The Wall! 

By Guy Graccian 

To be there. To be in alleyways most wretched, where joyful cries echoed, as the boot of the tyrant was tossed overhead. To watch, as the National Razor descended upon the nape of the napes, jewels and crystalline gold shattered into fractures, with the Last gaining its first dignity. To meet with Babuef and Darthe, Rosa and Liebknecht, under the candle of moonlight, with upheaval in our midst. Hope, hope; that burning word, my most delightful indulgence, which fills my heart with a deeper yearning than anything of the flesh. Beguiled in its rosy scent, I march.

Thump, thump, thump; it beats, Director Core, prying my mirrors forever open. 

However, I am in Nonimus, the prevailing nothing. The Razor fell, the masses farther. Prophets of light, casted unto the gnashing of teeth. Our holy creeds became reviled slogans, alongside the flagellation of our heroes for the entertainment of pigs. When the carnival concluded, their bare bodies, ribbons and bone exposed to the accursed sun had their hearts plucked. Still beating, still drumming, it was casted into engines of smoke. Smoke and blood, which now plume out of gnarled pyres of iron, where Amducias forges his trumpets. His minions raise them to their lips, and blare their infernal-eternal cacophony. Through the brass is the tune that put the world to sleep. 

Rest eluded me. Its siren call screeched from village to village, only to fall mute at my presence. In these villages lay the world and its citizens. They stood, their eyes clouded with a delicate cream, staring. Behind their firmaments is a world of rainbow, which duly pulsed in their vision.

Ashened soot pocked their skin, a disease they enjoyed, cherished. “A truly wonderful day!” One exclaimed. “The colors! The colors! Oh, how we have been gifted!”  

To gain their attention was meaningless. Most of what you could gather is a simple nod, or perhaps a repetition. But they certainly weren’t unaware. When the colors faded from beneath their cataracts, their howls of depravity would echo from wall to wall. Their bare feet would feel the viscous, grey mud between their toes, their lungs would fill with the metallic current that often brushed past their gilded hovel. They would scream. Crying for relief, but not for cure.  They would shriek even louder, if you proposed such a suggestion. 

Beneath. My soul lay beneath this canopy of grotesqueries, as the hamlet laid under the walls of the citadel. Coarse stone, pilled to the heavens, spikes protruding from the ashlar. The smooth steel gleamed underneath the choked Swoonlight, as bright as it was dull. At the base of this megastructure was a horde, desperately attempting to scale. The spikes were broad enough to act as platforms, where the numerous attempted to scale them. I have, as we all. Some would even make it as high as the last row, the grooved edge of the capstone etching itself into their minds. Their hands, of course, would then slip, as they plummeted to their deaths. 

It was cruel, truly. The last row was just out of reach. Greased, if you believe the soothsayers. But no one truly does. The Citizens toil, offering their children as lambs. Lives, centered around the Wall. I wonder if there is anything behind it. Ancient megaphones shriek “UP AND FORWARD, BEYOND THE PALE!”, but this is seldom. Seldom is worship. Processions, chants of pure ecstasy towards the Capstone Most High. Lectures in our study halls, with professors exalting their praises more jubilantly than any cleric. The shattering of throats, the desiccation of tear ducts, all towards our new freedom – if we could just vault over that last row. Now, there is only a quick yell. A yell, a droning cry, and then total silence. 

Oh, if I could only be in Guernica! To sing praises to our heroes, while the great dragon expelled its flames! To be reduced into cinders, instead of clay! To lose my senses by the drum of a mortar! To be split into atoms, reduced into memory by hellfire! Anything, everything besides the Wall! It has exsanguinated me of spirit, and has left only an aching lust for tragedy. For tragedy is better than nothing at all! 

But, I am delirious. These desires are fantasy. For the Wall is all I’ve known, as all there will be. Revolutionary dreams were espoused by the foolish, the idealist. They didn’t understand how the world works, and neither do I. Life itself cannot be unreasonable, only I. It has lasted for eons, hasn’t it? If it truly made no sense, then how could it? The issue must be myself. I am unworthy, unintelligent. I cannot understand the Wall. 

But I must, I know I will. I shall scale it. I will. I shall scale it, and when I have reached its peak, I shall look down to the crowd and scream with total vindication. “Leave, slaves! Return to your hovels!” I will proclaim, Prophet of Victoria. “For there is nothing behind these walls! Nothing but the same sludge we walk through! Nothing but nothing! Empty! Empty!” The looks on their faces! How they will finally weep for their dead, that their struggle had been for nought. The dejection, the blank gazes of disbelief, as I tear back the veil. Not tear, shatter. Their lives will lack passion, as mine hath been! 

I push past the feeble, unable to resist my advance. The weak shall always object, but never act. The strong, I and I, are destined to dominate. To scale this Wall, to reveal truth. Truth! I finally reach the base, my emeralds teeming with rage. The spikes gleam, about a foot away. All I need to do is lunge, and the first part will be over. As I position myself, the squeals of swine beckon me as I steer myself. It was then I noticed something. Beneath the base of the wall as a moat, filled with the corpses of the fallen. Their twisted, gored bodies piled on top of each other, serving only as memory. Memory of what was. Memory of what I’m now about to be. 

I couldn’t look away. Guernica, an expression of the most sweet fatality. To die scaling the Wall, as though there was no more of a virtuous endeavor. In the mass of broken flesh, a pale face protruded in the center. Sweet and effeminate was its sculpt. It was smiling. No matter, no matter.  It shall leave my mind, as I triumph, beyond the pale.