Mad; Would You Read This?
If there was something that the Madman knew, it was that he was nothing like those around him. He watched as tired men and women wasted away for the same things as everyone else. If money made the world go round, it was spinning like a children’s toy.
Feeling like he didn’t belong was something he wished he could understand, and some might say that some higher power was begging him to listen.
The only problem with this seemingly simple sentiment was that he did not feel this way. In fact, he attributed it to something formally inept within himself. Perhaps his father
(not quite)
had played a role, but mostly he felt it was himself. It was a part of him, as great and pure as the seas were a part of the world. He would sooner place that heavy burden on himself than release the illusion of control that he had spent the better part of his short life creating for himself.
Just as he found himself at the edge of the darkness in his head once again, the weak, folded paper he kept in his pocket found its home once again —
His vision blurred and filled with the undying flash of a bright, round, yellow light. The great star some millions of miles above which rose and set with a disconcerting exactness made him long for a world in which he had never been born.
He whispered to himself eerily among the crowd, a behavior that would cause an individual unlike Ellis himself to take a swift few steps to be free from his presence.
“Mommy?” A little girl holding her mother’s hand called up in a curious tone and a finger pointing in the man’s direction. Her mother continued to walk, but not without an eye or two looking out.
“You all wait but do not see,” he spoke softly out to the world passing him by. That world, save the man who sat down next to him that day, would never know what was happening inside him.
War was happening.