he had to look like this, he had to look soft and safe
WHO: Katurian Katurian (solo)
WHERE: The hospice
WHEN: The evening of January 20th, and forty-five years in the past.
WARNINGS: Death.
SUMMARY: Katurian almost, but doesn't quite, wipe a child out of existence.
FORMAT: Paragraph.
Once upon a time, there was a man who looked like normal men, but who was not like normal men.
This man, Katurian Katurian, woke up every morning while the sky was still dark. The first thing he did was kiss a sheet of paper where he had written a story for his poor, poor dead brother because he didn't have a photograph. It became a routine, this daily mourning, even though by now, the paper was wrinkled and stained with his spit and tears. You see, Katurian was very sad, although that it in itself did not make him unique. He was sad about his old world, about how he was dead and ruined and no one would ever remember him or his stories, and he was also sad about the two dead children he could have saved, maybe, but he was especially sad about what he did, or rather, what he had to do, which was kill that brother on a cold, prison floor, and suffer with the memory of down feathers under his fingers. A body buckling under his own. Silence.
The story he had written began with 'once upon a time' and ended with just that.
After kissing the story, he would fix himself breakfast - nothing too complicated, just cereal and juice and so on - and then he would get dressed and make his way to work, where he watched over the dying and read them stories and helped them bathe and held them when they cried. What had made Katurian unique was why he chose this job, and he chose it because he could turn back time, back to when no one was crying, no one needed help bathing, and no one was sick, and he could spend all day in that other time, and he could even make those dying patients laugh like they had their whole lives ahead of them, because, in a way, they did.
He told them to call him the Pillowman.
'Why the Pillowman?' each one would ask, staring up at him with wide, child eyes. Eyes that were bloodshot or unseeing in the present. And he would answer:
'It's because no one else can see me but you. It's like you're asleep in your beds, curled up on your pillow. I'm a dream person.'
And all the children liked this answer, because it was true that their parents and their friends and their teachers couldn't see him, and it made them feel special, that they alone had been chosen. They played silly little games, watching him try to touch objects in their world, gently poking at him with sticks. He gave them money from the present and told them to buy sweets with it, and when they came back, mouths stained with chocolate, he would tell them stories about pigs and angels and unicorns where no one died and no one was ever sad for very long at all. The story he didn't tell them was a story he had written a long time ago, and that story, not so coincidentally, was called The Pillowman. And The Pillowman went something like this:
Once upon a time there was a man who did not look like normal men. [...] The Pillowman would go back in time to when a man or a lady was just a little boy or a little girl, to when the life of horror they were to lead hadn't quite yet begun [...] because the Pillowman's job was to get that child to kill themselves.
Katurian's job was very, very sad.
He wasn't born into this job, and the idea sickened and terrified him and kept him up all night, and even though he had a friend that insisted very, very strongly that it was the right and merciful thing to do, he still couldn't find the strength to go through with it. And he agreed. That it was right. That it was merciful. Part of him believed, even, that this was why he was saved from death, so that he could perform this last service and rescue everyone that ever had a shitty life. So that, for a limited definition of the word, he could be a hero. Still, he couldn't do it, and every day he left the patients and their broken bodies and rode the train back home, staring at nothing in particular, thinking about how yes, he was a coward, he would always be a coward, and that nothing would ever change.
Except one day, he received a phone call. His first patient, a woman with early onset Alzheimer's, had begun what they considered the 'active phase' of dying, and this was a very nice, very clinical way of saying that there was nothing left, and despite working in the hospice for three months, Katurian had never received a call like this. She had no family to visit her. As her home health aide for these last months, would he like to say goodbye?
The train ride to the hospice wasn't the most agonizing twenty minutes of Katurian's life, but it came close. When he arrived, he was so pale that the nurses wondered if he, too, was sick, and this was not only because of what Katurian planned to do, but because he spent so much time in the dying woman's past that he knew all of her friends' names and all of her dreams and the way her laugh caught and squeaked in the back of her throat, and one way or another, she was going to die. When he arrived in the hospital room, he sat down next to her and held her hand and was quiet for a very long while.
Then, eventually, he let time slow down, and went to visit her one last time. 'Pillowman,' she said, grinning, forty-five years in the past. She was twelve years old. The sun was shining.
'Hi,' he said. His throat was raw.
She asked him why he was so sad, and he didn't know what to say. He knew that he should tell her about all of the awful things that were going to happen, about how her life was only getting worse once she hit thirteen, about how right now, she was dying in a hospital bed with no family and no flowers and only a stranger to hold her hand and, in fact, she didn't even know people that weren't strangers, because her mind had deteriorated into nothing and she was nothing. He knew that he should ask her if she wanted to die now and spare herself the pain, spare herself from everything horrible in this world that was going to ruin her along with everything else.
Instead, he cried. He held onto her, and he cried. The tears made his whole body shudder, but he didn't care. He didn't notice. She held onto him too, this dream man that she had known for inexplicable stretches of her childhood, and they stayed like that until Katurian realized his face was buried in the hospital sheets and the hand he was holding was limp. The equipment behind him was ringing a single, clear tone, and without turning around, he knew just what it meant.
