The Emotional Cities

My name is Edison Merts. I am twenty-one years old, and a male. I was born with a quad-polar disorder. I have been arrested eighteen times on different accounts of: Assault, Armed Robbery, Possession of Illegal Weapons, Possession of Illegal Drugs, Rape, Disturbing the peace, Domestic Abuse, etc. I had somehow escaped every single account of my arrests, except for the last one: First-Degree Murder. I was charged for twelve life-sentences, adding up my bail to $12,000,000. No one had felt pity for the quad-polar freak, and I was left in jail to rot. Eventually, I had been shut in a secluded cell. That cell was my sleeping grounds, my bathroom, and my dining area. It was one-hundred percent concrete, with no windows, and a iron door shut with three locks that the thief of the jail, a man experienced with the most complicated of locks, could not open. Sometimes I could faintly hear the arguing of other inmates below on the floors under me. My reactions were...more than varied.

There were barely any moments when I had made contact, eye contact, with any other human being. Despite the noises below me, I was alone. Sometimes the door would suddenly unlock and I would awaken to a room, clean from all excrement and disgust, with new clothes. Everyday, I could hear a shaft from my door open, and a bowl would just...slide in. No spoon, no knife, no fork...nothing, only my dirty hands. I always enjoyed that time of day, or night, I couldn't really tell, because it was the time when I finally got to see light, my own hands, my own skin...I could see myself. I was always sad when it went away, and I cried the rest of the day, sadly stuffing my mouth with mush. I would then begin to punch the wall, and would receive no reaction, which only made me angrier, then I would go into fear, thinking about the consequences of my actions that I had just began to do, death sentences, beatings, karma, all of these things to be afraid of. It got so bad that, at a certain point, I was afraid the whole day, afraid the walls were going to collapse because of the noise of a police officer beating on a rebelling criminal. I was so stupid, which was when I would usually become depressed and cry again.

Then there were times when I was...fully happy. W-When I could...deal with life, deal with the darkness around me. I felt joy and happiness, but then I receded back into fear, wondering if I was too happy. What if I wasn't thinking enough about the problems around me? What if I was blissfully ignorant, and someone would beat me? I could never be one thing at a time, every single day. I had to jump back and forth between four different feelings, things that I didn't want. I would rather have no feelings, none at all. I had always thought that each of my emotions had these cities, battling against each other for control of my mind. Of course, this was a ludicrous idea, but it helped me calm down, for just an instant. And then I would fall asleep.

Oh man, I can't even explain the things that I would think about and remember when I would even begin to pass out. I could hear anger yelling at me to get up, with fear telling me to stay down, or the zombies will get me. I could hear happiness trying to coax me into staying up to have fun, with sadness just mumbling quietly about smashing my head against the wall so that I could finally end my sad and meaningless life. Happiness would then begin to argue with sadness, with anger calling fear a chicken. I would then force myself to wake up, to stop hearing them arguing and fighting...I could rarely get sleep. I had valued the days, or nights, when I could sleep for...a minute, an hour, and most rarely, a whole day. I hated waking up, because I was back in pitch black darkness with nothing to think about, only to listen to arguing and fighting. Constant bickering and insulting, quivering and yelling... then there was some day when I had dealt with enough of it.

I could feel another emotion just...smashing through all of the others, placing imaginary and figurative duct tape around their faces. The emotion would stop fights, stop everything, would make everything quiet. Those were the days when I could sleep soundly, and swiftly. The emotion didn't have so much power, eventually all of the other emotions would 'wake up' as I would call it, and begin to fight again, and then the emotion would leave. I would always call the emotion 'Lonely' or 'Distant', but it didn't really stick. I didn't know what to call it. It was just my savior, that was all. It's color was gray, and not vibrant with a certain color like with happiness being green, and sadness being blue...etc.

I had certain moments when I would... 'enter' one of the cities, and would begin to walk through it, talking to people, feeling their emotions. I remember when I had gone through happiness, called, happiness city, and it was always a party. There were people laughing and cheering, with, amazingly, my favorite bands playing on the concert stage all day. The people in that city were never tired, and always had something to be, well, happy about. It was like my own slice of heaven. I had begun to ponder however. What if they were having... too much fun? The people in this city didn't seem to have any jobs, and I could sometimes see drunkards and harlots puking on the ground, with their peers laughing with, or at, them. I could actually see car crashes with...people inside, presumably dead. There was even a point when I had seen people being...raped. There were no cops, no control, only happy chaos.

