Word S**t

A Story by Wallflower

You’re predictable and incessant. And unavoidable like a beat.

You’re background noise.

You’re white noise.

You’re pathetic and you’re bored.

You’re unstable like balance upon a pole. You’re such an a*s.

If you’re so ridiculously high, can’t you battle it out amongst yourselves?

Why the hell do you get US involved?

Stop making your hooting noises and your snide comments. CAN’T you see what it

makes you?

You’re at the periphery of our existences. You’re the people on the footpath watching as our cars go by.

You’re on the sideline. You’ll never be more than that. So quit trying.

Morons.

Stuck in time.

Get lost.

I want you to die, you hysterical delinquent.

You. You…You’re the word-s**t.

People laugh as you impeccably imitate whichever poor victim happens to be absent in your heathen gathering.

I laugh. Laugh till my cheeks hurt. Laugh till the deplorable feeling in my stomach better known as suspicion wells up.

And as I walk away and it’s no longer funny, I begin to wonder…When me?

But that’s come and gone.

I used to like you once. Thought that it was all really just ‘fun’.

And then I began to see. Notice. Your baseless questions. Your searing assumptions. Your DEAFENING loudness.

I began to see how your mind did little but devise and deduce things that weren’t really there.

You knew to hit where it hurt.

But just knowing would never be enough for you.

You had to try and see if it really could work.

And it often did. But then, you had to make sure. And certain. So you pushed. And shoved.

Every single entity that did not fit your perception of perfection. You pushed right to the edge. Then over it. And then you threw rocks over the cliff. To make sure.

And yet I know enough people who love you. Who worship you.

Not just the idea of you. But you. In the flesh. You. Your philosophy. Your unique tryst with life.

Who have seen you at your most merciless. Thought it was all really just ‘fun’.

Some people just come to terms with themselves. Some people just don’t crack.

You need them.

Not a vaguely specific them. Just a them. A them so generic so as to include everyone you’ve ever met.

To enslave.

To cheer. Or to break. Whats the difference?

I see the way you stale the innocence of relationships by tainting it with what it isn’t. Or at least, it isn’t ready to be.

And now like everything premature…its life stutters.

And I think…word-s**t.

I see the way you proselytize.

How you can convince them to believe in your causes.

How through your sly eyes, they see everything as amoral, not immoral.

I hear how you cheapen every genuinely, originally sweet thing with your innuendos and less than subtle suggestiveness.

I feel the bile at the back of my throat when you go places that even I didn’t think you would.

I angrily quench the teardrops can catch me unaware.

Really. After the number of times you’ve managed to throw the same thing at me. Its amazing how you can still devise new ways of making old healed wounds burn once again.

Does the power amuse you?

The insurmountable power of the said word?

I think you realize the scale of your damage.

But to you it’s all about ‘fun’.

We…we’re just collateral.

Just like love. Just like hate. Indifference is all geography and convenience, and nothing personal.

I’ve seen the way you command silence.

The eerie, disquieting, humiliating, sudden silence when someone out of favor enters your realm. The half-muffled sniggers, the eyes that won’t meet theirs…

I’ve seen your power. I’ve been in your realm. I’ve served the High Priestess.

And truth be told, I don’t have even have enough self-respect to say that I’d rather be down than on my knees.

On my knees suits me fine, Highness.

I notice people twitch when they hear their name on your lips. How they involuntarily look over their shoulders to check.

Their conscious body language when they think your eyes on them.

They see how words never hurt you.

I know better. I know they do. Sharp.

But cold face doth keep up the image of a cold heart.

And when I’m truly, truly sick of the score you’ve picked for our lives.

When I can no longer stand the fact that you orchestrate the knots and loops in our ties.

I just come to terms with it.

Because…