Board Thread:Writer's Workshop/@comment-5101683-20180209083037

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 fond 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."

"Beware!" I screech, now mimicking the shrieking harpies. I can still see them, but their songs have a tinge of sorrow to them. Perhaps if their songs embody sorrow, I reason, they shall not chase me.

"My helpers in the air, my allies with their flares."

"They speak of things which they plainly cannot hear."

"They speak and they laugh. How they laugh as they near!"

"Such a fool with its insolent whining, its pining"

"Adulterer's hearts with such beautiful lining."

"Oh dear!"

I reclaim my own voice. "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 girl 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.

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 my memory?"

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 memory. 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, had not seen the monster. 