Bystander

A Story by Z

I have always sat here and watched – suffering old men at Death’s door, starving children in warring countries, and arrogant teenagers who impulsively go down the road of crime and drugs.

I have always sat here and watched �" suffering old men at Death’s door, starving children in warring countries, and arrogant teenagers who impulsively go down the road of crime and drugs. No one did I give to nor did I help nor did I change. Welcome to my stagnant world; a ghost town of useless thoughts and memories that are better left unknown.

Like a single tower reaching into the clouds, the tallest mountain reigning over the rest, or perhaps, one lone weed growing in a desert, I admired some humans just as much as I looked down upon others from the room in which I alone stand.

You must be wondering now, my dear readers, if I am human. At some point in my life, I was. However no longer can I call myself so, though I cannot quite put my finger on the moment from when I started to change and become a different entity, just as I cannot remember for how long I have existed in this timeless space.

There comes a moment for everyone when you lose interest in life �" after living far too long without goals or relatives or perhaps dedicating far too much time towards a job or a person and then losing it. What does one do when such a moment comes? What can one do? That is a question to which I could never find a satisfactory answer and which lingers in my mind anchoring me to the physical world.

I have always tried to forget the past, the grievous memories, and the lonely days of despair; but never was I able to do so. This is a lesson that I recount so you will know better than to become a cursed being like me.

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I was born into an average middle-class family: one of many trees in a forest. However, I had no recollection of a fatherly figure until the day when I entered school and was asked by innocent young classmates why I only have one parent. I thought myself to be special and unique �" a foolish notion that passes through every mind at one point or another. Nevertheless, disappointment followed. My father was neither divorced nor lost, but rather simply working in a foreign country and had little time to speak or visit my mother and I. He did not get along with Mother either for they had been married for far too long; they spent endless moments with each other and knew all that there was to know about any person �" his train of thoughts, his emotions, and every inch of his body �" so their days together became tedious and disputatious almost like a preschooler and a toy with which he has been playing for all his life.

Since I could walk, Mother has been very strict about my education. At three, I could read simple English; at five, chapter books. Around the time when I found out about Father, I started to learn piano, and though willing was I to start, that feeling quickly faded and morphed into regret. My memories of practice time are blurred and I recall no more than screams of terror and pain, yet happiness to succeed and make Mother proud. I believed her words when she said I was talented and that as long as I tried my best, she would never ask for anything more. She lied.

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In preschool, I was the weakest one in the pack and accordingly, I was bullied, beaten, and boycotted. On better days, I was able to hide in an enormous tire that stood ten-feet above the ground for I was small and agile and could climb over the edge when no one else had the nerve to. On worse days, I curled up on the ground while others kicked me around as one would a soccer ball, smashed my head against cupboards, and accused me of thievery in front of teachers. After school, Mother was always the last one to come pick me up. The instructors �" who had such glorious warm smiles during the day �" all looked down upon me as if they were crushing an ant under their feet when it was their turn to wait with me after class. One day, during my last week of preschool, a lion appeared. Chaos broke lose as the first victim came into view �" bloodied and wrecked. Screams of help echoed through the hall and teachers kicked students aside to run away. Hiding in the tire, I simply looked at the bullies who found joy in my pain and the superficial teachers who dropped their kind masks so easily, as they were brutally pounced on and dissected one after another. I laughed, “Serves them right.”

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My first elementary school was a small one in my neighbourhood and filled with friends with whom I clowned while I was younger. Warmness filled my chest as I played house with them during breaks between classes and whispered or passed notes during lectures. However, the string that bounded my peers and I together was thin and such happiness was not to last.

Change is the essence of life �" an inescapable fate and the pathway to both success and failure �" and accordingly, change attacked me from behind. Upon going to school, we children were submerged in a new world with more people than we had imagined would exist on earth. My playmates found new friends and left me one after another until I had nothing to do but sit alone during free time. I was honest, loyal, and possessive during those days when I thought they were positive characteristics of a person; however they forbad foolish me from moving on as everyone else successfully had. Sadness and loneliness overwhelmed me and I became desperate to make friends. Perhaps I had thought it was necessary to put up a strong front: I lied and I was violent, and eventually, I began to find fun in others’ misery. First I stole, then I harassed, and lastly I blackmailed.

