The Chase

The Chase

Sadness had always aspired to be as content as his brother - Happiness - so much so, in fact, that he envied the brutal severance rifting them apart. Alas, as with most aspirations, Sadness befell the usual disappointment of our meandering pursuit for something grander than what we have abreast. From when dawn first scintillated across the grassy verdure, Sadness awoke to a rheum encrusted around his whole aurora. When the sun guttered its candlelit flames atop the horizon, Sadness slumbered in turmoil of his irreversible reality. His heart beat, like a harp unstrung, and never did he feel anything save gloom. Those eyes were blinded from being full of somniferous tears. The blithe talk of those whom he had failed to befriend garbled to cacophonous illusions. In the dark, laughter deafened him. The palette of Sadness was apt to slake off kingly banquets, however, taste mildewed like the fungous white on unwitting leaves. He had a tongue, but would dawdle his speech to frivolity; or so believed his irrational mind. 

Happiness polarised as his exemplary opposite, for Sadness’s brother was sociable and conversant with his emotional others. Happiness disinflamed Wrath from his infernal temperament; subdued the unruly beast of primal, childish Mischief; rested Anxiety asleep when tremulous upon the prickly hairs on one’s skin; reconciled Good and Evil; disinclined Solitude from its alienable persona; embraved Cowardice to be stalwart; amended widowed Grief by allowing her to forelook at more prosperous futures ahead; quelled the rash Vengeance from wreaking upon those who have wronged; unbigoted Hatred and Spite from their livid malice; and danced through the earthly doldrums with Love. Sadness could never vie with his brother. To him, these were worldly elements he sought an education on - a sentimental education, as a Frenchman once wrote. They were ponderous to carry along with him in his daily affairs, and weighed him as a cumbrous anchor. Happiness would frolic through the meadows, blasé as can be, whilst he, Sadness, seethed in envious confusion of why he was so inept at such mirths. Their mother - Naivety - would complain to their father - Stoicism - of how twilit Sadness appeared, though neither dared query why his frown drowned all that had power enough to joy. They feared having to plumb the profound of, indeed, how woeful Sadness was. Most stagger at travelling slantwise the tightrope of broaching that which is desolating. 

At an age indeterminable, Sadness attempted to distract himself from what tyrannised him, by adventuring through the cities near to their home. In a boisterous tavern, he trialled the delusive wile of intoxicating oneself to evade nauseous sorrow; in vain. Gazing at the skies brought but faults in them, where the varicose web illuminating the cosmos dimmed Sadness. Birds howled at plaintive infrequencies; the insects droned at horrid length; and the clouds mocked him with their misshapen fancies. Rain would gratify Sadness awhile, before being subverted by a puddle glassing his pitiable within. 

One fateful noon, his uncle - Deceit - paid a visit to their home. He noticed how stifled Sadness was, and, after all had quieted down, he accosted his nephew:

 “Have you tried your mettle at Eros, in the centre of London?” 

Perplexed, Sadness stuttered out that he was not apprised of this establishment. Deceit enhaloed with that fervour of perversity. He wheedled to his nephew, and used garrulous persuasion to seduce him into checking Eros out. 

“I am certain it shall cater to your favour,” gulled Deceit. 

Being the fool of credulous trust, Sadness ambled to Eros, where he found the extent of how fouled his uncle was. The neon kaleidoscope shone in fluctuant hues of red: from carmine, vermeil, scarlet, crimson, and plenteous more. These lights were no deterrent for Sadness; what he was averse to revolved around gratuitous exploitation. All around him, Sadness saw the dulling twinkle of virtue being pawned by avaricious cruelty. 

As Sadness turned to depart, a waxen figure propped her lissom arm on his shoulder, reeling him into her boudoir. Resistless, he entered and lay abed with this mistress. She was all the more disheartening to view, for O’ how Innocence personified from her radiant face. Comely was the way her flaxen hair ruffled, and when shaking her head, its gloss mizzled as the ingots of golden embers from the backdrop of a bonfire. Sadness relented, and they spent the night together. 

