I Hate The Opera | |
by Jennifer Knighton | |
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The world spins by in multicolored shades of terror but no one believes, no one sees, no one understands, they think me mad, insane, a bumbling idiot. They don't know. They don't want to know. A figure neither male nor female, neither human nor beast, walks by in flowing cloth woven from the nerves of human babies that were stolen from their cribs at a young age and replaced with little devils but no one sees the thing except for me. Cloth twists and turns as it screams around the man and I cover my ears to block out the howls yet hear them still – echoing in my head, dropping forever in the canyon of my conscious being. I am conscious. I am sane. I have more sanity than those around me who pretend they cannot see all the world around them contains. Their minds are incapable of knowing all that I have known, experienced, witnessed. They are fools. And yet, they are happy in their ignorance. As happy as I once was. I would not turn back to that delusion. I miss it though. I do. I always will. This "madness" will not kill me. I wish it would. This lucidity has broken me. I could no sooner end it all than I could return to peaceful ignorance. If I end it – they win. If I die – they win. Perhaps there is a way not to die? But could I live forever with this knowledge? If I am not mad now I surely would be by the end of times. If time ever ends, that is. Now there is an interesting thought: does time end? Is there a point when everything stops? Can time die? Can that which is eternal pass away forever? And if time dies what happens to all that went before that end? I have always believed that religion was a drug the masses took to relieve their stress of eventual death – to know something lies beyond. If they only knew what lies within the world they presently live in, I suspect many would quickly seek out that heaven they've created. I wonder if they'd find it, but I digress. I did not believe. I believe only in that which I have seen and experienced. I believe in far more now than I ever thought I could before. I don't want to believe in what I've seen anymore. Proof by experience is too much to ignore. Blind faith would have been easier than reality. But if time itself ended would then these creatures end as well or are they outside of time as the Christian God has been said to be? Do they see all that is and was as if it happened at the same instant? These things are older than human existence, older than the world. I don't know how I know this, I just do. The knowledge is a part of me now, etched into my very chromosomes. Cloth spins past me again as the creature leaves the room with its latest victim. I wonder if I should say something. Why bother? No one would listen to the ramblings of someone they know is insane. This hospital will have no real children left soon and the thing will move on. Screaming demons will remain. He's not that scary really, I've seen far worse. Glowing yellow eyes still haunt my dreams. The sounds of insects too large to believe buzz in my ears even in my waking moments. In appearance he is not that scary. But it is what he does that makes him so bad. The children, the poor innocent babes. I want to save them. I don't know how. And if I moved them from their beds the doctors would accuse me of kidnapping them – they would never believe it was for their own protection. I've lost my train of thought again. I think I was philosophizing on the nature of belief and the power within it. Stars in the sky circle and spin, organizing themselves into shapes and lines that people try to interpret and give meaning to. They're more accurate than they think. The poor fools just haven't figures out what the alignments really mean. I wonder if no one knew the truth, if no one believed in these creatures from beyond those stars, would they still arise when the alignment was correct? Or would they disappear into the forgotten past never to return again, never to wake from their sleep? Such thoughts are useless, however. I do not want them to rise, but I cannot help but believe in them. Their followers are demented and cruel. They are no longer fully human – their inner beasts have taken over. Minds lost to the violent nature of the things they worship. Even if every follower died, there would still be belief hidden in the nightmares of those like myself. Perhaps if we hunted down every true follower and then killed ourselves? But then how would we know if our deaths succeeded? How would we know if it was worth the sacrifice? They will release me from this hospital. I will pretend my sanity has returned and play the game they wish me to play. I will return to my job. I will return to the Agency. I will be sent on yet more assignments and see more creatures that one should not have to see, let alone attempt to deal with. It's what I do. I protect the world from things they cannot fathom – from things they'd rather pretend do not exist. I protect them because once upon a time I saw something I should not have seen. And now I can't go back to my comfy delusion of reality. I can't go back if I wanted to. They'll never be able to cure me of that. I wonder if I can protect the children from this beast once I am deemed sane again or if it will be too late by then. I wonder, also, if they'll let me out of here to attend my friend's funeral. He died saving me from an urban myth that turned out to be a bit too real. There are things in this world I do not want to believe, there are things I cannot believe, and there are things I want to believe in – that human beings can be noble and save each other from the creatures and demons of the world, that they are still willing to sacrifice themselves for the greater good, this is one that I want to believe in. Jack no only gave me my life again, he gave me that belief. I must honor it and be the type of person he was. But first I have to convince these fools that I am sane. Well, sane in the way that they believe sanity works, that is. | |
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