The cracked class, stood before him, mocking him. The fault lines in the glass lined with blood, the epicenter looking as a pool of blood, a red spider web forming from the impact of his head to the glass.
He felt his forehead. Nothing. He sighed. He felt no loss of blood, no wounds on his head. His own immortality mocking him, keeping him from such a soft, sweet death.
Many times he had shot himself, stabbed himself, got ran over, was lit on fire. And many times they pronounced him dead, and then took it back, in awe.
but now he sits on the floor, his clothes blood-caked, but nothing on his skin. He was perfect. His only flaw.
Wednesday, September 24, 2008
Wednesday, September 17, 2008
Cowardice
It all began when he closed his eyes. The dreams, the folklore, the beauty. If only it was as real as the death that laid before him. For so long he had wished that the earth died, but now that it had come true he missed it all. For every tear he cried every night before he slept, he remembered a face, and with each face erupted a deep sense of fear and guilt and melancholy loomed over him, and another tear came out; this process continued until he found himself awake the next morning, the only memories still being faces, beautiful faces he onced loved or hated. But all the faces were human, and now they were dead.
He stopped himself from walking out of the building each time he tried, he did not want to see the death anymore, and the radiation poisoning would be bad enough, without disturbing himself with pictures of his friends charred on the floor. What a coward, he thought. Why was I such a coward? He shuddered at the realization that he killed them. All of them. Dear god, if I could turn back time.
He sat on the floor. He passed his time by drawing, or writing. Mostly letters, as if he was able to send a letter to anyone outside of this damned gymnasium.
Maybe they were to the people who couldn’t stay like he could. After the first day, most of them left, most likely now puss-filled bags crying for help a mile away, slowly dying of twenty cancers and fifty infections from the grotesquely slow death of radiation. The second wave, the last of them left after the second day.
Had it only been three days? It seemed like a year, at least. He shuddered, then cried, knowing that seventy two hours ago, those that he loved were alive before all of this.
Although none of the people that were in the gymnasium before now were people he loved.
But he had to leave, even though he focused on his pain, hunger still gnawed at him, like his ferret used to relentlessly attack his palm, unsuccessfully, and toppling over. He laughed. Memories. Good memories.
He had to leave. He stopped himself. He had to leave. He cracked the door open, the wind was blowing towards him, scaring him, and he closed the door.
He unsuccessfully tried to calculate the flow of the fallout, and realized that the wind was pushing it all away from that direction, and depending on the wind before then, he could be safe by now. But even then, he didn’t want to risk it. But he had to. He pulled out his sweatshirt and tied the bottom of his pants to his ankles. Twisting the hood until it gave him only one eyehole, he ventured forth.
The side of the school he exited wasn’t too badly hurt, some radiation poisoning had made some plants grow ill-proportionately, while others were strangled by their own uncontrolled cell growth.
He tried going in that same direction. But he had to look. He had to.
He stood above his friends, one of which was still gripping the door. The black skeletal hand still held the bar, while the body was dust.
He looked down, more friends, he looked at the football field. The grass that survived the heat had turned a bizarre blue-ish color, in their disease, the bleachers toppled over, their metal no more uniform than a three year old’s scribble, now black and some melted off, and even more pieces were jarred into the walls behind him, or impaling some of the students. The home side showed a bit of the extended crater, the very tip of a very large sphere cut out the far off edge.
He realized that the open space to the left had once been a building. With people inside. He had delved so much in the fantasy of it all, he forgot the truth, and desensitized himself. He wasn’t sad for his friends, or mourned the deceased. He was in awe of the sheer force of what killed his friends.
The building vacuum ended in what used to be the perfect sphere ending the bleachers did, but parts falling and toppling over had distorted into some bizarre tetris shape.
He sat amongst his friends for the last time. He had no will to live. So he sat, and he died.
and finally the guilt of the game he thought he was playing with his friends, that grim game that killed them, died with him.
He was holding the door against them as a joke, but the blast followed. What if he had opened it for them? letting them in?
At least he would have died with them.
So now, finally he fulfilled that.
