Chapter 4. Unbearable Confession

Now when I was pulled out of the CT Scan machine
My head was throbbing, and I felt tired
And I saw there was a little blue powder where my head had been
I felt worse than before
Like something had been injected into me

A few days went by and I got a letter from the doctor
It said nothing bad was going down in my head
But it wasn't true
And I began to think

If it wasn't cancer
Or a tumor
Or an ulcer
Then it was a secret
A diabolical secret
As if I had committed a crime and buried it deep inside
And it was growing into a monster
And if I didn't exorcise it, that it would go insane

I began to walk the streets aimlessly muttering to myself
I decided I must find someone who I could confess to
Whatever the confession was
But who?

Surely there was some friend I could tell it to
Well I didn't really have any friends
So I began to assess the near strangers whose path I crossed
Finally, I landed on a guy by the name of
Robert Gallows

A kinda lame person
A bit of a loner, maybe a bit simple

I lured him into a bar with a vague business proposal
I chose a well lit bar
Full of shiny copper railings and fancy wood trim
The kinda place the young and prosperous go to exchange backroom pleasantries in a wild tribute that [?]

I told him I was very unhappy
I confessed the most intimate details of my personal life
Faced with a need to make a decision concerning my life I'm unable to act
I've lost control
And I explained how I never intended to be this person
That looking in the mirror was like seeing a stranger
And I went on at a quick pace for about a half hour

Thirty minutes
Thirty minutes was all it took to disclose a man's entire life
But I couldn't go on anymore
The look on his face was p-just pain
His forehead was clammy
And he looked like he might cry at one point
But it was dried up

I told him
Whatever he chose to do with this information is out of my control
But I hoped that he would at least look at me sympathetically
And I made my exit in silence

And as I walked home
I got the sense that he was following me
Several times I looked back and I was pretty sure I saw him
I thought, maybe he wanted to see where I lived so he could call the cops
Maybe he had gotten so excited he wanted to become a vigilante
Taking the matter into his own hands
Or
He had just become so obsessed with my confession
That he just wanted to keep studying me

Days passed
And, and days later I found him trailing me again
And this time I confronted him Immediately
He looked horrible
There were bags under his eyes
He said
At least you should tell the son
At least the man's son deserves to know
And then he ran off

So I ran after him
Down the streets we ran
Right down the middle of the street
And everything was going by me so fast
And everything had eyes
Not just people were looking at us but everything was looking at us
The mailbox was looking at us
The blue mailbox and the green mailbox leaned together in concern
The telephone poles looked at us
The beat up cars looked at us
They said stop doing this, you might get in an accident
The houses looked at us
They said don't come in here
And the store windows watched us
Streetlights watched us
And they wouldn't change
They were stubborn
They wouldn't change when we needed
So we had to go through traffic
And then the headlights were watching us
Should we run them over?
They would just sit there and think
And finally I was so close to him I could touch him
I was running faster than I've ever run
And he tripped and I fell on him
He was red in the face and sweaty and struggling like I was a monster
Like I was a monster about to devour him
About to rip him to shreds
And I saw he was just a little kid
And I was a big kid
And I backed away
And people were looking
People had come out of the stores
The streets were watching
The power lines were watching

I got off him and I ran away
And as I was running I made up my mind to tell the whole story to everyone involved
But when I finally returned home there was a note on my door
And I stared at the note
I didn't know who write it
And after thinking for a while I decided to leave the note tacked to my door
I turned around slowly
And I began toward the beach
Deciding I would drown myself