You Were Warned
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"How could a person commit such a crime to murder immaculate keepers of time? Why should a person so foul get away?"
- The Death of the Cog, The Cog is Dead
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Anyone who knew anything could have realised that something had begun to go terribly wrong. The signs had up and bloomed from the dark abyss that exists beyond his own endless spectrum that is himself, thorning out before he even realised something was amiss. (There was nothing wrong with him! He is perfect!) So wrapped up into his own greed and misunderstanding, drowning completely in the faked love bestowed upon him finally by his backwater family of low class and despair of which he has drempt for since the dark days of a lonely childhood, in love with all that is his legacy and the thneed – he had failed to notice his declining health in his time of greatness.
He had failed to notice that the blood he had begun to cough up was more than a low infection that had traversed it way past the stone wall that is his immune system.
It started with things that he knew could not exist – things that could not be real in the world he was slowly coming to control and at last understand. The ghosts of what could only be dead barbaloots slinked out of the corner of his eyes, hulking piteously in an endless search for food in the wasteland that had once been their home. Those singing fish, beautifully strange in every-way, no longer sing in harmony nor do they sing at all: they remain lifeless, dead, with large open eyes that follow him everywhere and open mouths that say nothing at all. (They were your friends! They loved you! Why would you do this to them? Please – !)
When he passed the mirror, a lost boy would waver in its depth. He never spoke words for his eyes told him everything. His staff did not ask when he shattered all the mirrors in the building.
Deep in the throes of working, he would hear things, things that could not be. A murmuring, the slightest of the slight, in the canal of his ear: "Unless, unless, unless..." Sometimes if he listened hard enough – took that minute moment of his day out from his biggering and biggering – he could hear the trees scream their last as they fell to the ground. And when at last alone without the comfort of a peon who only sought the quickest way to power, floating on the mists of thousand threaded cotton and pillows stuffed with the beauty of goose, the voice of the boy he has yet to slaughter from his existence would murmur with the eyes of a child who has been stunted his chance to grow up: "Promise-breakerpromise-breakerpromise-breakerpromise-breakerpromise-breakerpromise-breakerpromise-breakerpromise-breaker–"
He would wake up screaming, shattering the silence with the cries of that same weak boy that he could not make disappear no matter the case.
It became common understanding for him to wake up screaming – the ghost of his past having yet to finish his revenge for being forever silenced. Sometimes, when the stars played out on the ceiling above his bed, filling him with the dreams of a lost childhood, he had to wonder if he would ever wake up again.
His vision began to blur; at first thought to be results of the migraines caused by the clanking machinery, grinding cogs, and the endless whir and whizzle of his glorious tree-cutting machines. The things that did not exist seemed to multiply in number, ranging in the thousands, all traversing their dying homeland for things that no longer, things that are as dead as they are. Floating at the edges of what could never be again, they began to drive him mad. The fish begin to sing, out of tune and utterly desperate in tone. Their melody is non-existent, nothing but a ruckus of mixed notes and lost hope, as if someone has strung the strings of a broken, nasty old guitar that sits tucked away at the back of his closet.
In the heap of its hazardous harmony, a mantra is endlessly repeated again and again: "–"
Time has begun to make its away around the clock, the near-perfectness of his health declining with every disturbing dong, and the world seems to grow farther away. Rather, it is not known if it is him or all those around him who begin to grow distant. His vision slowly fades, as do those monsters from his sight; blinking and shimmering into the cruel nothingness like everything else around him. They traverse farther and farther across the field in search for what is not there; their moans of agony slowly beginning to dissipate as more and more trees cease to exist.
And as all that is him begins to break down, bowing to the horrible that is the world he has created, his family worries. Worries for his health, worries for his legacy, worries for everything but him, (dear, dearie, lovey-dovey, hunnykins, my prized possession, you really should find yourself a bride and settle down. You're not going to live forever you know. Remember the company, remember us – )
That strange girl disappears, coming lesser and lesser every day to see him destroy her precious world. She fades from his life – the thought of her smile, those endless eyes where the rivers ran wild with freedom, can only bring him to his knees – and takes the rest of the happiness with her loss. There are times where her existence is doubted by him; thought nothing more than to be a little piece of madness fashioned from loneliness and the need to feel as if he is doing right.
His family only worries and worries and worries and worries and worries and worries and worries and worries and worries as the trees continue to fall.
When his vision is almost entirely gone, out of the million colours whose existence has plagued every unforunate sap to walk this earth, there is nothing but red, red, red, red, red; the former shapes and figures of all he has known having become an endless twist of oozing red and vermilion, dripping and twisting throughout his declining sight like puddles of blood splattering across the sky.
And at night, when he fights off sleep as if fighting for life or death, there is nothing but blood on his hands.
In his dreams, there is no trace of his poisonous existence. There is nothing indicating that he ever existed or had even come to their world and punished it with his humanity and lust for power. The trees still hummed that delicious melody, heard only by those who understood the trees and their magnificent beauty. The animals do not scream for their life – a sheer cry from the lives of those he has ruined on the outside – instead only remaining in constant happiness at the beauty around them as they once had before he had come from the world he had wished so desperately to escape and into theirs. There was no blood to be found on his hands whenever he could tear his eyes away at what he lost.
Most of all, there is still colour. There is still hope and colour; a variety of beautiful shades that range from the deepest of reds to the lighests of violets. Every colour exists, showing no sign of ever having been disturbed by the monstrosity that is him–
When he wakes, he wakes to nothing but the dark. He knows that his eyes are open.
The Lorax had warned him. He had been warned time and time again of what was to happen; was warned of the consequences to come as a result of his own stupidity and his overwhelming need to please his family and prove himself. It was his fault, his fault his fault his fault his fault his fault, that everything was this way – that things had turned out as they had. And whether liking to admit it or not, the Lorax had been right. He had been warned and he did not listen.
His sight has at last failed him; those mysterious stars that he has always craved to touch hanging above his bed have died. When the world starts to close in upon him – when the haunted of all those who are dead by his hands appear rushing in to claim the very fragments of his soul that has at long last has failed that test of time where it never stood a hero's chance, shattering at the result of his own failure (Prissy-boy, prissy-boy, prissy-boy aint goin' to do nothin' wit his life!), the last rustic chains to his own fabricated reality are at last broken, allowing for the gates of realisation to flood him with the understanding that everything, everything, everything is his faulthisfaulthisfaulthisfault and nothing would ever be the same again.
And when out of the thousands of the voices around him, the voice of that boy who has not been seeking the end but has only wanted change screams out in agony, the Onceler did not need his sight to know that the last tree had finally fallen.