The spectrum of neon lights gleamed over the everchanging expanse, while drunken ghostly figures past me, their faces briefly lit by the artificial madness, and then suddenly lost from my mind as they blended in with the unadorned masses. My pace picked up as I passed a block where there was a shooting a day ago, the flashing lights fusing into the background blazing aurora lighting up the surrounding air, and past the street preacher trying to rally people to their supposed redemption. The ‘cesspit of depravity’ is what my father called this city, I’d rather call it home. To the observer from the high-rise hotel widows, overlooking the boulevard, lights, casinos and the span of the uninhibited horde, the stampede of tourists sever stopped, the city was never silent. I weaved in and out of the masses, often against the flow of faces heading to their next station to spurge their ill-gotten gains, and sate their desire to lose themselves on the strip.

The backdoor was barely lit, with only the celadon fire escape casting a synthetic light brazing the handle, it being the only light that manufactured any sense of perception in the alleyway. Through the door, I descend into a world of hungry eyes and the boulevard’s bullion thrown at us and inserted onto us. I’m far too young to die, but tonight my ego would overthrow my conscious, or at least it would appear that way to the audience, effeminate hands reached out and grabbed my cloths, ripping off what little covered my body leaving only revealing patches of fabric leaving little to the imagination. Off to the back a group of bachelors obviously enjoying their last night of freedom from their boyfriend, spouse or husband to be. It was quite unheard off from where I came from but here it was commonplace, where love was free from the judgmental eyes who repulsed at the sight of men having affection to each other, their love to last forever, or until the divorce a couple months from now. All the eyes in the room drifted centre stage at me the coveting and thirst just about breaking their skin as it tore them apart, apart from reality, apart from the outside world and their boyfriends, husbands and spouses. The veneer of a masculine commodity removed me from myself, the fictitious setting and people and being I was there and then. The curtain went down, and I was thrown back to myself, and the fraudulent psyche I embraced was gone, left to disappear into the ersatz Vegas lights. My cynical mind kicked in, over a one hundred pulled in, in one evening just in tips alone, mostly from the bachelors, who’s intoxication seamed to get the better of them and their wallets, the insobriety of the woman in the room cause them to have a crack at asking me for a night of intimacy, as they slurred every 4th letter and forgot what their friends name, who they were with during the festival from social stigmas. Now the idea of kissing a woman didn’t repulse me, I had done a number times in the past, but it was just not my preference. I dressed myself according to the algid desert air, though the light illuminated the avenue, it did not warm the frigid desert, I fumbled open a pack sticking a smoke in my mouth and lighting it, the exhaust mixed in with my exasperation, the nicotine cascading through my lungs unhindered, exuviating the ego, and weighing it down, my conscious now finally in having authority over my intuition, with an inclination towards my mattress, had drawn me to the car lot, my muted steps inconversable by the concrete plateau, deserted of all human life, yet still full of motors, off all shapes and sizes, a metropolitan expression of the city, involving all variety of life.

I returned to suburbia, the reticent houses full of the life and body of the actual Las Vegas, the, suburban families, with their loving husbands and wives and children, somewhat like my childhood, though the place I grew up in was much small, a cramped Utah rural interwoven, all centred around the local Mormon chapel. Everyone listened to the bishop, but also knew the bishop’s business, even the whiff of a rumour that the bishop’s son was a ‘homosexual’, a blasphemous transgression against our lord and saviour must be stamped out. It worked for some time but when I was seen with another man, it was the last straw, for my father and the community. My family denounced me in an anathema, they were anathema to me. I remembered my past habitation, the ruckus that me and my brothers and sisters made, it was never silent. Bouncing on our trampoline, defying gravity with every bound we’d make, playing Pokémon cards, trading the holographics with each other and arguing over who had the shiny Charizard first, and running down to the creek, stripping down to our underwear and southing our skin from the blistering midsummers sun. I was truly carefree back then. Of course, when they found out who I actually was, my true being lay in the atmosphere burned by them, rescinded from their lives, especially from my father. I was a pariah, the black sheep in the flock, that followed the shepherd. It was all too much, I retreated to the metropolis, the only place they wouldn’t come for the fear that they’re faith would be extirpated.

I beheld the majesty of the Vegas life; the dishevelled crimpled blanket torn over one of the corners of my mattress. The half-closed blind limped down, closing the rooms window to the outside world and removing the exhausted and hollow face that reflected of the dark window. My footsteps echoed allegories of past single nights of ecstasy, then the walls echoed apathy resulting in deserted rationalisations that I was isolated from the outside world. My solitary conscience collapsed onto the bed exasperated at my psychosis, a fixation with the past. I couldn’t just move on, it was my roots, my nurturing and my growth, all the joyous childhood memories seemed like a fantasy compared to the loathing he had for me. My mom tried to convince him he was misguided, treating his own son abusively, but the patriarch had the last say. The blood ran down my mom’s nose, my father’s hand still bloody after she defended me. Her affectionate, and tender voice, tears in her eyes, told me I could stay, but it was too much I fled without even a goodbye. She was the only one who trusted me. I could always remember the taste of her cooking the, captivating and enticing aromas, resulting in a caramelized bliss to the taste buds. She would always put an extra one aside for me. The angel in her eyes reflected the person she was and continued to be.

