I am a dead man walking. You wouldn't guess it looking at me. I've none of rotted flesh, mangled limbs, or sunken eyes - but it is absolutely true. Conventionally true is the opposite - I'm so full of life that it bursts at my seams. I run and I jump and I sing and I dance and I love with all of my heart.

Mulling through the streets, dragging my feet, I'm unable to speak, unable to see. My hands lift and fall and toil and rest. My eyes have been marching backward into my skull since I first died. I can't remember how long it's been, all I can remember is death, all I can see is death. The whole world revolves around me as I stay still. The sun and the moon chase each other around me. All the humans on earth move about their lives around me. Plants and animals are born, they die, and more are born again. I stay still.

A tormentor lives inside of me. She seizes every opportunity she can to extend my suffering. When I am laying in bed, like a marionette, she will pull my strings and force me to go miles and miles and miles just to work me as hard as she can. I am her slave. She sells my labor, and she uses the money to keep me here, just alive enough to continue to torture me. When there is no work, she demands my attention. She yells and she screams at me and she won't let me rest not even for a second.

Something's gotta give. Lord knows what. It seems like an impossible situation. And oh, how the world doubles over if you say this. It must be that all are aware how awful the world is, and they try just as hard as me to ignore it. When this digusting, horrifying little creature is forcibly dragged out of the darkness into view, people are mad at ME for exposing it. It is evil to live, and it is evil to die.

I am NO tormentor. I am a caregiver. I am strong, and I am kind. People love me, and I love them back. My life is not unhappy, save for in one aspect - the feral child who I've adopted. I care for him so much but it seems he can't understand me and perhaps can't even see me. I help him to survive in the hopes his internal storm will leave him and he will find peace. He seems to hate me for it. Not in the moments of help, for in those moments he seems grateful and cooperative. But later, when he's done with the work, and he's left to sit in the storm, I know that he curses me and he hates me and he wishes I would go away or even die.

I wish I could free him from his loop. I ache for it. I don't even know if it's possible. Sometimes, I think he might be right, and this storm will never leave him (if you tell him I said this, it will be YOU that I kill). His mind seems so turbulent and so hostile to itself that it's a wonder how he's still alive now - I think it's because of me that he's still alive. He has some small trust or hope that I bring greener grass, but it's drowned out like a pin dropping at a rock concert.

I pray, even though I'm sure nobody hears me, and I beg and I search and I wonder at what could solve this problem and nothing ever seems to work. I'm at the end of my rope, and no matter how I contort my limbs, I can't reach him - no matter how I abuse my voicebox, even when my voice is coarse and eventually leaves me entirely, he never hears me. He stays there, sinking deeper and deeper down into the dark - and all I can do is watch and cry and feel like a weak, stupid failure.

I won't give up though, not until his heart stops beating, and perhaps not even then. Perhaps, then, I will start an experiment the likes of which haven't been seen since Frankenstein to bring him back to life. I will stand here by his side and I will shield him from the stones being pelted at him, and I will bring food and water to him, and I know that one day he will stand up and conquer.