Walled Up
By: Ivan de Monbrison
You know that you should never reveal anything about you, that is to them. This is what we should always all be able to do, whatever it might take. Just never stop hiding out from them, to finally become totally undetectable. And to do this, you need to live inside a wall, to disappear for good. Who knows, maybe that would work out? Yes, you must elude them at all costs, find the other path, the one that nobody ever takes, unaware of its very existence and of the mere possibility of even using it.
What struck him that day was the crazy people. There are way too many weirdos hanging out everywhere, at least in his eyes. But perhaps it’s not the very ones that all think about in the first place those are really truly insane in the end?
In the street, but more precisely so in the subway, he can watch them as they walk, stagger, and sometimes fall. Often slouching down the seat of the train, before suddenly standing up for no apparent reason--to fall back again. He can see so many of them busy reading on small screens, a few others usually eating or chewing at something, and one or two sometimes staring at the other ones, while merely hanging around, idly. Some are young and in good shape. Some are sad and crippled old men and women. Many got lost after coming from very far away to end up alone stranded here in this sort of navel of the world. It is the very same place where so many tourists keep flocking to from around the globe--by plane or by car--to admire the beautiful monuments scattered throughout the city, all well-preserved for this sole purpose. However, much more than the beautiful monuments, it is them, the madmen and madwomen, that he tends to notice the most, this with blinding veracity to his aging eyes. He thinks of himself as also being crippled in some way, dragging his lazy carcass among them with nobody usually him any mind. He remembers that earlier in his youth, he always knew beforehand where his feet would usually lead him. But it's over for good, now. Sometimes, he just feels the need to hide his face with his hands in hopes of no longer see them, the others, these strange creatures crowding all the available space, so intimidating to him. From time to time, he’s attempted, in recent years, to find shelter in some forlorn graveyard. Then, he always inevitably envies the deceased for their secluded spots, spots so adequate these silent graves provide for them. At times, he would have liked to be able to drag them out of their holes and put his own body in their place. While going back and forth between the narrow alleys of a forsaken graveyard, one could see him usually deciphering mechanically the names of the dead engraved on the steles or crosses. Taking note of the dates of birth and death carved under them, his mania led him to count all their years of life lost, deducing from it the years of death earned by them. Yes, he too often came to envy their deaths. He would have liked, almost despite himself, to steal it out of them. When not doing so, when instead walking on the sidewalk amongst the passers-by, he often fancies that it would be fortuitous if he could hide out, like a ghost, inside the nearest available wall so that he could then turn into some strange walled up passenger. He would be one of those who has nowhere else to escape. Who would rather than face the world all day long choose to be walled up, but still alive, in some solid structure. Yes! it would be so good to stay stuck in there, between bricks or inside the concrete. Once hidden, he could watch them still at leisure, slowly aging, travelling from birth to death. He would also still hear the background noise of the circulation of cars on the nearby highway. There’s one that's not far from where he’s staying these days; it completely encircles the city like a ring, this ring being always coupled with another steel ring made by all the cars, themselves being thus constantly in motion. He could also, at dawn, watch the huge trucks as they busy themselves bringing their food to all these starving human jaws. Well-hidden and buried under the city, thousands of invisible pipes evacuate all the water that citizens need. These mechanisms always seemed so precarious in his eyes that he often found himself thinking that it could very well vanish at any given time, someday, in a not too far future. He would like to scrutinize their mouths, too, as they move up and down in order to speak, their noses inevitably topped by two protruding eyes, absorbing, a bit like flaps would do it, the invisible urban air of the polluted megalopolis. He would have also preferred, rather than simply walking, to be able to crawl under the asphalt of the streets, all the way back to his home, to finally stay forever locked up inside it, thus having a chance to stay as far away as possible from the rest of the world. Therefore, he would maybe, slowly with time, turn into some weird kind of inmate—the obedient kind--which never tries to get out of his or her cell. Perhaps after staying for quite a while hiding inside any given wall, he would completely turn into the strangest kind of man of all: a walled-up passenger. The kind that keeps on living, always invisible to those prying eyes, being, just like all the rest of them, to him, nothing else but a weird stillborn child, in the end.
Ivan de Monbrison is a person affected by strong psychic disorders that prevent him from having a "normal" life. He has found in writing an exit to this prison. Or maybe it is a simple window from which like an inmate he can see a small square of blue sky above his head. His writing often reflects the never ending chaos within him, but at contrario to this mental chaos, the paper and the pen give him the opportunity to materialize this in a concrete and visible form. Writing is probably a slow death, but it's probably also better than mere suicide in the end.