Reincarnated Poet: Hello my freaky darlings! It's been a good long while since I wrote anything for "Songs to the Grave" and felt this little gobbet sitting in the back of my head while I was sanding a wall down. As anyone who has ever sanded plaster knows, it takes a long time, and as such, I have developed this story. Here goes. Oh, and I will be back to Not the Hero again by the end of the night. Expect an update tomorrow or the next day.
"Life's fast, but death's faster."
~ Me, I think.
I like things that go fast. I mean really fast. Pedal through the floor. Ignition clicking, swish. Gone and back again before anyone knows I've left. It's how I life my life, and several people have told me to slow it down—mainly the cops, but that's not what I mean.
Kate's always telling me to slow down, wait up, just hold on. I look at her, and I feel something in my chest, so I try. I try. I swear I try. I just can't do it. It's not who I am. I'm action and speed. I'm quick aggression and even quicker love. I can't be slow and steady and forever calm. I'm not Caleb, and although I love him to death, I wouldn't want to be.
But I'm trying. I'm trying because I know what happens when you go too fast. No one knows better that I. It's like a race. Exactly like a race. Your tires spin on loose dirt. You hydroplane. Something goes just a hair to the left instead of the right and—Bam!—you're on your ass faster than you even know you're falling.
The outcome depends on just how fast you were going, and just how much faster you could have gone. Say I'm at a walk, waiting for Kate, or trying to. My tires slide, but I can right myself because I was going to slow to start with. It's boring, but it's safe. There's no blood, no heat of the moment injuries. But there's something missing.
When you slow down you lose something. I can see what it is because I'm used to going fast. I try and live in one world, but belong to another. I see it, and I need it. It's the pull from your very soul when you realize that you're seeing things before anyone else. It's the cry in your head that tells you just a bit more, just a little faster. It's the tension in your stomach you feel when you go over that hill just a bit too fast.
But it's more than that. I can't explain it to you, if you don't already understand. Maybe this will help. It's what some girl told me once. I can't even tell you her name anymore. I don't even think I knew it then. She moved as quick as lightning, and made her decisions much like I do now. You might say she changed me. She told me, "Life's fast, but death's faster." I didn't understand her then. Watching things happen as they have, with Chase and Caleb, I think I can see what she meant.
We're all moving along at an even pace. We're standing on the record as it spins. Then there are some of us, who walk along with the spin. We're going that much faster, and because we're moving that much faster, when death comes knocking, it will overtake the record and catch those who didn't move first. It comes up on your back side like a demon driven from hell, and maybe, just maybe, if I move fast enough, ride hard enough, maybe I can out run it for a while.
Then again, maybe none of us can outrun it. Maybe we're all really just stuck in one place, waiting. All I know is that I'm not willing to take that risk. I can't give up all that I am, just for the brief smell of roses in the morning. I've smelled one, I don't need to smell them all. And maybe, just maybe, Kate will catch up. Maybe she will; maybe she won't. I can't care anymore, because if I do, I'll just keep slowing down until I'm the old man sitting at the stop light at four in the morning, because the lights yellow.
I can't do it. I won't. Life is fast. We see that when we watch our friends die. We see it pass by so quickly that we mourn the loss of it, but what we don't ever think about is that death's faster. It's a race. Just because the number eight car's won all the races to date doesn't mean that I shouldn't jump in and drive.
If you really think about it, it's like this. Life and death started the race at the same time. Life took off like a rocket out of the gate, but it can only do eighty. Death takes a while to get started, but it's got the capacity to run a good hundred and twenty. The only way to beat it is to get a good enough start.