Spoiler
July 24, 2009
Dear Henry,
You and I both know this has been a difficult year. I have no intention of dwelling on the past, but it's sort of just there, and we know that if you ignore that kind of elephant in the room, something's gonna break. I hope that one day, if you're still out there Henry, that these documents may fall into your hands and some light will be shed upon the dark story we shared.
It was my Sophomore year in college and my world seemed full of bright, sparkling promise. As a double major in business and art history, I never intended to cure cancer, never intended to shake the world with this generation's theory of relativity. I just wanted to appraise good art, to see good art, and to make good love with good artists. My professors appreciated my ambition and intelligence, but something was always missing, like that one puzzle piece that manages to fall behind your bed and remains there as you quickly forget the loss. I didn't feel the absence of that something so much as understand that it existed. I figured that things were going a little too well, that I felt a little too happy, for there not to be something terribly wrong in my life.
I was stupid, Henry, very stupid .
I didn't know how good I had it, how easy my life was. Sure I had the stress of school, of impending bills, of simply being alive, but I didn't know just how much harder it could get. So I figured I'd try to make you understand that. I guess I think that if you knew just what had been going through my head, if you knew the pressure I was under to be perfect and create perfection, then maybe--
I won't try to persuade you. I won't slather my story with butter or sugarcoat a single moment because I know the truth, especially in my case, is what needs to be said. I've never been good with telling the truth, especially to other people, but for you...
For you Henry, I'll tell you everything:
I frequented a diner close to my apartment building--within walking distance actually, you know the place--and one night, like most others, I found myself lost to a journal of hastily scribbled notes and multiple empty cups of bitter coffee. The time escapes me, but it wasn't any time significant, just after dark from what I recall. The bell above the door had jingled as it would have for any other customer waltzing in for a burger or a cup of coffee before a late shift, but this customer managed to catch my attention by the way the bell had jingled and the way the door had hastily closed behind the anonymous being. I raised my gaze from the blurring lines of black scrawl to see a man in a trench coat, hat, and white beard hobbling in, a heavy cane in one weathered hand.
With a huff, he sat himself at the gleaming bar on a round, blue-topped stool, head bowed as if in prayer. Strangely, the two waitresses standing behind the bar neither asked for his order nor welcomed him into the establishment. He didn't try to catch their attention; he just sat there with his cane laying on top of the bar and his hat tilted down.
Feeling as though someone were taking me by the hand, pulling me from my booth seat, and guiding me forward, I walked over to the man, eyeing the waitresses before clearing my throat to announce my arrival at his thick shoulder.
With a gruff sigh, the man raised his head and looked up at me with clear blue eyes set into a face that was not so much aged with wrinkles but with shadows. After staring one another in the eye for a while, those old eyes grazed over me in the way I had seen curators size up a painting.
"So you're the one it chose?" he muttered, the scowl on his face showing disappointment and the arch of a bushy brow showing distaste. Insulted by his words, though I hadn't they faintest idea about what he was talking, I folded my arms indignantly over my chest.
"Excuse me?" I hissed.
"Oh, so you don't know?" he asked in false astonishment, tilting his hat up so as to see me better--or so that I could clearly understand the sardonic looks he kept throwing me...
Dear Henry,
You and I both know this has been a difficult year. I have no intention of dwelling on the past, but it's sort of just there, and we know that if you ignore that kind of elephant in the room, something's gonna break. I hope that one day, if you're still out there Henry, that these documents may fall into your hands and some light will be shed upon the dark story we shared.
It was my Sophomore year in college and my world seemed full of bright, sparkling promise. As a double major in business and art history, I never intended to cure cancer, never intended to shake the world with this generation's theory of relativity. I just wanted to appraise good art, to see good art, and to make good love with good artists. My professors appreciated my ambition and intelligence, but something was always missing, like that one puzzle piece that manages to fall behind your bed and remains there as you quickly forget the loss. I didn't feel the absence of that something so much as understand that it existed. I figured that things were going a little too well, that I felt a little too happy, for there not to be something terribly wrong in my life.
I was stupid, Henry, very stupid .
