A sort of cleansing...

This bit reads more like an outline for a chapter...but may also refer to another chapter that is in more detail. Or might just be a slight memory during a point in the trial where Simon flashes back to it, for a moment...

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Those sketches and poems saved him from despair. Selling the pamphlets under a pseudonym made him feel wickedly dangerous. Willing to gamble with his new life. And that led to him doing art work for the cover of a fellow clerk's graphic novel. Which helped him regained his destiny and center. Thanks to this, he could face the world at large.

Then Demian had found him in the mall, seven years later, and thought he could start things up, again. Simon had refused to even acknowledge him, which angered the man. He'd grabbed at Simon in the store. Tried to force him to talk with him right then and there, but the only response he had received was a ballpoint pen jabbed into his cheek. 

Well...and a warning that the next one would go into his eye, if he was seen, again. 

Demian had been with two young men, both vaguely similar to Simon in look, and they had led him away, casting hateful glares back at him.

He’d even heard one say, “Was that the asshole you told us about?” 

“Yeah,” Demian had growled. 

“What a dick.” 

“He always was.” 

The poem and sketch Simon did that night were his most violent and cruel. Under the image of a finely built young man half lying off a bed in a pose of death, boldly colored markers making the blood streaming from a wound in his chest bright and terrifying. And under it he'd written... 

Blood is coming.

Hear it flow

Close and cruel.

Unstoppable.

As furies laugh

And beg me cry.

I cannot.

It was long ago.

No midnight shrouds it

In false love.

No careful step

To soften echoes.

No prayer nor dream

To stay its spread.

The pool of crimson

Will be met

By life of one

So filled with dread.

The silence

Deep with screams

Lies where it fell

And all one knows

Is three cold words

That softly echoes

In your head...

It is done.

 

He burned it for being far too intense. Even for his anger. But at least that’s when he knew he was on the road to recovery. 

Two years later, Demian was dying. AIDs. Probably spread it to those guys, because they were no longer around and nothing was said about them. They may have already been dead, for all Simon knew. 

Or cared. 

That was something else he had to acknowledge about himself. That he was no longer willing to compromise with anyone, or care, now he had control, again. He didn’t blame people for getting AIDs, but did think it was more through abject stupidity on their part than anything else. 

Which was a harsh, unforgiving attitude, and he now was rather ashamed of it. But once it was known about that disease...to keep going out and doing what you’d always done...which not only got men infected but also helped them spread it to others...that was unconscionable.

He’d heard from one caregiver, after Demian had grown ill, that he had brought a young man who looked like Simon home, and she’d found them in bed, the next morning. And when she told the guy Demian was positive, he’d shrugged and replied, “We’re all gonna get it.” Then left. 

That may have been why Simon made certain he was there to watch Demian die. To make certain he couldn’t spread the disease any further. He don’t know. He'd just known that when the day came that Demian was no longer of this world, he would feel relief.

And he had.