You cheat rather than try. There is no effort needed for your achievements, only the identical thoughts of your twin. And still, when you fail or succeed, you wonder how it came to be. You pride yourselves on your randomness, on your scattered pieces of brain, on your normalcy, and on your identical twin brothers and sisters. There’s always more people like you in the world, and it comforts you to know. Why should you worry?
I check your census every so often. The numbers grow, and your popularity climbs with it. But let me try to save you, let me try to show you what you can be.
“No.”
Why are you so afraid of the truth?
“We’re afraid of everything.”
I don’t care. Shut your eyes and ears right now to my words, if truth is that which you fear, and shut your life into a gas chamber. Do as you please, volition is still yours. Or, volition in numbers, at least.
I don’t understand you. I’ve watched you silently every day, I’ve heard your giggles and superficial lines, I’ve been in the midst of your catty chatter, and I find you ridiculous. But you populate the world. You deny your own soul for a trend, you deny what you believe for what the majority thinks. You fail as your brothers do, and if you were to achieve over them you would be a sinner. But tell me, Soul Seller, how are you the perfect man? Your world is enveloped in the absurd chaos caused by your brothers, in the reality of the normal. Normalcy has become amorality, and you have become normalcy’s entity. How does it feel?
You can take those numbers in your census (those numbers that used to be people), but you cannot take me. I will not be your sheep, I will not be your friend of betrayal, and I will not be your equal. If I fail, I fail for myself, and if I succeed the only person whose name will be credited is my own. I am not ashamed. I could die tomorrow satisfied because I embraced myself during life, the only thing that was always truly mine. You could die an eternity from now, hungry for something more, lost and confused, and when you realize the importance of yourself, of your dreaded ego, you will find that you burnt it long ago, its corpse a mess of charred cinders crunching underfoot.
Your goals are each others’ goals. What will you be? “Lawyer,” in unison, “Successful,” in unison, “Ordinary,” in unison.
I will not.
You, with your naked twisted claw and purple scarred flesh, you cannot make me into the deformed troglodyte you are. I will not be food for the thought devourers, I will not be a slave to the masses. You cannot make me a still-life tombstone with a blank epithet to set on your front porch. One day you will realize the importance of my words, the beauty in the extraordinary, the grace in the strange, and when you do, you will be middle-aged and nauseous, your skin slowly wrinkling into the thick crags of age. You will spend your life searching for something more, and you will spend the rest of your life afterward yearning in a bitter, soul-eating disease for what could have been. But no, I will not be that aging, middle-aged woman. I will be the same human I am today. I will change, I will grow, and I will age— but not as you do. Misery will eat from the swollen arteries of your heart, Bitterness will twist those long nails of yours backwards, and Yearning will fill your veins with tasteless water. But those things cannot touch me.
I will hold pride in every new curve of my skin, I will smile at every laugh line, and I will not be vanity’s slave girl. I will spend my life as if it was immortal and I shall always play the role of the jaded optimist. I will never be you. I will never be the Liar, the Betrayer, the Twin, the Murderer, or the Strangler. And if indeed you are the pure and I the sinner, I will gladly skip down the road to Hell and kiss every flame that nips me. You will be in Heaven, and you will be always wanting. It is you who are truly damned.
Now what do you say?
“Whatever.”
When you’re a regretting, graying, wrinkling, and- above all- empty woman, 45 years of age, you can’t say I didn’t warn you.