Life, Engaged

So you think you’re right and that you can confront me.

You ask why you are not among the chosen ones, why you don’t live in a palatial house with a helipad and a garage larger than your apartment. You would like to see the obscene amounts of wealth of the mighty go up in flames, their flamboyance and stature ground to dust. You want to see them reduced to your own measly circumstances. You ask me why you don’t deserve better, why they should possess all that you can only dream of. The vagrant who lives under the flyover asks me the same question about you.

I am the one with the power. I make the decisions. I hear your wings flutter helplessly but do not bat an eyelid, watch indifferently as the warm blood trickles out of the bullet-wound that I’ve made- that is the amount of apathy I am capable of. I wring your neck hard enough for you to writhe in pain, but not nearly enough to kill you. Oh no, I wouldn’t do that- you are my perennial source of amusement, marionettes on silken threads. I let the texture of the threads deceive you. When you are desperate enough to think of taking your own life, I let the sunlight shine upon the silk and glimmer into your eye. The clouds part for an instant- I will grant you that little pleasure that the most wretched prisoner deserves- and move on with the game of deception; blinded by momentary glory, you will easily forgive a lifetime of sins.

I know you’re strong. You will fight and try to keep me at bay, come dangerously close to upsetting my well-laid plans. At these moments, I cannot but help admire your tenacity. I indulge your whims for a while- and then bind you hand and foot and throw you back into the dungeon where I belong. At times, you defeat me at my own game- unshackle yourself and break away from me- only occasionally, but you do. I am a fair competitor, and I will admit that a few of you possess a power beyond mine. Extraordinarily endowed. You might be one of them. I will leave it to you to find out. I don’t tell fortunes.

You want the rolling pastures and the clear lilac sky- let me remind you that there are also marshlands and smog; there is no reason why you should deserve the one more than the other.

Fight to the end, ask me your fatuous questions. I revel in battle and ludicrousness.