I’m Sorry
By Greg Wilburn
Copyright 2014 Greg Wilburn
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I’M SORRY
September 23rd, 19—.
My poor Art,
You became a monster long ago, but it wasn’t of your own power. We forced you to become one, mostly I, and no one seems to care about what we did anymore. Except me. I care. I wish I didn’t really, but when I remember how I instigated the crime, forcing my long-time friend to transform into an abomination before the eyes of everything, I can’t help but feel responsible.
Art, I hope somehow that you find this last entry in the bloodied pages of my diary. I say bloodied because of you, Art, and how I can’t stop letting the innocent crimson drip from my lips and soak into the pages, like poison, which is further evidence of my crimes. And the blood isn’t my own, I assure you.
It’s yours, Art, all yours. I know because of the taste and the smell. It tastes bitter as wormwood, and the stench of death wafts up from the glistening pools seeping into the pages. But no one will know, after all. Except me, Art. I know. That’s why, by the time you read this, and by the time the body of this local lawyer is found, your blood will be muddied with my own. And, truth is, Art, that innocent blood is always lost in that of the guilty. My blood is so much thicker because of the grime that’s accumulated inside me since the beginning of your end.
It’s a slime really, because it cudgels and grimes slowly as it drags through my veins. In this polluted stream, the slowly damning memories of what I, and we, did to you play over and over in my mind. Maybe that’s where I really got this damn heart condition from. It’s funny, Art, really, it is, that not soon after you became the monster on 13th Street, my heart gave out. I kind of wish it did permanently that day.
I can see now that it was really me trying to kill myself off, and I’m sorry that I tried to blame it on you just because you were watching me from inside the dusty windows. I couldn’t see you, but I know you were there. Not as a murder projecting some satanic power upon me, but as a betrayed and hollowed-out victim, feeling compassion for the demon I was transforming into.
I can’t face you, Art. I can’t bear to look at all the unnecessary damage that I havocked upon you. And, as I said, your guiltless blood will be covered by mine own. I think it’s really interesting how our bloods act as truths too. Yours is the truth of who you were, who you are, and all the innocence of you in contrast to what I’ve made you become. Mine is a truth of sorts, at least one I could live with, but I think at core it’s really a lie; a lie I keep telling myself to this very moment. The lie that you’re the monster, and that it was all your own doing. And that I merely found you out, and in that, protected all of us from who you really are.
It’s my distant and crumbling truth now, and in the grand scale of what’s happened, it’s really just subjective nonsense. I guess it’s not a truth after all. It’s really a lie that I’ve disguised and given to myself and all the others as a truth we could believe in. Yet, even to this day, it testifies against me, pointing me as the monster, as the murderer of an innocent man. And in all that, you remain absolute.
You and your truth, the real and unobjectionable that’s infallibly bound, rails against me, against all of us, reminding us that you were the third party substitute, the sacrificial lamb, and that we’ve truly become the monsters that we feared you and the her and the she were. And, as I mentioned beforehand, your absolute and unwavering nature based on your fakely projected guilt will be lost underneath the black waves of my own blood, a pollutant that covers and hides the truth, trading absolutivity for any sort of subjectively driven justification.
It’s funny, I might even be chuckling between my sobs. Really, Art, I find it funny that I became a lawyer. I lie for a living. I’m pretty good at it too. It’s truly sad that I once believed I was giving truths, even if it was half-ones at that. I thought of myself as a detective, a hero, and a savior giving a voice to the uttermost truths of our beings and exposing them to the world, and in the end, the truth would win the day. I probably could’ve convinced myself of that only if it weren’t for you, Art. If only I hadn’t done all this to you. If only I could stop the searing guilt pumping my brain full of truth, the real truth. Not a half or quarter or sixths truth, but the whole one.
So, in the end, my dear Art, I have to kill myself. I know you’ve probably realized how selfish it is. I see that it has less to do with you and more to do with me. You see, Art, I have no truth. I’ve never had it; not then, and definitely not now, and not ever. I can’t be satisfied with the quarters and eighths and fifteenths of the truths around me. I can only be satisfied with the whole. And the whole lies solely with you, inaccessible to me and us, who’ve never known any sort of absolute or concrete.
I have to die, Art. I have to become the sacrificial lamb for me, and for us that have made you a monster. Only then, at least I believe, I can discover the whole truth. Maybe it’s when I’ll see God, or most likely Satan, that I’ll have some inkling of what you’ve been forced to be because of your isolation, because of your innocent existence that is so clear to see, which lies buried underneath my and our feigned justice.
They say that some angels walk the earth, and I believe you’re one of them. I truly believe it. Why? Because you’ve never hated me or us or them, anybody really. I know, and you don’t have to tell me. I just know. You see, Art, you’re my damning light, my salvation, my hope. I hope God doesn’t mind that too much. It might sound crazy, and as you well know I’ve never been too religious anyway, but you’re an angel. And in you walking this earth, you’re an embodiment of the truth, the absolute nature of what should be known and upheld.
And even with you in our midst, we denied you and all that you are. I’m so sorry, truly sorry, Art. My Arthur. I can’t express with words the hate I feel for them and me, and me most of all, for forcing your angelic role in our broken earth to become that of a demon. And what makes it worse, Art, is that I’m the only one who’ll know you’re the angel and we’re all the demons clawing at each other, beasting around helplessly to survive.
We, and especially on my end, have seen it the opposite way for so long. We humans usually work that way, and are selfishly rotten to the bone. We, and I, saw you as the demon, the monster, the adversary, but when the subjective lenses of perception fall off and we can see the true nature of our existences, you’re the light, the grace, and the savior amidst us, who are the monsters underneath the bed and in the closets, the dark alleys, the whorehouses, the graveyards, the attics, the sewers, and seeking to destroy you and your Lord at all costs.
That’s why, since I can’t express this remorse with these vulgar words, I have to die. I must show you with my actions that I’m truly sorry and hunger for truth at the essential elements of my hollow being. I have to convey my message, my atonement, with a sacrifice. That’s what your Lord requires anyway.
I’m hoping I can score some points with Him, and not rot in hell for what I’ve done and what I’ve become. Murderers and demons belong in hell, and I hope that when I can see Him, and hopefully you, my beloved Art, there might be a truth that saves me. I hope it’s possible that in the infallible nature of our universe, I played a role for something, possibly a good of some sort. Or at least something not entirely evil. Please vouch for me, Art, and please show me your truths and all that lies between.
I remember how it all began those thirty-two years ago. Yes, I’ve been
keeping track, Art. If you want some exacts, it should be thirty-one years, eleven months, two weeks, and four days from now. I haven’t kept track of the hours and minutes and seconds, but if you think it would help give me some leverage with the man upstairs, I can certainly try. I’ll even go down to the milliseconds and microseconds, and the small undulations of the inner mechanisms of time if I have to. That’s how much I miss you and regret you, Art.
I never should’ve dared you and Danny and Lucas and that other guy whose name escapes me to race me down 13th Street. But you have to at least admit, Art, that it was the flattest and best location to have a race on that April morning. We lined up so perfectly underneath the cloudy heavens and above the flat-faced earth in the anticipation of victory. I, and not even you, Art, had any time to notice the barren landscape full of dying weeds and dumps of forgottens lining the sides of our raceway, except for the solitary and dilapidated hovel at the end of the road, where the she and the her