He stopped himself from walking out of the building each time he tried, he did not want to see the death anymore, and the radiation poisoning would be bad enough, without disturbing himself with pictures of his friends charred on the floor. What a coward, he thought. Why was I such a coward? He shuddered at the realization that he killed them. All of them. Dear god, if I could turn back time.
He sat on the floor. He passed his time by drawing, or writing. Mostly letters, as if he was able to send a letter to anyone outside of this damned gymnasium.
Maybe they were to the people who couldn’t stay like he could. After the first day, most of them left, most likely now puss-filled bags crying for help a mile away, slowly dying of twenty cancers and fifty infections from the grotesquely slow death of radiation. The second wave, the last of them left after the second day.
Had it only been three days? It seemed like a year, at least. He shuddered, then cried, knowing that seventy two hours ago, those that he loved were alive before all of this.
Although none of the people that were in the gymnasium before now were people he loved.
But he had to leave, even though he focused on his pain, hunger still gnawed at him, like his ferret used to relentlessly attack his palm, unsuccessfully, and toppling over. He laughed. Memories. Good memories.
He had to leave. He stopped himself. He had to leave. He cracked the door open, the wind was blowing towards him, scaring him, and he closed the door.
He unsuccessfully tried to calculate the flow of the fallout, and realized that the wind was pushing it all away from that direction, and depending on the wind before then, he could be safe by now. But even then, he didn’t want to risk it. But he had to. He pulled out his sweatshirt and tied the bottom of his pants to his ankles. Twisting the hood until it gave him only one eyehole, he ventured forth.
The side of the school he exited wasn’t too badly hurt, some radiation poisoning had made some plants grow ill-proportionately, while others were strangled by their own uncontrolled cell growth.
He tried going in that same direction. But he had to look. He had to.
He stood above his friends, one of which was still gripping the door. The black skeletal hand still held the bar, while the body was dust.
He looked down, more friends, he looked at the football field. The grass that survived the heat had turned a bizarre blue-ish color, in their disease, the bleachers toppled over, their metal no more uniform than a three year old’s scribble, now black and some melted off, and even more pieces were jarred into the walls behind him, or impaling some of the students. The home side showed a bit of the extended crater, the very tip of a very large sphere cut out the far off edge.
He realized that the open space to the left had once been a building. With people inside. He had delved so much in the fantasy of it all, he forgot the truth, and desensitized himself. He wasn’t sad for his friends, or mourned the deceased. He was in awe of the sheer force of what killed his friends.
The building vacuum ended in what used to be the perfect sphere ending the bleachers did, but parts falling and toppling over had distorted into some bizarre tetris shape.
He sat amongst his friends for the last time. He had no will to live. So he sat, and he died.
and finally the guilt of the game he thought he was playing with his friends, that grim game that killed them, died with him.
He was holding the door against them as a joke, but the blast followed. What if he had opened it for them? letting them in?
At least he would have died with them.
So now, finally he fulfilled that.
End of his world
His head shrunk, or felt like it, since the world around him seemed to grow, surprisingly even his body, most notably his hands; in this shrinking his head tilted towards the ground and he stared at his feet, every single scratch and dent in his boots seemed to scream to him and laugh at his face, every pore on the concrete floor below and the rocks protruding from such illuminated in an orangish-yellow glow against the streetlight and the cold darkness of the nighttime. He liked feeling small, just the ability to be different even in that aspect, or maybe it was just being alone altogether, empowered him in some sick and twisted way; only politicians and whores really need people to love them, after all.
His bizarre jacket matched the color of the sky, and his pants were merely a faded version of such, gracing his skin all around, hugging him close to make him feel wanted, his boots barely loose, but the buckle holding it tight against his feet; the music playing in his head was nice and soft, sad, dark, and everything that enabled him to be him. It was so loud, in fact, that he almost didn’t notice she was trying to get his attention. He fumbled to get the music from his head and struck his composure. “Sorry, what were you saying?” he asked meekly, embarrassed at his show of humanity. “I was saying are you going to join the party?” she asked.
If only it were that easy to join the party, he said in his mind. To join the party meant to seal his life into this strange and bizarre lifestyle to him. Booze surrounded him, so did the whores and those who preyed on other people; although truthfully, he so admitted, I do like some of these people, not all of them are like that.
