Quiet Pine Trees #2: Kill Me Please

"We all got one wish. Billions could fly. He got the recipe for room-temperature superconductivity. He wondered what was wrong with his soul."

T. R. Darling ~ Quiet Pine Trees

The lights burned.

Keeping to his shadowy corner, he tried to make out the different figures dancing in a cacophony of sound and silk, but with their howls of delight and mesmerizing twirls and poses, everything turned into one maddening blur.

He had to find Acey though. He had to.

Digging his fingernails into the brick of the wall, he felt he had something to cling to. Something solid. Before he ventured out into all this confusion.

Stay calm, he warned himself.

With a shuddering step, he entered the crowd.

Swept away by it, he soon lost all sense of direction and sense of himself.

He was a fish going against the tide. That is always a dangerous thing.

He risked being crushed by their antics. 

"Why don't you dance?" came a voice in his ear. If not for the masquerade mask, a necessity for the festival, the owner of the voice would have seen his fear. His flinch at least was lost in all the movement about.

He looked up to see vicious rat eyes peering through the holes of a lion mask. The teeth were bared in what was an attempt at a grin, but with such a thing looming he couldn't help but quiver.

He swallowed the lump in his throat. "I am looking for my partner."

"Ah! How wonderful! Then enjoy the dance!" The lion masked creep spun away to be lost in the throng again.

He knew they were not real. Merely sentries for this strange place.

But Acey liked to come here. Liked to fill himself with as much Awaken as he could pump into his veins. Then he would lose himself in this mad world. 

Then Acey would come to him sobbing and shaking and "Why does it hurt?" and "Make it stop!" and "It's too much for me!".

And even worse was that heart wrenching, soft, little whisper.

"Kill me please."

He didn't want to be here, but he had to find Acey.

It was always scary to watch Acey dance. When he did, he wasn't Acey anymore.

Through all the changes he witnessed in his friend, this was the most bizarre. 

He moved mechanically. Like a robot. He couldn't control himself right. Spinning and twisting. Laughing hysterically. Tearing at other people. Their faces. Their clothes. Their masks. Their eyes. He would tear down some of the lights and wrap himself in their cords. He would spasm as if in a seizure. He would stop and just stare at things that weren't there.

He hated it when Acey danced.

But at least he could find Acey because of it.

His friend was standing in a throng of neon dresses and puffy white wigs and pastel parasols. Maidens in varied animal masks laughing and shouting and cackling mad. And he was patting their wigs as if they were soft animals on top of the girls' heads.

Then he dropped his hands and stared up beyond the reach of the sky.

He always wondered what Acey found up there.

Acey looked down and met his eyes and all he saw was terror.

He stepped forward, weaseling through the ladies, and grabbed his friend's arm.

"Let's go home, Acey."

The three girls froze and turned to him in rapt unison.

Mechanical. Like a robot.

"Why don't you dance?"

Their trio of voices echoed demonically in his ear, rattling his skull.

He forced cheerfulness into his voice. "We have a date to bake cookies together with lots of rainbow sprinkles!"

They snapped to ease. "Oh how lovely!" said one. "Have fun on your date!"

"Thank you for keeping my friend entertained!" he replied as jovially as he did not feel. Then he gripped Acey's arm tight and entered the fray once more.

Acey turned in his grip to hold his wrist tightly.

To save them both from drowning maybe.

Returned to their retreat in the old boxcar, he helped Acey inside and sat him down in a chair. Acey was limp as a ragdoll, perpetually melting into the seat, staring through the floor to the core of the Earth.

"Acey?" he murmured softly, pulling the mask off his friend's face.

Acey wouldn't respond.

"Acey? Come back please. I'm here. I love you. I want to help you."

Acey blinked and looked up, meeting his eyes. A wan smile cracked his face like stone. "I could see them." His voice broke, hoarse and agonized.

"I know," he replied, pulling Acey into an embrace. "It's ok."

Acey held on tight and wouldn't let go. It hurt. To be crushed in so much desperation. But he loved Acey and wouldn't let go either.

"Why couldn't I be smart like you? Or dumb like them? To fly, to have worlds of parties, to call toys out of thin air, immortality; or phasing through objects or telekinesis or infinite charisma. Why me? Why this?"

"Smart? I think I was rather dull."

"And I was the dumbest of them all."

"You don't have to walk this road alone, Acey."

"But I'm... I'm the only one..."

"No. No. I'm here." He pressed a palm to Acey's chest. "In your heart. So you can never be alone. And I'm also here. Right in front of you. Holding on."

Acey pulled away and rubbed the tears furiously from his eyes.

"Kill me please," came that soft, terrible whisper of a plea. "I don't want to see people's souls anymore."

Quiet Pine Trees #1: Remember Humankind

“Alien myths told of human brutality. Braver civilizations invited us to their homeworlds as scarecrows. Primordial fear kept enemies at bay."
T. R. Darling ~ Quiet Pine Trees

Clear black night hung with stars, sucking away the gaze turned longingly towards them.
Cold was the air and cold were the bones of the old scarecrow slumped in its bonds.
From where did we come from? It wondered silently. If it had the power to open its thread-and-needle mouth, it would voice its lamentations. But who would hear?
Not the other ragdoll corpses sloughing in their rot.
Who decided for us that this was better than death? The scarecrow wondered silently.
If it could just widen the stapled gap between lid and lid and take in the world around it, the scarecrow wondered if it would see heaven or hell.
View limited, everything looked like hell.
Talons dug into its arm, making the scarecrow flinch. A loud peal of shrieking emenated and the wild beat of wings. Whatever fowl had been there was now scared away.
Scarecrow serving its purpose. Maybe.
It’s purpose could always be to die. Now there was a heavenly thought in hell indeed.
“We invited you!” the aliens said, sweetly, softly, sewing the scarecrow’s mouth.
“We saved you!” the aliens said, slowly, somberly, stapling the scarecrow’s eyes.
We conquered you and destroyed you and raped you and cheated you and sacrificed you.
The aliens said the human race was an abominable thing. Said they did nothing but conquer and destroy and rape and pillage and lie and cheat and kill and murder.
Said it all with every ounce of hypocrisy as they enacted such miseries to be the saviours.
The aliens laughed with their newfound toys, dancing gleefully like children at Christmas.
“Look at these wonderful things we have rescued away! Let us take these terrifying abominations and put them to good use!”
As freak shows as experiments as prisoners as monsters as scarecrows.
And so died humans.
So rose objects.
These new objects toiled away at their masters’ desires. Forgot themselves and loathed themselves. A murmuring mass all lowing the same lament: “we are the worst of all things and deserve nothing more than this existence as monsters.”
But the scarecrow remembered the human race.
Remembered it for its beauty. Remembered it for its ugliness. Each individual of that collective a spark burning bright in unity. A conflagration of souls, beautiful in its juxtaposed balanced of good and evil together. Every waking infant a realm of infinite possibilities and impossibilities, every dying elder a library of moments imprinted on the fabric of history. Infinite evil and darkness and horror coexisted with infinite good and light and pleasure.
And for this, the perfectly balanced life form ever conceived in the universe burned and sang and bled all over the gemstone homeworld it named Earth.
The aliens chose to remember its pain.
The scarecrow remembered its glory.