The Wall
The scenery past by Vinnie as he sat in the limo. He was being driven to his next gig.
Earlier in the evening; his manager, a rat by the name of Mace, had apparently found him unconscious on the floor of his hotel room, thanks to a combination of, from what he could remember, 7 different types of drugs; some of which were still in his system when Mace turned up.
As the unconscious white mouse had lay there on the floor of the room, his mind had been busy. He'd experienced a troubled life: His mother, a beautiful woman by the name of Harley was lost in an unexplained accident; which meant his father, a, now, ruined mouse by the name of Throttle, went over-protective on his son as he tried to shield him from the harsher aspects of how the world worked.
His school years, however, shattered that illusion into a million tiny pieces, when he found out that: 1. Not everyone wanted to be his friend and 2. That the schoolmaster, despite Throttle's reassurances, was really a bitter, antagonistic bastard who caned most of the students if they did the slightest thing wrong. Vinnie was usually the one on the receiving end of these punishments as he was always trying to impress the vision of beauty who was sitting next to him: Her name was Carbine and she and Vinnie's chemistry was interesting at best.
However, each time that Vinnie succeeded, Schoolmaster Stoker always intercepted and gave Vinnie some, in his mind, undeserved lashes with the cane. Vinnie couldn't help it. He couldn't help that maths was the most boring subject ever devised ever, and that he thought he'd spend his time better by writing poems or imagining all the kids around him starting a riot which resulted in the school's total destruction.
Of course, this all only existed in his head. When Vinnie finally gathered the courage to ask Carbine out, he was met with almost flat out refusal due to his childish antics. After the jolting blow of this, Vincent resolved to actually TRY to understand this. His brain had just woken up and realized that he needed all the knowledge he could get if he was going to get through life, and quite possibly snag Carbine.
There was a major obstacle in his conquest to get in Carbine's panties though: His father, Throttle. After Harley past on, the tan mouse had gone majorly over-protective on his son, and wasn't ready to let him go. Vinnie enjoyed the attention to a point, but it was starting to get really old, really fast.
As the months went by, Vinnie slowly became more and more mature. He began listening in class, he presented himself well and got out of most of the habits that Carbine had rejected him for. The ego, though, he was still working on. Eventually, after persisting for ages, Carbine finally agreed to a date with the white furred hurricane. Their first date was nothing major: Just dinner and a movie; but Vinnie showed a grace and sophistication Carbine had never seen before.
To placate his father's fears of rushing their relationship, Vinnie and Carbine went on nearly a year's worth of dates; and each time, Vinnie tried his hardest not to screw it up. The last three months of their years worth of relationship had actually panned out the way Vinnie had planned, and so, he was stuck on cloud nine.
Then came the great shock to his father: Vinnie wanted to move out. With the promise of phone calls once a week, and to marry Carbine, Vincent was gone. With a rent agreement between the budding young pair, they almost immediately got started on turning their blank apartment into a proper home... after the long bout of sexual escapades that permeated for approximately three days.
Something started to change after they moved in together though; Vinnie had been slowly starting to close himself off; and build a mental wall which was separating himself from the outside world. For a long time, it was unnoticeable; but when Carbine looked back, she began to notice. The day came when they finally got married. Vinnie swore to multiple people that it was the happiest day of his life; but deep inside, he was secretly questioning the idea.
As the years went by, Vinnie was noticeably more angry; not over big things like the bills that were piling up, but more over, say, the fact that Carbine had broken a glass. While Vinnie was out at his work one day, Carbine snuck into their room... and spied a diary. Opening it, the diary revealed that not only was Vinnie becoming more angry, but also more psychopathic. Within the pages were pastiches of poems, snatches of anatomy books, and random scribblings that described Carbine's last breath as she sank toward the bottom of a lake. But why? She wondered as she continued to flip through the diary. Why is he thinking this? In fact, scribbled on the last page before the current date was a question: Why am I making her suffer?
Now she got it: he was distancing himself because he couldn't control the feelings he was going through. He didn't know what was causing them either, so he wouldn't have a way of explaining it to her, as he had no quantifiable explanation for them. After weighing up the significant pros and cons, particularly the facts he was becoming more violent with every day; Carbine made the heart-breaking decision to leave.
