By: This Kind of Punishment
From: A Beard of Bees (1985)
Ahem.
"...Renomate curator Mr. Beagle crossed the corridor which lead to a gothic painting. Dark tones of Giotto caught the attention of his purple erudit eyes. Out of his sight, the scent of burning flesh could be felt, and he knew it was his own. "Don't move," said a voice, chillingly cold and unwanted like winter, belonging to a silhouette ten feet away from Mr. Beagle, who stood on his knees and pain travelling throught his 65 year-old precarious body. The silhouette, who had a hair dark as the oil painting the curator stood near, painting it with his own hand dyed in red against the wall. Soon, another bullet running like an angry ox's horn went throught the old man's flesh, now a dead man's flesh. Approaching out of the vanishing point like a mad dog out of its kennel, only those with a keen would be able to notice the man out of the silhouette, opening the curtains of darkness and erected pupils revealing dark eyes, the sound of his metallic armory reverberating throught the walls, smoke rising of his gun hole as the spirit of the man he murdered, a job well done. The familiar tang belonging to the museum and his victims, fragile as pottery, yet natural as the sun who settles down at the horizon..."
— What a shite beginning for a more shite book. As if the author had been suffering of writer's block on the first page, and dysentery on each paragraph.
Despite making a single and sincere commentary, Amarant Coral had no words to say. Was he speechless? Even a drowning man enjoys the water around his, he thought. A throath running out of air, and some beer. Nothing that can be solved by an instant of walk between the factories of Sheffield to a pub found at the surroundings of Seville. A bit of clean air can also be found outside prayers, and a cemetery. Alexandria sure is a Kingdom of many colours, and none at all, but soon as Amarant stumbles into a pub, he forgets all about this talk of colors. Wines are purple or red, no matter the price or sentimental value for each piece of grapes squashed by dirty feets. Equals get along equals, though some say that poles apart attract each other. Science have nothing to do with love, because science was made to make sense, thought the red-haired monk.
I hate red-haired people. Stupid monks have their heads shaved, polished like rocks. Funny, there is a story about a writer who died after an eagle carrying a turtle though his sparkling bald head was a rock. And the man wrote Comedy and Tragedy, how ironic that his life ended in both ways. How many times my life could had been ended, and only a few times together with the world who raised me... Bah. A spine bend since he was a child, as if the blue his skin holds on didn't made him a monster yet. A time later that Amarant would wear that single claw, for it to be used a few times. Soldiers do not use their swords, but nobody wants to get in trouble with any of them, no matter how skinny they look beneath such fat armors. Or how human they are supposed to be outside duty, who holds them tightly alike belts.
The guy who wrote that book can't be human, thought Amarant, stumbling across another absurd of reality, and like always, ignoring it by drinking a pint.
Kain killed Abel.
How many times you've heard this before? Sure, it comes from that book. Everyone owns it and so did my long departed grandma. Primitive societies treated death as a social relationship, hence the ceremony burials. If graveyards, asylums, orphanages and other social institutions no longer exist, it is because death can be found everywhere and no longer needs to be hidden... I can see death on her face, and everytime I see myself on mirror. So, Kain and Abel, right? They were brothers. One was a farmer, the other took care of the animals. One day, they had to offer a sacrifice for God. Kain offered vegetables, and God denied them. Unlike Abel and the meat whom Lord appreciated. Want some meat? I'm gonna offer you meat! And so Kain killed Abel. Maybe nothing that I've said made any sense, it's a blasphemy, but I never burned anyone said to be a witch to the crisp.
A few punches do not kill anyone when well-measured.
When I told this to Crescent, she turned her back. I believe that she would stay at Kain's side as much as she once wore its spear. Legends and beliefs varies from people to rats to another who stands on both feet. An only feet, before Crescent kicked my ass, figuratively speaking. Don't waste your strenght on something that vain, maybe that's what she thought inside that head, inside that helmet, inside that castle. Now she must be watching from the window what lies outside, to make some difference. But it's hard to defy routine, and not feel strange at all. Me, for example, I've paid a visit to her, breaking more than shards of glass since our last meeting, again, figuratively speaking. A Dragoon Knight would never resort to unprovoked violence, but what lies inside that armor ain't a Dragoon alone. Everyone can hold on of a duty, but to end up protecting an only kind of person with such powers in hand...
