Short Stories

Forty-Four: Hope

You had never quite understood what hope felt like from within. From as far back as you could remember, you always felt a hole of despair and regret inside you. You could sense it on others. It was similar to a warm bask in the sun and feeling airy and light. It was all around you as you walked through life, floating through the air and drawing its wispy tendrils around everyone.

Everyone except you. You yourself couldn't produce this feeling of hope. Every time you came near the golden tendrils of hope, it would back away, almost like it was flinching. You just somehow knew if you could just brush against hope, you would start producing it. You would be able to feel it, instead of digging yourself deeper and deeper into a pit of envy.

However, hope wasn't a physical object you could capture and trick into touching you. It was more of a metaphysical force. No matter how hard you tried to touch it, it ran away. Like, a positive side of a magnet trying to touch another positive side of the magnet. Hope ran away from you. You were so desperate to know how hope felt like. Of course, you knew you would never be able to touch it. You had figured this out a few hundred years ago. Your senior had told you this.

You were the opposite of hope. Despair. Unlike hope, despair had chosen to take a physical form. You emitted despair like a bucket full of water riddled with holes. Despair looked more like thick purple tar. It oozed along the ground and corrupted whoever it touched. Despair would also flow whoever despair touched, but hope could always combat it. And, at least humans could still emit other feelings.

Sadness took the form of blue water. Fear took the form of thick black fog. Anger took the form of a crown of thorns that would grow bigger and bigger the angrier a person got. So on and so on. All the feelings, humans categorized as 'bad', took physical forms. All the feelings humans names 'good' feelings, were only metaphysical. 'Bad' physical forms could not touch 'good' spirits. But, we could touch each other. It was the only comfort we could get. Just like me, I was drawn to touch my opposite as the other feelings would too.

One day, we would succeed in touching our opposite. Then, we would live for a couple more seconds, and we would turn to dust. The only thing that kept us alive was the spirit of those feelings after we passed how long a human should live. You wished that that day would come soon. You knew it would. But, for now, you were to be the beacon of despair until furthermore.