Here's a short story I've been working on for the last couple of days. It's short, about 1200 words, so I would appreciate if some people could give it a read and give me some feedbacks. I'm wrestling with some things, but i'll save that for after people have read it.
Thanks.
(as of right now it's Untitled. Perhaps some could help me with a title too?)
I’ve been saved! It happened so suddenly, but it’s everything I could ever hope for. It was precise, and planned with meticulous attention to detail, and all has worked out; I have now reached the sanctuary I have desired for so long.
I was meandering about my neighborhood, as per usual, when I saw them: they were looking for me; I knew it by the way they were walking. It was their quiet stroll - soft heel to toe steps - that indicated their desire to remain hidden. They carried weapons and hunting equipment and tried to avoid twigs and branches in the sparsely forested wasteland. One of them bore a large net, and the others had tranquilizer guns. They wanted an easy catch, and I couldn’t blame them; so did I.
I was struck by anticipation. My time had come. I would escape this wretched place forever and never come back. There is nothing here for me; barely any food and water are to be found, and the landscape isn’t quite habitable any longer. The days are only kept meaningful by the imbedded sense of life and its continuation we seem infused with. It’s a wretched torture that pains everything and everybody in its wake. It at times paralyzes me so that I’m stuck within life’s own inertia: a perpetual longing for something better, but with no means to accomplish it.
What kind of world is this to bring love into? How could a rose bud in this kind of sick and twisted landscape? What fruits could any one of my children bear? Where would they play as they grew, learning to be fully grown individuals able to take care of themselves? Where would I watch my children frolic, in some field in some place, in gaiety and sublimity with a life worth living and a love worth sharing?
But now all of it has been destroyed already by them. All of it is ruined, none of it salvageable. But now my destroyer’s become my savior, and I am able to escape into their world, unafraid and more than happy to disappear behind the glass.
So I walk into the trap. Everything goes as planned: they shoot me with their weapons, they net me with their net, and I fall to the ground without a fight. I go willingly with them, and I am jubilant.
They wrap me up in a bag and carry me to their vehicle. I am taken a long ways to a place I do not know, and I leave everything behind me. I leave my rotten berries, my contaminated drinking waters, my disseminated forests; I leave the tempestuous life I have lived and await the easeful stare the glass brings and the clean drinking water, fresh fruit and raw meat. I look forward to the cage, away from their world of delirium and destruction.
The first ride is rather coarse, and I find myself having stomach pains a short while in. They leave me in the bag the entire time and I can’t help but enjoy the solitude even this small black fabric bag brings with it. The darkness becomes comforting as it lets me block out all that life has become.
I hear inaudible words; they speak a different language that I don’t understand, but it doesn’t really matter to me. Their voices are kind of comforting, relaxing in a way. They continually poke me with needles to keep me sedated. I don’t mind the feeling; it kind of makes sense, in a way. It feels so sublime and natural.
I can’t say how long this goes on for, but before long I am put in a small metal cage. I awaken; still half drugged, I find myself being shipped onto an airplane by a cargo vessel. I can’t stand, so I sort of lay there in my inebriation. I watch some of the airline staff point at me and whisper things; I see passengers from close by aircraft laughing at me. I see everybody around me taking part in some kind of hidden joke that I don’t understand. But does it bother me?
No, it does not.
Once I’m put on the airplane they give me food and drink. I don’t have to do anything but lay there, half stoned - with a lack of ability to do much of anything - and they give me sustenance. They keep me alive and I don’t even have to try.
I lay there for a while, fall asleep, wake up again, they feed me, I am alive for a bit longer, and I fall asleep again.
Some would want to ask if it bothers me that I don’t have to try, that people laugh at me because of where I am, and I would reply, “No it doesn’t bother me, even if it is through a looking glass.”
And it really doesn’t.
So they drug me again, this time with some intention to send me into some sort of perpetual dormancy, where some infinite sandman presides over my will to life, but never quite lets its end come too easily.
Leading me on further with a carrot which he does let me bite, but which is always sour and never quite satisfying.
The next time I am conscious I am in a glass cage in some zoo. There are people everywhere and everyone is looking at me. A small latch opens in the corner of my cell and a serving of food and water is forced through.
My surroundings are a simulation of my natural environment. Everything is perfectly constructed to meet my every need and desire. I am safe here; I have food and at least four comfortable places to lie down. I have four walls and the company is never the same.
What more could I want?
I gradually make my way over toward the latch. There is a small air vent near there and I can hear talking on the other side of the glass. I look up to see two beings standing directly in front of me, a thin sheet of glass separating our ability to fully connect. This time it is a language I understand. It is a young boy and his father.
“What is that daddy?”
“Well son, that’s Eros, the God of Love.”
“Oh. I thought it was a beast.”
“Well, it is son. That’s why it’s here.”
No, that’s not true! I’m not the beast; you’re the beasts. Humans are the beasts of nature, and that’s why I couldn’t live in your world any longer. That’s why I am here, behind this glass, where you can only look at me; where we can never truly be together, but where I’m only some hallucination: only to be seen but never experienced.
And this is what I want, and this is what you want.
“Ok, if you don’t mind folks, we can move on to the next exhibits; over here we have Minerva, Goddess of Wisdom, and just to her right is Hermes, the royal messenger of the Gods, two of our most prized possessions.”
No Wisdom, no Communication and no Love to bind either. Just some fairy tale, some idol behind glass. We don’t exist anymore. We’re just some exhibit provoking questions that are never quite answerable.
“What is Love? How do we acquire Wisdom?”
You don’t. You drug it and put it in a cage.
A short story, not too long.
Moderator: Kat
