Trousdale: A Short Story

Inspiration hit this morning, and concluded in the following concoction, the first fictional installment I would now like to share with you here. It is a short tale of woe, written purely from my mind's eye, and displayed in all its gloomy glory below. And so with that, I give you the troubled tale of:

TROUSDALE 

Does he know how crazy it really feels to be crazy? Three nights here and I fear the pain growing in his eyes has still known little of this. He stares at me from down that long sterile hallway... 

Trousdale. 

Even as far away as he is, I can still see the whites of his eyes boring into these brown ones of mine. What must he have been through to look like that, and stare like that? He has this look about him as if having already lived the grim lives of at least 30 desolate men, and yet still only carries an age of no more than 7 and 20. 

I'd long ago given up on my own fight against this beast, and I've accepted my fate in this shiny white hell, but one so young as he should not yet have to be forced into such reality. There is so much more he has yet to live before he can truly say he can go no further; so many more sleepless nights, tossing and turning in torment; so many more relationships to ruin with trepidatious thoughts; to see the worlds in his mind crumble, and high hopes shatter from this pitiable plight. 

I know his story. I lived it once. I lived it fully, and now am paying the price. But he is not yet reached the checkout counter of this tale. He has not yet earned the right to sit back in a barred room, breathe deep and repeat that he'd sure done his best.

No, that time for him has not yet come, as it has for so many others of us. We are the forgotten ones, the ones for which there is no more hope in people's hearts, or support in their wallets. 

 But Trousdale, he must go on living to the end of it, until he can find no more reason to rise from his bed each day, and no more sympathy in the eyes of the ones he loves. I know he is not there yet, for I can see it in the way he looks at me, dissecting me with this gaze. I think he is trying to compare myself to him, imagine how he might someday reach where I am, and that is never a healthy practice. He should not be surrounded by such examples that plant infectious ideas in his head. He is in danger of fancying himself much worse than he yet has become, and that would cripple his ability to live out the rest of the sound days he is still so blessed with.

They signed his dispatch papers this morning, and yet he still just sits there, all day at the end of that hallway, staring. I want to go to him, tell him to get on with his life, leave this forsaken place, but I am in no state to move or motivate.

The others have no better luck, having too seen it all and lost the drive to inspire. We still do our best, mind you. But in a place like this, one must accept the sad state of this truth that cannot be cured, and learn to go about your days here as if they were your last and at the same time have already slipped away.

If you are reading this and have no inclination of what write, then feel yourself fortunate and I urge you to think on this no further. It is not a subject of interest to the undisturbed, and not one worth unraveling.

But if you do happen to share sight of this sense, then allow me to conclude by wishing you my dearest heart's desire that you find balance, and hope to never see you walking these halls, staring blankly at me from the other end of this hallway.

It may be too late for him, for Trousdale - though only so soon begun - but that does not have to be for you as well. I have lived in both worlds and seen it all. And I can assure you, given the choice again, I would not take post here, no matter how much they are paying me.