Whirlwind | W.M.

1

I will never understand humanity's fixation on defining good.

I used to, or at least I thought I did. Good used to mean obedience, it used to mean kindness, humility, morality. It used to be so simple, clean your room, get good grades, help those in need, be respectful, be patient, be kind, it went on like a checklist shining on a pedestal.

Some sort of goal for waste prevention of such a short, human life. They say it like it'll gain you a trophy, coated in sugar and sparkling like diamonds to mask the defecation of lies that hid beneath. Nobody wants to admit it because it's such a torturous truth but being good is meaningless.

Goodness, in a word full of cruelty amounts to idiocy veiled by the incessant need for significance. How can one exist with the thought that all they do, in the end, fades into ash or is buried six feet underground with their mortal bodies? All the sacrifice, all the so called service exists solely for one's own gratification.

You don't help others for their sake, you do it because you walk away doused in the indulgent pleasure of the thought that someone like you, was able to affect somebody else in a radiating light. It's all about power, disguised by the notion that selflessness, in all it's pure glory can exist without a hint of corruption.

It can't.

I was once naïve enough to hope it could, little old me, begging, pleading before I understood the degradation that came with giving so much power to somebody else in the form of a simple request. Their answer holds the fate of your world, no matter how big or small it may be. I've done it all, all until my knees turned black and blue, until my skin stained crimson and my tears best the oceans that cover such a cruel world. I once believed in being good and it brought me nothing but pain.

"Take me, please. Just take me." I would scream, my throat carved with desperation as my heart fought to pound against the inside of my chest. I thought I was pure, in that single moment, I thought I was doing something for a greater cause.

The only cause I ever believed in.

And they'd all just laugh.

"You think you can bargain for a life, child?" He'd say, a haunting smirk etched onto such a mundane face. He used to look like a man I could pass on the street and lose in a second, and then his face began to be the very make of my nightmares.

"She's just a kid. You'll make no use of her- she'll die instantly. I can take it, whatever it is you have a better shot with me. Let them go and I'll be yours to use."

I'll be yours to use. I said.

I couldn't have imagined the reality that tied to those words. When the hushed conversations filled the cold room, all I could focus on was the feeling of my blood thrashing within my veins. I could feel every inch of myself, halted, waiting, and teetering on the edge of a simple answer.

"What makes you think you're special enough?" He turns to me again; chilling eyes bore into the very depths of my soul as I looked around the room, frantic and blanketed with terror.

There it sat, on the edge of a cold metal desk.

I can remember the sensation of my fingers wrapping around the glass, the force it took to shatter it against the ground, the jagged tip of a single fragment pressing into my skin, tearing flesh and seeping blood. They all watched me like I was crazy, like the naïve little girl had finally decided to snap and kill herself before a room of arrogant men who held no regard for life in their bland uniforms and unrelenting experiments.

I wasn't trying to kill myself.

I couldn't, even if I wanted to. It only took moments, merely seconds for the flesh to come back together. It was like the gash had never existed at all, the only proof it once did was the blood dripping from my forearm, hitting the cemented floors with a ghostly, lingering, splutter. The mumbles surfaced again, they were conversing amongst themselves as I knelt there before them, my jeans soaked in the small puddle of blood that had pooled at my base.