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You don't know me. I'm not important. I don't matter and I never will. In fact, nobody does. The world keeps spinning, families break apart and people die. What changes? Money, the stock market, global affairs. Each person imprinted on this earth has no more meaning than those around him, and in the end, the sweet song of death captivates us all, and puts us to sleep.
So where do I fit in? I don't. You might think this letter holds merit, and that some fledgling destiny was the thing which enticed you to pick this up. I blame coincidence. Mere shameless uncoordinated coincidence. Funny thing about coincidence. Something good happens and it's suddenly God's divine providence, yet when something bad happens, it’s karma nipping you in the backside. I don't think people believe in God. I think they believe in a scapegoat, in logical reasoning without a logical explanation. They're confused, but then again who isn't. Life is the question, and some crazy celestial being just happens to be the answer. Everyone prances around, hoping to make life. "It's beautiful!", they say, "A miracle!". Someone once told me "To create life is to condone death, nothing more." She was right.
You want to know how to live life to the fullest? It is contained simply in these words: make use of suffering. Make use of everything that bothers you, bugs you, makes you want to hurt those around you. I can tell you one thing. I made an impact, and who's to say that what I did was wrong. I didn't do anything wrong.
People look at me as a fiend, a demon. Those animals were taken in, corrupted, by the society which caged them; they are the true criminals. People die and nothing is done. People starve and the world moves on. And when someone does something terrible, something unspeakable, he can't be persecuted by the person they hurt most. They call it 'life.' I call it, 'the heavenly prison.' We are enraptured by this instilled sense of right and wrong. No moral skill is innate. It is all developed based on the creative process of some men with power. Yet, no one fights. I fought. But I digress...
Let me tell you a story. I grew up in a place where light was not welcome. Happiness was second to everything and the only satisfaction I ever got was killing the man who put me there. It was an airy room, and every day I could hear the suppressed screams of the souls that were trapped within. The voices never stopped, yet the doors never opened. I don't remember much of these days. I spent the nights with my hands folded, glaring up at the open moonlight that I knew was outside the acrid walls of my prison. It was free, and it spread that freedom to everyone but me, to everything that didn't deserve that chance, that one chance to make anyone pay for the burning loneliness that filled every bone in my body. The only thing that helped me through the day-night cycle I struggled to keep track of was the pounding voices from inside my head. I always tried to focus on one voice, just one. Each time though, the message was the same. "The Heavenly Prison"
So one day it happened. I awoke to the sound of the door unlocking, and for the first time I saw my captor. I saw the man who had thrown me into the abyss that had wrecked my sanity. I was weak, but the ardent fury inside me was strong. When I came to, there were people standing over me, and suddenly, new voices were heard. They were no longer the demonic ramblings of my enamored psyche, no...these were the voices of angels. They spoke to me in quiet tones, and the soothing quality to every voice kept me calm even under the most intense of pressure. From there I was questioned. They showed me photos of that man, the faceless dark angel that bode over my being. As I looked upon his lifeless body, the voices returned. They grew louder, and louder, screaming at points. I fell to the floor in agony and from then on everything is mostly a blur.
It's hard to remember the hospital names, the doctors, the wards. There is one thing I do remember though; the one word that everyone I came into contact with seemed to make use of. "Crazy." They told me the voices weren't real; that everything I had heard was made up by my own conscience. How could they tell me that, when the only thing that brought me to life in childhood were those voices. Had the doctors told me to kill? Had they told me to make him miserable? Had they told me that sooner or later everyone who grew, while I stayed the same insignificant mutt, would be punished?! No! They said I wasn't being reasonable. Reasonable is a term used to describe what someone who owns a lab-coat deems logical. If they had sat in that hell, in that abysmal hell, they would know. They would know the joy that I felt when his blood was trickling slowly down my hand. When the moonlight first hit my eyes after ten years of unbearable solitary. But they didn't. No one knew; no one believed me.
Those voices were reality. They were the only tangible thing that was offered by any lackluster form of a God. When people weren't there for me, they were. Everyone has his own little conditional sense of rationality. I know mine. I understand mine, and I get that it makes me strange. But I don't have to answer to 'them' anymore. I don't have to answer to any Albert Einstein who makes his way into my space. I answer to me, and to anyone else who creeps into my thoughts.
Then, they took the voices away. Day after day, pills were given to me in an attempt to control what they saw as my inhibitor. Every day, the rooms grew darker and darker as my friends left me. I was alone by the end of the fourth week, and with no visitors to sooth my nerves, I became irrational. I began to think about staying, about living my life in these enclosed walls. That was until I met her.
