Noah Cicero - The Collected Works of Noah Cicero Vol. II

expensive

I swear these humans, and they are humans, there is something human about all of them, when no one is looking, it comes, but when someone enters their presence, the gestures of a robot return. These humans would wear shit for eyeliner if it was expensive. I cannot bow before this earth, I will not debase myself before these humans who have chosen the adjective

expensive

as a God, they have deified celebrities and ruined their own emotions. They degrade themselves and call it happiness. Oh, Vasily, I am here, still on this earth, amongst humans that have chosen against happiness. I am an insoluble person, Vasily. I cannot mix. You stick me in a crowd of thousands and I make not one friend. Everyone is scared of me because I have emotion, because I am not afraid to admit that I am human, that I shit and fart, and have wet the bed. I go into public, stand and say, ‘I have wet the bed!’ And they run, they run from me like the boogie man. To people the boogie man is truth. Children realize in the middle of the night alone in their beds that their parents do not love them, that the world is unfair, cruel, and that the world, the only world they know is trying to grind them down into unimaginative workers who love the expensive above all else. That is the boogie man, that first fear of anguish, of knowing that you have been condemned to a life that is out of your control. They have freedom, but modern life is structured in such a way that you can only use freedom to choose what soda you drink and what to order at restaurants. But everything else has been chosen for you. Who your parents are, where you are born, how your parents treat you, what school system you go to, what economic class you are from, what neighborhood you grow up in, all chosen for you. And those are the things that make us who we are. We get our reality from the outside, and we don’t get to choose the outside until we’re older, and most of us are destroyed by that outside before we get a chance. Oh, chance, oh emotion, I’m not making sense, but who’s trying to make sense here. People, even if they are trying to make sense, go as far as the cause, and as they approach the reason, the core of the problem, they realize they are part of the reason, and give up, they stop at the cause, because the cause is simple. The reasons terrify them. I decided one day to go to the reasons, to smash all nonsense and grab the reason and pull it down and hold it in my hand, and let it terrify me. And I have been alone ever since. I have been alone for so long, so long without anyone that can understand what I’m trying to explain, trying to get out of this Russian body of mine. But I have received only silence. A silence that screams at me, ‘Just die please, you are ruining my day.’ I cannot take it anymore. I cannot take this anymore, I cannot, I cannot, I cannot, I cannot, this world, these people with their expensive faces have demolished me, have made me falter and now my legs have given out, my Being sways like the willows, and the swamp has engulfed me, there is nothing left to give, I have given and not received, I wanted happiness. I swear, there was a piece of me that woke up every morning and said, ‘I want to be happy today.’ Then they would send their dogs out and they will attack me, bite, scratch, tear at my Being until there was nothing left but to resign myself to this misery. I’m not alone in this suffering, in this bleakness, but what hurts most is that they won’t admit it in unity, they won’t just say to each other that they feel it too, and that is what hurts most, is that I’m alone, but I’m not.

See ya sometime,

Lizaveta.

Chang walks up behind me. I hear his feet crunching the snow. He stands beside me, puts his hand on my shoulder and says, “She’s dead.”

I stand there for a minute and say, “Yeah, it’s cold. Let’s get out of here.”

We walk back to the car, in silence.

One’s name was Josiah. Josiah was not very smart. The most common thing said about him was, “I think he might have brain damage.” Josiah was a hard worker but not a good worker. At the concentration camp they were forced to make boots for the Nazis and Josiah kept messing up and causing problems for the other workers. People were always saying, “We’re in a concentration camp probably to die at any moment, and Josiah is making things worse for us.”

The other’s name was Yosef. Yosef was a hard and good worker. But Yosef never stopped talking. Yosef would start talking as soon as he woke up till the second he went to sleep. Yosef didn’t need anyone to respond to anything he said. He would keep talking no matter what. People were always telling Yosef to shut up but Yosef never listened. People often said of Yosef, “Why won’t he shut up, we are so miserable, life is so hard, and he keeps talking.”

Yosef would also do things like if he stepped on a nail and got cut he would go around telling everyone how he got his foot cut and people would reply, “Yosef, we’re in a fucking concentration camp waiting to die, who cares about a little cut.” Yosef wouldn’t respond to that though, and would go on telling everyone about his cut foot.

Yosef also made friends with the Nazis. He would talk to the Nazi bosses and try to make friends with them. People would tell him, “Yosef, the Nazis hate us. They’re laughing at you.”

Yosef would respond, “No, the Nazis love me.”

People would walk away in anger.

Josiah though made great potato soup with very little ingredients. Josiah would prepare the soup and everyone would feast and people would say, “Josiah messes up a lot, but he does make great soup.”

One day there was no food. And many were close to starvation, so Josiah took it upon himself, maybe because of empathy, bravery, or because he actually had brain damage, to steal some food.

Josiah crawled through deep snow and through barb wire in the night to break into the Nazi food supplies. Josiah broke into the supply shed and got out one box and pushed it slowly through mud and snow while crawling for over two hours back to the barracks for people to eat, knowing the whole time if he were caught it would be the last thing he ever did.

Everyone was so hungry they chewed on the uncooked potatoes in the night. Yosef, though, did not eat the potatoes. He went to the Nazi bosses and told them what Josiah did.

The Nazis marched in the barracks where the starving Jews were. The Nazis grabbed the potatoes from their starving fingers. One Nazi ripped the food out of a small girl’s mouth. The Nazis shot Josiah in the head. Josiah lay there still and quiet never to mess up at work again. The starving Jews looked at dead Josiah, the person that tried to save them who they always said had brain damage. Then they looked up at Yosef standing next to the Nazis. Yosef stood smiling with not an ounce of remorse on his face.

The Nazis shot all the starving Jews that ate the potatoes. They lay there dying. Their waiting was over. In their last moments they didn’t know who to blame: Josiah for stealing, Yosef for snitching, or the Nazis. They bled to death before they could decide on someone to blame.

The Nazis never killed Yosef. Yosef lived through the war and still lives. No one ever knew Yosef did that. The starving Jews were dead and the Russians killed the Nazis there that night.

After the war was over, Yosef went to America and became a successful businessman. He got married and divorced several times and had several kids. He can be found in Florida living in a retirement community getting a tan next to a pool.