Though young, children have begun to develop the tendency of always wanting to be above others, and so very often would someone bring precious toys or erasers to school. Mother was never a fan of “wasting money,” as she would put it, on fickle youngsters who were interested in unnecessary objects. She told me the best things in life are free, and I had believed her until one day in the future when I realized that anything worth having comes with a price. It was at such times when I began to look jealously upon others wearing an expression very similar to a hobo who peers at Thanksgiving feasts through glass-stained windows on cold autumn nights, and I decided to take their joy away from them. At first, I only took small pieces of food from their backpacks, but interest was eventually lost. Then, I moved on to erasers from dollar stores, which amused me far more but grew dull within time. The last time I stole was when I had almost gotten caught: I was sneaking a glittering pen out of a girl’s desk when I had asked for a washroom break during physical education, and a fellow student walked into the room to grab his water bottle. Through false smiles and excuses, I evaded being caught in the act. Nevertheless, rumours flew around the school of a hundred students. I could hear whispering behind my back, threats from my peers to tell a teacher, and thereafter, blackmail. My most dreaded moments of the day were the five minutes between the bell designating the end of break and the one indicating the start of class when the teacher enters the room; I learned to wear a watch and wait outside until the last minute before the second bell rings to start going to class.

As harassment continued, I began to hear voices echoing in my head when no one was around and to feel tears welling in my eyes. It was most likely this unhappiness that drove me to harass others the way storybooks often described a victim of bullying to make fun of a person weaker than he. My first act was to formulate insults in my mind, though I never uttered them out loud. This was counterproductive as it only frustrated me more and there was no one to which I could voice my thoughts. Proceeding, I dropped notes of discouragement or harsh words into others’ bags or desks and enjoyed watching their confounded reactions when they read them. Often, they reported the notes to teachers and long tedious lectures about respect and friends ensued, but no one cared enough to get to the bottom of the case. Like a cancer cell that grows bigger in time, my harassments developed from simple notes to writing insults on bathroom walls and leaving brown envelopes filled with tea-soaked paper on which I wrote curses. Eventually, the administration had to take act and I was found out.

It was probably the first time I cried in public when the teachers scolded me for my actions. They phoned Mother and interrogated me about my reason for such cruelty. At first, I tried to explain the frustration built up inside of me, but words escaped my mind and I stuttered. However, I noticed the way the adults glared at me as if to tell me to stop wasting their time; they could not care less about my reasons and simply wanted to get the case over with. My simple and partially truthful answer satisfied them, “It was a game.”

Soon after, I transferred schools. I was determined to make friends here and was hopeful of a new start. When I first entered the class, the teacher introduced me to a girl who would help me out during the first few weeks of school. Those were the golden days when the teacher complimented me to no ends for she thought I was talented, and when the students all loved my company for I was a new and exciting addition to their everyday lives. We were kind, caring, and friendly to one another. On Hallowe’en that year, I had won first place in a costume contest and got straight A’s on my progress report for the first time.

Perhaps it was because I was too happy that God decided to introduce suffering to my life again. The girl whom I had first met moved away and I gained a new friend, but she was self-centered and hated by the rest. However, she was kind to me and made me laugh, so I decided to become the nice person that I had once dreamed of being and befriend her. Less than a few days later, my new world crumbled into Hell and the karma that I built up throughout my early childhood struck me down. Many people stole my belongings and threw objects at me in guise of an accident. The teacher whom I adored so much fell ill and could no longer work.

For reasons unknown to me, my new friend decided to tell me a secret about herself: she liked a boy; and although it was but a foolish impulsive crush, it was a big deal to us young lads. Around the same time, I became sick of the constant bullying towards the two of us and I decided to befriend a popular student; I learned from my past lessons and was no longer the loyal moron I once was. After the girl �" friend A as I will now address her as �" told me her secret, I passed it on to my new friend �" friend B. B gave me the idea of blackmail, where I would tell A to buy B and I candy or pencil sharpeners or lip balm in return of keeping her secret. This continued for many weeks until A, who was often lectured by her mother about her reckless money spending, could no longer bear to continue life down such a dreadful path. Perhaps it was because an important screw in her head became loose or because she saw no more point in living: one day in class, friend A yelled like a madman and started dancing on top of desks. She suddenly ran out of the classroom at the speed of light and into the forest behind the school. The class hesitantly followed and witnessed her climbing up the tallest pine tree in the forest. That was the last we had seen of A. Ensuing the incident, friend B and I were asked if we could think of any reason A would commit such extreme acts seeing as we knew her well, but both of us feigned ignorance; we knew that the incident would be forgotten and left in the dust or graded of as a simple suicide because of depression.