I didn't know how good I had it, how easy my life was. Sure I had the stress of school, of impending bills, of simply being alive, but I didn't know just how much harder it could get. So I figured I'd try to make you understand that. I guess I think that if you knew just what had been going through my head, if you knew the pressure I was under to be perfect and create perfection, then maybe--
I won't try to persuade you. I won't slather my story with butter or sugarcoat a single moment because I know the truth, especially in my case, is what needs to be said. I've never been good with telling the truth, especially to other people, but for you...
For you Henry, I'll tell you everything:
I frequented a diner close to my apartment building--within walking distance actually, you know the place--and one night, like most others, I found myself lost to a journal of hastily scribbled notes and multiple empty cups of bitter coffee. The time escapes me, but it wasn't any time significant, just after dark from what I recall. The bell above the door had jingled as it would have for any other customer waltzing in for a burger or a cup of coffee before a late shift, but this customer managed to catch my attention by the way the bell had jingled and the way the door had hastily closed behind the anonymous being. I raised my gaze from the blurring lines of black scrawl to see a man in a trench coat, hat, and white beard hobbling in, a heavy cane in one weathered hand.
With a huff, he sat himself at the gleaming bar on a round, blue-topped stool, head bowed as if in prayer. Strangely, the two waitresses standing behind the bar neither asked for his order nor welcomed him into the establishment. He didn't try to catch their attention; he just sat there with his cane laying on top of the bar and his hat tilted down.
Feeling as though someone were taking me by the hand, pulling me from my booth seat, and guiding me forward, I walked over to the man, eyeing the waitresses before clearing my throat to announce my arrival at his thick shoulder.
With a gruff sigh, the man raised his head and looked up at me with clear blue eyes set into a face that was not so much aged with wrinkles but with shadows. After staring one another in the eye for a while, those old eyes grazed over me in the way I had seen curators size up a painting.
"So you're the one it chose?" he muttered, the scowl on his face showing disappointment and the arch of a bushy brow showing distaste. Insulted by his words, though I hadn't they faintest idea about what he was talking, I folded my arms indignantly over my chest.
"Excuse me?" I hissed.
"Oh, so you don't know?" he asked in false astonishment, tilting his hat up so as to see me better--or so that I could clearly understand the sardonic looks he kept throwing me...
October 9, 2009
4:36 PM
The patient has agreed to disclose personal information.
...Back then, we were referred to as gods. The others before, those like me, we could create, annihilate in equal measure. The physical world was putty in our capable hands, and as far as anyone else was concerned, we could not be stopped in our frantic remodeling of the universe. But the "god-maker" had its own agenda. One would refuse to alter, repair, refuse to birth another lovely Athenian being from our aching skulls, and that diabolical little media-proclaimed "miracle" would evacuate its unwilling host to infect another able-minded victim.
I was warned in the beginning that this would happen someday, someday when the "god-maker" was all I had left and when the world became all mine. The warnings, though, they didn't really matter, not in the heat of the moment, when all the stars are perfectly aligned and every dreamy cliché has taken root in one's formerly, exaggeratedly tormented life. I remember the feeling of invincibility. It was heavy, like lead weights hanging from thick rope around my neck, but it provided that almost pleasurable burning sensation that comes after a long run.
Through the mental exhaustion and physical pain came an enlightenment worthy of Buddha and an emptiness resembling...something empty. With those sensations, both alike in being misunderstood, I felt for the first time in my nineteen years a freedom that I had never even imagined gaining. With the enlightenment, I understood that what time I had left on this earth was open for me to bend at my will while any Alterations would ultimately die along with me, and I was okay with that notion. With the emptiness, I realized why whatever deity or deities had exploded this universe into being had taken that first disastrous and beautiful step into the unknown. Every new creation, every new change assuaged the soreness of my weary nerves and smoothed out my ragged edges. I found peace in creation, not destruction as I had once been so inclined to explore.
But the Figments were what saved me, whom I really owe my life to now. Without Liz, without Jack, without...without...I'd probably be dead in a gutter somewhere. So godlike are we? So powerful? I could have created an army, could have brought the sky falling with a few quick pen strokes if I so wished had they not reasoned with me time and time again. These beings, these ghosts of humanity, not even birthed from a living creature but metastasized from thin air, were telling a human what was right and wrong. What was worse, they really did know better. They really did. I had been given the abilities of a divine creator, but for what? In the end...they were the only things of worth that became of my life. And I...
The patient is feeling unwell and requests to return to her room. Request will be granted. Session rescheduled for tomorrow morning.
