The rose has thorns to protect its beauty, but when the petals fall off and its beauty is gone and the stem withered away, why do the thorns remain? Why do they remain to protect the empty shell of that once breathtaking flower? What left is there to guard? To live on for? Why do I remain? When the very thing that I was created for, to possess a soul just like a rose was planted to possess beauty, is gone?
Where do the forgotten ones go?
Where do the destroyed ones go?
Where do the empty shells, the boots and helmets that carry their thorns around on this planet—those that lost who they are.
Where do they go?
SPRING
Like a rotten log half buried in the ground – my life, which has not flowered, comes to this sad end.
XXXIII
After the five day journey back, I exit the starship at O’Hair International spaceport in Chicago. I grab my only luggage—the small sack of supplies given to me by Jack—and walk down the hallways to the metro. Throughout the spaceport hallways I see posters of anti-Herculean images plastered everywhere. Among them are also pictures of Uncle Sam holding a US flag and pointing back at you. Alongside him is another man holding a flag of the Party, across his neck a Medal of Honor.
That man is me.
I take a speed train to North Carolina. During the ride I watch a video screen on the rear of the seat before me. It replays news reports about the Kuplar ambush. A newswoman speaks, “Brave Coalition forces were caught in an ambush in the fringes of the Kuplar region to aid a besieged allied town. The town was full of civilians about to be massacred by Herculeans. The heroic Coalition forces held the line long enough for the town’s inhabitants to escape till terrorists finally overran them by an ambush. We take this time to remember their great sacrifice as none survived, including one of our very special Medal of Honor heroes, Private Peter Verum.” The report continues after the moment of silence, declaring that a memorial will be held later today by the President to commemorate their sacrifice.
After the speed train, and a variety of buses, I am back into my old college town. I go to the local library, right in downtown of where I would drive around that cruise route with Isaac. Using a public computer, I find a local lawyer, Mr. Reeves, and print a picture of Isaac. I grab the picture of him and leave. The only one I could find was one from the military yearbook. It’s better than nothing.
I enter out onto the street, and look down the route I used to drive on so many times. I sit down on a bench and watch the cars pass by for a while. It becomes evening. I cross the street to a parking garage. Inside I find a wallet in the middle of the garage, in it is a spare key. I press the alarm button and find the corresponding car, and take it out of the garage and onto the main route.
I drive slowly through the route. “We haven’t been in the Wang-Stang forever, huh Isaac?” I wipe my eyes. “I wonder what bars are popping tonight.”
The route enters downtown. I see the first bar, Stout Brothers. It looks pretty empty despite it being night already. “Damn, that place looks dead, hopefully the other joints are doing better.”
I keep driving through downtown on the route. “No Isaac, you won’t get me to smoke, goddamn, don’t you know that stuff is going to kill you eventually?”
I roll the window down so that the smoke can clear out. Instead, I feel the cold wind whip at my tears.
“Seriously man, we gotta stop coming out here every weekend to just get drunk. We’ll get fat.”
I keep driving down the route. The lanes become hard to see as my eyes get blurry. All of a sudden the route ends, before me a huge freeway. It cuts right through the state park I always pulled over at. Next to it is a sign saying: Your Party at work. Finished Public project. The loop has been cut in half, and the only way to keep going was to get onto the freeway.
“No! What the fuck is this!”
I pull the car over at that old turnoff that is now a dirt mound, trash littered everywhere.
“What the fuck happened!” I climb over the mound. The whole meadow is gone. Instead it’s the freeway and a construction project of some sort. I run up against the fencing that cuts right through that wild rose patch I cherished. They’re all gone too. “WHY!” I shake the chain link fence. “WHY! GO AWAY!” I see a second shadow near me. “Isaac?” I turn around quickly. It was just the passing lights of a car on the freeway.
“Isaac! Isaac!” I fall onto my knees and hands, cutting my hand on some trash. I try to get up, but the chain link fence has caught onto my pocket ripping it as I move. The paper with the lawyer’s info falls out. But something else drops too. The crumpled up paper of that poem game Isaac and I played, falls out by my feet.
I slump back against the fence. “One last poem spit, huh buddy?” I ask the cold night.
I try to remember what I wrote before I open it. Before I see what he wrote.
“Isaac, where are you? It’s your turn.”
The paper gets smeared with my tears. I finally unfold the nearly ruined paper to read his line. The last word being Love.
Love, what is that? I could write down some sophisticated shit like we’ve been doing, but that wouldn’t do it any justice. Instead, I’ll say what really matters. I love you Peter, I love you like a brother. I really missed you while you were gone doing your holotour, sucking in all the fame and limelight. It was hard going through the motions every day of realizing what I did, without you there to help me through it. I am sorry I have been acting cold or quiet to you lately. I just didn’t know if you got over it, and if you did, I didn’t want to bring you back down with my agony. But like that promise we made at the rose bush you showed me, back in our oh so far away hometown, we got to look out for each other, and I always will Peter, I’ll look over you, because I love you.
I push the paper back into my pocket. I crawl up the dirt mound near the car and fall to my knees on top of it. I raise my arms at the lights of the new freeway traffic. “Isaac please come back! I fucking need you! I love you! Look what they fucking did to us! Our route!” I slide down the mound. “No, no, no, no. Isaac. Please man. Please!” I take out his lighter and try to light it, but it won’t. “PLEASE!” Where the Dream ends has become bent and scratched. I raise myself up and slump against the car. I look into the mirror to see my dirt covered face leak tears down my scarred cheeks.
“Why am I alive!”
XXXIV
The next day, after sleeping behind the forsaken mound of trash, I drive to my parent’s house in the city over. It is daytime and I know both of them must be at work. I hop over the fence into the backyard, and go through the unlocked sliding glass door. I go to my parent’s room; underneath the bed in a shoebox is a pistol. I grab it and walk away.