[One-Shot] A Chorus of Wasps

[Teh Ebil Snorlax]

I tune into conversations around me. It's the only way for me to feel like a real person anymore, to feel like more than a name. I'm told that a rose by any other name would smell as sweet, as if the name is just an insignificant, accidental collision of sounds. I know better. The name is everything. The name is all I have left.

Slouching in the shade of a magnificent fountain, I don't watch the crowds, I hear them. Even with my eyes shut, I can almost see the words flying between the hundreds of people assembled here, fleeting exchanges of words meant for everyone but me. They have all come to gaze at the fountain with its glorious, glistening arcs of water breaking on stone turned so organically to statue that it could have been a plaster-coated plant. I have come to listen to them, even though each word sounded for ears other than mine is a barb in my soul, a chorus of wasps that stings me too keenly to endure but enthralls me far too much to ignore.

As I open my eyes, a woman breaks away from the herd and walks towards the fountain, her long legs turning the distance to dust in a handful of seconds. I try to study her features but nothing sticks in my mind. I have seen too many faces to remember any but the truly extraordinary; this woman is not unique enough. I've seen her eyes a hundred times, her nose a thousand more, her mouth a million more still. There are only so many combinations that can exist and it hasn't taken my very long, in relative terms, to see just about all of them.

Finding the whole experience of sight wearying, I close my eyes again. Before I can return to listening, the unremarkable woman sits beside me and starts squawking at her family to take her picture. Even her voice, meaty and grating, is nothing new for me. I've sat in front of enough fountains to hear just about every timbre, tone and inflection that natural selection can throw at me. A thought enters my mind unwillingly, a trespasser in broad daylight. Though unwanted, it is not unfamiliar; the fear that eventually all the voices will blur together like the faces have and I will lose the last thing that lets me pretend to be human. What would the symphony of spoken words around me sound like if the voices began to reduce themselves, like the faces have, into sets of archetypes? It would be like standing on top of a hill and watching the vibrant, bustling streets of the city below degenerate into a series of shapes painted in with crayons.

At last, the unremarkable woman finishes her vain attempt at resisting the relentless, eroding ebb and flow of time against her memory. I cannot help, even now, but laugh a little at the grand and intoxicating innocence of it all. It has been at least several decades since I could remember who I was, let alone where I've been. All the detail of memory has decayed into generalities. The last thing I truly remember is the day I woke up to find myself standing over my own body. I think a man might have come to me and explained what had happened and why but I've seen too many men since then to know if that's something that truly occurred or something that I think would comfort me if it had.

All I have left now of my identity is a name; Michael. Somewhere in the vast, empty caverns of my mind, I can hear the echoes of a woman screaming that name, only for her cry to be drowned out by a blaring...something. It could have been a truck horn, a siren or an animal's roar. As I say, the detail has rotted too far to know. My name is Michael. It's the only thing I care about anymore. It's the only thing I can care about. Even this chorus of wasps will fade into a monotonous drone one day. It will all be grey in the end, I think, like the shadow of this fountain, like its stone.

With the dull glare of the sun in my eyes, I rise from the great slab of the fountain and make my meandering way through the pillars of people, already beginning to turn grey in their souls. I was like them once but, at the close, we will all be the same. Something stirs somewhere in me and a vague impression of words rise to my lips.

"In the democracy of the dead all men at last are equal."

[Blastoise Fortooate]

Quite interesting.

plastered-coated plant.

I'm not sure if this doesn't make sense or if I'm just drawing a blank. Typo? I dunno.

[Teh Ebil Snorlax]

Originally Posted by Blastoise Fortooate

Quite interesting.



I'm not sure if this doesn't make sense or if I'm just drawing a blank. Typo? I dunno.

You're right, it should be "plaster-coated".