The Voice of Thousands

You’ve heard the rumors more than anyone. It’s the only way you get to be a part of the conversation. Through the rumors, the conversations that fill the air. They circle around you, filling your head to the brim with hope. A creature, a light, an abomination lurking in the caves just outside of town. People have claimed to see it, have talked to it, and have come back with different descriptions and interactions with the beast.

“It can grant you your deepest desire.”

Desire is a strange way to describe what you want, but it does the job. The desire to fit in, the want to not be an outsider, the craving to belong. All of these were ways to describe your wish, yes, but could a mysterious object or thing grant this for you? Were you willing to go into the condemned cave to meet with something that probably wasn’t there?

After years of eating alone at lunch, all of the years of being the last chosen for a group project, and years of teachers and classmates forgetting your name, you finally have a chance to change everything. You can have a group, a click, that belongs to you. People will finally know your name. But the cave is larger and darker than you had heard from the rumors.

The mouth opened wide and welcomed you in, a stark contrast to the vivid yellow caution tape. There’s a feeling in your chest, something tugging at your heart to make you enter the cave. It’s like someone tied a red string of fate into you and is pulling on the end. The feeling twists and turns you through the gaping directions that you could easily get lost in. But the string, this reassuring feeling gives you confidence that you’ve never felt before. Right and left and down deeper into the dark pit that held your fate tightly in its grasp.

You can feel it. Deep in your bones you can feel it. That buzzing, that vibration coursing through your blood and making you visibly shake. It’s excitement. It’s anxiety. It’s curiosity as much as it’s repulsion. You want to know more, craving for it to learn more about you. Yet you want to run away, to hide from this in order to… what? What are you hiding from? You wanted this after all.

It’s feasting on your desire, your longing, everything that you want and need. Yes, you need this. It’s a necessity to belong and fit into the current of students. The stream of people that feel nothing on their own without the permission of others. You need to belong to the normal of society.

You step closer. Your fingers twitch to reach forward but to also stop you from continuing on. Your footsteps echo throughout the cave and the thing feels more than sees you. It’s glowing. It’s dark. It’s burning as much as it’s frozen. You long for it. You crave it. You need it to know you're here. It craves you to.

There’s a thrumming inside you, the static electrifying you to go… Go where? Outside of the cavern and into the warmth of the sun that will surely stop this constant shiver. Or closer in, drawing you to reach your hand out? That’s what was right, that’s what was necessary. You have to touch it, if it’s a solid object. Was it? You’re not sure.

It was welcoming and bright, warming you more than the sun could ever try to do. You were made to find this thing. You’re finally where you belong and the thing in front of you seems pleased at your presence. Like it’s been waiting for you to find it. Like it’s been desiring you as much as you desire it.

It’s talking, but the walls of the cave do not echo. It’s linked to you, speaking into your mind and only to you. Only for you. There’s too many and not enough voices. They beg you to come closer, to reach a hand and grasp what belonged to you. Of course! You’ve been cheated of something that everyone was naturally given. Fitting in belonged to you, a privilege that was taken from you. But you can have it now.

Its pulse is shaking your body, your heart matching its tempo. Its heartbeat feels like one, yet it starts and ends before you're ready. It’s going faster by the second. Your mind is screaming at your heart to calm down, but the music must continue. The show, this wonderful performance, must go on! You're a player in the orchestra of a thousand heartbeats. Each one longing to reach forward and grasp the thing in front of you. 

But only you can touch it. It belongs to you, it wants you, it needs you. It’s an itch you have to scratch before the voices scratch first. It’s a natural instinct that you can’t fight. It glows and darkens with excitement as well as expectation. You have to take it before they do. Quickly!

The voices cry and scream. They beg and praise the thing in front of you to the point where you forget your name. Why have a name when you belong in the crowd? Why have a voice, an opinion, when the crowd can answer together? Why be an individual when becoming one is much simpler.

Your veins are being plucked, your muscles are stretching and twisting to make you scream out your melody. A melody that can disappear into the thousands that sing in the choir. It’s bliss, it’s pain, it’s ecstasy as much as it’s burning your core with agony. 

Was this the right thing, though? Were you supposed to follow the crowd? Why can’t you sing your own melody and be the center of your own universe? You could be yourself, love whatever and whoever you wanted at the cost of being an outsider. So what if people didn’t know your name? You knew who you are, where you belong, and that should be enough.

But the voices drown your voice of reasoning. They claw at it and sink it down deep into your mind. You can only hear the longing and happiness that the thing in front of you could bring. You can finally belong. 

You feel so warm and cold at the same time. You feel at home and more of an outsider than you’ve ever been before.