In the morning, however, Sadness retched with disgust at what he regarded to be arrant defilement. Not from a perspective of considering the nameless mistress as hideous, but from how he so loathed himself. Sadness felt he was desertless to have enjoyed a calmative sleep, with one so gracious. He stole out of the boudoir, whilst the mistress was supine and snoring of a dreamful memory they had shared together. Nevermore did Sadness see his nameless mistress. She was but a willowy mirage that summoned him to lament in disgrace irreconcilable. 

Henceforth, when Deceit next visited their home, Sadness shirked having to see his devious uncle that had so shamed him. Lust was thus incompatible with Sadness, and Sadness jilted Love from his self-reproach.

His successive task deviated, and was more studious. Delving into literature seemed a veritable way of escapism. O’ how the hood of such hope winked him: what Sadness uncovered was that, the avider he scoured, the more these tales chronicling the glum sides of humanity thawed. From Young Werther suiciding, the Requiem for a Dream alike his own, Greek Tragedy ill influencing his affectable humour, and the unsparing depictions of Maupassant. These Flowers were not for our sad Algernon. He renunciated literature, and denounced it as an odium which he swore never to return to. 

For Sadness, in the glamour of every glimmer there was an ominous shadow of doubt. Thus what besides could Sadness do to disentwine? 

He soon alloted his flexuous series of misfortunes to his native land, and, as brotherly Happiness excelled at everything he touched, Sadness decided it best to embark abroad. Flee somewhere afar in the continental offings. When relating this to his parents, Sadness realised that they comported gay smiles, as if his riddance had long been pined for; as if, through Sadness leaving his parents and those shores which were familiar to him, they were all disburdened of what worries Sadness had inflicted upon them. Blame was yet another component tallied to his growing list. 

Upon a ship sailed Sadness, with his maritime brethren swabbing the deck in incessant routine. The wind would flit between voracious squalls, plummeting deluges, foamy waves which crested in monstrous shapes, and the constant brine salting the nautical air. Captain Courage had agreed to let Sadness stow with them, as they wended the fearsome ire of the sea. Sadness knew not where he wished to be delivered to, nor had he demanded Captain Courage take him anywhere in specific - Sadness was at the complete mercy of where they spirited him to. 

In the meantime, Sadness engaged in duties aboard the ship, petitioning that they may relieve him. To a degree they did, though as he was inured to the repetitious cycle of life at sea, he wearied yet again from his melancholy delights. Great billows plashed against the port and starboard of the ship, lurching them askew, sickening their stomachs to troublesome indigestion. His feet, encased in irrespirable boots all day, festered of what algal growth multiplied from it being an expedient habitat for such germs. The rigidity of conforming to the implicit laws on Captain Courage’s ship all the more misgave Sadness. 

The members of the crew, roistering when the moon peeked and pearled its milky drapery, were unfond of Sadness for similar reasons that had so dogged him when ashore. They despised how Sadness secluded himself to avoid their drunken merriment. To the crew, Sadness misjudged them through his captious reservations; when, in fact, Sadness shied away out of humility to not irk them. The ironic Pathos of our poor wanderer! 

After interminable days, they moored in Asia, at a Japanese port called Serendipity. Disembarking surged Sadness with the smother of colours, electrifying the thoroughfares, streets, and alleyways with inconceivable polychromos. His scent grasped the toxicity of odiferous culture, bodily perspiration, acquisitive chatter, and an acute sense of being beyond one’s faculty for bobbing afloat in a foreign land. Indeed, sighting these curios muddled Sadness, and caused him to look elsewhere for a sojourn. From this metropolis, Sadness, on his lonesome, scaled the acclivity of Japan: passing through Sendai where the Trees predominate the city, Aomori where he idled in the natural springs of bubbling heat, and, by the time he had arrived at Sapporo, he indulged in the hoary winterland where tiny men were rimed and fashioned of stout snow. Then Sadness dismounted to the declivity of Japan, where he studied the increase in temples, shrines, and pantheons for their emperors of old. At Nagoya, he saw the Castle with its aurous statues of Shachihoko erected atop its roof. Osaka both unravelled the winnowing Cherry Blossoms shimmering their roseate sparkles, and the ancient Shitennoji Temple with its fived-storied chapeau, outspreading at each level like the plumy wings of a red-crowned crane. He hurried along the frightful vertigo steeping him to Hiroshima, where cadaverous voices echoed throughout him. Hiroshima dismayed Sadness to wilt from the empathy he felt; he could smell, breathe, and taste the sweat of that pernicious, atomic catastrophe. His final stop, before heading toward the rest of Asia, was Mount Aso, in Kumamoto. Here, Sadness gazed at the craterous caldera, where once the still sentient volcano had erupted and collapsed; he wished he could leap off into its caldera and be engorged in molten, scalding waves. Be effaced from this Earth in a pit of combustive glory. It would bode well to attribute one’s exploration in Japan as gladsome, alas, this was far from the case for Sadness. 

