This is the opener of my book.
I’m always late. Not for everyone, just for the ones who matter. But the fault is not mine. Father has burdened me with such clusters of work that managing them with dexterity is all but impossible. Even Mother is indifferent, persistent in her course, too preoccupied to afford me even a sliver of courtesy. And yet, humans think I am the one who is precise, cold, and inevitable. For the sake of the withered and the worthless, I am anything but cold. They have never glimpsed the sadistic faces of Fate and Time.
I do not despise humans—oh no—but the two wretched architects of my reputation? I loathe them with all the ashes in the wind. How am I to stomach the paroxysms of grief that consume me when I gaze upon those cracked lips, those closed, resigned eyes, those bodies stilled in repose? Father and Mother expect me to imperceptibly lift the humans that cause these sentiments in my heart, to watch them wane into dust. They expect me to let them dissolve into brittle bone and for their souls to be hurriedly secreted away, bereft of even a whisper of care, of mercy, of promise that Death is not the end. The bodies I caress have not acknowledged that Death is not the end, they are ignorant, they are definitely, yet they deserve to comprehend, to be able to take in the words, Death is not the end. Father and Mother expect me not to care. They expect me to be some ineffable ridicule untouched by sentiment, but they do not hear the silent penitence I endure. They do not hear the ignorance I hear. They do not hear the palpable tears I have to witness, the sorrows I have to observe, and the resignations I have to endure.
Perhaps I am a mess of contradictions—late, clumsy, and far too sentimental for my own good. I should learn from my superiors, from Father and Mother, from Fate and Time, to quell these furtive emotions. Stoicism should be my only creed. Stoic Father’s and stoic Mother’s successor ought to be stoic too.
But I am not. I simply cannot be.
I have a satchel in which I carry things, emotions of humans that they caged in an object: a broken necklace, a pen drained of ink, a teddy bear with three broken limbs.
I have seen hands clasp tighter in final moments than they ever did in a lifetime. Perhaps in those last breaths, they finally grasp the gravity, the pain, the absurdity of it all. I have seen eyes brim, not with grief for what was lost, but for what was never reached for. I ponder what measure of incredulity, what staggering folly, renders a soul so wilfully ignorant.
Humans are ignorant, I remind myself.
Ignorance is humankind.
And human passion is the awareness that humankind is mortal.
I have never seen human life from the center, only from the periphery. I’m always on the edge, watching you, ready to disappear if you decide to eye a glance my way. But by the time you turn around, I am already gone, because I am always on the periphery. Death is always on the periphery. But this time, I stayed; not because I had to, because I wanted to. I am a Collector, Father and Mother call me that, I collect things that are supposed to be left behind, they tell me. But I see humans do the same all the time – children collecting pebbles on the pavement that serve no purpose to them and adults collecting pain and sorrow from hatred and anguish that, too, serve no purpose to them.
Father and Mother tell me I’m not human.
I know, I say, I’m a Collector.
And I collect stories, too.
This story is really nicee. Keep making stories like this.