I’ve always had an overactive imagination, during elementary school I wrote stories and created worlds for my friends to play in. I was the leader of a group of kids who thought making up an alter-ego and playing in your friends made up world was the coolest thing ever. It was easy to find kids who wanted to play with me, and I started my own club where the other kids had to pay dues so we could get pizza every Friday. I was on top of the world where all of my peers valued and encouraged my creativity. We spent hours afterschool playing the games I created, and I’m sure this had a profound effect on me.
In middle school all of that changed. The qualities that had made me valued in elementary school got me ostracized and made out to be some sort of freak. I was picked on relentlessly, and spent most of my recesses and lunches alone. I did very well in all of my classes, and my writing was encouraged by my teachers, but the few friendly encounters I had with my peers still left me feeling alienated and like I didn’t belong. In 8th grade I came out of my shell somewhat, and resolved that I didn’t really care what people thought of me. I was introduced to Poe, George Orwell, and Aldous Huxley, all of whom I adored. This passage from one of my middle school notebooks is alright. I think it shows an impressive command of language for someone who was my age, but what is so striking about it is the content and the level of detail. These are some very intense thoughts for a boy to be having. I don’t particularly remember why the eyes were considered a weapon, but I suspect that even at that age I considered truth and the ability to see the truth of utmost importance. Recalcitrance, denying those who would harm me, was also important.
The Last Day
The very earth shook beneath my feet. My heart beat’s low, dull, quick rhythm hammered my ears. My breath came out in uneven gasps. My body had been rendered immobile by chains, weights, bruises, and cuts of all size. Many of my bones were fractured, one of my arms was bent backwards, and I felt a small piece of rib jut from my side. Blood seeped from me as four men hoisted me up to the gallows. A low groan escaped my swollen lips as they dropped me in place, and the jolt resounded throughout my body.
I was a young man. My exact age I cannot recall but I could have been no more than sixteen winters. They had caught me. I know not how, but I had been caught without any opportunity of escape. They had made sure of it; my greatest weapon, my eyes, had been gouged from their sockets. I no longer know the light.
People. They cursed, jeered, and called for my slow execution. Some were not content with that so they threw stones, glass shards, anything that might inflict upon me more pain… more suffering. For they didn’t just come to witness my death, they came to seize retribution.
As the executioner began to place the noose around my neck something peculiar occurred. The crowd suddenly fell silent, transfixed. For you see the beaten, broken, tortured, utterly destroyed young man, about to be laid to death before their eyes smiled. His swollen lips curled, and his missing teeth shown bloody stumps reflected in the receding sunlight.
It was a blood-curdling sight to be sure, and the crowd stared in silence as if hypnotized. I smiled into nothingness, eye sockets empty but for clotted blood. There was no reason for it, no explanation. Then, all at once, as if an offensive joke had suddenly been realized one thought entered the minds of the spectators. He is mocking us.
A single solitary cry erupted from the crowd and broke the stagnant air. It was not a cry of fear, pity, or lament. No, no it was a cry of anger, hatred, and persecution. All at once as if driven to madness by the sound the mass burst into a riot. They rushed the gallows.
The executioner was viciously beaten to death, and the guardsmen could not contain the uprising. I too was terribly battered, and yet still my heart beat on. I was taken up on their hands and shoulders to a hilltop.
I was laid on wooden planks and nailed down through my wrists and ankles. I had not the energy to struggle, or to scream, but as blood seeped from my wrists and ankles a horrific groan escaped my lips… but my grief was lost to the wind in the raucous revolt.
As they hoisted me up, on what I knew to be a crucifix, I felt the cold bite of the wind prickle my naked flesh. The weights still encompassed my body, pulled me downward, made it seem as if any moment the earth would gape its maw wide and swallow me whole. As their final deed of retribution the townspeople set fire to my crucifix and I was burned alive.
I wrote lots of disjointed passages and continued the habit all throughout high school. I got closer to some of the people I had gone to middle school with, formed some lasting friendships, and also made some really bad decisions. I want to stress the fact that I’m not just a total loner, while I do value my time to myself I did spend time with friends and had many girlfriends. Yet there’s this feeling that persisted, like I just didn’t belong, like other people found it difficult to understand and accept me, which was/is probably true for the most part. I have a good friend who always chocked it up to teenage angst, but I’m pretty sure this went beyond that, I mean most kids don’t write passages about being crucified and burned alive. It seems my fascination with the macabre and horror started very early. I really wish that a teacher had taken interest in my writing and tried to help me publish, that would’ve been good for me as I was too shy and lacked confidence. I have confidence now though, and I definitely plan on entering more competitions and writing my ass off. Now that I’m in college I feel the need to really focus on formulating a writing career, I’ve been studying psychology and marketing. Two very interesting, very necessary, subjects.
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