For so long that night was hidden from me. It was a mystery I could not solve by myself. The vague memories I had in hospital rooms and ambulances weren’t enough to recover what happened to the boy that Sunday night. They didn’t dare speak about it, as if keeping it a secret would keep me safe from reality. It was far from it. In trying to protect me, they had left me wandering, searching for answers in a world that offered none. Wishing to make sense of it, I turned it into a narrative, using the little information I managed to extract. In doing so, I realised my story doesn’t match Freytag’s pyramid exactly, in the sense that it doesn’t yet have a decline following the climax. It has been awaiting the end of it, which has lasted longer than the theory allows. Maybe the climax has not yet finished. Maybe the curtains remain open, awaiting applause from the audience in order to finally rest.
What if the theater was empty, and it was I that had been sitting in one of the seats awaiting a performance worthy of my applause. What if no performance is worthy of it? Shall I remain bound to my seat for an eternity? How will I then be buried? Perhaps they will postpone it till my corpse has begun rotting. Only when the smell of rotten flesh has become a nuisance to the other guests will they resort to removing the seat altogether, cutting it off using an axe and hammer, and burying me along with it. I will need a coffin double the width and length of any ordinary one. I will need an experienced carpenter to fulfill my last wish, for no ordinary carpenter can craft a coffin strong enough to withstand the size and shape of a chair fused to a corpse.
Maybe then shall people bring me flowers. I’d much rather they collect the flowers blooming over the soil sheathing me from the rest of the world. It is easy offering flowers, but accepting them is much trickier. With flowers come expectations and hopes. When being handed flowers, you are asked to carry not just the weight of roses, but that of the eyes, ears, and thoughts of the person handing them. It might be easier to accept flowers plucked from a grave, as one won’t be required to consider the other buried beneath. They will simply be living beings emerging from the soil, just like any other.
Any who wish to collect flowers growing from my grave must wait a while longer, for the ten year old boy survived that night, and I stand where I am today thanks to his strength and composure. Being merely grateful would be the gravest disrespect to him and all that he endured. The only way to earn his approval would be to carry his mark on me with pride, etched onto my head. To never again be ashamed of it, to never bear the comments of others who had not witnessed the ten year old boy who had returned from the dead, and brought me to where I am now. I owe him everything that has happened to me since then, and everything that will happen to me from this day forward. I will seek his guidance wherever I turn. I will never again forget him.
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