Short Story Sunday #2

 

The Tortured Soul

    I see no reason for reason. I continue to strive for what is right and the best, yet I continue to fail. I stand here now at this bridge. I look down into the waters below me. How wonderful would it be to end it here. To end all the suffering and torture I have faced. All things I have known will vanish. All the things known about me will vanish. All the falsities, all the truth shall be gone. What worth is life when all has been lost! What worth is it when I continue to fight for freedom, but I remain a slave in chains! What freedom do I have when I cannot seek happiness! I cannot seek wealth nor can I seek stability!

    All that there was, all that there was, was taken away from me! Do you know where it went? Where was it? Am I a condemned man by fate? I was not a lover, I was not an adulterer. I neither propagated gossip nor did I want it. I never did desire wrong. I never tried to do wrong. I only sought to fight for my own merit! I am a fighter! Yet the blood I wish to spill has been spilled on me! Woe to thee that governs me as a tyrant! The slave of wages! I go into that dark cave where I do not see that light. I no longer see the light all is darkness in its depravity!

    I no longer see the darkness. I have made my own light in my suffering. I see the juiciness in a grape beneath a winepress. That sweet wine that comes from it. I sought only my own stability in wealth but there was no work. I lived and used all my wages to survive. I could not live. I wanted to live first before I could love. I could not find any work that brought me up in the classes. I knew at a time it was much easier to move from one class to another. 

    To be ruled or to rule! I desire to rule my own fate and destiny. But I commend my soul into your hands with my own. I cannot move I see the darkness where I thought I would see light! My despair is great and I cannot find joy nor happiness in all the things I seek. With what I seek I cannot ever obtain. The unobtainable is no longer obtainable and what was obtainable is unobtainable. Yes, means no and no means yes. All the things of the world have be turned upside-down in my life. By good merit I worked in my life and by my own merit I go! I do go fiercely into that night!

    I look up from those dark murky waters. I see the clouds and the sun part through them. Although I see hope I do not know it in my heart. I have hoped before yet there is no hope today. I see now there is no other solution. I stand on up high on that bridge and I look down at those waters. I look up again with my arms widespread embracing the cold air despite the sunlight. I close my hands and plunge into those waters. I stay there but there is no joy nore pleasure. Yet I desire to die but I do not die. By what mercy is my fate today. I know there is a tomorrow for now.