The saddest summary of a life contains three descriptions: could have, might have, and should have."
-Louis E. Boone
Celebrate with me
There’s the skyscraper I’m going to. It is made of glass and blazes with intensity of million hot summer days; sometimes I think it’s crazy but I remind myself that it’s just a dream. I’ve been here before, I think; but my legs are tentative, treading the grainy ground that trembles with anticipation. I can hear my heart beating, or is it yours?
They stand there, and I come closer, but my legs are those of a mechanized doll. Three turns of dainty handle, three falsely-confident steps.
So, I push the glass doors open with mad determination I do not feel, and I stride confidently amongst the masquerade, head held high- with pride that is stolen from someone else. People here are so happy, their smiles brilliant and sharp. Their smiles biting into your spine and liquefying into cold sweat shivers. People here are so beautiful and made of such brittle glass, filled with emotion, these people filling this room to the brim, bursting with virtue. This place is so empty. They pat my back and nod in acknowledgement and my smile is ever present, meant for someone in another place, time, and dimension.
I slip away to the elevator and keep pressing the glowing button, but the elevator just won’t appear. A paralyzing thought passes through me like a spear-I already knew it will never come. For the past five years it never did. Someone taps my shoulder and a smooth, graceful hand points first at the looming clocks on the ceiling dripping with bitter champagne; and then onto a slumped, sleeping figure with a mask of a queen , a broken mask bleeding blue liquid, somewhere at the back of my mind I feel like the queen is only for me to be seen, and she is. Sometimes I think it’s crazy, but I remind myself that it’s just a dream. I know the routine like the back of my hand, but still I want to proceed. Glide up the stairs, up, up. All I have to do is to get to the top, the top, the top. I go up the stairs and music, like a savage animal, roars around me and tears within me.
And all I want to do is peel away their gorgeous masks, but I know I’ll hurt them then; there is no border between the skin and cloth now, every mask is a leech living on their truths and exhaling lies that are too beautiful to deny. Nothing against these people, they wear masks to forget, to pretend, to be happy, to remember or just cause they’re afraid. I know I am different.
My legs are lead, too tired to move, so I grasp each thigh and force myself up the steps; and then come seconds, as if no work was required of me anymore, and the heavy body was not burdening a bundle of emotions wrapped in soul; and I float, and I feel ethereal and sweet. Embossed half-way up the staircase is this feeling of eternal content- glimmering, shimmering and yet so homely, I am completely submerged in it. This moment is perfect. This moment screams into infinity; this moment cannot be frozen, it freezes a part of your brain in it- creating a memory. The moment is gone now, and I’m going upstairs of the staircase. I must get at the top.
It rains, it rains in the building. Sometimes I think it’s crazy, but I remind myself that it’s just a dream. And my head becomes loaded with thoughts so unnecessary and unneeded, but I am not turning back. I must get at the top; but with every drop of the rain and every stomp of the lead legs on the steps my head gets heavier.
I am at the top now and I look down…Down at the people in masks who are cheering and screaming in joy below, because none could get so far, because their masks would just peel off and everything would become too real for them; better stay pretending forever, that’s what they think. And the eternal rain has completed creating a crown on my head. I am proud, I got to the top. I look in the mirror, and the face smiling back at me; I blink-and from the frigid surface of the mirror a figure of the awoken queen is looking at me through the shells in her mask, but the mask is not wrecked as it was before. And her crown is just like mine. She is me.
Distantly I hear screaming and feel hands clawing at my face, and I realize that both actions are produced by me. Queen of deception, at the top, the Ace of false- that’s what I am. I do not want royal blood if having it means to bleed acid tears; I want to be someone else. The parts of mask come off, and although I see pieces of my face from where the chunks of mask crumbled, blue liquid is leaking from the cracks in the mask. I shriek;
I do not want royal blood if having it means to bleed so painfully. Revulsion in my strained voice cracks the mirror, cracks the floor; I keep falling down, down, down. I reach and break through the ceiling of the first floor, crash through the clocks and can’t breathe because of the bitter champagne. The ground starts to shake from my screams and people in masks just look on and applause. Moment before I hit the shuddering ground everything just stops, everything but the terror inside of me. I am unmoving in a lethal position, suspended a meter away from the impact, feeling all the force of gravity and another, unknown, but bloodcurdling force pressing on me, waiting for the moment to unfreeze to break me.
I look around like a puppet with my limbs depending on stilled strings, frozen; and I see the party, like a picture with great details but lacking vital motion, and some of the people in masks going up the stairs with futile hope in their eyes. I look out the glass doors, and I see myself, the very first me that awoke into this dream with memories fresh from the real world, and after travelling so far up and falling so far down I realize that the girl I am seeing is just repeating the same routine.
She knows the routine like the back of her hand, but still she wants to proceed. I see her through those glass doors, and wish they were mirrors as she keeps cautiously approaching the place of my fatal confinement. If the glass doors were mirrors, I would be seeing reality, and although every one and each of the people in masks and a frightened queen with a broken crown wish to find the veracity; the truth is, it is all just too painfully palpable and real. It’s just so sharply real. I am fixed in this mortal spot with broken pieces of all the things that could ever be broken, meaning everything, around me; I am waiting for the girl to come in, knowing that my fall will then thaw out and attain its final destination.
I close my eyes now, I know the routine like the back of my hand, but I have no choice but to proceed.
Before I enter the building having only one goal in my mind, that is to get at the top , top, top, something inside of me tells me that a figure of a queen with a crumbled mask has just hit the shivering ground and disappeared leaving behind a trail of blue blood, but of course I did not see it as well as the way everything restored itself and the looming clocks on the ceiling continued dripping bitter champagne. I know the routine like the back of my hand, but still I want to proceed. I am the puppet master again, not yet the puppet. Sometimes I think it’s crazy but I remind myself that it’s just a dream.