I saw the train wreck the pills had made me. I saw what they had done to me, and I began to wise up. Every day I would cheek the pills and spit them out; I didn't think the doctors noticed. Then I began to get visits from her. She was the beautiful angel who bore my sadness and cleaned my wounds. She was my guardian angel who had once deserted me; now she longed to be forgiven. Her eyes gleamed of hope, yet her voice was depressing to the touch. Her beautiful white dress seemed to compliment the estranged black depth of her eyes, and nothing could have been more serene. Every night, I would sit in bed, and she would appear. We would talk for hours about the meaning of life. Her ideals were sentimental, yet realistic. She used to ask the same question over and over. "If I die today, what would change? What would happen in the world?". I could never come up with a response. It seemed so naturalistic to determine that the world would be different, but it was as if I would be the only one affected. In the grand scheme of things, I would be the only one who was left in unbearable sadness. The world would continue, and that's the way she saw things as well.
One day she said, "Let me explain something. People are ignorant. They choose to believe in God because they think God believes in them. They choose to become a part of society, to bask in the glory of what is known as 'the real world'. People do not understand significance. They don't understand that no one holds meaning except to the people around them. They have no meaning to any heavenly being, and no meaning to men who do not trifle in their affairs. But the opposite is the view of 'society'. Everything and everyone is influenced by the society which is projected by a figure of whom no one ever catches sight. In the end, will it matter that you followed the blatant morals of a corrupt society? No. Everyone dies in the end. Everyone breaks down, and nothing is eternal. To create life is to condone death, nothing more."
As she left, I sat in thought. This wonderful woman had explained the meaning of life, in no more than a few words. "To create life is to condone death...". This phrase sank into me like quicksand, and soon it became my philosophy. God wasn't important, nor did he exist. These people who thrived whilst I was enclosed, they did not matter to me. Life did not have any purpose rather than to create suffering, and that suffering was the only thing I could hold onto. I used the suffering to my advantage.
I dreaded the day, and spent most of it waiting for the night, so that the moonlight could shine as I spent another endless night with her. We talked more of purpose, often ending on the same conclusion. We talked of the sense of right and wrong, of challenge and virtue. These topics whirled my memory and kept my brain process intact. So much I learned from her.
One day, I awoke to my door being pushed in, and white suits restraining me to my bed. According to what I have since overheard, they had found out that I stopped taking my pills. I fought, struggled if you will to keep my mouth shut, but they were too strong. That night I told the woman of my predicament, yet she was unresponsive. The only utterance from her came at random, "The Heavenly Prison". At first, it started out quiet, then began to grow louder and louder, to an almost unbearable scream. I did not sleep well. When I awoke the next day, I took my pills again, after being forced and continued on with my day. That night, she did not visit, nor the night after. They took her away from me. They stole her.
It has been three days since I have seen her. I don't know what they did with her, but she is gone.
Today, I requested a consult with my psychiatrist. I knew what had to be done. Upon entering his office, I asked about my visitor, wondering when she would be back. He simply replied, "She's not coming back, I'm sorry." These words, these undeniable crimes against humanity! They wrecked my being, and in a flash of red I threw myself upon him. I clenched my hands around his throat and yelled as the life slowly faded from him.
He deserved it. He and every other man who had what I did not. A companion! A friend! I was not allowed the happiness of other men. I was not allowed the joy to feel normal. And by that same standard, he was not allowed the life that was bestowed upon him. Simple coincidence had set our circumstances, and now that same coincidence had doomed him to that restless song, that final tone that freezes the heart and stops the lungs, the song of death.
Now I shall hear that same song. As his body lies next to me, I sit in nothing but glory. He was meaningless, yet I am meaningless and nothing could ever change that. The world will continue as I close this letter, but my quivering hands tell me I changed something. Not necessarily something important, but something that will never leave me. The moonlight will never torture me again, and when I close my eyes it will cease to shine through.
Goodbye Beautiful.
- Title: To Whom it may concern.
- Artist: Ravec
- Description: An epistolary short story based around the tattered thoughts of a psychotic man.
- Date: 12/28/2009
- Tags: short story action psychology exciting
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Comments (2 Comments)
- Little Milkflower - 02/06/2010
- I still love it.
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- Little Milkflower - 12/31/2009
- This was amazing! Wow. I could see it in exact detail! Wow. Oh my gosh. Wow. You are amazing. Keep writing! Wow.
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