-Spencer- Welcome to the end

Sam died today. Or yesterday maybe, I don’t know. I watched her from the edges of the House's territory, unwilling to get too close as she just walked into His embrace. Can't remember if I screamed at her to stop. That doesn’t mean anything. Maybe it was yesterday.

Click.

There’s nothing but a light, one tiny, singular, solitary light, and it’s easy to think that just for a second, just for one. Singular. Second. About everything and to do nothing but follow the flame with your eyes, see your life in the glowing embers of a wick. Pictures and memories flash like cameras, fleeting and blinding, putting spots of black in your vision.

It’s like rain, falling down, every single individual droplet in perpetual motion, adding to a collective. Because falling is just like flying, isn’t it, at least until you hit the ground; plummeting at 120 miles an hour at 33, 300 feet, you have three minutes to think about your life. You’re quiet and still and there’s nothing but the air rushing away around you. Nothing is tangible, and nothing hurts.

… three minutes, huh?

Click.

The light goes out. And then it’s gone, it’s left, and a web of pictures, videos and writings spring from dilapidated fingertips like dust, each key a meaningful letter, a meaningful sound. We write because we’re afraid, you know. We write because we want to leave something behind. “My name is Spencer Fitzgerald, and I’m about to die.” It gives finality. It relieves responsibility. You’re allowed to give up.

It’s a funny little thing. Silver and bronze, filled with liquid, a worn and dirty wick. You turn a wheel with the side of your thumb; spark. And with that spark, a wisp of smoke. It’s empty now, of course, last bit of fuel used up on a final cigarette.

As last rights go, this is pretty shitty, but I’ll take what I can get.

Two. It’s funny now, what I wish would happen, what I wish did happen. I wish that I had told Matt to stop trying to save the world, then we’d run, we’d run for as long as we had to. For as long as it lasted. And if I died, I would’ve died afraid but happy. Naive and happy. Protecting him. I could deal with that.

Click.

I almost miss it. I do miss it, I miss all of it. Cushy amendments and set routines. I was fucked up, but so was everyone else. We all sat in our own little worlds, waiting to answer a call that never came. We all thought that we were there to serve in a way everyone else couldn’t. Shouldn’t. There was nothing above us aside from our Father, nothing that wasn’t permitted. There were the good guys and the bad guys. It was so fucking simple, until it wasn’t.

Because now I see good guys who kill with smiles on their faces, that get other people killed and act as if there was nothing they could do. Now I see bad guys who whimper and cry and beg, that put on fake personas in order to stay alive. I see the same people turn around and stab their enemies and allies in the back all in one go.

You start to feel things that aren’t real. Things that you think you would feel if you were “normal”; we start to grasp at straws, force things that were never really there. I’ve just watched. Watched for so goddamn long and kept my nose out of everyone else’s business. Watched it all burn around me, and didn’t lift a finger. Guess I’m like Him, in that regard...

Click.

Silhouettes. I think that, after a while, you have to stop seeing people as people. I did it back then, did it when we’d see bodies that looked more like a cartoon representation of what a human should be, and I do it now. I know the look -you know the one- wide eyed and afraid and jittery and cautious. I didn’t say a thing, didn’t offer one bit of advice or comfort. You all expect someone to give you answers, give you help. Contentment has a habit of making people comfortable, and as much as I hate to admit it, being comfortable means...

I was able to pretend for a while. You’ve all done it, most of you are doing it now from the safety of... wherever you are. We pretend that we’re people, like how long we last or what we do makes a difference in the end. And you know what? We’re all wrong. We spread out and run and infect others like a virus, latch onto innocent, ignorant people and suck them dry. We’re parasites, we take their help and they pay the price, like some twisted game of blackjack. The House is the only one who wins, and none of us are the fucking dealer.

And we can buy the drinks and wear the suits and tie the ties and look the part, but we’re never, ever going to be the same. And that’s the worst part, because now He’s taken something from you. He’s taken everything and He always manages that tiny bit more, the last refuge you had. He doesn’t think, doesn’t feel, doesn't do anything but act, doesn’t do anything but overpower. He takes you and everything that makes you and crushes it easily and then you’re not even left with the cinders afterwards. And the worst part about it is that there’s nothing you can do.

Click.

One. My name is Spencer Fitzgerald, and I have fifty three seconds left until I stop falling. The ground is coming up fast, and idly I find myself thinking about how it’s going to feel, how long it’s going to take, how much it’s going to hurt. I can’t help it, because as tired as I am, I don’t want it to hurt. Even with everything I’ve done, I don’t want to suffer. So instead I think about everyone that’s died up until now, with all that blood around me, surrounding me, on my hands. I’m not going to scream and beg, but I know I don’t want to die. I don’t want this. Was this how it was for everyone else? For August and Lori and Amanda and Todd and Sam, was this what it was like in the end? Sitting, just waiting, alone?

It’s cold.

I still have... I still had so much ahead of me, so much to see and do, but it’s all gone now. I should be relieved. I should be happy that it’s finally going to be over. But what sort of comfort is this? What comfort is waiting for death to fucking fall in your lap? I’m angry, I’m angry at a world that would let this all happen, at a universe that would do this to me. I’m running out of time and it’s not enough, and I’m left not a hero, not a ethereal figure, or anything that I wanted to be. These are the last words I’m ever going to write, and everything is ending one second at a time. Fuck all of you. Give up. No, fuck, don’t you dare ever listen to me; you’re all braver than you know, stronger than you’ll ever realize. But this is my stop. I'm tired of struggling, I'm tired of fighting a fight that I'm not going to win. I want the quiet and the hum, because for all my struggling, it never made any difference. 

But maybe, just maybe, you’ll live through all of this changing. All of it. Everything. And then life can go back to normal. 

I want to see it. I don't want to go.

... Leon


I think I'm ready now.