There was even a time when I had entered sadness town, not a city, but a town. It sure looked like a town, with no one around, only people moaning and groaning about, smashing their heads against walls. There was liquids, disgusting liquids, everywhere...and I had felt...sad too. When I had attempted to help people, they just pushed me away, and said that it was their burden to carry. They always seemed jealous of those who were happy, and actually struck them when a single person was, at the slightest, happy. I figured this out the hard way when I was slapped across the face by some random woman, who just walked up with a beer bottle in her hand, drinking her troubles away, puking on the concrete sidewalks. I was invited to some random, abandoned house, when people had actually begun to worship sadness, embellishing it but giving blood sacrifices by cutting their arms with razors. Whenever they left, they always covered their arms, ashamed of their actions. When I had asked them what happened, a small tear would form in their eyes, and they would sprint off. I could feel something pulling me out of the city, before I became sad myself, and I was...neutral when I had awoken, like I had somehow...kept an emotion quiet.

It was really cold in the jailhouse one day, when I had entered fear town. This town, which actually looked like a city, now that I thought about it, had control, maybe too much control. The cops were constantly arresting others, yelling incoherent words about how they were planning to assault them. I had shivered once when I was tackled by a S.W.A.T. member, an actual, fearless, stone-cold S.W.A.T. member, and had a gun up to my head for terrorism. When I had been released from the jailhouse, with a very long debate for my release, I had locked eyes with a woman. She had instantly sprinted off, screaming about how I had caused sexual assault, and I was promptly chucked back into the slammer. I was actually led into the same room where I was in real life, the whole deal, no windows...no nothing...etc. I was then pulled back out into real life, back into my home sweet home...

It was just recently that I had experienced the actual Hell of Anger City. It was even a city anymore, just a barren, destroyed, crumbling mess of a 'city' that was subject to a large quantity of atom bombs. It was like Hiroshima had repeated itself...twice...then five more times, then had gone over and over again. I could still hear things explode, and children, women, and men would scream as they were blown apart from nuclear explosions. I could hear gunfire, commanding officers, explosive cannons, grenades, rockets, every object in the American, at least, I think it was America, arsenal was being used in this one city. It's almost as if that the country was destroying itself, just because of the division and confusion between the two parties of politics, and the Presidents' failures and misgivings, causing impossible amounts of stress and anger, meaning terrible decisions would be made...based on emotions. So many innocent lives...unless...if they weren't innocent? I couldn't continue my question before I was dragged out of sleep, and still hearing the stupid, repeating voices of the most dumbest of arguments about hair color and virginity. I could have sworn I heard anger, of all of the emotions, insult happiness's mother. I didn't even know that emotions could have mothers.

I couldn't do anything about it. While entering the cities of my emotions at least gave me a look at what each of the emotions could cause, and would somehow delay their ramblings and arguments, but I couldn't...do...anything. There was no answer to the arguments, no compromise, no solution, nothing that could help me out of this. I was stuck with these four voices, overlapping each other, and I was powerless. I even tried talking to the emotions, but they didn't pay attention. They wouldn't listen to me...just like that stupid trail. ¨Oohhh! You have quad-polar disorder! Well that doesn't mean anything! Blueh Blueh Bleuh Blueh Blueh! Who caaaares about the dumb findings of your tiny brain?! I'm the attorney general, and I lick grapes for breakfast!¨ The judge was as skinny as a stick, and as that thought had actually...came into my brain, the arguments suddenly stopped. They began agreeing...actually...agreeing with each other about a single, tiny thing that I had thought. I could suddenly feel that gray emotion...just moving through my brain. I was...calm, emotionless, and alone. I had no one to talk to, no one to listen to. I was...neutral. It may have not have lasted long, but I enjoyed the silence. The solution didn't last long, and I was back to square one. Back to square...one.