A Fraudulent Life

Interred yet alive, in this interminable internment, deemed irredeemable by physicians, institutionalised for life, he chants away in his isolated cell, "It was all a lie, my beautiful fraud."

*

The essence of a child's innocence lies in its inability to lie, at least effectively, and the truth keeps everything simple. Alas, his childhood was lost in a barrage of reproaches attacking him seemingly from all directions and one day, the novelty that the human mind is, it started conceiving ways to silence the rebukes before they came. A master in optimisation and efficiency this evolutionary tool, it taught the child to lie.

*

The best lies go against Occam's razor - they are those that are so incredibly detailed, comprehensively thought out, and convincingly deceptive of every aspect of reality that they achieve the same unhinged effect in everyone's mind and thus building an alternate reality in the collective conscience. With age as the situations grew complex, so did the spells upon spells of deception guarding him that before anyone could catch wind of it, everyone in his life was swindled into believing that the scared, insecure, unsure, grovelling kid had given way to this confident young man - a most diligent employee, a most sage mentor, an anchor for the unmoored, a vision of hope for the disillusioned, a most dutiful son, and a most doting friend. However, sadly there came a time when these outward shields, turned inward and blinded his own self from his abject truth.

His evasion from his own self came to an abrupt halt, when he encountered a research being conducted by his friends. The mathematician had come up with a data model which given every bit of miscellaneous and inconsequential piece of information about your everyday life for the past seven years - what when where you eat drink watch think dream and do, could produce a comprehensive report of your personality traits, including those that may be hidden from yourself; while co-authoring the paper was the psychologist who conducted interviews of participants and revealed their reports, discussing every line of detail and gauging their reactions. Unwittingly as he sacrificed himself as a rat to their little experiment, the report dug out from the furthest and most forlorn corner of his mind, the same sad child he always had been. It was a good lie till it lasted. A good life, till it lasted.

*

As the lies unspooled, so did his mind unravel. Unable to come to terms with a self he himself thought long gone, coupled with the fact that it had been unveiled by a non sentient mathematical model, years of cocooning his fragile faculties were undone and any semblance of sanity disintegrated under the glare of truth. Afraid of being called out, he shunned himself from everyone. A day came when he decided to end this wretched existence once and for all, but it was only then the truly decimating blow struck - he realised he was too timid to even end it himself.

*

Eventually he was found and brought to medical care by his psychologist friend who wracked with guilt tried his best to piece back his broken self. One day in a moment of unprofessional despondency, he related his shame to him. There came a brief lucid moment, where the light in his eyes shone and he replied with a miserable smile, "it was all a lie, my beautiful fraud." It was the last gasp of a soul vaporizing into the void. His hollow shell rocks in the aftershocks.

"It was all a lie, my beautiful fraud."