But he was there for her. Completely, wholly, her.
“Yeah, I was just, uhm,” idiot, he thought, think of something, anything, now “feeling left out, you know, since im the new kid everyone has someone to hang out but me…” he paused, should he ask her? Should he? SHOULD HE?!
Too late.
“Oh, you’ll find some people, look there’s Ashley, and Jonathon, and all them, come hang out with us.” She smiled. Oh, to view such a grace was like walking on the beach during sunset again. Such beauty for such a little while, and maybe you could catch the wondrous green flash if you were so lucky to, but as long as she kept smiling, the green flash never came to seal away the beauty. But she stopped, well not so much that she stopped smiling, but she stopped smiling at him, and it became the general happiness smile; while nothing wrong with that, as it still held its composure and wonder, just he could not see how perfect her dimples lined across her face and her face lost some color at some points, and gained at others, and her face becoming his nirvana.
Wait, she said “us”. Finally he got to hang out with her, but in such terms it didn’t really mean anything. She normally talked with Jonathon, or Andrew; since they knew her better they had more to connect. He wished he was there. But it seemed like she wouldn’t let him in there. Why not?
If he persisted in such tomfoolery of thought, his mind would be caught up in that instead of thinking of something to talk about. But his mind continued to wander all night long, and all she did was talk with her friends. He became part of an entourage, but none of the cool people running the show, just one of the losers in the background laughing at the jokes and throwing their two cents in that nobody willed to pick up.
What a waste of a night. What a for shame waste. Everyone went one way, to their after parties. Whatever. He parked close and decided to leave. She had obligations that she had to leave then as well. His mind tensed. What do I do what do I do what do I do what do I do what do I do. Not that he really thought it like that, but it was as if it was one giant what do I do just drawn out that long, and yet he knew what it was going to say so he continually reprocessed that information becoming a strange chorus of the words what, do, and i.
And while he stood their fumbling with his keys trying to finish up the process, she said his name. It sounded so beautiful. He realized she never really said his name that much, merely sticking to easier third person. “Did you have fun?” she asked. “Kind of?” he replied, unsure of what to say about this droll disappointment of a group therapy session of preps and stuck up jerks; which is unfair to say, he thought again, why do I have such a problem with people of higher social status?
She laughed, “Sorry you were kind of in the back of the crowd there. I guess you were left out.” She kept getting closer, her car was on the other side of his, he concluded. “Just a little. But don’t worry, I’m fine. Did you have fun?”
“Kind of.” She giggled. He smiled, satire was something he enjoyed on occasion. “Well I’m glad you had fun. So I’ll see you Monday?” He replied, the words flowing through his mouth, casualities were easy for him come time. “Yup.”
The lamp posts surrounding them illuminated the ground in a pale yellow orange, the street lines turning from white to grey somehow in the mix of colors, trees surrounded them, and there was nice green grass a rarity in the middle of a desert such as this; which reminded him of the heat, and how sweaty he was underneath the jacket, and how surprised he had been to discover how hot it could be at night during this. And finally the second was over and his peripheral vision stopped focusing on everything else but her. She looked beautiful somehow in the disgustingly colored light poured out by the fixtures which were to the left of her soft face. All he wanted to do was reach out and hold her, but she extended her arm out first. What’s this, a hug?
A rush of emotions came upon him, but first and foremost, with his composure intact he held her for the second longest second of his life. “Byye” he said, with a slight smile.
She turned her head as she walked away, and gracefully squinted her eyes just barely, just barely enough that it was almost as if she didn’t, but he knew she had, her eyes had a different illuminating glow to them that intoxicated him, then her lips curled into the ever so slightest smile, almost as unnoticeable as her eyes, except for the fact that it was intentional and anyone could have told that she was smiling, yet it seemed almost like an accident on her part, somehow; stopping his attempt to figure out the phenomenon, he was able to hear her beautiful velvet voice stream out the same farewell he gave, yet sounding more sophisticated and beautiful and somehow just the most wonderful thing he had heard in his life then. So much so, in fact, that after she got in her car and drove away, he still stood there, and realized that he would seem stupid when her headlights hit him, as she was about to turn that way, he quickly moved to the other side and got in. She drove home and he drove to his house as well.