Phaeton and Icarus were burnt by same sun, and they did more than staring at it.
It became so easy to kill people.
And to be hired for same.
To get both hands dirtied only by sweat.
I retired of being a mercenary, as much as I gave up of gambling, because these businesses afforded me money and enemies, at same rate. Or nothing at all, but extracts out of my pockets, faces coming out of a wall. They do not appear that much as they did before, and that's to say for someone who doesn't even like its own face. Whatever it may be my race, or if I am a cross-breed, just like dogs. Shorter everyday, I could step above one, but they seem so pissed, more than any common dog, or a huge bandersnatch. I would be pissed too if I hated my own existence too, but not that much. I would be selling my own ear's wax, had I not been the only one. Here on Alexandria, you can even sell your soul in change of a buck, or in change of nothing at all. Nothing that valuable as something you did yesterday, and do again today.
Walk, learn, talk, eat, reproduce... a vermin can't do all of these, but he knows by instinct how to do the basic of the things. They do not even kiss each other. I never saw anyone walk to Alexandria's Hanging Gardens, especially a couple, only walk around while holding hands. Only a mother and child, except that they know how to have care for each other. Wasn't supposed to Sir Forgetful remember how it feels like? Not only his. Why remember, if they could enjoy the moment instead? And here I am, sitting in a bank, giving advices like a fortune cookie. Maybe I could sell these, only to bring false hope to a world where the word 'optmistic' only exists because contrasts exists for everything. Look at that weak, standing near a lady. His green camouflage, mixing with the ambient around, while Freya wears a red so intense that she looks like a flower. A sundew, with an only fly around it.
So quiet they are that I can hear grass growing, other than my thoughts. Barely they talk to each other, despite these walls offering of fresh air while in daylight. Fresh, but not free air. I had to pay a visit here, and wherever I go, I have to pay. As if all things need to cost something... says a business man. Money doesn't come out of trees, but paper does. Inspiration as well. There is a plant that lets you travel to another world, but here, there are only plants on the way. Don't step on the grass, and I wonder how that warning was put there. Which came first: the grass, or the warning? The awareness, or the tragedy? Grass is resistant, so why not step over it? Cows and chocobos can eat them if they want. Don't step on flowers would be more adequate, but who would? Don't smell the flowers, now that would work. There are poisonous flowers, so I wonder why they would put them here.
What is a warning, when you do not even know the reason why? All that you know is that you'll get at jail if you do something wrong. Now, to treat a lady like that, while caged in that sort of relationship, an orchid who can't get out of a tree... I don't know. Laugh, cry, I have nothing to do with these rats. Nothing, you mean? It's so easy to clean your both hands after a fight. For someone to tell you to wash your mouth with soap, and you go for it a few times. I say what I say, even if you do not agree with me. I can't even agree with myself most the time, because this is getting bored. Feeding ducks with popcorn, well let's see if they can eat a burning one. Heh, today ain't a sunny day, and to smoke isn't allowed. Only the trees to catch our bad breath and make it good, and what we say in exchange? To write a book costs paper.
Thoughts are for free, so do the speech. Except that, in most cases, is better for you talk nothing. Be quiet, unless you want to get in trouble. He already has a troubled mind, something that at least fills the emptiness. A pair of eyes, and barely he notices her on its side. Then Sir Forgetful begins to talk about pteridopythes, which sounds like a gem's name, but it's just another plant. An entire kind of, and Freya looks looks interested as a hollow wall. Each of that man's words sounds like knocks, which make her pay attention to. He is discovering the world, showing it to another, awaiting to be heard... this is so dumb. Wonder why they were quiet before? Well, there is a fern, and Sir Forgetful with its keen eye spotted an iddlehead coming out of the rhizome. It's one of the most simple, yet beautiful things he ever saw. When others see it, they do not care that much as he does.
