Young Writers Society

I wrote this practically with my eyes closed, because I couldn't quite see it if I was looking. And then I couldn't change it; so it'll have to be a piece of prose in itself.

HEROES

It's not a question of choice, it's a question of necessity; if you stand behind the line, if you don't walk it like a hero, then you'll never be a hero. I've shaken hands with the majority - we all have, and their palms are clammy and sweaty in your grasp as they avoid your eyes and mumblejabber on about community, insurance, safety. You want your ears to run red, just so there's a sign for them, just so you can scream the I told you sos at their backs while you watch six billion eyes bleed slowly into white at the sight of a dollar bill. You want to be a hero, Uncle Sam says softly, that's fine, I've got a box full of them at home; it's the rectangular wooden one right next to the cash register - climb on in.

Lazy Sunday afternoon, and the Bob Geldof is fighting the Kinks for airplay: I'm walking through the schoolyard, talking to the children who want to be doctors and lawyers and vets and dentists and salesmen and plumbers and rockstars and boxers and dropouts and crack-addicts and ganglords and rapists and murderers and footballers and single parents. God bless the New Right, the teacher says solemnly; hand on heart, then stabbed skyward, I tell her, already knowing that she already knew that. She flicks her skirt coyly, and I decide I'd rather talk to the boys; nice hair. School fun? Much interesting to do 'round here? Just the factory, mister, says the short one, just the toys they make; we can get 'em cheap. Stay safe, boys, and remember: always use a condom. Thanks, mister, they say; welcome to Columbine.

My badge shatters as I walk over the Eagle, seconds before I can turn it in. Since I'm not given the option, I lunch with the third-rate car salesmen upstairs - we have a good laugh over the politics of business of politics and then I shoot every single one of them dead. After all, they were going to shoot me one way or another, with pens or prods or a piece of paper. You'll be brought to justice, the last one says, shaking my hand firmly before lining up against his own wall; I already have, I write in bullets.

Quietude takes over my life for just a bare second, and I'm left thinking. I don't want to be a hero anymore, but I'll settle for one more legend. Whoever you are, one day you'll wake up with me sitting in your porch, and you'll shout at me because I didn't stay. And I'll say to you, where were you? Where were you when we galloped bareback through the desert to flank the enemy? Where were you when we fired a hundred thousand people into revolution? Where were you when we climbed Everest just to see the view? Where were you when we made love in a sunstreaked topfloor flat in Paris, where were you when we crossed the sea in a rowboat, where were you when we fought them hand-to-hand on the battlements, when we drove the train across Siberia, when we herded a million antelope down the steppes, wrote stories in a bedsit in Prague, got high in a hippie van in the midwest, sang to an empty concert hall in Vienna? Where were you when we walked on water just because we couldn't?

And she'll say, you're dust. You shouldn't've died. And I'll say, you should've.

My tears aren't for the lost heroes. They're for the heroes who don't have to be special anymore.