Tuesday, February 25, 2014

"Mensana En Corpore Sano"

You can't find me. You can't catch me. You don't even know where to start looking. That's your whole problem: you are looking. You aren't listening.

I am walking across the country on the sounds of children laughing, of adults gossiping, of parents worrying, of babies crying and people screaming and everything in between. I am walking on waves.

I was like you once. I lived a normal life. I had a normal job. I woke up in the morning and I went to my normal job and I came home and I did everything I was supposed to do. I ate and I slept and I shit. I was like you all are, a biological machine, a thing made of flesh and water and electrical impulses.

And then they came to me. The Lords of Shouting, the Masters of Howling. They had no bodies, no need for food or sleep. Without bodies, they lived as vibrations in the air, a sound unlike anything I had heard before.

They offered to make me like them: to strip away the meat, to make my soul sing. How could I refuse them? How could I turn down their generous offer?

I can't tell you that it didn't hurt. Of course it hurt. It was like dying. My skin was stripped away, then my muscle, then every layer until I was only bones. And then my bones turned to dust and I was left with nothing. Nothing except myself.

I was finally free and for the first time, I could see what I had been missing. I had never known true freedom. I had always been encumbered by walls and floors and distance. To see something, I would need to open my eyes, to turn and hope my vision wasn't hindered (not to mention the fact that I wore glasses).

I have no eyes now, but I see much farther and much better. I can move at the speed of sound. I can hop and skip across cities and towns. I can see what people say. And if I feel in the mood, I can wrap myself around them and give them a show.

You've seen my work. The first few times, I hadn't meant to do it. It was involuntary – one moment they were alive and so delighted to hear my symphony, the next they were on the floor, blood pouring from their ears. Too much of a good thing.

And then I decided that I liked it. If people could not live like this – and the Lords of Shouting are very picky in choosing who to change – then I could at least show them what they were missing. Even if doing that makes them hemorrhage, even if they die, at least their last moments shall be filled with sound and fury.

And that's why you can't catch me. Because I am sound and fury and I am nothing. I was never there at all.