charloft
Maybe you're one of those people who likes keeping to yourself, who doesn't much care for people flitting in and out of your space. Or maybe you're the one who wants to be best friends with everybody, bringing smiles and cheer to all around you.
So, which is it? Are you a hermit or a social butterfly?
Before the sickness he was the funny one.
He was, he was always making jokes. Laughing. He had a wife and a child and they were the perfectly knit family and he was the good guy. "Paul's got your back." that was what they said. He won awards for his work, medals of commendation, he made major arrests. He was good at his job, the pillar of the community-a lucky guy who everybody wanted to be like. An Adonis, a god.
Then the sickness came and he was something to be shunned. Pitied. He was no longer allowed out on field assignments. He was bound, chained, to a desk. Being locked away from the life he'd led hurt more then any wound he'd ever taken in the line of duty. To fall from the top and hit all the rocks on the way down was the worst thing in the world.
His world collapsed so his family collapsed. Joyce took his daughter and fled without so much as a goodbye. Every time he thought of them he coughed so hard it brought tears to his eyes and blood soaked his handkerchief.
Work left him, his colleagues deserted him and he was glanced at the way one would glance at an old dog left unloved at the pound. Any moment he'd be put down. It festered.
There was something else growing in him, something harsher then any cancer and more painful then any sickness or coughing spell. Disgust.
--------------------
He isn't the social butterfly anymore. No proud god, or at least a proud minion of a greater purpose. He slogs his days through Los Angeles staying put. No names, no nothing. His daughter calls once a month and he listens with tears in his eyes and the emotion makes him cough so hard he falls off his hotel room bed spasming. He is dying.
Death? Death isn't the hand that's closing in on his chest. It isn't the breaking feeling that he feels when he skulks about the work he'd once believed in like a beaten cur. It's the peeling paint he lives with. The take-out dinners, the lonely nights in the diner watching other people engaged.
Other people living.
This world was hell and hell was clearly other people. Being denied everything, spending your last remaining days without companionship watching other people like ghosts in the rain. You were dead. Dead inside, dead outside.
Which was what made them so very appealing in the first place.
They were dead already.
So, which is it? Are you a hermit or a social butterfly?
Before the sickness he was the funny one.
He was, he was always making jokes. Laughing. He had a wife and a child and they were the perfectly knit family and he was the good guy. "Paul's got your back." that was what they said. He won awards for his work, medals of commendation, he made major arrests. He was good at his job, the pillar of the community-a lucky guy who everybody wanted to be like. An Adonis, a god.
Then the sickness came and he was something to be shunned. Pitied. He was no longer allowed out on field assignments. He was bound, chained, to a desk. Being locked away from the life he'd led hurt more then any wound he'd ever taken in the line of duty. To fall from the top and hit all the rocks on the way down was the worst thing in the world.
His world collapsed so his family collapsed. Joyce took his daughter and fled without so much as a goodbye. Every time he thought of them he coughed so hard it brought tears to his eyes and blood soaked his handkerchief.
Work left him, his colleagues deserted him and he was glanced at the way one would glance at an old dog left unloved at the pound. Any moment he'd be put down. It festered.
There was something else growing in him, something harsher then any cancer and more painful then any sickness or coughing spell. Disgust.
--------------------
He isn't the social butterfly anymore. No proud god, or at least a proud minion of a greater purpose. He slogs his days through Los Angeles staying put. No names, no nothing. His daughter calls once a month and he listens with tears in his eyes and the emotion makes him cough so hard he falls off his hotel room bed spasming. He is dying.
Death? Death isn't the hand that's closing in on his chest. It isn't the breaking feeling that he feels when he skulks about the work he'd once believed in like a beaten cur. It's the peeling paint he lives with. The take-out dinners, the lonely nights in the diner watching other people engaged.
Other people living.
This world was hell and hell was clearly other people. Being denied everything, spending your last remaining days without companionship watching other people like ghosts in the rain. You were dead. Dead inside, dead outside.
Which was what made them so very appealing in the first place.
They were dead already.