September 29, 3042

Ah, back to Glenzor. Spent this first day going through old correspondence.

It's good to get away from previous close company for a while. I need a chance to collect my thoughts without constant distraction. Slowly but surely, I find myself securing my affairs against what is seeming to become ever-more-inevitable a fall. I need this chance to stand back and look at things objectively. When I'm alone, it seems clear that I would be a damn fool to destroy myself as thoroughly as I seem to be so inclined. It's a very precarious balance I'm keeping now; the word, the gesture, and whatever happens after is all self-destruction, one way or the other. If I find I've misjudged, then there really will be no honorable recourse but complete annihilation. There are circumstances under which I am unwilling to live.

But the alternative hardly seems better. I can make all these arrangements and then choose to go on as I am now, but sometimes that seems as self-destructive and the other. I can't concentrate, I sleep poorly, I live day to day hating myself for being so weak on both counts; of morals, and of convictions. I hate what I am÷what I have been forced to face about myself÷but I can neither embrace it in vicious defiance of the world nor shun it in cold denial of my own feelings.

Sometimes÷tonight, sitting here alone in this giant house, with nothing to hear but the pen I write with as it scratches this paper÷I think it would be very easy to solve this whole dilemma. I have drugs enough in this lab, and a bottle of good brandy to hand. My lifestyle is eccentric enough that they probably wouldn't become overly worried about an absence of a day or two. It would be Callous or Danny who would find me, I suppose, if I leave this lab door closed; that would be cruel to them, although better them than strangers.

But I'd still have to explain; they are too close of friends not to press for a reason, and death wouldn't be sufficient to hide from their queries. Even that way, I couldn't avoid shame; so I guess that's no answer, either. "Have the courage of your convictions," my brother once told me, "or suffer and be still." I'll have to choose one way or the other soon; I feel the pressure growing, especially during these long, quiet interludes.

Two more days until we meet at the Flintlock Brotherhood. Perhaps I'll cloister myself here until I can safely venture out with an adventure in the offing, to take my mind off other matters.

September 30, 3042

Laurie sent a cigarette case; Nick a poison snake (well, we have to make allowances for personality, here!) as "thank you" gifts. Sigh. I hate being stifled by all this niceness. And I expected to send all this time trying to resubmerge myself into self-pitying depression and vicious iniquity....

October 1, 3042

Meeting, Silver Bell. Danny showed up and gave me a new sword÷black steel and rubies. It would look great over the fireplace; if only he'd let me leave it there....