Whoa! Look at that huge mushroom cloud in the sky, far off in the distance. No one, other than myself, has even noticed it, much less reacted to it. Now that Mama’s ghost is having me put away, where I can’t do anything to stop her, she can go ahead with her plans to destroy the world and bring us all to Hell, to join her. The people on the streets aren’t reacting to the nuclear blast because her magic is restraining them, hypnotizing them into a state of total apathy!
No one cares. No one will help me. Aunt Jane and…that man everyone says is my father…are just working for Mama’s ghost, to keep me under her control so she can be free to unleash her mayhem on the world. I’m powerless to save everyone from her.
I wanna kill myself so badly, but I can’t, because: I can’t escape from the clutches of the staff taking me back to the mental hospital; I’m too chicken to endure the pain of slashing my wrists, or jumping off of a building, or any other violent form of suicide; I have no pills to OD on; and besides, killing myself will only bring myself further into Hell and under Mama’s control.
There’s nothing I can do to relieve my pain. No…
Oof! What…the…? Did one of those boats on this surreal road just collide with the elephant I’m riding on? Oh! It’s losing balance…I’m falling off!
Aah! I just hit the road on my left side, hurting my upper arm and hip. Now I’m in pain on both sides of my body, after that motorcycle crash I had before.
Hey, I see Aunt Jane and…that man…lying on the road, too. They’re all bloody and unconscious. Are they dead? I’ll check for her pulse: oh, my God, she is dead. She was working for Mama’s ghost, though, helping to ensure that I stay locked away in the mental hospital, so I couldn’t stop Mama from using her magic to make a Hell here on Earth. Why would Mama kill my aunt all of a sudden?
What’s that? Coughing coming from…that man. I’ll go over to him, in spite of my revulsion from him. What does he want from me now?
“Roger…Roger,” he’s saying between gasps and coughs. “I…am your…father. Why…can’t you…just accept me?” More coughing from him–it’s revolting to watch and hear.
Again, though, I must ask myself: why would Mama’s ghost kill off the people who were helping her? I see the hospital worker, the one who was steering the elephant we were on, lying next to ‘Dad,’ dead and covered in his own blood, too.
“I…love…you, Roger,” says ‘Dad,’ then his head falls to the side, and he’s lying there dead, with his eyes wide open. I’m checking his pulse. No, he’s definitely dead.
I don’t understand any of this. Why is Mama doing this?
None of it makes any sense, unless…
…unless it’s all just been figments of my imagination the whole time.
Is that why no one responded to the nuclear blast I saw a few minutes ago? Because there was no nuclear blast?
My seeing boats on the road instead of cars, celery sticks instead of lampposts, animal heads on people’s bodies, mushrooms instead of skyscrapers, fire in the background, blue elephants instead of ambulances to take me back to the mental hospital,…none of these are Mama’s magic, but just my hallucinations going to such an extreme?
All because I can’t accept that this man was my father?
Hey…as I look all around me, I see that the surreal imagery I’d seen before is all gone. Now, everything looks normal: cars and buses on the road, lampposts, tall buildings, pedestrians with human heads, no fire to be seen anywhere at all, not even on the horizon. All there is before me is that car crash–my ambulance lying on its side, with the back door wide open so I could crawl out and look around outside, and my aunt and…my…father…lying here, dead.
The world is just an ordinary place.
And I am just an ordinary man.
I’m no hero. My life isn’t the great melodrama that I imagined it to be, with a demonic mother persecuting me. I probably didn’t even kill her; as everybody else told me, she just died of a heart attack, and I was just a fool sticking pins into a doll that had no effect on her at all. I’m nothing special; I’m just a deluded idiot.
And because of my resistance from them, I just lost the only two people in the whole world who actually cared about me. I’m mediocre, and alone.
This existence is worse than any fiery Hell I could imagine…and it’s all of my own creation.
People are crowding around the ambulance. I’ve got to get away from them, or else I’ll be put in that mental institution for the rest of my life, and I don’t want the rest of my life to be a long one.
Since there’s no mother-demon trying to get me, suicide is still a viable option for me. I’m getting out of here, now, before another ambulance arrives!
Umph! Oh, getting this crowd of onlookers to open up a path for me is annoyingly difficult!
“C’mon, you people! Out of my way!” I shout.
“Hey, don’t be so pushy!” a man says.
“You’re injured,” a woman says. “You need to go to the hospital, Sir.”
“Mind your own business!” I shout, then get free.
I’m running away from the crash scene and down the street. I see an alley between two tall buildings, and I’m running towards it.
A voice whispers in my ear, “Yes, Roger, go in there.”
That was another hallucination, of course, the voice of ‘Mama.’ I don’t believe any of that’s real anymore, but I’m still going into the alley. Piles of garbage bags and boxes are lying against the walls on both sides. Is this where I was before, when I crashed the bike? It smells just as bad.
Looking back, I can see a few people running after me. I’d better hide.
Behind these boxes here will be good. Yeah, those people just ran past. I can hear them running farther and farther away, their footsteps getting softer and softer. I hear nothing at all now.
Good. I’m all alone now. No one to bother me. Absolute peace.
…except for the war going on in my heart.
I hate my life. I never amounted to anything. The only way I could make my life have any meaning was to make up a melodramatic, hallucinatory story about my mother being a witch and a demon from Hell bent on destroying the world, so I could fancy myself a hero about to save everyone. What a load of ridiculous nonsense, all fabricated to hide the truth from myself, that I’m just a pathetic loser! I couldn’t have an average man as a father, because I’m below average.
If only I could have just accepted that man as my father! I could have grown to love him, to receive his love, and then finally learn to love myself! And now he’s dead.
Now I have nobody to value me in any way.
I hate myself, and I want to die. But I’m too scared to kill myself, as much as I hate living.
If only I could kill myself quickly and painlessly. I have no sleeping pills or other drugs to OD on. I have no access to a bathtub and razors so I can do it the old Roman way. And I don’t have the guts to jump off of a tall building.
What am I going to do? I don’t want to be in a mental institution for the rest of my worthless life.
I want to die…now…but I can’t do it.
If only there were somebody out there who could do it for me. Any murderers out there?
Is there anything in these boxes or garbage bags that I could use? Any bottles I could break, and use the jagged edge to cut myself? Let me take a look…
Hey, what’s that over there, by the opposite wall? Another hallucination? Very well–bring it on. Nothing else is helping.
Infinite Ocean 