Author's Note: well i hope you all like second person
Disclaimer: The Long Walk is not mine.
You aren't scared of dying. No, not at all. Death isn't what scares you. What you're really afraid of is living.
Sure, life can be great, life can be just fine. But all your life there's always a nagging pressure in the back of your mind wondering whether you'll ever really mean something. Philosophers spend hours indulging in that pressure, and most just forget about it.
You don't know why, but somehow that's all you're thinking about when you put one foot in front of the other for the what's probably the billionth time. Will you ever mean anything, in the scheme of things? Or are you just another tiny life, one of many?
You're pretty sure it's the latter. You're not anything special. You're funny, that's just about all you've got going for you. You're funny, and sometimes you make people feel good about themselves by the fact that you do everything wrong.
Why is it that here you're suddenly just thinking about your existence? You're on a road. A flat, dark road stretching for miles upon miles upon miles. That's what scares you, really. The idea of just being a flat plain of nothing, going on forever and ever.
You're not a road, but you might as well be. A long, winding, stupid excuse of a road that's been trodden all over to the point where it wants to become a dirt path. Huh. What a nice fucking metaphor. You were never good at metaphors, the best you could get in school was somewhere around an 85.
That was you. Mediocre, just barely good enough to pass. So average that you manage to fuck everything up and everyone just dismisses it as another measure of mediocrity. That's what you hate the most, really.
If you're going to fuck up everything, then someone should at least realize it? You want to be punished, you want to be screamed at and rejected and left alone. Because those are real feelings. You can almost touch them because they're so raw.
That's why you like Parker. Parker who's always yelling and swearing and being a cocky asshole. Because Parker's real, Parker isn't hiding behind anything. He's obnoxious and in everyone's faces at times, but that's who he is. He's Collie Parker, and he's loud and angry.
But you, Abraham. You're just funny. Not even that funny. And it's your shield, it's the only thing that you can hide behind. You don't even care about what might be your real personality anymore. It doesn't matter.
It's ironic, really, right now. You've been using so many terms your English teacher would appreciate. Irony, metaphors. You're exposed to so many people, so many people just watching you for reasons they can't even remember. And yet they don't know anything about you, you're just a number and maybe a name. And when you die, they might be upset that their favorite fell, but then again, they might not care at all.
No, you're going to live. You got into this whole damn thing not caring, and you might as well finish it. You didn't mean to get into it, but you are, and you'll just be finished. They'll all just drop sometime soon, and it'll just be you and then you can sit down in a chair and it'll all be over.
But on the other hand, you're not an idiot. At least not that much of an idiot. You knew that taking that test and getting into this damn thing would kill you. So why don't you just do that? Die. It won't be too hard. Maybe if you just lay down, it'll be over quickly. Bang and then it's all over. Just like sitting down in a comfortable chair and resting your legs, but more permanent.
Just resting. Forever. You think that'd be nice, you don't want to die, that's for lunatics like McVries, but you just want to rest. For a long time. Yeah, that's right. Just resting. For years and years and then only getting up when the only two individuals left on earth are you and maybe Collie Parker if you're feeling nice.
Because face it, life just sucks, and you'd rather rest. It isn't because you want to die-well, maybe it is, at this point-but you don't even care how anymore, you just sure as hell want to do something that isn't walking.
You feel the wind biting at your back, god, fuck the weather in this godforsaken state. Why couldn't the Long Walk be in, you don't know, Arizona? Or at least somewhere a little warmer. Ha, now you sound like Parker. That's what friendship is, you suppose. Picking up on people's dumb little habits.
Not that you have any dumb little habits to speak of. You're just sort of funny, and there's not much for anybody to pick up on there. Maybe if Parker starts talking about sex in the netherworld, that could be considered picking up on a little habit.
You almost laugh at that, but then catch yourself. If you laugh, you'll probably fall over and never be able to stop. You hate laughing anyways.
A loud gunshot brings you out of your reverie, and you turn around to see none other than Collie Parker fighting with a soldier. Holy shit, Parker just shot a soldier. Surely that's illegal. You step forward to pull him away from the stupid fucks and scream at him that what he's doing is senseless and he's going to die.
And then suddenly your throat gets tight. You made them all take an oath. You made them all take a fucking oath, and now your friend is going to fucking die because of that oath.
All you wanted was for them to take you seriously, to believe that you were something more than funny, and now all you want is to go back however many hours and undo all of that because right now more than anything you want to help.
But you took an oath. You made them all swear that they wouldn't help each other out. No more favors.
Then you hear a strangled scream and you don't want to look but somehow you do and Parker is screaming some obscene word while blood seeps out of a hole in his chest and right now you hate yourself so much and you just want to be the one with bullets forming bloody holes in your chest.
But you don't cry, you don't scream, hell, you just try to look away while the only person you even cared about in this whole damn thing bleeds to death. He's calling them bastards, you realize. And that's what they are. Fucking bastards.
Out of nowhere, you wonder how you even got here. What inspired you to end up here, miles from home, on a road to nowhere at all, watching somebody die? It's sick. The whole thing is so fucking sick, you just want to vomit until there's nothing left inside of you and you're purged of everything you've ever consumed during this whole thing.
Parker finally stops screaming and you want to pound your fists against the ground and scream because someone is dead and it didn't matter before but now it does. And you know that's selfish and stupid of you, but you don't care because you're only seventeen and you shouldn't be seeing things like this.
You thought you weren't suicidal, that your being here was just an accident, that it was all just going to be painlessly over soon. It turns out that you were wrong. You were wrong about everything.
i didn't mean for this to turn out sort of parkeraham
i swear