After my ill teacher left school, a substitute came to replace her for the rest of the year. Unfortunately, he was a jaded teacher who detested children from the bottom of his heart and treated us all as scumbags. Had we known any better at the time, we would have reported him to the administration, but we were naïve and clueless about the nature of our world. My grades dropped from straight A’s to C’s and, as soon as summer vacation came, Mother flew into a rage. Half of our furniture was violated and I was chained to a pole and locked in the basement for a month with nothing but bread. The garage slowly degraded into a dump as I bathed in my own bodily excretions. When I was finally allowed to leave the basement, school had already started, as did a new chapter of my life.

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My recollection of the series of events after my imprisonment is blurred as if I and tried to forget them but failed. When I came out of the basement, I was too weak to stand and stench contoured the air around me. My legs collapsed under my weight and I was sprawled on the ground with my head bowed down to Mother the same way a servant would to his master.

My teacher once told me that there is no love greater than a mother’s towards her child, and so badly had I wanted to believe those words. During my young childhood, she was God to me �" the only person whom I had ever looked up to. Her word was absolute and her happiness was my own �" or so I thought.

It was truly surprising to my inexperienced mind how instantaneously such dedication faded away like footprints in the sand the moment when she glared at me �" pathetically crawling on the ground and reaching up to her for a helping hand �" and simply walked away.

My body went numb and I started shivering as if I was drowning in cold dark ocean water; my breath caught in my throat and I wanted to cry out, but I could not almost as if grief was choking me! And then, I lost it. I lost trust when I realized that Mother only cared about how my behaviour influenced her image. I lost hope when I realized no matter how hard I tried, without solid results, I would be deemed useless and thrown away as trash. I lost love when I realized that my blind feelings would never hold any meaning to her nor would they be returned. I lost happiness when I realized the only thing it ever gave me was the ability to feel sad.

Hatred overwhelmed my tired body and forced myself to stand as I wished from the deepest and darkest corner of my heart that Mother would burn endlessly in the flames of Hell. Her lack of regard for me pierced by heart like daggers as I wondered to myself if I was not even worth the effort to look down upon and if so, why did she give birth to me? Staggering, I walked forward and chased after her like thunder following lightning and when I reached her, I stretched out both hands, swearing that I would bring her the same terror and solitude she gave me, and grabbed her legs so that she tripped over, hit her head, and passed out! Never could she have guessed how much a blessing Death would have been.

When Mother awoke again, she was missing all the nails on her fingers. She screamed and screamed like livestock on the verge of butchery, but no one could hear her from the soundproof urine-covered basement that she had once encaged me in. I grinned at her and told her, “I had looked at happiness through your eyes; now it is time for you to take a look at pain through mine!” I grabbed the knife that I brought down to the basement with me after dulling the surface so that it would not kill Mother but could bring her excruciating pain and I thrust it towards her face, her chest, her stomach, her arms, and her legs! She yelled and cried and begged and squawked empty threats at me but such actions did not save her. Only when she wailed the words “please kill me” did I finally cease the violent jabbing. I looked down at her on the ground �" crippled and dirty �" and without a word, I left her just like I promised I would.

After ascending from the basement, I tried to walk towards the sink and get a drink of water or a morsel of food; however all strength escaped me and I plunged to the ground. Torturous pain racked my body roaring out from my chest and I felt more fatigued than ever before. I saw a faint red hue spread across the room and a deep voice echoed in my head, “Do you regret?”

Then, everything went black.

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The next time I awoke, I was stranded in a simple white room that was dressed with only a bleached chair under a frosted table and a lightless window that showed images of all the humans on Earth far too clearly than science should allow. For much longer than man should be able to live, I had been marking the hundreds of thousands of days for which I had been sitting here on the soft leather of the chair, watching people make the same mistakes I once did. At first, I tried to escape. I cried for Mother and attempted to break the glass of the window. I begged God to help the people that the glass panel showed me, but all was in vain. Within time, I gave up.

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Now, after centuries of futile pondering, I still exist like a phantom that forgot to die. Nevertheless, I have always sat here and watched �" depressed teenagers who consider breakups the end of the world, mutated children of drug addicts and alcoholics, and helpless seniors who fall into dotage without anyone to care for them. No one can I give to nor can I help nor can I change. Welcome to my stagnant world; a frozen grandfather clock that will never strike midnight.