“To revel in death is to live. For only when you find peace in death, do you realize what your life was? You may find the solitude for eternity refreshing from you brief Passover in life in which you were repeatedly forced to work. Or, better yet, you may find it a time to recollect on all the things you did.” When she said it I didn’t have a clue what she meant. But I smiled and nodded along when she continued.
“Think about it, if you were to die, you’d either be miserable or happy. There’s no room for gray noise. If you allow yourself to become a drone, a sheep attached to belongings that you don’t even know why you have; it’ll haunt you to your grave and beyond. But-” as she said this she punctured the air with her finger “if you lived your life filled with fun and memorable events you’re eternal seclusion may not be so bad… But when I say memorable events, I don’t mean how much shit you’ve collected, or how much money you’ve made. I mean what you do.” Her hands were in fists and she was looking towards the ceiling, I still didn’t know what she meant though. “Take for instance today. What did we do? You know full well what we did, but so will the world. And when we die, we’ll go out smiling because we have something to think about. We have something to ponder, something to carry us through perpetuity, our memories are now our blanket.” I felt it was time to speak up.
“Yea, but we didn’t do this to create memories, and if we did, I’d rather we just had sex in public, that would make better memories than this. It’s like you’re pulling excuses out of the air.”
“True… it didn’t start out like this. But when we were in there, doing what we loved, planned for, and nurtured, this thought came to me. Like a reveille from the afterlife. It must have been when we ran out, but I just had this sudden flash of thought, I will remember this. For the first time in my life, I’m living! Admit it, you’ve never felt this alive”
“Yea, I’ll give you that, but I bet some other people don’t share our sentiments”
“That was a very, very, bad joke you know…”
I couldn’t help but laugh, it was a bad joke, that’s for sure, but it also brought to mind another thought.
“What if, and this is a very big ‘what if’, we start to regret what we’ve done? Then what will happen in our extended stay in the earth? Will we go from reveling in our glory to being haunted by the demons of our actions?” “I can’t speak for both of us, but I know for sure I’ll never regret what I’ve done. For one instant in our entire existence on this planet we did something worthwhile… we made this world a better place to say the least.” “For who though? We spent the last few years of our lives hating these people, but then what do we do? We return their actions upon them ten-fold, aren’t we the ultimate hypocrites?”
“Only if you believe in retribution my little space monkey. Look at you; your morals are crowding out your reasoning. Of course we’re hypocrites in the eye of most, but what we just did, thousands of people have worshipped.” “What the hell are you talking about now?”
“Think about it this way. In the bible, a book respect and revered by countless fools over the past centuries, there is an angel of death, it goes about and kills those that are deserving of it, right?”
“I don’t know, I’ve never read the bible, and I don’t think you have either…” We both laugh.
“Well, if what I hear is right, there is this angel of death person, and like I said before, he goes about and kills those that are deserving. Granted, deserving to the church is anyone who has an opinion different from the norm, but the idea is still there.”
I laughed again, this was getting to funny for me, “I still don’t get it.” “Basically we gave the angel of death a vacation, is that simplistic enough for you?”
“I guess, but the question of morals comes into play with that. You can look at that two ways though, your way, or another way that puts those that we hate as the angel of death, and us the ones deserving of punishment.”
“Then how come they didn’t kill us?”
“Give me a break, maybe they didn’t have the same mentality as us, maybe they believed that by torturing us we would adhere to there thinking. After all, wasn’t that what the inquisition was all about? Converting everyone into the same basic beliefs, or at least making them say that they did? It would be the same way with us, the higher ups of this situation aren’t priests, but instead the higher ups in the social ladder. The prom king being the most popular and ultimately the ruler. We don’t act like them or dress like them so they tried to harass us into conformity. The inquisitors believed that they had God behind them in their actions, who are we to assume that they didn’t have a similar belief, except god would be society, and that they were doing the world a favor?”
“You have a point there, but there’s always the question of morality. What they did was malicious, and that can’t be good.” “Are you inferring what we did was good?”