Never that a plant interested me that much, or made my heart ache like his. Something about to burst into leaves someday... now I know why Fratley feels for it. And I said his name. I can say it if I want. Funny how people rarely say the name of another, unless it means something special as a plant growing out of a seed. Pteridopythes do not share of any seeds, or flowers, or anything attractive as fruits. They are taller than moss, yet dependant of water. Not a suprise that a burmecian could relate well with any of these. It's not everyday that you can spot a hummingbird before it leaves, hardly when it keeps staring at you. Freya says something about how beautiful these little things are, how come these winged jewels shed of wonderful colors, only for Fratley to ruin everything by making a statement that hummingbird's do not shed of any colors at all.
It's just because of the light refracted throught the wings that they have these colors. They can be found everywhere: at Alexandria, Lindblum, florestsm fields, deserts, even on a snowstorm. Fratley says it as if he had been throught all these places. In fact, he has, but can't remember. I would like to not remember, had I been in the worst of the situations. But Fratley had been too, which makes me feel a bit sorry for the guy. Had things went this way, instead of forgetting everything, but guess there are ways to bring pain even on happy moments. How much longer will it take for another fern to grow up? Will I pay a visit to this place again? Alone, or followed of Freya? I can also read faces. They are better read than lips, because you can put lipstick on the later. At the exit, holding hands, close to each other, frozen fingertips...
Am I the one who's alone? By choice?
When you try to do something new...
When you see a pool of vermins to be least disgusting than the crowd of sheeps moving to a slaughter, enough reason to go backwards instead of looking there, frightened, with a fear old as time. The one that you won't be remembered by what you did in small scale. There are those who saved the world, and people who do not care about it, polluting each day with their feces. Then you write about it, exposes it in public, they do not like it, but still you insist to write. Words uncomfortable for their make out symphonys, beds tainted in red, diseases instead of babies, some who lead a short life, and some who lead nothing but an excuse to live within skinny women, absorving each of her nutrients everyday. And when you write about about it, when everyone else is writing about funtime within bathtubes and bubbles rising as the enjoyment of one within another, almost as if you were hiding in the shadows, in a world of shadows.
A hundred shadows, all the same, stepped by feet without taking notice. Shadows that grow since childhood, disappear within a chimney, and sunny days that aren't bright anymore. Go to school, learn something, be hired for a job, and forget about writing books and their characters. Why write about many faces that do not even exist? Why cover layers above layers to give depth to a person like an onion? The further you go, the more you are sure to cry for real. Want to cry? Look at the window, fool. The bones left of a turney meal are the same bones of people who never saw an opportunity to get out of this hole. Know what? These are the ones who exist in order for you to be what you are. The ones who really work hard, outside a chair, and large clothes to disguise the amount of fat inside.
Taking a bath of strawberries, showing pineapples, cutting heads... Why make someone cry on paper if its easier to laugh at a funeral of an unknown? Guess what? Being a boss of yourself is the ephitome of failure. In the end, it's all your fault. From unus pro omnibus, omnes pro uno, to every man for himself; each individual is slowly becoming a company that manages itself, and makes its own capital come in fruition. If there are no job opportunities, why not make your own? We live in this competitive and dangerous world where we must be strong to win, and avoid danger while doing risks. The uncertainty is everywhere, since we became our own bosses. Taxes changes abruptly, prices become cheaper than betting tomorrow's weather, marriages, friendships, everything becomes unsure but life's is this way. Sure, there are those who fear doing risks, and for this reason, they become nothing in life.
Why your fault? Well, you do not work, only have efficiency to earn profits, and to be explored without knowing. Slavery didn't ended, it just changed to us being paid in money. A cent is a money, so why complain? This sense of freedom, of being owned by yourself, created by self motivation and increasment of your performance, is an illusion that makes things easier to be blamed at yourself. An entire responsibility of a nation, put upon an only person's shoulders. Everyone's shoulders, who think by themselves. People today try to find the truth on sucess, or resilience of continous limits, but there aren't none, or in failure. The brutality of competition brings fear and frailty, but none of this can be demonstrated, because we need to be strong. But in the end, we are blindfolded, walking on high wire, pursuing salvation on what slaves us most.
If cynicism made me lose weight... poverty did it so, and something more to this day.
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