Onward through Asia his malcontent persisted, and sullied everything he glimpsed at. In Thailand, at the hallowed Temple of the Emerald Buddha, he could glean but mere fractions of what meditative splendour he ought to perceive. Those locks of luscious gold were, to Sadness, gilding insipid, humdrum, and superficial tawdries of a piety he could never attain. In Cambodia, in the village of Choeung Ek - known as The Killing Fields - Sadness had a morbid infatuation propel him to inspect the egregious genocide that devestated. Needless to say, Sadness soon repented at having devised of the idea, for Death menaced back at him with ghastly irreverence. In Vietnam, a similar phenomenon concurred with the immemorial pungency from the ghostly Napalm, still haunting the country. It stank of arid detergent, petroleum, and gasoline all concocted into one noisome potion for destruction. 

“Why must we slay our sistren and brethren, neighbours and strangers, friends and foes?” posed Sadness. “Is it cognate to our blood that we must incinerate all that is beautiful? Do we quantify Beauty with what Gore can Gain for us?” 

Sadness was aware of these questions being irresolvable, and so moved on with the continuum of our Complacency. 

Thereafter was the stoney anfractuosity of the Great Wall of China, weaving as a Gordian serpent, blushed by the virid forestry and downy clouds surrounding it. They had no effect save bemusing Sadness, and inciting him once more to philosophise: 

“Why would we mar Nature and Earth with such a construction? It has merit, but some Wilds are best left untrodden.” 

Throughout India, Sadness honed in on these quandaries, and discerned the disparity between what was naturalised and what had been entrenched. The skies were obstructed from the metalliferous buildings soaring upward. The streets teethed and teemed with a populous rampage. The distinction between Wealth and Poverty scowled at Sadness, as he remarked upon derelicts, mendicants, unfortunates, and hustlers eke for dear sustenance. Yes, the Taj Mahal was magnificent and regal, the domal red balloons aloft Mysore Palace were astounding, the gigantic Amber Fort was incredible, the millions of insectile eyes on the Hawa Mahal were fascinating - but they all flew awry on Sadness. 

Even the miscellaneous vasts of Russia could not slake what plagued Sadness. His heart was quenchless in how ill it jaded from what should have overawed. Something forbade Sadness from disembroiling his weariless dearth of cheer. Perhaps, contrary to what he had believed, Sadness had too sentimental of an education, and so noted then dissected all the errors in humanity. Too receptive to how violated our peculiar world is. 

Some pupae, when eclosing from their chrysalids, are accursed to suffer by having been lent the compass of differentiating North from South, Good from Evil, Beauty from Grotesquerie, and Innocence from Iniquity. An adulterant defect in their metabolism, cardiovascular system, or brain - who knows where or what, save that it is infelicitous and unjust. 

There comes a time when this defect enervates its wandering host, and thins them into being susceptible to the malignant. This is plumb what happened to Sadness. His pursuit across the continents did not rest till he had viewed all seven of them. During that time, a mildew of the mind forked out, like gloomy boughs at twilight, and progressed to a more heinous, debilitating condition. First, what afflicted him externalised upon his facial features, with ashen fatigue freaked left and right, then his eyes sank to bulbous bags, and soon his skin deteriorated to a charnel pallor. Before long his entirety was dampened by these symptoms of a predacious malady. So ailed was Sadness, that he returned homeward and shoreward, where he dreaded to think whether his parents, and Happiness, had missed him at all. Had he drifted into a phantasmal image of their past? A vague, tenuous, and fleetful nobody that, upon arriving, would but deject them anew. 