“No my little space monkey, what we did was horrible, but necessary, tomorrow after we’re 2 more names on the list which will be read on the 10 o clock news tonight, think about what everyone else will be thinking? They’ll see the uselessness of their plights to be popular, and on the reverse spectrum, others will see how futile it is to try your hardest to be different. And out of this thinking will come a peace, a bonding if you will, between everyone. And for awhile, it will be a glorious happy haze of togetherness.”
“And then after tomorrow everyone will go back to the same old crap.”
“Not necessarily, things here have been drastic enough, people will change.” “Right, that’s what everyone has thought about every action like this in the past. All that happens is that people act like friends for a little while, and then fall back into their old habits with the exception of an elite few. And, even worse, people will exploit this new sense of togetherness for their own good, the school officials will use it to mask funding disputes for new security measures, the ‘outcasts’ will use it as yet another thing to rebel against, and the ‘higher ups’ will use it as yet another way to distinguish themselves by becoming media whores and giving out interviews about how sad they are. It has happened before, look at the trade center thing”
“Oh god, don’t bring that up, I’m so tired of hearing about it.”
“Exactly, when they were attacked, for a month at most the country came together, people were nice to each other. Then people stopped caring about it, but people wouldn’t let it die! No, the government used it to get the citizens support to bomb an entire country, killing more civilians than were in the trade center at the time. Schools used it as a theme for prep rallies, so that those who didn’t want to go to them were labeled unpatriotic and ‘terrorist’ supporters. And then to top it off, the crème Della crème if you will, people used it to sell products! Every commercial since then has ‘God bless America” or, even better, “United we stand”. What started out as a good thing turned into another gimmick? Which is exactly what will happen with this.”
“So are you saying that you’re regretting this?”
“No way, I’m just saying we need to get our reasons strait, in the last few minutes we have come up with different explanations for our actions which mask our true intentions.”
“And tell me, my little space monkey, what was that?”
“We got tired of being harassed, we got tired of being called different, and we were tired of it all. And granted, we do have some memories to keep us company once we die, but that isn’t the sole reason we did it, nor was it to change anything, except for the lives of those around us, and of course, ourselves.” “Yea, the Space Monkey has a point”
We laugh again and then she starts talking.
“I just had a sad thought though, what if people view this has just another copy cat plea for attention?”
“Well I think people will need to get their priorities in order.” She laughs a little, and then continues. “Well think about it, nowadays people think that most suicides are triggered by another, so they’re labeled as a copy cat. Murders are always blamed on the media, along with school shootings, and almost every other violent act.”
“Yea…?”
“Well, wouldn’t that just be horrible if all our preparations went to waste because we listen to Marilyn Manson? It’s almost disrespectful to me.” “Well, you have to think about it this way, we are influenced by the media whether you like it or not, it just depends on who you are when it comes to how much it influences you. Think about it, you call me Space Monkey, that’s not a phrase you came up with now is it? If it wasn’t for the media no one would really have opinions if you ask me, after all, if there was nothing to talk about, why have thoughts of anything on anything? But it’s not the media per say, its life. The media just portrays life. Think about it this way, a person dies. Normally, only those around him would here about his death. But the media takes it and turns it into art or profit. Now more people have heard about it. Are we all going to kill ourselves? No, there’s a reason why humans are an advanced civilization, we are not lemmings anymore, to an extent. The media tells us about things, directly or not, but it’s up to us to interpret this. So the man’s death we hear about and formulate opinions. Some may realize that death is an option whereas before, it was a distant thing. Others, like you and me, hear about it and think, that sucks. It’s all based on the person.” “You’re right Space Monkey.”
“What the hell started this conversation?”
“I don’t really know, I just felt like making a speech to make our actions a little unique compared to what every other incident like this.” “Well, I’m sure the people around us will remember this day fairly well.” I turned to the assembled silent. “You will won’t you?” I was answered with silence.
“I think you’re right Space Monkey, they will remember us, and this, and everything else that has transpired today.”
“But it was a good speech, I’ll give you that, kind of reminded me of something I read or saw somewhere, great final words.”
“Well, I was just talking out of my ass like I normally do….”