Chapter IV

Finally found the time to speak with me, have you. Well, it was bound to happen eventually. Your love for our sessions never wavers; no matter how hard you try to hide it under your emotionless face, your heart brims with reasons for our talks. You masochist, the thought of self-depreciation thrills you: "you're not worth it, your life is a waste. Your existence, pointless. Your voice, silent." Them phrases are what get you going, and who best to feed them to you than me.

So, what have you been up to? Ah! Failure as always. Nice to see some consistency. More lives you have thrown away into the trash pile; heaven's full so they're being sent to hell, but hell's full too; you have banished them to purgatory for the rest of eternity. No one to pray for them – because you sent them all. An eternity in a senseless waiting room where time stretches past reason, making each hour a second and each year a mush by the end, which there isn't so they can find leisure in calendar collections to keep some resemblance of a balanced soul. A shame that they won't be able to their calendars with the lack of light and the lack of eyes that the soul possesses. I've rambled on. Don't fear their fates. They aren't real anyway; they do not get the luxury of purgatory. Neither will you. Spending so much time in that fake world takes its toll eventually. The real world will forget you, won't it. Why should it remember you? You abandoned it. Like humans, as you should know, abandonment of anything clears the heart of its love for you and clears the brain of its memories of you.

Do you remember them? Your parents, your younger brother, your grandmother especially. That was what caused this whole debacle. How did it go exactly? Oh yes, it was something like this.

Age: fifteen; your grandmother had been diagnosed with stage three lung cancer. A life of cigarettes and alcohol, all gifted by her era, where smoking was still prohibited, and alcohol still glorified. Jack Daniels and a pack of Marlboro Gold King size would satisfy for her daily meals; downplaying the excessive coughing choking the house, retelling stories of how her and your grandfather met, sitting in that patio at the back of the Kingfisher, spotting each other's eyes and brew, discussing the grand national and claiming the ever-so-common love at first sight cliché that continues to bore grandchildren to this day (not that you would know whether grandchildren still exist as you haven't left this building in nearing a decade).

That day I am confident you remember, sitting in the hospital ward, the nurse walking in as you and your family sat around her sleeping yellow body, playing that woeful tune in incohesive unison; the switch, you stared at it the entire stay, until the nurse walked over to it with robotic emotion and turned it off; what was worth was that noise that followed, only a moment as the nurse quickly attended to it clearly irritated; that relentless beep, felt by the family in the room, alone. The beep knifed your metallic heart long after it stopped, chipping away at the rusty machine until it finally cracked. Many had tried and failed, but it had finally faltered. Now you was recreating the screeching beep, fleeing from the room and never returning to your family's side.

Never saw them again in the flesh, just some pictures to remember who you left, all because of that switch. You said to leave it on, claiming the minute odds were likely, the others pleaded for it to turn off, so their own grief can be disabled. Why you took offence to this? Only you and I know. Selfishness. A Selfishness no one else could understand. You did not want life for your grandmother, you wanted your heart to remain full because you naively expected it to stay untouched for your entire life. She was old, at wits end, viewing her remaining life with a microscope, looking back with a telescope. A life she lived, whether happy or sad was irrelevant. She lived her life and that is undisputable. If she lived any longer, she would have lived a life she did not ask for; why should you choose the length of life? What happened was no different to what you wanted. Stop sulking, it has achieved nothing.

At the end of the day, all you left her was a single rose before her sleeping extended. Her last image of you: a rose and you feeding it water from your eyes. Embrace that image, because to her, that image was you.

That old teenage frustration has taken over you again, kicking and swinging at air to appease your punishment. I should correct myself; that day in the hospital was not your last time seeing your family, it was the last time seeing them as they were. After that you became the air, and your parents became you – your little brother the untouched headpiece on the bed, clueless to the war zone. You bared this, didn't you, expecting some epic hero story in the future. All the violence you escaped to rise and be the one to stop it. Stop it? Don't make me laugh. You did nothing. The abundance of people to speak to, ignored; the numerous numbers to call with your phone, deleted. You called once, through a temper at the person on the end of the phone and hanged up before they could apologize for cruelty they never inflicted on you.

Many escapes, the single option you chose being to escape, in both body and soul. Your tantrum has halted but be careful not to reveal it to your fake friends. They may become the ones to abandon you.