Next up on the chopping block is the magical babu, Bastien. This contains talk of suicidal idealization and self-harm, so read with caution, my lovely readers! The truth is about to come out.

Words: 698

Characters: Bastien

I know he’s dead.

I’ve always known, really. But I act like I don’t. I pretend he’s still alive, that I see him and talk to him. They think I’m crazy. They’re right, but not in the way that they think I am.

But I know the truth.

How could I not? I relive the memory every night without fail. And every night I am reminded of how he died so violently doing what he loved most. That his own passion had killed him before a crowd as if he were one of his own spectacles. The final puff of smoke was the crimson cloud dispersing through the water.

I’ve always known.

He deserved to live, yet he died for no reason. No reason at all. Why? I can’t find anything to justify it. Nothing at all. And since there is nobody to blame… I blame myself. I don’t have a reason to blame myself, so I make up a reason. I tell myself that he didn’t deserve to die, so by that logic, I did. I did more than he did, at the very least.

I learned to believe my own lies.

Sometimes I even forget that he really is dead. I’m a rather convincing liar, you know. Sometimes, I almost think I do really see him when I pretend to talk to him. Though I can’t see him. If I could, I know he’d be frowning at me, the one who deserved to die.

I want to die so very badly. It’s what I deserve.

I don’t why I deserve to die, I just simply do. It won’t bring him back, but he shouldn’t have died in the first place. For some reason, it was me who should have died, I figured. I thought this irrational thought so many times until it was no longer irrational, but indisputable fact.

I can’t live on when I want to die.

So I did what all good magicians must do.

I put on a show.

I would put on the most grand and all-encompassing facade that anyone had ever seen. I would fool everyone, including myself. I would make others happy because I myself felt nothing but bitterness and grief. I would encourage others to believe while I had long since given up hope.

And so I poured every ounce of myself into this facade, going only with the thought that if I entertained and enchanted people, they would never have to feel as empty and loathing as I. It was my duty and my responsibility to give these innocent people a service- it was the least I could do. It’s what I must do, if I must live.

I’m so empty.

I pour myself out all day, every day, so that when I go to bed at night I am filled to the brim with the terrors and the memories. The hallucinations become increasingly vivid with every passing night. And so, each night I have to hack away at myself in order to cut out the terrible, pitiful parts of me. I keep a knife under my pillow just to make it more convenient.

If I act like I don’t know what I’m doing, they can’t stop me. They would try to stop me from punishing myself if I told them I knew I was doing it. So I just pretend.

Nightmares, hallucinations, amnesia… excuses abound so I may continue to live my life as the corpse I deserve to be.

I’m such a good liar, aren’t I?

And I’ll continue to lie. If they start to catch on, I’ll run. I ran away from home, I ran away from the circus, and I ran away from her. I stay in the circus once again because it keeps us moving. Never in one place for too long. Never too close to anyone, while still doing my service to society.

I’m a joke.

Do I believe in magic? Well, perhaps. After all, how else could I have been able to fool so many people? How else could I have been able to fool myself?

I wonder what my father thinks of me now.

Except he doesn’t think.

Because he’s dead.