Before he let go of her hand, he kissed it, and hated himself even more.
WHERE: The hospice
WHEN: The evening of January 20th, and forty-five years in the past.
WARNINGS: Death.
SUMMARY: Katurian almost, but doesn't quite, wipe a child out of existence.
FORMAT: Paragraph.
Once upon a time, there was a man who looked like normal men, but who was not like normal men.
This man, Katurian Katurian, woke up every morning while the sky was still dark. The first thing he did was kiss a sheet of paper where he had written a story for his poor, poor dead brother because he didn't have a photograph. It became a routine, this daily mourning, even though by now, the paper was wrinkled and stained with his spit and tears. You see, Katurian was very sad, although that it in itself did not make him unique. He was sad about his old world, about how he was dead and ruined and no one would ever remember him or his stories, and he was also sad about the two dead children he could have saved, maybe, but he was especially sad about what he did, or rather, what he had to do, which was kill that brother on a cold, prison floor, and suffer with the memory of down feathers under his fingers. A body buckling under his own. Silence.
The story he had written began with 'once upon a time' and ended with just that.
After kissing the story, he would fix himself breakfast - nothing too complicated, just cereal and juice and so on - and then he would get dressed and make his way to work, where he watched over the dying and read them stories and helped them bathe and held them when they cried. What had made Katurian unique was why he chose this job, and he chose it because he could turn back time, back to when no one was crying, no one needed help bathing, and no one was sick, and he could spend all day in that other time, and he could even make those dying patients laugh like they had their whole lives ahead of them, because, in a way, they did.
He told them to call him the Pillowman.
'Why the Pillowman?' each one would ask, staring up at him with wide, child eyes. Eyes that were bloodshot or unseeing in the present. And he would answer:
'It's because no one else can see me but you. It's like you're asleep in your beds, curled up on your pillow. I'm a dream person.'
And all the children liked this answer, because it was true that their parents and their friends and their teachers couldn't see him, and it made them feel special, that they alone had been chosen. They played silly little games, watching him try to touch objects in their world, gently poking at him with sticks. He gave them money from the present and told them to buy sweets with it, and when they came back, mouths stained with chocolate, he would tell them stories about pigs and angels and unicorns where no one died and no one was ever sad for very long at all. The story he didn't tell them was a story he had written a long time ago, and that story, not so coincidentally, was called The Pillowman. And The Pillowman went something like this:
Once upon a time there was a man who did not look like normal men. [...] The Pillowman would go back in time to when a man or a lady was just a little boy or a little girl, to when the life of horror they were to lead hadn't quite yet begun [...] because the Pillowman's job was to get that child to kill themselves.
Katurian's job was very, very sad.
He wasn't born into this job, and the idea sickened and terrified him and kept him up all night, and even though he had a friend that insisted very, very strongly that it was the right and merciful thing to do, he still couldn't find the strength to go through with it. And he agreed. That it was right. That it was merciful. Part of him believed, even, that this was why he was saved from death, so that he could perform this last service and rescue everyone that ever had a shitty life. So that, for a limited definition of the word, he could be a hero. Still, he couldn't do it, and every day he left the patients and their broken bodies and rode the train back home, staring at nothing in particular, thinking about how yes, he was a coward, he would always be a coward, and that nothing would ever change.
Except one day, he received a phone call. His first patient, a woman with early onset Alzheimer's, had begun what they considered the 'active phase' of dying, and this was a very nice, very clinical way of saying that there was nothing left, and despite working in the hospice for three months, Katurian had never received a call like this. She had no family to visit her. As her home health aide for these last months, would he like to say goodbye?
The train ride to the hospice wasn't the most agonizing twenty minutes of Katurian's life, but it came close. When he arrived, he was so pale that the nurses wondered if he, too, was sick, and this was not only because of what Katurian planned to do, but because he spent so much time in the dying woman's past that he knew all of her friends' names and all of her dreams and the way her laugh caught and squeaked in the back of her throat, and one way or another, she was going to die. When he arrived in the hospital room, he sat down next to her and held her hand and was quiet for a very long while.
Then, eventually, he let time slow down, and went to visit her one last time. 'Pillowman,' she said, grinning, forty-five years in the past. She was twelve years old. The sun was shining.
'Hi,' he said. His throat was raw.
She asked him why he was so sad, and he didn't know what to say. He knew that he should tell her about all of the awful things that were going to happen, about how her life was only getting worse once she hit thirteen, about how right now, she was dying in a hospital bed with no family and no flowers and only a stranger to hold her hand and, in fact, she didn't even know people that weren't strangers, because her mind had deteriorated into nothing and she was nothing. He knew that he should ask her if she wanted to die now and spare herself the pain, spare herself from everything horrible in this world that was going to ruin her along with everything else.
Instead, he cried. He held onto her, and he cried. The tears made his whole body shudder, but he didn't care. He didn't notice. She held onto him too, this dream man that she had known for inexplicable stretches of her childhood, and they stayed like that until Katurian realized his face was buried in the hospital sheets and the hand he was holding was limp. The equipment behind him was ringing a single, clear tone, and without turning around, he knew just what it meant.
Before he let go of her hand, he kissed it, and hated himself even more.