|
Dave
|
 |
« on: July 15, 2016, 10:44:39 pm » |
|
See the men.
He sees their faces hanging like paintings on a wall. In his mind, they shift and move. The clarity changes. In moments, in days, in months, in years. They change shape, they blur, they shift. He looks on each lovingly, their smiles or their frowns, their heartaches and tribulations every bit his own.
There is the first. A magician with a deranged smile. Hair as black as his soul. A stern resolve in his eyes. A warrior. A hero. The bastion of humanity, and the wielder of its rage. The desire to be a force of good despite the hate he wields in his heart. He teeters on the edge of a cliff, looking ever over the edge into the abyss, daring himself not to leap, but he does. The author smiles.
There is the second. His face an ever-shifting mask. His desire for change so deeply ingrained, he craves nothing more than to not be who he is. The mask stares into a mirror, and a beast stares back. The world sees the mask, his vain attempt to hide what lay beneath. What lay inside. More than anything he wants to be like them, like the others, like all the normal, but every time he looks in the mirror he’s reminded of the monster he really is. The author hangs his head and looks away.
The next come in a pair. Young men refusing to take life seriously. One filled with a rage bubbling beneath the surface, the other apathetic to the world around his. To them, the universe is a joke, sometimes cruel, sometimes fun, but never serious. The author knows if they were real, he’d hate them. But he knows they’re as much a part of him as the others.
Another steps forward from a life hidden, roaring into a bright spotlight, but blacks out into darkness before any dream realised. He, too, is full of anger, and his brooding companion, the loyal brute, barely hides his desire to hurt. In his head, this small one wants nothing but to be a bigger man. Nobody ever told him he wasn’t actually small. The author hates him. He hates his fake bravado and arrogances, knowing it is ill-deserved. He turns away.
Then there is a pair. They are the intrusive thoughts. The author looks at them and sees his broken mind. Creatures of shadow with desires to feast on human flesh, to indiscriminately hurt, maim and kill everyone else in the world. A rage, or apathy, he can no longer tell which. The demons, horrors burned into a mind desensitised by the violence of the world. His darkest thoughts.
Finally, at the end there is a face filled with light. Honourable. Loyal. Prideful. Like the first in so many ways. But nostalgia holds no sway, this is too young. The author sees hopeless optimism. Reckless fearlessness. The stupidity of the naïve. A storm, pelting the world with a cockiness he could never possess. He doesn’t hate him. He feels sad for him. He’ll never become anything.
None of them will.
The faces on the wall stare at him like prisoners in some twisted cell. A mind that refuses to let them have their happiness, let alone its. The author stands before them all. Hating them. Loving them. The dichotomy of self.
He burns them all.
|
