I do not feel safe in my own skin. Deep within this flesh of mine is an entity of suffering and guilt - Guilt for what? I do not know, but this torment is too much to bear. Pounding and pounding away like an axe chopping and hacking at the wood of my existence. A thousand knives, blades and daggers all slicing me asunder - to shreds. It stings, it burns, it rips and it tears me apart. My body is no longer my own, now it is torn from limb to limb as it is ripped from the bone, from the very root and the whole thing falls apart - A Thousand Thousand Splinters. The world is too much, for this is nothing - No more. This is pain, beyond pain, it is torment, it is torment of the most horrible kind. I am in the eye of the storm. A storm that is beyond the reach of human hands. It is a tempest, the likes of which we mortals are not capable of comprehending. The howling wind of a hurricane, the black clouds with streaks of lightning and rain. It has been brewing for centuries - perhaps for all time - maybe this is all that exists. And I am its only victim, I am the only one.
I work the register and see their mess of a face - Everyone of them isn't human, but a shell of one. The poor, stupid shell, but what can one do. I take their order and go to their table. It is their table. I do the same for every table. Then it happens - The smell of the food comes in with the smoke - You know it the moment it does. It is a smell of death, a scent that will never die. The smell of the dead and the living. They eat their meals and never smell the smell of their food, but I always smell it - I am the smell. And in my skin I feel the pain of it, of all their stench. It burns me. It tortures me, and I fear I will never be free from it. So many of them, how could one person take it? Their faces, a thousand eyes, but the eyes are what it is about. Their faces, a thousand eyes, and their eyes. It is impossible. The eyes are my only refuge. These eyes, these eyes. There are eyes of the living - How are they different from the eyes of the dead?
Their eyes are yellow, a little distorted, a little cloudy, but clear - eyes. There are eyes of the dead - how can there be eyes of the dead? The eyes of the dead are dark, black as sin, but these eyes are clear, they are blue, bright blue - and my blue, so bright it blinds me. It is only the glare of them that does this, but still the pain is there - This gaze is another assault, it reminds me of all the eyes in my face. Those of the living. Those of the dead. Those of the alive and those of the dead. Eyes of color, eyes of the undead, eyes of the demonic, and yet also of the innocent. Eyes that taunt, that taunt with one single tear. Eyes that curse with one single kiss. Eyes that want to consume me - devour me. Watching the meal come and go from my view I am here, I am here. I am here in this Burger King, forced to work for eternity.
The day may come where my sight will grow dim and I may become blind, and my blindness will be the blindness of this castle. Blinded by the chaos and the pain. Blinded by my own apathy. To these eyes it will feel like the world is ending, I have seen it already. For twenty years I worked there. I couldn't not. I wasn't born a servant, and I don't really know why. Maybe I should have been, maybe I could have lived somewhere else, but I don't think I would have - What else would I do?
I'm sure everyone knows how horrible it is to work in a place like this. You work and work and work. And then you get more work, and you work and work and work, and then your paycheck is short, and then it's even shorter, and then you just want to quit and go home, but you can't, because your bills don't pay themselves. So you work, and you work, and you work, and you don't have time to even stop and smell the roses. Then one day you're not working - A few days ago I quit, I left. I left a group of friends. There was one family. A mother, father, son, daughter, son's fiancée. I left them all behind... I... I don't want to remember them. I can't remember them, because I... No. No!
No! No! No! No! No! No! No! No! No! No! No! No! No!!!!!