The Road the Mule Walks

I can't keep this to myself anymore. I've felt trapped for so long, seeing friends who look beyond what is accepted as normal and become looked down upon as beyond normality themselves. They become the pill-poppers, the institutionalized, those who paint the walls red with their blood or hang tall like the criminals of old. How could I become like them? It sneaks up on you, you see. Once you see just a little glimpse of something wrong, it spreads like a crack and before you know it the world is falling down in silence.

Nobody knows that there's something wrong with me. I play with my grandchildren just like always, I laugh with my friends and coworkers over wine. I don't let uninvited gentlemen bother me until I return home and know that I can no longer hold it back. I can't tell anyone who I know can betray me with a concerned smile, because it would kill me inside. That used to be me. I was the one with the concerned smile and a dagger forged from good intentions in my hand.

Perhaps the gentleman is an arbiter of justice, come to collect me for my ignorance. Perhaps he is the empty masquerade of a being above the sky. Perhaps none of it matters. But I won't let myself be alone anymore. So I've come to you, as silly as it sounds. All of you young people who have to deal with this thing at an age where you can't simply say that you've lived a full and happy life and accept it, all of you at an age where it just isn't fair.

Maybe it's selfish of me to want to count myself among you, but I don't feel like I've lived long enough yet. The furrows upon my brow and the glasses before my eyes betray me.

My name is Basil, and I'm not ready to go quite yet.