When Vincent came home that night, there was a long letter on the table, which explained his wife's reasons for no longer wishing to be with him. Vinnie was crushed. He urgently tried ringing her. He wanted to explain that the diary she'd found was the diary he'd used to write down random lyrics. It was his job. He was a songwriter and a performer in a band who specialised in heavy metal.
However, when her phone picked up; the voice on the other end was not Carbine's. Utterly shattered, Vinnie crashed to the flood and cried his eyes out. He couldn't believe it: his wife of nearly 5 years had left him. Consequently, with this out pouring of emotion came some of the darkest lyrics Vinnie had produced. The songs Vinnie penned ended up the highest selling songs of the band's history, and no-one could sing them like him. Every concert was unique in the fact that he always saw one groupie who looked a tiny bit like his former lover, whom he still pinned for every night in his cold bed.
During a concert on the Lysium Rise, with his blood shot red eyes and powder on his nose, he saw her: Carbine.... or at least that's what his mind thought. The groupie was really a girl, with barley legal looks, named Mercedes Crossfire, who'd been pursuing the sexy lead vocalist since he joined the band. Mercedes had followed the band closely since she was 10, but her obsession with the white furred lead singer had hit all new heights in recent months. She was now 23, and determined to get Vinnie in her pants. The Lysium concert was her chance. She had been thrilled when Vinnie had invited her backstage, and now, her mind was in overdrive about what was going to happen when she showed up to the motel room later that night.
When Vinnie opened the door of his room, he heard the voice; he didn't know what to think. The girl in front of her was a perfect clone of Carbine. She looked exactly the same. The voice had changed a bit, but that wasn't something the drug induced Vinnie had picked up on. By now, Vinnie's mental wall was close to completion; and as a result, he was spouting nonsense that was going completely over Mercedes' head. Mercedes' was wanting sex, but Vinnie wasn't giving her anything. She stroked over his chest, but he just kept staring at the wall; his mind racing at a mile a second. She began to suck his fingers, but as she began to undo her top; Vinnie finally snapped.
He launched himself out of the chair, and started breaking anything he could get his hands on. Carts for the room service, bottle, mirrors, tables and chairs; anything that was at hand. The culmination was the television going out the window as the white furred mouse cut his hands deep on the residual glass that remained in the windows; a vicious, animalistic growl resounding through the room.
Hours passed, and as Vinnie lay there on the floor of his ruined hotel room, his wall became complete. He was now a shell of his former self; cruel, arrogant and selfish. The right side of his face had a gigantic wound on it from where he crashed to the floor when he lost consciousness.
When Mace crashed through the door, he couldn't believe what he saw: his best star; unconscious, naked, blood smeared and with patches of fur missing.
With little time to spare; he ordered the physician to clean the wound on his cheek, then to place a flex plate mask over the wound. The flex plate was sanitary, but it was really a worst case fix. It would have been better to cancel the concert, but there was no way Mace was going to do that. He needed the money; Vinnie was costing him big time and Mace demanded a return for what his star was doing to him financially.
With the flex plate applied; the doctor gave the unconscious white mouse an injection; which caused Vinnie to come back to consciousness and scream his head off. His eyes were wide and bloodshot, his breaths were shallow and his pulse was obvious. He was clearly in no fit state to perform, but Mace ordered his staff to bundle the out-of-it mouse into the limousine that was waiting downstairs.
As Vinnie was being hauled to the limo, he drifted in and out of visions of his childhood. He remembered the time he bought home a Squirrel Bat home and how his father ordered him to let it go. Vinnie wouldn't listen, and instead kept it in the shed at the back of the property. The next day, Vinnie came down with a spectacular fever, which meant the white mouse was in bed for at least three days. When he was deemed fit enough to go outside; Vinnie immediately headed for the shed... only to find that the Squirrel Bat had passed on from starvation.
Deeply saddened by this development, Vinnie took a shovel, and buried the poor thing. However, it seemed as though the diseased look of the dead Squirrel Bat had consumed his body. He frantically began clawing at himself, seemingly tearing away the dead skin that covered him. By the time his visions stopped, he was in a pressed military uniform with two crossed hammers serving as the emblem. He sat there quietly in the backseat, the limo pulling into the destination.