She was the one person I genuinely loved, who disregarding of who I was, loved me and I cherished her.

My phone lay down on the place I rest my head, perhaps it fell out my pocket, I couldn’t think less of it, the nerves, built a citadel of anxiety, which only nicotine could collapse. With the suspension of the smoke dissipated at the ceiling, my hand steadied and press the numbers that etched themselves into the back of my imagination. The phone buzzed, the char in the end of my smoke glowed lethargically, the inverse of my pulse, eventually with the sudden realisation that this was it. The other phone answered. A gentle and sensitive tone reverberated throughout the room, “Brendon”.

The leaves rustled as my boots, caked in and stained by the dark murky cud that enveloped them. Suffocating and drowning in the trench like mud that the path shouldered, I carried on towards the envisioned escape from the insurgency in my mind's imagination. This was the only way out, the only certain control I had, in a corpse of reality my mind focused on that one phrase, the one curse that shock the very foundations of my conscience being. I can't escape. Repeated again and again, besieged by it, broken down by it, emaciated by it, killed by it. My dog scampered through the roots of a collapsed beech tree, its leaves wilted and rotting, returning into the dirt from whence it grew from. I contemplated each step as it brought me to my desired fate, to end being mindless, spineless and pretend. To burn the mask which had grown from my throat and hands, almost perfectly crafted, covering my face and my face. A facade over my brain, my thoughts, my beliefs. But the cracks began to show, after 4 years the play was going to end and my true self would be released.

The path twisted and turned like the river beside it, a constant sound reminding me that I was still alive. My mind reflected on what I would leave behind, a limp lifeless sack of blood and bones with no choice and no purpose, the existentialism filled my lungs and deflated out into the same questions. Why? What's the point? We are nothing more than quarks, leptons and bosons, interacting through the four fundamental forces of strong interaction, weak interaction, gravity and electromagnetism on the quantum level. Everyone is, everything is, I am no different to the air around me and the ground underneath me. What makes me special? What makes me different? What makes me significant? Nothing does. I'm insignificant. A broken mask covering a broken being.

My parents moulded me to be a follower of their beliefs, to follow their commands, according to their religious views. Fundamentally I didn't believe in a God, to me the idea was completely irrational and irrelevant. I pleaded with them with them that I didn't have the same beliefs as them, but it fell on death ears, being forced to sit every Sunday to the same old ignorant lies again and again. In their eyes I was already going to hell. Their misogynistic, trans-phobic, homophobic, sexist bull-crap would fall on dead ears. The mask that I had portrayed as my own was eating me from the inside, to keep up to their standards on the surface ended up with me dying on the inside. The almost daily mental breakdowns and anxiety attacks expanded the ominous void I felt inside . Falling into darkness, I isolated myself, and antisocial recluse, I held onto anything to slow my fall into the abyss of non-existence, the distractions numbed me from my thoughts to the brink of obsession to relinquish me from my dire fate. I pondered what I would leave behind, a legacy of mediocre.

I stopped, the dog started chasing in vain. A flash of a small fury mess bounded down the track, a natural reaction to its predator. It ran out of sight in the blink of an eye terrified of death. The path drew to an end, with a beech tree, large and elderly, decorated with rope, a length dangled in the breeze back and forth. I stood there in silence. An infestation in my mind's imagination took over, every fibre in my body screamed in fear , the image of my limp lifeless body swinging back and forth in a noose engulfed my mind. I turned and ran, my mind in shock relinquished control of my body, my legs drunk on fear moved on their own. My dog pranced along side, unaware of what I had come to do. My mind reflected on the rabbit, running away from its fears, as I had down, I felt a sense of pleasure at my own weakness, my inability to do anything finally worked for me. The saying that death inspires me like a dog inspires a rabbit came to mind. Filling me with some sense of a feeling. My heart pounded throughout my whole being, the air crystallising my breath, I slowed down to a walking pace my mind in entropy, made of fear and questions. What did I just do? Why did I run away? My body demanded only to survive, only to live, not questioning why but just doing. A conflict raged in my conscience, everything seeming to contradict its self. My whole body was shaking the fear still burnt deep inside. I returned home, defeated. My only escape, failed, killed, dead. Why? Why? Why? Why? Why? Oh tell me why I'm broken?

