My emotions are too high today, Beautiful Reader. I have to get away...
I run to my little corner of the classroom where i sleep on my little mattress and hide under my blanket. It's all getting to be too much. I need to get away. I need to escape. . . so I turn on my music, shut my eyes, slow my breathing. Type... type again.
I'm standing in a grey mist again. The world is familiar. I've been here before. The ground is made of a cool grey stone, shining and plain, riddled with small puddles. I look around in the mist and as the music plays, shadows rise and the puddles rise up to form around them. They take faces, the faces of those people who have haunted my mind. I walk up to each of them, put a trembling hand on their faces.
I look up at a familiar face...but something about him seems ... sad... sorrowful... he's gone. I know he is. Somehow, I know who he is and that knot in my throat comes back. I know he's already dead in the real world. Shot and killed overseas. I know who he is... I touch his face, and he smiles a little, but the water cascades as he does, and i look down as the water recedes into the stone and just try not to cry.
I walk to the next man. I touch his face, looking into his eyes, bright, intensely coloured. When I touch him, I can feel his heart beating , and i can see him look down at me. For a moment, the water forming him wraps around me, but then it turns dark and murky, and I pull my hand away.
I look to the other man, who seems to smile kindly at me, but behind the first layer of water smiling I can see the shadow sneering, laughing and pointing at me, whispering to the shadowy figure next to him, who laughs at me. I look away, eyes clenched shut, but force myself to look at the next one.
He stands there, idly watching me, his hands folded over each other in a military fashion as he simply watches me, the hint of a smirk there as he shifts, crossing his arms and nodding at me, as if encouraging me to continue to look.
The next man stands there, and breaks into a wide smile as I look back. He seems so happy, and I smile back, the world getting a little brighter, but when I smile I can feel the daggers from the eyes of the second face, and I look back at the murky man, who looks like he wants to step forward, but turns away, reaching out slightly to hold the hands of the shadows who walk around him. I feel guilty, but when I look back at the man who smiles, his eyes burn with a genuine happiness and a hint of longing, as if he wants to give me happiness. Can i deny happiness for the sake of the Murky Man? I look back at him, and I want to reach for him, but when I do, he turns, further enfolding himself in the arms of the shadows who caress his watery skin, giving him what he wants...
I can't do it. I can't handle the conflicting emotions. All of them are different shades of darkness, reaching out and surrounding me. I can't do it. I cover my ears, shut my eyes, and sink to my knees. The one who laughed at me steps up to me and kneels next to me, tilting his head inquisitively, and I see the shadow's inky black eyes boring into me, searching for the sign of a weakness as his hand draws back to hit me. I just stare at him. Before he can hit me, the man who smiled pushes him away violently, and hissing, the laughing man slinks back to his shadows, laughing again at me as his glinting dark eyes watch me. The laughing man kneels beside me, a hand on my shoulder and a hand on my chin, lifting it to look at him, but then the Murky man comes up, breaking away for a moment from the caressing shadows who stare on, just waiting for him to come back, and the murky man puts a hand on my shoulder from behind me, looking at the laughing man with a look I can't understand. The laughing man stares back at the murky man, then looks down at me as the poisoned and muddy water of the murky man pulses, running over my flesh, surrounding my figure kneeled on the ground. I can't read his expression, but he takes his hands off me, one simply running down to my hand, standing there as I stand up. The man who looks like a guardian just stands there...he does nothing, like he's waiting for me to walk away from everything and know what he knows. I don't want to turn around. I can feel the poison of the murky water seeping into me, and it hurts, but I stand tall, and I don't want to hurt the Murky Man. I almost feel like he doesn't mean to hurt me...but he does, doesn't he? He knows what he is, right? Does he?
When I look back up into the laughing man's eyes, I see pain. He immediately looks away, but he keeps his hand over mine a moment before looking back, bright blue pulsing behind his eyes as he stares at me, quiet. I want to run away, and all of a sudden the world around me starts to spin.
The men of water swirl around me, their faces blurring into each other. Laughing. Smiling. Bitter. Guarding. They all begin to form just one thing... anger. I'm angry... I can't get away from it, and it's all around me. The emotions build too highly and spill over, and I just can't do it. I scream, "STOP!!" and all of a sudden the world stops, the men all flying back and exploding in a mist of water that combines and falls like rain. I curl up on the ground, crying. I don't want to be lonely...but I want to be alone...
I feel comforting hands run over my back and to my shoulders. I look at my shoulder and see the glinting stone of the world around me in the shape of the hand. Is it...? I look over and I see the face...it is.... It's the flint man. As he helps me up slowly to my feet, wiping away my tears with his cool, stony hands, he smiles, his features still vague, and he leans forward, kissing my forehead gently. I feel a rush of calm, of peace, and I look up at him, opening my mouth to speak, but he shakes his head, stepping back, and runs a hand over my arm. I feel like he showed me the water feelings for a reason, but I don't know what. He nods to me, as if letting me know that there was a purpose to my pain, and lets go of my arm, turning to walk back into the mist, his feet never quite leaving the flint ground. I call out after him, but he keeps walking until he is almost out of sight. Just before he disappears, he turns to me for a second. He has no expression still, but I feel okay..then he's gone, and my eyes open.
I don't have an analysis, Beautiful Reader. I think I know what the water feelings represented, but I feel no closer to a solution than I did. I still just feel lost. . . What did you want, Man of Flint? Why did I have to hurt?
I'm lost.
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