That Look

Oh, how they love to come up to you, like naked, shitty baby-birds, with their heads turned upwards and that look... that look!... on their faces: an absurd pantomime of pity, and a suggestion that you should just break down and weep right then and there because that is what they expect, that is the custom, I suppose.

And they say all the things: how kind he was, how gentle and how you really must have loved him and miss him so much now, and that if there is anything they can do, they will, even though they never really mean it. And never do they know the true story, the horrifying madness that lay below like a deranged black octopus aways ready to squirm and thrash about it's vile tentacles, and jet out its slimy, foul ink that leaves a stain that stays on your soul for years.

But you play the part, the placating diplomat, and confirm their impressions, even though it turns your stomach in the end. Which is just fine, really, because no one ever actually asks how you feel but instead make endless assumptions. They don't want to know. And, really, you would never want to subject them to the letdown, the fact of what this man really meant to you.