A child. A child. The madness, the irrationality – the sheer lunacy of it made him want to laugh and cry, bang his fist against a wall and slowly push a needle deep into his eye. (If he closed his eyes tightly, he could imagine the pressure, even though a small part of him knew that the pain would be infinitely worse.)
The cries of the children in the gutters, the piles of rags on the street corners, the graffiti and stench of the city… all were swallowed by the green. The once-comforting color seemed to leach from the buildings, tingeing the sky a faint cyan. It was the color of greed, the color of excess, the color of smiling fat businessmen with nothing to offer but their empty promises and their wide, perfectly white smiles. (Even the gleaming teeth had turned green by now, where they weren't gold and silver with fillings.)
When she had come, immune to their knowledge and their dark secrets, they had seen in her a warning, a chance. They had thought her innocence reflective of a world untouched by the thick, greasy fingers of corruption and greed. Thinking of it now, he wondered how they could have been so naïve. The child hadn't represented a purer time; just an age when time seemed to stretch on forever, a glowing path of glittering gems and illusory glory.
Now all he could do was close his eyes and long for the world he had left behind. It had been rotted and decayed from neglect and exploitation, but it had rotted honestly, by God. Honestly! He could scarce remember what honesty, even honest death, felt like. Here, even the poorest, the lowliest couldn't bear the indignity of reality, preferring to die with dreams of wealth in their eyes and snobs' lies on their lips.
They had all believed in the dream, he supposed. The girl had caught them up in her insane vision, and they couldn't resist its seductive tug. She had seen only the glint of hope where she should have seen the slippery, shiny pyrite, the cracks and bumps in the road where the infrastructure was starting to crumble. And they, in their ignorance and shortsightedness, had chosen to believe her. They had wanted to be a part of her sweet madness, seeing their world through the eyes of a child who knew nothing about it.
Winds from the North, South, and West had blown countless leaders in and out of the city, none able to stay long enough to make a difference. The only ones who stayed were the bosses, the truly powerful. They sat in their thick green armchairs and counted their silver long after last call had sent the drunks spinning onto the streets, directionless pool balls twirling until they came to rest in the dark pockets of the green felt table.
Green… how he hated the color! Not spring green, true green… at least, he thought he didn't. It was becoming difficult for him to remember what it looked like. The only plants that grew in the forsaken city were weeds between the cracking sidewalks, coming up bent and twisted and yellow. He once saw a little girl with bare feet picking a bouquet of them. It had taken all his might not to scream at her, to shake her by the shoulders and beg her to wake up, or go back to sleep and never look on the day again.
He still couldn't understand how he had become one of them. When he looked out with haunted eyes under his old, tattered hat, he could almost see his reflection in their eyes. 'Homeless. Looks hungry. Maybe drugged? Dangerous, freeloader…' They backed away, dragging their kids with them to look at the museums, the big tall buildings – everything but the cold reality ready to steal their watches for food.
The others had made out better, he thought… yes, he'd definitely heard something about one of them. Which? Why? Some sort of award, a governorship. L, it must have been L. He'd always been ready to crawl like a coward, and it was no surprise that he'd found a home with the lobbies. The other, T, had had power, real power, for only the five minutes of his inaugural address. Then he'd watched – all who could see had watched – in horror as his plans, his dreams of merit and equality, had vanished. T's eyes had been weak, rusted shut with old ideas of truth and honor. He hadn't been able to see the small, determined workmen of the bosses, calmly chipping away at all he built. Soon there was nothing left but smoke and the stony dust of chipped statues, dust that made mine workers choke and ask for health insurance. That's when he'd vanished, simply rusting over with road maps that made no sense in a world without a moral compass.
The vagrant came upon a china shop. The fine pieces inside interested him less than the clean plate glass windows. He took a moment to consider his reflection. 'I'm coming undone,' he reflected, suppressing a morbid snigger. 'Appropriate, I suppose.' The shopkeeper was starting to look nervous. He left.
When he thought about it now, he couldn't bring himself to regret it. The child's dream had been foolish, wrong, a mistake – but didn't they need it? Didn't they need a fantasy to suck blood from in the dark and lonely nights, to cuddle tightly until it tried to escape and they smothered it? (Dreams did get used up, after all. A dream believed in for too long is far more fragile than one questioned from the start.) He hated that part of himself, the part that needed the delusion. It was a weak, stupid entity that sucked at his anger and turned it into remorse. It made him paint the walls of the subway at night and laugh until he felt as though his sides would come undone.
He could never forget her words, her ideas about his reality. "Magic." "Good witches and bad witches." "Munchkins." "Yellow brick road." It had all seemed so exciting to her. But then, they'd always been good at putting on a bright face for the tourists.
In the heart of the Emerald City, the Scarecrow threw back his head and laughed.