Folk Story

There once was a man. Modern day. This man, however, has been around since the beginning of time. He has lived many lives, through the eyes of every person. If we were to teach animals to speak, we would understand that he has lived through them as well, but to their harsh misfortune we have not. The point though is that this man is more than a man. This man we examine today, John, is just a good example of the man that lives inside everyone and everything, and always has and always will.

John’s a pretty normal guy. John lives in Boston. His parents are Kevin and Ashley. Kevin is the CEO of a big firm and Ashley plays tennis. Not professionally of course, but as a hobby to fill her free time. Which all of her time is. John’s got a sister, Rose, 32. John is 34.
         John went to a private elementary school, a private high school, and now goes to an expensive state university. Rose started in the same school as John, just two years behind. But in her second year of school, she was given the boot for drawing a vagina on a piece of paper and asking several of her classmates what vaginas were for.  Fortunately for Rose, her family had a friend who was a ballerina that had begun to teach her how to dance at a young age. She had always loved dancing and was truly the definition of a natural. And in the same neighborhood that lived Rose, John, Ashley, and Kevin, there was an alternative elementary school that taught ballet as an option for PE credit.

Please daddy please can I go to The White School?
Kevin, pausing in his phone conversation with his work buddy Scott about golfing the coming weekend
Yeah sure honey. Not everybody can cut it at St. Catherine’s.
Rose knew that he hadn’t even considered that she loved ballet. That he’d hardly considered her expulsion. Rose had considered them both enough for the two of them. John didn’t care.

John was good at sports. He liked girls. And they liked him, not because he had a really captivating personality, but because he was the best at sports and because he wasn’t the ugliest and because his peers respected him. Kevin always seemed to favor John, presumably for those same reasons. Ashley didn’t really favor either child. She was beautiful and she was pleasant, but she was a ghost. If she had to choose though, she would have chosen John as well, because Rose was different.
         John got laid first out of his friends, he was the prom king, and after graduation he headed off to UCLA to study business. John was on top of the world. Rose, on the other hand, went missing at age 14.  There was something about her, a curiosity, a desire to understand, to know. She danced her way through school, figuratively and literally, and on the day she left, her ballet shoes were found in front of the biggest church in the city, nailed to a dog. His eyes had been removed. Attached to the shoes was a note


This dog’s death is the most moral thing in this god damned city. He is a martyr. You are all just as blind, and you will all be just as dead soon enough. If you are unwilling to open your eyes, then you may as well join this dog on the street now to save everyone else the resources.
Rose is dead. If anything returns in her absence, it will be the harbinger of doom. Enjoy the cesspool while you can.
Rose

Nobody had seen or heard from Rose in 18 years. John was confused when she left, but quickly moved past her disappearance and onto other things. Recently though, John noticed that he was feeling slightly odd. For whatever reason he couldn’t get his sister’s departure, murder, whatever it was out of his mind. Now rising the ranks in a corporation himself, John began to feel quite alarmed when the thoughts of his past began to interfere with his work. He would look across a conference table and turn to stone as he caught a glimpse of his sister staring back at him. Or he’d hear her voice, speaking ever so softly, on the occasional quiet evening. Rose had returned
One evening, John heard his sister’s voice uttering what sounded like some kind of an incantation, rhythmic and monotonous. He then felt a sharp pain in his left ear, which spread first to the rest of his ear, getting more and more severe, and then to his head and down his neck and eventually, taking its time, engulfing John’s entire body. John’s mouth was open and he was trying to scream but he could not. Nor could he move his limbs. And at this moment, as John laid on his bed in complete agony, he dared to pose the question to himself
Why is this happening to me?
As these thoughts roll from one side of John’s brain to the other, he felt something strange on his left hand and the shroud of pain was lifted. Moments passed and John, exhausted and mildly euphoric after going through such a traumatic experience, looked over at his hand. Stuck clean through it was a knife, and holding the knife was his sister’s hand. John could feel this knife more than he had ever felt anything before in his life. From his sisters eyes escaped a black smoke, and as she opens her mouth to speak, it is visible that she has no tongue, nor teeth, nor gums. Behind her lips is complete darkness. And her voice sounds like nothing that a human has ever heard, nor will hopefully ever hear again

JOHN! WAKE THE FUCK UP! THIS CHARADE HAS GONE ON FOR LONG ENOUGH! HOW CAN YOU SIT AND PONDER WITH SUCH EMOTIONAL INVESTMENT WHAT COLOR YOUR NEXT CAR WILL BE WHILE THERE ARE PLANETS IN THE SKY THAT HAVE NOT YET BEEN DISCOVERED? WHILE THERE ARE PARTS OF THE MIND THAT STILL REMAIN UNKNOWN? AND ABOVE ALL, WHILE OUR PEOPLE ARE DYING MISERABLY IN COUNTLESS LOCATIONS ACROSS THE GLOBE? YOU HAVE A FUNDAMENTAL DUTY TO DO EVERYTHING IN YOUR POWER TO ENSURE THAT EACH HUMAN IS GIVEN THE OPPORTUNITY TO LIVE! AND JOHN, THERE’S A LOT THAT YOU HAVE THE POWER TO DO! YOU HAVE SHARED THEIR PAIN FOR A BRIEF MOMENT. NOW BRING THE PEOPLE TOGETHER! WAKE THE FUCK UP!

And John woke up. He received a call letting him know that his parents were dead. Rose had killed them and John knew it. But he wasn’t sad. Because for the first time in his life, John was alive. Inside John raged a fire so intense and pure and human that his dresser began to consider the meaning of the word “personify.”
         When John arrived at work the next day, wearing an expression that told passing pedestrians not to fuck with this motherfucker, he got to work. School had given him contacts. And over the years he had learned to communicate rather efficiently. Finally he had something worth saying. Quietly and precisely, John set stone after stone until one day, not far from now, everything stopped. And the world reset.