Your Stories

There is no end to your stories of irreversible devastation, of picture perfect, panic stricken, appropriately poor, yelping masses that ooze pus and horror and blood. Your stories narrate, in lyrical poetry, the pain of a lost child, or a punctured eye ball. The relatively complex ones relate in gruesome and tragic detail the rise and fall of some naïve and idealistic ambition – of full stomachs, for example.

Perhaps, in the process of communicating the multifaceted and hopelessly insurmountable obstacles that lie on the path to achieving these overly simplistic and childish dreams, you delve in some detail on issues of global warming, gender inequality, and trade injustice. You reach the novel and surprising conclusion that there is dire need of some sort of immediate action. You perhaps propose the wearing of a specifically coloured ribbon on the seventh of December, or the publishing of a bi monthly magazine.

In other stories your characters deliver inspiring speeches, on sunny mornings, in obscure village squares before – unexpectedly, of course – dying of dysentery.

The villain in your tales remains an unnamed monster, who possesses the physical vagueness, the pervasive control, and the unchecked power of God. However, you and the ghosts of your HIV infected heroes remain untainted by the influence of this monster; you are shielded by your stories, and your heroes are shielded by their idealized poverty.

Soon enough, however, you will realize the futility of your efforts. You would suffer from a few panic attacks, and vow to never bring life in to this world. Your stories and your heroes would no longer shield you from the corrupt world beyond, but gnaw away at your organs, slowly, painfully, and with your consent. From the lone fighter you once were, you would transform in to a moldy fear ridden shell. And before the last of your humanity is chewed away by your very own creations, you would sigh in relief, and welcome your new found numbness.