Battleship Challenge [I4]
"Dead fish don't swim around in jealous tides" - ScottWeiland
Death
Gatsby was dead.
All it had taken was a single bullet to put out the spark of one of the most lively people I had ever had the good luck of meeting, and knowing. That spark had been something I had always imagined as eternal, and infinite. A never ending presence that continuously lit the ashy world with it's sheer determination. A hope that travelled unheeded through time, carrying it's bearer beyond the flimsy walls of death.
Ambition had sparked the dream. The desire to be something more than what he had been born with, giving up on those things that would never be of use to him, had lead him to a place very few people ever managed to reach in their lifetime. He had crafted a past that was worthy of his bright future, a past that was worthy of a man as great as Gatsby had been. His shame had only caused him to become the proud, generous person he had become. The cost of everything it had taken to reach where he wanted to be covered perfectly by the person he had always dreamed of being. A perfectly practiced mask that exuded everything he needed it to, with only a single weakness to falter him.
Love had grown the dream into something that was unreachable. Love had idealized the great dream into one person who would never be able to fulfill the expectations unexpectedly thrust on her from a distant past she had nearly forgotten like a painting now old and in disuse.
Somewhere along the line, Gatsby's great dream had been corrupted into the woman he had fallen in love with so many years ago. The day the fay-like woman, Daisy, had entered his life and enchanted him like he had never been enchanted before or since.
The body that once hosted the life and ambition of one of the most complex people I had ever known, seemed far too small, too tiny, for the greatness it had once held. The broken body that floated above the reddening water of the once-used pool, was as cold and selfish as the woman he had once fallen in love with.
He was as dead as the grey George Wilson, who lay only meters from where he floated, his last act of life's evidence still in his hand clutched like a lifeline that would give him everything he wanted. Perhaps, it did. I do not know if I would ever truly understand what prompted his last act of vengeance.
Nothing had saved Gatsby from a fate that had perhaps been fated from that very day, nearly five years ago, when he had left for the war. He had never expected to have another over something, someone, he had been so sure about.
I wouldn't be surprised if Daisy and Tom left without a word. This had been Daisy's little 'spree', different from Tom's yet the same.
Perhaps in a way, Daisy did get to float Gatsby around in one of her pink clouds.
Just not in the way she had expected.