Silence is everywhere.  You hear it in the gaps of sentences, behind the stars, just after the rain has stopped, when everything is still too scared to come out.  Some people find it disturbing, and so they do their best to cover the silence with noise, lights, music, action…but the silence always has the last word.  It reigns again once death has come.

I am not one of those people.  For me, the silence is second to my lifeblood; it is the soothing, comforting sound I long for.  Death is my lifeblood, but then, I invented it.

Do not think that I wanted to curse the universes with it.  If you are listening to me, you have heard the holes in the stories of my twin, and you have come to me to have them filled.  I knew that if the Universe had no end—as Michael and so many others wished—that there would be no joy in living.  If you always have something and know that it will never go away, you will never appreciate it.

What, you think death is not something that brings joy?  Think again.  There is always someone who is happy when someone else dies.  And when was the last time you went out and had a night on the town just because you might die tomorrow?  Haven’t you been told to make something of your life before you lose it?

To be able to see the light, you must have something to contrast it with.  That was my original gift.  To make the opposite of what my brothers and sisters made so that all would know the true beauty of those gifts.  But only one person ever saw that.  But Michael controls everything that matters.

The light is not domineering?  Please.  Take any religious institution.  No matter what it is, I’m pretty sure it tells you that you have to live a certain way to receive ‘redemption’; stray away from the path they have chosen for you, and you will never receive that redemption.  Oh, but they do it to save you!  Doesn’t that make it different?

No.

It’s tyranny in one of its many forms.

Yet while Michael—and others—would demand the world of you before they ever lift a finger to your aid, I would not.  Come to me for aid, and I will give it.  Come to me for shelter, and I will provide it.  If you are hungry, I will feed you; tired, I will give you rest.

But when I need aid or comfort, I will come to you in turn.  Friendship goes both ways.  But even then, I give you a choice.  I will ask; should you say no, I will go away and never come again.  I will understand, but I will never come back.

For I am badly hurt.  I do not deal well with rejection, and I constantly watch for it.  I do it to protect myself.  I cannot connect well with others, but I still try at least.  Though I am losing my will to do so, for even my aid is being rejected now.

Look at me.  You see these scars?  You see my thinness?  Or are you distracted by my bottle, or my joint, or my needle?  But those are other aspects of my hurt.  No matter what you see here, it is an aspect of my pain.  I drink and smoke and use enough drugs in a single day as would kill anyone else.  I need them now.  They are my comfort when there is none for me in the whole of the Universe.  They are my comfort even when there is.

For no matter what you do, you hurt me.  Live, breathe, you hurt me.  But that is a pain I can deal with.  I want you to live and be.  Perhaps that is masochistic, but perhaps not.

Perhaps death would not end inside of me if it had been accepted.

You didn’t know that?  Well, now you do.  Everything wrong with the Universe is my constant companion.  That is part of why I cut, drink, smoke…

The other part of it is that my twin brother has run any self-esteem, any happiness, anything good I ever had into the ground.  I cannot feel the thing called ‘happiness’ any longer.  All I have is numbness and sorrow.  And I would rather feel numb than sad.  So I cut to become numb.  The physical pain dulls all the rest of it for a moment.  I drink for the buzz, though it never lasts long.  The same goes for my smoking and using.

I’m not worried what will happen if my liver and/or kidneys finally fail.  If I die then, I’ll not feel at all anymore.  Because I won’t be here to feel anything.  It would be a wondrous blessing.

If you have noticed, I am quite thin.  That is because I haven’t eaten anything at all in some three billion years.  I have been subsisting off of death energy.  I am a little hungry…but there is really nothing I’d like.  Food wouldn’t help me.

You remember I said I might come to you for comfort?  Comfort, companionship is what I want, and need.  It takes a long time for me to start trusting anyone.  Until I do, I will insist that I am fine, that I don’t need help.

And really…I am fine.