“Don't eat before the prayer Ryan”, mother exclaimed at me. I dropped the spoonful of mashed potatoes back onto my plate, as everyone bowed their heads and I stared blankly at my plate and waited for dad to finish the rambling prayer, while my stomach grumbled for mum's infamous mashed potatoes. “ (mumble) … and in the same of jesus christ, amen”. I wolfed down a mouthful of the potatoey goodness while my my two younger sisters bickered over some trivial issue. “ Ryan are you packed for the camp”, I sheepishly stuffed another mouthful while I looked at my dad in silence.“ Well son I packed you a bag so be ready to leave at 7” dad said adamantly. “Fine” I begrudgingly accepted. “I know you don't really get on with many of the other young men but Andrew will be going”. My growing sense of dread in the pit of my stomach subsided , “Okay” I said as I tried to hide the blushing redness, that crept up my cheeks. I sprang up and brought my plate into the kitchen, nearly dropping twice with my sweaty hands. “I know you two are good friends” he shouted to me in the kitchen, frankly still oblivious to my reaction. I turned on the tap, stuck in my earphones and put on blue neighbourhood while I methodically washed the plates while my parents chatted at the dining table. “You know they just passed the same-sex marriage bill today” my mother said intriguingly. “Really? They just keep shoving their agenda down our throats, marriage is between a man and a woman, just as the Lord intended. Just what has the world become?” I stacked the last plate on the drying rack and headed up to my room.

I laid on my bed, staring at my phone as the clock slowly counted up to 07:00, my mind wondered, why did I have to grow up in this family? Yes I got on with them but there was a sense of something left unsaid. That I just played along with everything out of a necessity to coexist. “Ryan lets go!” a dry and slightly aggravated voice ghosted up the stairs for obviously the seventh time. So I plodded down the stars and got in the car.

The car pulled to a stop as the trees cast a welcomed shadow over the scorched grass, a few yards a head the rest of the group, huddled together round the mangled remnants of a tent . I swung the door open and with my bag flailing behind me ran over to Andrew while a welcoming face smiled back at me. “Its great to see you Ryan”. “You too I responded then instantly regretted the specific tone I used and then racking my brain through a hundred different ways I could have said it, without knowing that I had completely blanked out and was staring at one of the leaders. Who awkwardly waved back at me with a deeply confused look on his face, who was probably thinking who is this child and why is he giving me a death stare. I cringed at those thoughts while we all headed over to the campfire.

The sun started to set over the jagged spires poking into the the few clouds that spotted the sky overhead, filled with a pinkish hue, as I tried my best to salvage the chard remains of a marshmallow I had purposely allowed to catch fire. The trees overhead contrasted the pastel sky as we talked, for hours and hours bathed in the warm glow of the fire. As its flames licked the star lit sky, people started to leave and head to bed until it was just me and Ryan left. The sparks drifted upwards through the pine branches that spotted my view my view of the sky overhead. I moved my back up the tree a little, as I was a little stiff and looked at his face, partially lit by the glow of the fire. He looked at me and we stared at each other for a couple of seconds, I bet even in that lighting he could tell I was blushing. He leading in and kissed me on the lips, my mind started racing at a hundred miles a beat, I leaned in a bit more. A blinding light shone at us. “ WHAT THE HELL IS GOING ON!”, dazed and confused I leaned back, trying to block what little light I could, that blinded me.” Are you too bloody fags”, the man blinding us bellowed while I in a baffled and confused state tried to get a grasp on what was going on. Then I felt a bulking hand grasp my shirt, and drag me away a few yards, the pin me against a tree. My shirt my tattered and legs emended with dirt and grazes, I struggled, a useless move against someone who had me helpless. “How could you do that, especially with your upbringing, its unthinkable”. I tried my best to produce a sound, when I caught a glimpse of his fist launching towards me , then I fell unconscious. 

A jolt woke me up, my head pounding as I looked out the window to seethe street lights passing by. I caught a glimpse of a sign as it whizzed by.”60 miles to SALT LAKE CITY”, almost home. I looked over to see dad at the steering wheel. “Allen told me what happened at the camp, son” , he calmly spoke, almost like he was speaking under his breath. “He said that you got into a fight because you were... kissing Andrew”. I failed to make a sound, my mind went into overdrive and shock at the same time. The sky was blacker than black, and the only source of light was the street lights that flashed by as a silence drew over the car. “Da...”. “How could you do that, after how me and your mother raised you! You know it wrong. God said, between a man and a woman. Not bloody Adam and Steve. How could you? How could...” he knocked my response out of the air. I could make out the disappointment in his face, silent and internal. “Dad it's part of me” my speech stumbled. “How come you always, state how loving the church and doctrine is, but yet it and you hate me, that I am immoral and evil, that what I am is from the devil himself apparently. Your disgusted by who I am because I don't believe the same things as you, that I'm gay, that I don't fit in your plans. That I don't fit into the community, that I'm in the way of you having the perfect Mormon family”.”SHUT IT”, I fell silent. “ I never said that I didn't love you” his voice took a calmer tone, “ I will always love you no matter what. If your gay. Or atheist. Or anything... I honestly care about you”.”but how can you earnestly believe” I questioned. “that doesn't matter, I will always care about you”.