Palaces Built for Ghosts

A story of love and loss.

     The heart is like a kingdom--a place of splendor and love. You adopt your family and friends and loves within, and you envelop them in your affections. Palaces are raised brick by brick; each drop of fondness is another stone; and so masterful labyrinths of riches and luxuries are bestowed upon them, where every desire is met as they abide in the empire of your heart, lords and ladies awash in your admiration.

     Showered in a deluge of mutual contentment, you reside together in those hallowed halls--palaces intertwined through friendship and love, camaraderie and trust. You walk together through the lush gardens, stand together on the shores of crystalline seas, play together in the verdant lands unbounded and unconstrained, whisper together under the light of the moon as you watch the stars a million light-years away, live together in echoing halls and high chambers, and bond together under all hours of time. Side-by-side, under the golden rays of the sun and silver spears of the moon, you build higher and farther, and never dream of letting go.

 

     But life gets in the way. People drift apart. Palaces begin to crumble, flowers begin to whither. Apparitions and fantasies appear where once there was a real, tangible person; but their fortress has fallen, and only ghosts walk those hallowed halls.

     New palaces are erected. New friendships, new loves are formed. The foundations of the old ones are left to rot until they fade into disremembrance, and then crumble to ashes that are washed away by the wind, into the distance--into nothingness.

     Yet greater than the pain of drifting apart is the pain of unrequited affection. You erect palaces in their name, plant gardens at their feet, sweep the roads and mind the gates, and watch for their arrival--and then they never come. The love endures, and the palace does, too--but empty. Silent. Your footsteps clap like thunder as you walk through these hushed halls. Your breathing echoes on the walls. These palaces are so painfully empty that they feel as if they’re unreal--as if they’re only illusions in your mind as you stutter and stumble through the oppressive loneliness they impart. It feels silly. Invalid. Stupid. Childish. Selfish. They don’t love you. You shouldn’t love them.

     But you can’t help but to wash the stones, and to watch the gates, and to pray for their arrival.

 

     But the worst pain of all comes in the aftermath of tyranny. When you bring your friends, your family, your loves into your kingdom; and you give them their palaces; and you give them their gardens; and you give them their affection; and then you lock the gates. You become dissatisfied. You create arbitrary standards that they don’t match. You pressure them to fit your ideals. You threaten them with fire and fury, with words and whips, with banishment and abandonment. You board up the windows. You build the walls higher. You make the locks stronger. You keep them entombed inside. You plan to starve them out. You find them unworthy of the palace you made for them, of the gardens you planted for them, of the fields you tilled for them, of the work you did for them. You set your standards unreasonably high, and you besiege their palace. You view it as love. You’re pressuring them to better themselves, to fit the mold that you’ve designed for them--as if you know best.

     Both of you cling to your love as you force them to become your enemy.

     The palace begins to crumble, the air begins to rumble. Craquelure on the walls, wailing in the halls. Storms form overhead, wind wails like voices of the dead. In enmity you lay your traps. Lightning flashes, thunder claps.

     Rain lashes against the stones, drowning the gardens and muddying the roads. You unleash your wrath--the power to bring down the palaces: the might to crush your own kingdom. You bring ruin unto yourself to force perfection onto them. Maniacal and monstrous, you bring down the walls.

     The palace crumbles, comes tumbling down in a hail of broken stones. The storm rages on. You see them one last time. Your friends. Your family. Your loves. They stand there, limping, battered and broken, bruised and belittled. Bloodied and dying, the light fading from their eyes--their eyes, once brimming with their affection for you, now sallow and sad, sickly and sullen. Tears well in them. Disappointment. They loved you; they still do.

     But it’s too late.

     You failed them.

     There’s no fixing this.

     They fade away; they leave you--not out of malice, but for their own good.

     Your kingdom is left to dwindle down to nothing. The palaces all fall. The gardens all wither. The storm rages on; it rages and rages until finally it has nothing left to conquer.

     And then you see it.

     And then you realize what you’ve lost.

     And then you realize what you’ve done.

     And then you fall to your knees and cry, wailing and weeping, pleading and begging. You scream at the sky, you scream at yourself, you scream at your gods, you scream at your family, you scream at your friends, you scream at your loves, you scream at the ruins, you scream at the gardens, you scream at the rivers, you scream at the seas, you scream at the sun, you scream at the moon, you scream at the stars, you scream and you scream and you scream.

     But it’s too late. No one can hear you. You already drove them away. You already decided that there was only room for them if they changed themselves for you; you already decided that there’s only room in your heart for you.

     In a blind, desperate haste, you rebuild the palaces. You replant the gardens. You wash the stones, you sweep the streets. You till the fields, you adorn the halls. In a frenzy, in a panic, you make it better than it ever was. You put more effort than you had ever dreamed of before. You finally realize what it takes. You finally realize that they never needed to change; they were perfect the way they were. So, you rebuild their palaces, and you call out to them. You beg and plead and pray for them back.

     But it doesn’t matter.

     You’ve already hurt them too much.

     They’re never coming back.

     And now you walk the halls of empty palaces reserved for people who will never come back. Your heart becomes full of such structures--of massive, hulking palaces and grounds that will never be inhabited again.

     And, in the end, there is only room for you. Your kingdom becomes full of these palaces built for ghosts. You’re too afraid to build new palaces for new people because you swear that you’ll only hurt them in the end; so, you sit in empty halls, waiting for ships to return that you sunk at sea.

     You wait. You wait. You wait.

     You wait.

     You wait.

     You wait.

     And years melt by until you finally look in the mirror and laugh at yourself. And you say, “Here I am, still wishing. Here I am, still waiting.”

     Here I am, still wishing.

     Here I am, still waiting.

Reviews

[Arriam]

This is such a fascinating, wonderfully contradicting story. it takes the reader everywhere they need to be so beautifully. All in all, this is very, very well done.

Arriam

[Seth Armstrong]

Thank you so much, Arriam!