Day 137

I have tried appealing to your sense of charity.Your empathy. Your good will towards others.
This was foolishness on my part. Not because I think you lacking in such qualities - I do not think you a monster; I know you to be human.
As such, you are cautious. Suspicious. At times, down right fearful.
And you have much reason to be, for there are monsters in the world. Some very near.
So I implore you for your sake, where once I pleaded for mine: relent. Leave me be.
I am to be feared, not as I am, but as you threaten to make me.
You have only dealt in people, sir.
Monstrous though they may act, the act itself exhausts the men they are.
Monsters, however feel only relief. The effort for us, is quite the contrary.
Humanity is a weighted covering that pulls at my every fiber, and my only reward is that of being able to keep bearing its weight a little longer.
So allow me to keep my guise for a little longer still.
For since first I dawned it, these days have felt a peaceful dream, and should I be wakened from it, I fear we both should miss my sleep.
This is not a plea for mercy.
This is not a threat on your life.
It is a forecast of what will come, from further pressures made by you upon me.
A storm threatens to break, heed or flout: your fate is your own.

Day 136

A man sits before a grave, freshly dug.
He knows not of the body buried below.
He did know a woman though, filled with life.
She enjoyed dancing. She said it was the most impossible thing one could do, because it requires you to keep time and yet you lose track of it when you do it.
Deliriously paradoxical, she would describe it. Which was also a fitting description of her.
Deliriously paradoxical. This woman who loved going to bed, but loved to sleep in. Who loved to laugh, yet would consume tragic stories with earnest.
She would pour out love and praise as a faucet, yet couldn't stand to receive a single compliment.
A warrior without violent impulse.
An adventurer without mission.
A living saint.
This woman, the man had known in life. But she was gone now.
In her place: a stone slab, name etched upon the surface.
The last time she'd bid him farewell, he said he would think of her when soever he should dance.
She instructed him to dance more often, then.
A sweet sentiment at the time.
Now: he could not think of a world with music worth hearing.
Not with her unable to hear it . . .
Yet, with letter in hand, written by that woman, he is called upon to fulfill final set of tasks.
One such task is to enjoy himself while doing the others. Not to forget her - mind. That would be a rudeness, unbecoming of the man. He did smile at that bit.
No. Just look forward to a day when she is simply in another room, while he is in one too.
The paths diverge, but their having met can never be undone.
So journey onward. Envision a day when he should smile upon thinking of her and be not saddened so much by her absence.
The man eventually stands up, his instructions neatly folded and pocketed, before wiping the dirt from his pants.
He looks a last time upon the stone slab, then turns to leave.

Day 134

Atop the old tower, just below its mighty bell, our man stands upon a ledge.
He is short of breath, having run to this very spot. Chased from everywhere else he could possibly hide.
But they will find him here. In time.
Capture is inevitable and our man knows this.
He holds a locket close to his heart, and seeks the courage to commit one final act of defiance.
One move his would-be captors could not have seen.
A last will and testament, made out in self sacrifice.
But what guarantee was there, that the message would make its mark?
Should he toss himself to the bottom of this wishing well, would his life be enough to purchase one last wish . . .?
The bell begins to toll and his resolve is summoned.
Locket to lips, he whispers his last words before forcing the artifact into his mouth.
He nearly gags more than once, but the bell's ringing masks the grotesque noises.
He forces his body to accept this last meal, despite its many attempts to expel it.
The last bell rings. The precious cargo is stowed.
He steps out into the open air, and for half a breath has the strangest hope that he might have been able to fly this entire time. And somehow forgot until this very moment.
Impossible to tell how long this comfort stays with our man, before his inevitable-

Day 133

The smooth glass like surface of the lake is suddenly disturbed.
Dancing droplets fall and break upon the body's surface in a fantastic display of rings and ringlets, all growing and dissipating with every impact.
How much more beautiful is should all be if not for the massive shadow that lay dormant just beneath the surface.
A shadow whose slumber threatens to give way to waking with each gentle drop...
Sho should be to blame if one of the should wake it.
The rain cannot atone.
The watery cage was never designed to hold back a calamity.
Calamity, you see, is only ever a raindrop's width away from breaking free.
Yet in all these years, calamity has remained at rest.
Until you brought children out to play . . .

Day 132

We are all just stories, at the end of it all.

With books snapped shut behind casket covers.

This isn't metaphor. I have very little talent for metaphor.

There exists a growing library, began some time ago, in which the lives of every living person has been recorded in books.

Each book a person, each page a day in there life.

You live your life until the final page is filled out, at which point the bound cover is closed. With it, your mortality is realized.

One book, however, remains opened.
It has never closed in the history of the library, despite this book having had every page written and rewritten upon, numerous times.

Well, not every page.

Not the final page.

That page remains blank, as well as far and away from the libraries many shelves ...

It was taken by the book's owner. And she has been avoiding death for a very long time.

And she is not nearly tired enough yet, to give up on the chase.

Day 131

I worry about that voice in my head.
The one that says have we done enough, yet?I'm afraid of it.
Afraid it will never be satisfied.
Afraid it will always stay with me.
Afraid of what it's repetition truly reflects on my own soul.
More than anything I'm afraid that it will never say what else can we do?
When do we become a good person?
When do we become good?
When do we become?

Day 130

Not that the man had a breadth of experience when it came to homicide, but before this night he would have wagered his victim to be the most troublesome while still breathing.
Yet here he was, chasing a slippery corpse down several flights of stairs. Trying to catch the thing before a hapless bystander should be taken out at the knees.
Oddly, this was more exercise than the deceased had ever experienced in life - just one of the many reasons our man had turned murderer.
It was not done in abidance to a warped code of morality, nor some skewed perception of justice.
More an act of pragmatism.
The newly baptized killer had reasoned that the world has need for saints and villains, but the sloths and glutinous of the species are simply taking up space. Space that should be made available for valuable players in the game to come . . . or in the case of his corpulent victim, an abundance of spaces.