If knives in backs and devils in details were real competitions, then I think you would win. Duplicitous, that's a good word, means untrustworthy and it's already untrustworthy to have two words for one thing. I think you're duplici-sound-it-out-tous. Walking around all fancy, all pretentious, in your nice coat and your clean shoes, adorned with that cute little hat of yours. I guess you never learned the rules around here, did you? You know what happens now, surely? You must. How could you not.
We're just standing here, count us, one, two, just the two of us, standing here together. And you're looking at me like that and you expect me not to do anything about it? No, it's fucking nonsense, I think. I think that I can't stand the very sight of you. I think that I want you to never come back once I knock that stupid half smile off your face, once I teach a dumb kid like you a lesson you should've learned a long time ago. I mean, count em, I have one, two, fists, that's right, two fists with which to punch you. I could even do so from two directions at once if I so felt inclined. I don't luckily. My distaste for violence, which is quite significant, mind, is not outweighed by my distaste for you, which is also quite significant but not quite as significant, so to speak.
It's the art of pontification that gets you, I think. You can't bear to interrupt because you're so very polite. Such a good little human, all polite, all caring, hardly daring to speak while I'm talking. Too afraid to even fit your voice into the gaps, to struggle to wrap your head around a world where I'm not speaking. It would be rude, oh so rude, to leave, to abandon me mid conversation. And we are having a conversation, are we not? It could hardly be said not to be a conversation given how long we've been talking for, how long my whispers have been in your ear, how long your brain has spent carefully sounding out these words. And that means that even I were to pause for a moment, just a moment, like so... you have to ask me to continue because it would be just dreadful to walk out of a conversation mid-conversation, would it not? As you did, proving my point.
I mean, as soft as your jaw is to outstretched fingers, nothing is stranger the concept of those who don't want to hear my voice. It's funny to think that there are those out there who don't enjoy my voice. Who think that I'm detestable. You don't think that, do you, my little detestable morsel? You wouldn't. You love the rapture I inspire in you, the way your little mind uplifts my every word, imbuing them with a sense of importance, because my words are the most important things you've ever heard?
Do you ever remember how to speak, I wonder. We've been huddled in the corner for a long time now, just me and you, just the two of us, count them, one, two, look see? Two. We're here together you and me, just the two of us, stuck alone, watching as the dark begins to die, and the lights start and the fires burn and the world is drowning in gasoline. Perhaps we should stop pouring the gasoline, stop lighting those fires. Do you consider yourself to be a moral person, little thing caught in my web? Because I think it would work to recast ourselves through metaphor and you're the beautiful butterfly whose wings struggle feebly against the spider's web, and you're the calf with the wounded hoof staggering before the wold, and you're walking around with a whole in your head, because you're too good, because you're too kind, because you would've cut me off if you valued your life more than the social anxiety.
Oh no, don't start now, it's far too late for that, I mean, you don't have any words that I haven't given you, because I've been speaking through you for years. Watching see? My mouth isn't moving anymore. Yours is. You just echo after me, whispering whatever foul thoughts I put into your head, whatever I make you think, or maybe I should say whatever I think, because I'm not really here, I mean, look, count em, one, one. That's all just one now.
If there are ideas, then there is competition, and if there's competition, then there's persuasion, and there's persuasion by diplomacy and persuasion by force and I'm nesting in your little head and running riot in your mind because you were too soft and you let me in. And I'll ramble and ramble and you'll let me because it seems harmless, because you're patient, because it would be rude not to let me in your house, not to watch you sleep, not to eat your dreams.
And do you wonder if that's why they avoid you, they congregate around not you, they cut you off at the parties, because they can sense a predator? And the herbivores scatter before you can hunt, before you can feed, because you were too empathetic and now you're a killer. Now you're a hack on the system. And you'll corned someone in a dark section and whisper about how there's only, count em, two of you. Count em. It's untrustworthy not to.