Only neither made it to their house that night. Going the same direction initially, he saw her car in front of him and became focused on that, until a truck driven by a drunk driver sped out in front of her and she crashed into his side, the brake lights the most devastating red he had ever seen. Blinded by fury and pain and all sorts of emotions he did not know how to handle he too attempted to stop, but crashed into it all himself. She died that night. He lived on for twelve hours as a vegetable until they found a napkin he wrote on with his blood lying next to him saying “pull the plug-” his initial strewn underneath. Having to oblige by his demands they pulled the plug and he died accordingly in the next hour. For a slit second he felt humanity again, a flash of all the beauty and just things in the world he had seen. Which, for the most part had been her. Beautiful her. As he gasped for breaths, he realized he was dead, and lifted from his body. He walked around the hospital, not to find his love. She had left without him. She had to have known it was him. She had to have known she killed him. And yet she left anyway. Dear god, is this what I gave my life for, he thought.
That was the third longest second of his life, and the fourth longest second of his life would be the eternity he would spend wandering the earth seeing all he didn’t see when he was alive. He finally got to see the world burn in its hatred, despair, and pain. He saw it be reborn in fire. He saw the next generation of man suffer worse than before, burn, and resurrect. He saw Armageddon so many times it broke his heart even in his invincible spirit form; and with each end of the world, it gave birth to a new, more drone like mankind. Until finally they were ants to a dictatorship, and finally his spirit died then. Once humanity had died, his only weakness, there was nothing left to live for.
-Edward
His bizarre jacket matched the color of the sky, and his pants were merely a faded version of such, gracing his skin all around, hugging him close to make him feel wanted, his boots barely loose, but the buckle holding it tight against his feet; the music playing in his head was nice and soft, sad, dark, and everything that enabled him to be him. It was so loud, in fact, that he almost didn’t notice she was trying to get his attention. He fumbled to get the music from his head and struck his composure. “Sorry, what were you saying?” he asked meekly, embarrassed at his show of humanity. “I was saying are you going to join the party?” she asked.
If only it were that easy to join the party, he said in his mind. To join the party meant to seal his life into this strange and bizarre lifestyle to him. Booze surrounded him, so did the whores and those who preyed on other people; although truthfully, he so admitted, I do like some of these people, not all of them are like that.
But he was there for her. Completely, wholly, her.
“Yeah, I was just, uhm,” idiot, he thought, think of something, anything, now “feeling left out, you know, since im the new kid everyone has someone to hang out but me…” he paused, should he ask her? Should he? SHOULD HE?!
Too late.
“Oh, you’ll find some people, look there’s Ashley, and Jonathon, and all them, come hang out with us.” She smiled. Oh, to view such a grace was like walking on the beach during sunset again. Such beauty for such a little while, and maybe you could catch the wondrous green flash if you were so lucky to, but as long as she kept smiling, the green flash never came to seal away the beauty. But she stopped, well not so much that she stopped smiling, but she stopped smiling at him, and it became the general happiness smile; while nothing wrong with that, as it still held its composure and wonder, just he could not see how perfect her dimples lined across her face and her face lost some color at some points, and gained at others, and her face becoming his nirvana.
Wait, she said “us”. Finally he got to hang out with her, but in such terms it didn’t really mean anything. She normally talked with Jonathon, or Andrew; since they knew her better they had more to connect. He wished he was there. But it seemed like she wouldn’t let him in there. Why not?
If he persisted in such tomfoolery of thought, his mind would be caught up in that instead of thinking of something to talk about. But his mind continued to wander all night long, and all she did was talk with her friends. He became part of an entourage, but none of the cool people running the show, just one of the losers in the background laughing at the jokes and throwing their two cents in that nobody willed to pick up.
