“Do Not Tell Me Lies”

I take this moment to reach up and say hello to the guards as they hover toward us.

“What is it you’re doing here?” they ask.

In a moment of clarity, it all made sense. The garbage strewn all over, the children playing checkers outside, the angels singing their highest notes—it was all a test. THE test! The grand gesture made to have greatest impact on all those around me.

I loosened my tie and snarled, “this is the way she designed us, these are the actions we must take. Now move aside so that I may present Her Highness with the gifts we were meant to present her!”

A silence hushed everything within thirty miles. The people all paused. Birds dropped from the sky. Cats and dogs and mice lay at each others’ feet, gazing into each others’ eyes, crooning sweet lullabies. There was an itch in the air, an itch that needed to be scratched but could not be reached. In moments like these, rivers flow uphill and stars burn brighter than the roar of a hundred angry elephants. The silence mutes the clouds in the sky. I wiped my brow and spat pale color onto the ground.

We heard a soft voice. “See that they arrive safely.” It came from behind a brick wall covered in ivy as treacherous as a vial of snake poison.

The guards shook their heads, turned, and led us up the long winding path. Daffodils smiled and giggled. Roses blushed and retreated within themselves. The mood was tense but stray [sic] enough for us to forge on through.

I coughed, and when I looked around, it was all gone. Was this all a dream? I looked down at my feet, which were still pacing slowly toward inevitable doom.

“What does it all mean?” I screamed into my reflection in the mirror. I hadn’t noticed myself staring back at me, quietly, pityingly.

“How long have I been here?” I asked. My reflection remained silent. It closed its eyes and a wave of excitement rushed over me. I remembered when I was two years old and went hunting with my father in the woods. He shot us a buck and clawed through its throat, ripping straight across its abdomen. My father wrapped me in the buck’s intestines and I have never felt such warmth since. Blood rushed from my head and something akin to nausea crept through my tiny belly. But it went away and I felt like a man, alone in the woods, surrounded by peace and eternal struggle. It was then I knew what had to be done.

I smashed my hand through the mirror. The glass held intact, spiderwebbing into a million narrow cracks. I grabbed my reflection by the neck. I felt the hard Adam’s apple pulsate against my thumb.

My reflection opened its eyes and demanded I release it at once. I was in no mood to comply, so I just squeezed the neck harder. Breath slowly escaped, like air leaking from a slit in the underworld. The bones crunched like a baby’s rattle underneath a hippopotamus. A smile crept across my face, warped by the spider’s web that ran across my reflection’s face. The wave of excitement and nausea erupted and burst from my abdomen, and I fell to the floor.

My legs twitched. My arm had shattered as I hit it on the side of the toilet. I felt the cold floor on the small of my back. A headache and a mindache encapsulated the warm blood flowing from my ears.

Oh why, oh why! Is this the way we’re going to end this nightmare?

She looked down on me, her face inches from mine.

“Do not tell me lies I know are lies,” she said. Drool dripped from her lucious lips and landed on mine.

“I will never lie again,” I said. She knew it was a lie.

She put her mouth to mine and sucked with the might of a thousand turbines. I watched it all disintegrate, molecule after molecule, not sure if I should finally relax. If there’s an answer inside me, this would surely lead me to it. I closed my eyes and disappeared, the darkness imprisoning me for the rest of eternity.

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