Post by G.A. on Dec 10, 2020 21:06:54 GMT -5
I hurt myself today
To see if I still feel
I focus on the pain
The only thing that's real
To see if I still feel
I focus on the pain
The only thing that's real
Have you ever gotten the distinct impression that life is just happening to you? That’s how I felt for so long in the crowded darkness, my body banging up against the others of my cell as life jostles us around like popcorn kernels in a microwavable bag. In the cell, it’s hard to know whether it’s day or night, it’s as if time itself does not exist, only the ever-marching sameness that we have come to know since the day they entrapped us here and left us to die. I lay awake under the crush of bodies and created a sort of escapism for myself, a world where I was still free to live as a man and not whatever failed creation that I currently found myself to be. In this fantasy I can walk, run, talk. I can make friends, have a life of my own, maybe even fall in love.
Oh, but I was in love once so I know what it feels like, it’s important I tell you that. It was the sweetest kind of love of all: a forbidden love. We started out as rivals in our job, he was the tried and true favorite and the name on everyone's tongue then they brought me in to replace him. Back in those days, I had something to prove. I was born into silent misery and thus had developed a hard outer shell to shield myself from the horrors of the world. When they called me in to take over his job I didn’t even give it a second thought, never considered how he might have felt to be thrown out like yesterday's garbage after so many loyal years of service. Immature selfishness wrapped in a parcel of youthful exuberance and all tied up with a pretty green bow. God, if only I knew then what I know now.
The needle tears a hole
The old familiar sting
Try to kill it all away
But I remember everything
The old familiar sting
Try to kill it all away
But I remember everything
When the company first told me about the assignment it's true that I was ecstatic thinking maybe this would finally be my lucky break. That maybe for once life would cut me the biggest slice of the pie and that I might eat until I had my fill. Lady luck was finally going to smile in my direction and boy, was I going to give her a mouthful when she did. That was not meant to be, however. From the very moment I started people's reactions to me where not what I had expected. They were angry, hostile even, that I had come along and replaced my predecessor. The names they called me cut me more deeply than you can possibly ever begin to imagine. Disgusting, an abomination, trash. The vilest insults constantly hurled at me and for what? Because I was given the opportunity of a lifetime and took it? It wasn’t my fault what they did to my predecessor yet everyone looked to me and placed their blame at my feet and upon my shoulders. The burden was so heavy that I could hardly go on. And then one day, I met him.
My predecessor was just as burdened by our intertwined destinies as I was. For the first time, we spoke and then we kept speaking and then we fell in love. We knew that some close minded people would find the idea of the two of us together to be an abomination, that it was against some cardinal sin in their little book of burning bushes and miracles. How could something so innocent and so pure ever be a sin? He would reassure me that our love was not taboo as I spiraled into my own insecurities from the darting judgmental side eyed looks we got just from walking down the street together hand in hand.
What have I become
My sweetest friend?
Everyone I know
Goes away in the end
Fruits, they called us. Green with envy, he would shoot back. And we lived that way for a long time, him being the strength and me being the weakness until one day he couldn’t take it anymore and he left, just gone as if he had never walked into my life to begin with. I was devastated.
The years passed by and I threw myself into my work, doing my best to shut out the sounds of the critics the way that my love had taught me to for so long. They continued to ridicule me but it was okay because I was laughing all the way to a luxury penthouse apartment in the sky, all the while. Out of the blue one day I received a call from a man known publicly as L.A. Johnny Stylez but who I affectionately referred to as Johnny Appleseed. Mr. Appleseed told me they had a big pay-per-view coming up at his wrestling promotion Outlaw Pro Wrestling and that my lost lover had signed on for a match. A match against me. At first, I didn’t know what to think. I was confused, hurt, angry. All this time since he walked out of my life and now I get a call from a very strange man telling me that he wants to fight me in front of a crowd of people? What does this even mean?
I wear this crown of thorns
Upon my liar's chair
Full of broken thoughts
I cannot repair
Then it hit me: he felt the same way about me that everyone else does. He found me repulsive, distasteful and likely he wished he had never tasted me so deeply. My heart was absolutely shattered the next few weeks as I weighed the proposition of the match. Finally, I worked myself up into a good anger about the way that he and the world at large had treated me my entire life and resolved that yes, I would do Mr. Appleseed's show and yes, I would fight the only person who ever truly loved me for me. I’d never get the chance.
He died a few days later. No, not died, he was MURDERED by some unfeeling dimwitted monster. Scooped up into the jaws of death as if he had never existed at all, leaving me here all alone in a world that has never gave a damn whether or not I live or die. There would be no fight, no opportunity to let him know how much pain he had caused me with his betrayal. Likewise, there would be no reconciliation, no moment when our eyes finally met across the ring all these years later. Hope was just as dead as the love of my life.
Beneath the stains of time
The feelings disappear
You are someone else
I am still right here
The feelings disappear
You are someone else
I am still right here
By the time you read this letter I will be gone, just as you’ve always wanted. You’ll never again find me in the palm of your hand or be forced to deal with my overpowering flavor on your palate. I thought that Limey loved me, thought that he cared about me but now I know that is was just another exercise in pain much like the rest of my life has been. I never asked to be born, never asked for the hand that I was dealt, no, like all of you I was created by a higher power and thrust into my role in life without so much as a thought as to whether I wanted any of this at all. I’ve done my best and tried to find the silver lining of a bad situation but it was never enough for any of you. Do you think that I don’t see the way you talk about me on your precious little Twitter accounts? Oh, didn’t know I knew about those did you? All this time you thought you could just sit around behind the anonymity of your keyboards trashing me with no repercussions, calling on my employer to discard me the way that he discarded Lime so many years ago, making baseless acquisitions about my mother even. I hope that when you read this you are all pleased with what you’ve accomplished. You wanted me gone and so I will take my leave of this world but before I go I have only one question for those of you reading my letter: is it better to live a monster or to die a good man?
Regards,
Green Apple
Green Apple lays the pen as he takes a shuddering breath with both tiny hands placed flat upon the cherry wood top of the desk. His eyes wander briefly to the newspaper beside the note settling on the picture of Limey that was used for his obituary. He was glad they had used that picture of him as it was always one of his favorites. It had been taken on a sunny day when the two of them had decided to have a spur of the moment picnic in the park that got cut short when a duck from the nearby pond had happened upon them and tried to eat them. Even with that, it had still been a good day and it was a happy memory that Green Apple often liked to revisit. He pushes himself out of the executive chair and turns to look out the window of his top floor apartment, taking in the hustle and bustle of the street below and a world that despised him. Well, you’ll get your wish yet he thought to himself as he brought the gun to his temple and pulled the trigger.
And you could have it all
My empire of dirt
I will let you down
I will make you hurt