Board Thread:Writer's Workshop/@comment-5101683-20180510004933

Can someone tell me if this story is worthwhile, because I don't know if I should continue it.

I love my classmates, but do they love me?

I love my sister and my cat, but do they love me?

I love my parents, and they love me, but do they know that I love them?

Forgive me for my faults, please, whoever may read this. My soul is corrupted with idleness, for I have no drive. I should work harder, and yet I do not, in favor of losing myself to my electronic vices. Uncertainty, too, is a vice of mine, though this uncertainty is no doubt tied to my laziness. When I find the root of this evil within me, I shall exterminate it.

But at the very least there is one vice I shall never find myself a slave to: the beer.

How terrible, how miserable must those who drink this poisonous juice of rotten fruits find the world! Such terrible, intoxicating, poisonous filth should not defile the bodies of the kind and virtuous, nor should they attack the sensibilities of the pained and alone. How despicable must the people who brew this potion be! Perhaps every kind person shall gaze upon the beastly vice of drunkenness and riotous mayhem and raise their hands in defeat, but I believe with all my heart that underneath this façade, their anger burns as coolly as the blue flame of a Bunsen burner.

As I walk home from school each day, I am usually concerned with trivial matters. However, you, virtuous person that you are, have caught me on a rare occasion. My thoughts are those of love and acceptance, and happiness is flowing within me, a joy so clear that even if I were to anger at my faults, the fount of happiness would wash it cleanly away.

Of course, such joy may not last long, for I must inevitably walk underneath the trees. Their looming presence and dark shadows never fail to dampen my mood, despite my rational mind proclaiming them nothing but trees. It could be the city's fault, it being their custom to cut the trees' branches once a year. The trees, incapable of screaming in agony as their limbs are brutally severed from their body, and equally incapable of understanding why such a thing must happen, keep their emotions deep inside of them until all that is left is a deep, primordial fear of something.

Of course, the mere idea that the trees' fear causes mine is outlandish enough to laugh at, so I truly believe that it is nothing but a fancy I created to pass the long walk home. But as I look up at the trees, I cannot shake the feeling that they radiate oppression and despair.

The rustling of the amber leaves stays me a moment, but I shake it off, hoping it is a bird. Sadly, I cannot explain away the twisted face of the withered hag staring at me from the branches of the tree, and I hear her scream before I see a veritable vision of hell. Harpies rain down from the sky, singing a song of woe and entrapment. I begin to run, hoping their screams are nothing but warnings or entertainment or anything but a reason to attack. They do not seem to be chasing me, but they continually descend into my vicinity, leading me to craft my own song with the wheezing breaths of a convict.

"No," I sing.

"O women of woe, O women of cold and snow."

"The fires of hell have made you so."

"Concede, I plead."

"You're frightening me."

"I fear retribution for planting a seed."

"It was not me."

"I swear you are wrong."

"Begone!" I scream, for I am slowing now, and as such, the harpies and their screeching, maddening voices shall surround me completely. I dislike this idea immensely, so immensely that not ten seconds after I have screamed the first time, I feel the pressing need to scream "Begone!" once again. But then I freeze and nearly upend myself, for though the harpies no longer come, I am faced with the monster who haunts my dreams.

His eyes are round and green, and his fangs prominent when he grimaces or gasps for air. He feasts on the intestines of a young lady with relish, such relish that I feel a pang in my heart and my stomach. As I retch as this terrible, terrible sight, he sights me, and turns to me with a terrible grin before sinking his gaping, unnatural maw deep into the nether regions of the girl. Her arms are stretched out as if she had attempted to fly to safety, but the beast

I must stop now, and apologize for this terrible crime. I wish it had not happened, for if it had not happened, your minds would be purer for it, as would mine. Thankfully, when I look up again, it has been replaced by my house door, for it had been nothing but a memory.

"Say," I ponder aloud, "how much of that was in my mind?"

