Out of Misery

a monologue

dustin hansen

Well . . . you see, son . . .

(pause)

When you die, you stop growing. It’s like sleep. And you don’t dream. But your hair keeps growing. And you sleep and drool and have an erection and nightmares forever. And your back and neck hurt. And you walk in your sleep, and talk in your sleep, without knowing it. And you wet your bed often, also. And no one cleans you up. Cause you’re dead. And sometimes you make some eggs, without waking or realizing. And you fall down a lot. And your breath stinks. And the covers are stolen from you. And so you are cold, and hostile.

You fight.

The closest you come to dreaming is the vague thought that you’ve forgotten something. Anxiety, subdued. You’ve f ≈orgotten to set the alarm. To pay for something. To pray for something. To suffer for something. You wish to suffer. But you cannot. You wish to wish to . . . wish. But you fail, miserably. And you fail at being miserable. You wish to wish to wish to put yourself out of its . . . out of your misery. You wish you could forget this wish, and about wishing, all wishing. You hope you have lived. You hope you have died. You hope you will not snore, in the life after this one. Which is death.

I’m not making any . . .

But all this is vague. You do not understand any of it, think or feel any of it, and you cannot say it, even to yourself. Even if you did–even if you had the strength to try–your self speaks another language, and listens and understands in yet another, unknown to you, and to your self, and to every other self. It wonders what this is the language of.

But only hazily. Wearily it wonders. Half-dead-heartedly. Half-half- Adead-heartedly. Three-quarter-dead-half-heartedly. Or, uh, . . . yeah.

Your only wish is to feel dead. To feel like what you are. And to have been what you are from the very beginning. You wish this hypothetically, knowing that nothing can never come true.

But you “know” this only hazily. And you know that you “know” this still less clearly.

You almost know (hazily) that you do not know that you don’t know this (hazily), but not quite.

You try to forget.

Ever so slightly.

But this takes a lot out of you.

And you wonder where nothing comes from.

Until you have no strength left to wonder. To care.

And you wish to try to wonder why you hoped, and why nothing never comes, and if it has always been and will never be.

Forever.

But, really, that’s about it.

(pause)

You’re not alive anymore, is the thing.