“So be it,” said Sadness, “what choice besides do I have?” And thus he ventured to his native land. 

Reuniting with his parents, they were petrified by how different he looked; Sadness had matured by incarnating onerous Wisdom. Happiness lumbered when greeting his brother, and retained his weeps from how he surmised Sadness to have fared ill during his vagabonding. Fatherly Stoicism, motherly Naivety, and brotherly Happiness diagnosed an immedicable Pestilence to have taken hold over Sadness. This was substantiated by Remedy, the doctor whom they had called to aid them in their quest to reverse the malady. After much scrutiny, Remedy affirmed that Sadness was, indeed, possessed by pathogens immune to medicine, or herbaceous panaceas. He could not classify the peccant matter within Sadness, for it was capricious in how often it metamorphosed. Remedy would waver over it as being akin to a malarious delirium, or a tuberculous fever which proliferated off all that was dolorous in Sadness. The disease feasted off what was negative. 

At length the parents disputed with Remedy about Sadness’s rate of survival, and were inexorable on being told that their sad son had little chance of reconquering himself. 

“In my professional opinion,” stated Remedy, “the tissue binding Sadness seems to have long forfeited its care for existing. Under the microscope, I see atoms shifting and sifting in listless despair. It is undispellable, I am afraid.” 

Sadness was nonchalant on whether he would be vanquished by what wasted him. In an ironic sense, he joyed at being stamped with a label of when he may expire. It felt behoveful that he would swoon after having foundered to find what he so sought - albeit what jewel had he craved? 

For the following days, Sadness was witnessed by his family. Stoicism would lay beside him, assure that Sadness dozed - which he pretended to do - and unbosomed his regrets for having been implacable. He rued at having been inexpressive and unsympathetic: a hollow, blank painting where the faces have been gnawed off. On the other hand, Naivety relinquished what vault had so enfettered her from comforting her sad son, and felt a guilt incomparable to that of Stoicism. Hers was attributable to being remiss, and ignorant of the duties she ought to have done so as to quell Sadness. What both Naivety and Stoicism did share, was the onus of their selfish desire to preclude the conversation of emotions with Sadness. They had so quailed at the slightest hint of having to speak on such matters, that they now misappropriated the series of events upon their shoulders. Guilt can pervert the most imperturbable of creatures. 

Deprecated at intervals, the gleeful visage, indomitable passivity, and tender generosity of Happiness maimed from how harried he was. In the late hours of night, he would arch upon an undulant chair, warding over his invalid brother. Juxtaposing the occasional movement from his chair were creaks from the wooden floor, quarrelling or keening from downstairs, and the wind whistling its remorseful requiem. 

These visitations habituated till a faerie sheened upon Sadness, alarming sleepless, devout Happiness, presiding over the nightly welfare of his brother. Rushing over to Sadness, Happiness saw a pearly kiss be japanned on his skeletal cheek. The rhythms, of which the heart of Sadness palpitated, were so irregular and murmurous that Happiness fretted. He widened his mouth agape, prepared to bellow out for his parents, but Sadness reeled him in. 

“No, let my final minutes be at ease.” 

Happiness nodded.  

“Before I perish, I wish to endow you with the lesson I learnt on my journeys.” 

Sadness beckoned Happiness closer. 

“We all seek idyllic Greed - one unachievable to us, yet so captivating. Do not be deceived into throbbing or sobbing for that which is ostensible. Suffice in what you own, or risk embittering yourself. My whole life I chased what I was deprived of and,” Sadness pointed to Happiness, “envied. The tragicomedy being that my chasing was me running away.” 

The ultimate breath sighed from Sadness, and a gangrenous air encapsulated the room. 

Happiness hastened to the nearest bathroom, where he could bathe his sorrows. Luckless was he, however, for when dabbing his face in the mirror, it showed him to have warped to Unhappiness.