bahamas. So she wasn’t free, but I am.
I am.

For some reason, very short declarative sentences can sometimes pack more of an emotional wallop than the same words tacked onto another sentence.

Just MHO of course, no offense intended.