Without much prodding, the truth tumbles out of my mind: from the rustle of that first amber leaf, I had been seeing nothing but the burnings embers of a much-reviled illusion, the mirror I use to look back upon that foul memory I dare not speak of. I look back at the trees and find them to be green. It is the time of new beginnings, and I should no longer be focusing on the past.

As I enter my house, thoughts of the frightful monster threaten to overwhelm me, and I find myself nearly unable to dispel them. I can fondly reminisce about the long-gone days when such thoughts could not penetrate my mind with such vigor, or the even earlier days when I had not known such a terrible sight, when I had not seen the monster.

The psychopathic nature of its actions cuts into my heart whenever I remember the gleam of its eyes, jubilant yet innocent. Had it been happy to do such a thing? Was that its birthright? Even though I have made efforts to shield myself from bestowing reason upon such a terrifying force of nature, I feel that I may have somehow misunderstood its goals.

I see his eyes on the computer screen. I'm not getting good grades. It frightens me, sometimes, but it should frighten me more. I have never known hardship, never known the slap of reality dashing my dreams, and so I cannot muster the outrage which would lead to sure improvement.

Something must be terribly wrong with my soul, and I hope that you, reader in the audience, have no such affliction. I cannot believe any medical or sociological reason for why my thoughts have dulled, and I trudge mindlessly on in search of some "better" future. I don't know why I kill myself like this, but I would never wish such a thing on anyone else. It leads me to drink water, filling up my water bottle as if I can purify myself through the tap and the motion.

"Maybe this is their reason that the poor and the addicted drink the beer," I say to myself absentmindedly as the tap pours forth its glistening elixir of life. "They forget their troubles for the moment, and they have something to do when they feel their life is crushing them."

And as if by magic, the pieces which had once been scattered to me suddenly make all too much sense. I see myself reflected in the water, the cold, clear mirror which scatters my external visage and lays my soul out clearly. I see, reflected in my black heart, the very reason for which I have the computer, and for which others have the beer, and in that instant, the wall I had created in my mind for those terrible drinkers of beer is shattered.

I hope, dearest audience, that people can tell you these things, and you need not realize that they were hidden within your heart all along. Or I hope it doesn't hurt you when you shatter such preconceptions, for at this point in time, when I realize that I don't differ so much from drinkers of beer, I feel a deep sorrow, and I would not wish it on anyone else.

I down the water, and it tastes bitter, tinged with my sorrow and my anger, with the realization that I had an assignment due which I had not done, with the poisonous quality I had once attributed to the beer. Unsatisfied, I down more, and yet more, and every time it reminds me of nothing if not the mocking, innocent glint of the monster's eyes.

I want to scream, because I feel like I cannot deal with it anymore. I feel too entitled, too lazy. There must be something deeply broken in my heart. Unfixable, I lie down and fall asleep, only awakening when I feel a familiar presence in the room.

I cannot help but whimper as I watch the monster meander closer to my face. He repeats my cries, mocking me as it nears me. Its hot breath feels like a furnace, like an opening into the reviled gates of the Christian underworld.

"Not now," I mutter. "Begone." I hope that he may understand my plight. I had watched the death in an almost detached manner, and yet now, I feel the guilt and shame for being so detached that I let my idle thoughts of heroism trump my fellow-feeling towards a life lost. In my defense, I had been feeling restless and angry for some time by that point. I had been itching for someone's day to ruin, and I guess that in the end, it was that one.

Alas, to face the distraught caregiver and watch her cry over the limp body was terrible. I sympathized with her then, and not myself. From that day, I had vowed to keep myself pure of this putrid sin. And yet I could not, and so the monster appeared in my mind to give me hope that I was the one, and yet I dare not tell anyone of its existence. After all, it's not healthy to be so detached from reality.

My dear reader, if you see something that disturbs you, how far would you go to disturb it? Alas, this question is loaded; people have killed their own in order to sway successions of rulers. What I have done is not quite so terrible, but it gnaws at me. It haunts me whenever I close my eyes and hear the wails of someone's death.

What was the point of my action?

I snap back to reality like a rubber band, swiftly painfully 