Equus

Hours past, the notepad still rested in the man's hands as he lounged himself against the tree. His expression blank, eyes staring at the empty pages with equal amount of emptiness, maybe more.

Writing was never a difficult task for Equus, not during his school years, nor his career as an educator. His essays and reports had always been coherent and sufficient in the eyes of the academia. Not brilliant, not genius, but sufficient. That was his aim, an ordinary man with ordinary talent in an ordinary world, which he accomplished not without practice.

He learned the key concept during his years of perfecting his camouflage--never write about himself.

Equus never wrote about himself--no, Joseph never wrote about himself. No. Wrong again. Joseph wrote about Joseph. Joseph Gabriel Himmel, all his 38 years of life before Naxis was a carefully constructed lie to mask who he truly was--to mask Equus.

I miss nothing of the world.

He wrote down his first line, his first truth after years and years of well maintained illusion--the illusion of Joseph.

I miss nothing of you.

Joseph was a lie. A mere character he created to navigate the world that seemed to Equus both boring and deceitful, a world that dare not heard the truth. Joseph wrote about Joseph. Joseph never wrote about Equus. Equus wrote Joseph. Equus wrote Joseph to write about Joseph... Joseph was a lie and Equus--

Equus Equus Equus... 

...Isn't it true that you used to call every students by their names and recall every work they'd ever done in great details. Isn't it true that I remember none of their faces, and when I try to recall their crafts I remember the huge hole on the ground the ruins left by war and bombs.

--Equus was the truth.

Remember the forest near our parents' house? I remember setting it on fire and watch it burn down in flames. You remember none of that.

You bring home the kitten and nurse it back to life and I drown it in the lake. You don't remember the way it struggles under the water and I don't remember the feeling of tears rolling down your young cheeks as Father brings home its corpse.

And the girl next door. You wouldn't remember opening the iron gate that keeps the giant mutts from chasing her down the cement road, same as I wouldn't remember holding her bandaged hand by the hospital bed, and say: I'm so sorry. I hope you get better soon.

Equus paused, putting down the pen. That was not true. He stared at the line and thought. --Not entirely. It was Joseph who said to young, petrified Sarah "I'm so sorry. I hope you get better soon." but it was Equus whose hand Sarah's hand fit into.

He remembered holding her hand and stroking the bandage gloving her soft injured flesh. He remembered looking into her face and saw the lingering terror behind her eyes and the blood clogging on the flesh wound on her forehead. (She fell on the cement road before a man ran out of the house with a baseball bat, scaring away the dogs.) He remembered feeling her hand tremble and her lips pressing into a thin line. He remembered knowing she was holding back the tears.

He remembered feeling excited.

See what you are missing out? You've missed out a lot. But do not worry. All those you past, I will enjoy now.

Finally Naxis is a place I can live, and you are no longer needed. You are retired, Joseph. Your final duty is to sit tight and let the counsel take care of you like a vegetable, or a vessel you are. As I live and breath in this world.

--This is the real world.

Equus smiled and set the pen down. Equus. Naxis player. Level 4. Weapon: Sharpened Stone. He smirked and placed the journal back into the toolbox. At the bottom of the page was a name signed in the man's slender and sharp handwriting