What a waste of a night. What a for shame waste. Everyone went one way, to their after parties. Whatever. He parked close and decided to leave. She had obligations that she had to leave then as well. His mind tensed. What do I do what do I do what do I do what do I do what do I do. Not that he really thought it like that, but it was as if it was one giant what do I do just drawn out that long, and yet he knew what it was going to say so he continually reprocessed that information becoming a strange chorus of the words what, do, and i.
And while he stood their fumbling with his keys trying to finish up the process, she said his name. It sounded so beautiful. He realized she never really said his name that much, merely sticking to easier third person. “Did you have fun?” she asked. “Kind of?” he replied, unsure of what to say about this droll disappointment of a group therapy session of preps and stuck up jerks; which is unfair to say, he thought again, why do I have such a problem with people of higher social status?
She laughed, “Sorry you were kind of in the back of the crowd there. I guess you were left out.” She kept getting closer, her car was on the other side of his, he concluded. “Just a little. But don’t worry, I’m fine. Did you have fun?”
“Kind of.” She giggled. He smiled, satire was something he enjoyed on occasion. “Well I’m glad you had fun. So I’ll see you Monday?” He replied, the words flowing through his mouth, casualities were easy for him come time. “Yup.”
The lamp posts surrounding them illuminated the ground in a pale yellow orange, the street lines turning from white to grey somehow in the mix of colors, trees surrounded them, and there was nice green grass a rarity in the middle of a desert such as this; which reminded him of the heat, and how sweaty he was underneath the jacket, and how surprised he had been to discover how hot it could be at night during this. And finally the second was over and his peripheral vision stopped focusing on everything else but her. She looked beautiful somehow in the disgustingly colored light poured out by the fixtures which were to the left of her soft face. All he wanted to do was reach out and hold her, but she extended her arm out first. What’s this, a hug?
A rush of emotions came upon him, but first and foremost, with his composure intact he held her for the second longest second of his life. “Byye” he said, with a slight smile.
She turned her head as she walked away, and gracefully squinted her eyes just barely, just barely enough that it was almost as if she didn’t, but he knew she had, her eyes had a different illuminating glow to them that intoxicated him, then her lips curled into the ever so slightest smile, almost as unnoticeable as her eyes, except for the fact that it was intentional and anyone could have told that she was smiling, yet it seemed almost like an accident on her part, somehow; stopping his attempt to figure out the phenomenon, he was able to hear her beautiful velvet voice stream out the same farewell he gave, yet sounding more sophisticated and beautiful and somehow just the most wonderful thing he had heard in his life then. So much so, in fact, that after she got in her car and drove away, he still stood there, and realized that he would seem stupid when her headlights hit him, as she was about to turn that way, he quickly moved to the other side and got in. She drove home and he drove to his house as well.
Only neither made it to their house that night. Going the same direction initially, he saw her car in front of him and became focused on that, until a truck driven by a drunk driver sped out in front of her and she crashed into his side, the brake lights the most devastating red he had ever seen. Blinded by fury and pain and all sorts of emotions he did not know how to handle he too attempted to stop, but crashed into it all himself. She died that night. He lived on for twelve hours as a vegetable until they found a napkin he wrote on with his blood lying next to him saying “pull the plug-” his initial strewn underneath. Having to oblige by his demands they pulled the plug and he died accordingly in the next hour. For a slit second he felt humanity again, a flash of all the beauty and just things in the world he had seen. Which, for the most part had been her. Beautiful her. As he gasped for breaths, he realized he was dead, and lifted from his body. He walked around the hospital, not to find his love. She had left without him. She had to have known it was him. She had to have known she killed him. And yet she left anyway. Dear god, is this what I gave my life for, he thought.
That was the third longest second of his life, and the fourth longest second of his life would be the eternity he would spend wandering the earth seeing all he didn’t see when he was alive. He finally got to see the world burn in its hatred, despair, and pain. He saw it be reborn in fire. He saw the next generation of man suffer worse than before, burn, and resurrect. He saw Armageddon so many times it broke his heart even in his invincible spirit form; and with each end of the world, it gave birth to a new, more drone like mankind. Until finally they were ants to a dictatorship, and finally his spirit died then. Once humanity had died, his only weakness, there was nothing left to live for.
-Edward
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