His four Bodyguards surrounded him as he made towards the crowd. When he approached them, he started shaking hands with everyone he could reach, and giving young kits kisses as he headed for the stage. Once there, he sang out a speech, singling out the rats, Sand Raiders and anyone who looked out of place. His mind was completely given over to the corruption that was permeating him. His mind's eye saw scenes of mass destruction. A rat owned bar getting demolished, a Sand Raider community getting blown apart, and a rat/mouse couple getting torn apart; all under his orders. His followers asked no questions, but did what their leader asked. He grinned, but at the same time, he was horrified.
It all came to a head with a loud scream of "STOP!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!" He wearily looked around. He was in a grimy, heavily used bathroom; his back pressed against the wall. His calm, normal mind was again in control, due to a break through of self-consciousness. The white furred wreck quietly muttered lyrics to himself trying to keep his current mental state locked in the front of his mind; instead of his alter-egos. He took a deep breath, sealed himself off as best he could, then shut his eyes and let his mind take over.
When he gazed around, he was in a massive courtroom, which was surrounded by spotlights; which gave a very theatrical touch to the absurd scene. His back was against the wall as Schoolmaster Stoker took to the stand; claiming that he knew the white young mouse would eventually end up doing wrong later in his life, due to his inability to conform to the rules. Vinnie tried to plea his way out, claiming that the wall started due to his traumatic experiences as a child with losing his mother and being traumatised at school.
Next came his wife, who immediately got to the point, accusing Vinnie of neglecting her, plotting to kill her and being an asshole to her; which he actually took the blame for. He realised that if he hadn't been building his wall to shut out the rest of the world, he would have seen the gem he'd had right in front of him, instead of shutting her out; and would have asked if she wanted to be actively involved with his projects. His ears drooped as his wife left the stand.
Next was the most confusing: His father. His testimony made no sense to Vinnie. He accused his son of leaving home, which meant he'd lost the only link to anything he had remaining. Wasn't the over-protection of families the reason people moved out of home? So he wasn't such a burden to his father's financial status? Listening through his father's testimony, however, gave Vinnie a new sense of depth as to how much his father truly cared about him; but also, it made Vinnie realise that in a small way, his father was the one to blame for beginning his wall in the first place.
Again, Vinnie made another statement, after his father left the stand. Once more, he took the crazy option, a small part of his brain hoping that if he said it enough; the currently unseen judge would believe him. To a certain extent, his wall was behind this. The Wall had been a combination of factors all throughout his life, with the cement of pessimism binding the bricks of trial, suffering and pain together. Ultimately, it was Vinnie's choice to pull it down; but he didn't know whether he should.
Finally, after a slight pause; the Judge appeared: a colossal, 7 foot tall behemoth, with a metal right arm, and a patch over his left eye. It was as though the Judge encompassed everything about both Vinnie's light and dark sides. The Judge's massive voice boomed out; causing dust to fall from the top of the wall. Vinnie was scared; he curled into a ball to try to make himself as minimal as possible. The Judge leaned over the ball of white fur; his red eye seemingly x-raying him for every last flaw, no matter which side it existed on.
The Judge's verdict was unusual. He said the evidence was indicative enough for him to be able to completely over-ride the jury, and that he'd never seen such a crime that more deserved the full punishment. The torment and pain caused to Vinnie's father and wife were enough to make the Judge sick to his stomach, and in his wisdom tainted rage; the grey behemoth ordered the colossal wall be torn down.
As the wall came down; Vinnie opened his eyes. He didn't seem to be in the bathroom anymore; instead, he seemed to be in a gigantic, seemingly flat valley. What he didn't know was that, during the trial, he'd walked out of the bathroom and had stumbled into Mars' biggest minefield. It hadn't been mapped for mines, and hardly any of them had been cleared away. How the white mouse got as far as he did was anyone's guess. As the wall finally stopped tumbling; Vinnie took a wrong step; his foot connected with a mine and said mine exploded, with enough force to blow his legs completely off his body. With his final seconds of life going by, Vinnie thought to himself: "I hope I get a second chance..." He took his last breath; a loud rasping sound that would have choked anyone up. His eyes drifted shut, his chest fell, and his heart stopped.
All in all, we're all just bricks in the wall.