A Serenade for the Innocent 19 Third Envelope

Dear mother,

Thank you for opening this letter, if you ever did, mother.

I will not keep you any longer. I am slowly feeling my sanity deplete as the hour passes. I feel like I'm turning into a madman, a beast. I have decided to tie my body to a wooden chair far from the water, but I am can still feel its power surging through my body although I am not facing it directly. All my friends are dead; mother, I have failed you.

However, you must know that I am not insane. I am not at all delusional nor is my mind in a state of absolute disrepair that I cannot even comprehend what is real and what is not. I am aware of who I am. I know full well how I can send this letter to you, and what it is I wish to inform you. I am writing the works of the devil and how his temptation got the best of us.

I saw the bodies of my friends, my comrades, my fellows who stood with me to protect social liberation. I spoke with them passionately about our dreams to form a different society devoid of hunger and pain and discrimination and all sorts of evil that permeate our country. All we ever wanted was to live a better life.

Now I stood here, bound with the grip of fear as I stare upon the grinning corpses of my friends. We were supposed to be heroes, mother; we were supposed to form a better world together. Instead, what we had is a death unsuitable for a man like them with honor and dignity.

I was enraged. I was beyond angry. This was one feeling I have not felt ever since the magistrates and the ministers took father away from us and sent him to die in the camps. I was over with just a subpar feeling of annoyance, but this time, I was not directing it upon the authorities looming above us.

My eyes were dead set on the water.

I could feel it, mother; the sensation of the devil's wrath looms within my heart and pumping a dreadful small little critters and crawlers all over my body along with my blood. I was beyond saving and not even the angels of the lord could reason me out. I stomped towards that dreadful water of hell and pointed at it as screamed from the top of my lungs!

You will not fool me the way you did my friends!

You will not take hold of my body!

The power of Christ is within me!

I'd boldly proclaim all of those with great determination as I shouted and pointed and yelled loud, loud, loud, louder than the neighs of a dying horse. However, just like my friends who loomed all over the water, nothing happened. The water did not budge. I yelled still. I growled with all the power I had as I pointed a rosary at the damned water shaking the rosary with all my might.

I did not even realize that most of my saliva would fall towards the water and swim within the primordial evil to venture upon its hellish secrets.

To my surprise, they told me the answer in the form of a twinkle.

My yelling grew lighter and my words started to come to a halt. Everyone noticed how I started to regain my composure. Even one of my comrades who was scratching his head earlier on a corner of the room stopped whatever it is he was doing to gaze at my dumbfounded expression.

I had my eyes on the most wondrous thing I had ever seen in the short span of my life. My hands shook for I have finally known the devil's mission here with us. Shivers started to crawl and scratch my skin as my trembling strengthens. I stumbled forward, forcing my sanity back into reality. It made me realize the eyes pointed towards me. They were reddened with red veins covering the whites of their eyes like they were all branches of a blood-red tree. They looked at me with empty expressions, but I could see in their eyes a will strong enough to devour me whole—I am not even sure if I am being metaphorical in saying that for I could truly feel that they would eat me anytime soon with the way they point their gazes at me.

The fear took the better of me and it finally hit through my head, making my brain shut in a snap.

That was when I dropped my rosary towards the water, and just like how my spit twinkled brightly, my rosary turned into a bright yellow thing, twinkling within the evil water as if the liquid itself is covering my rosary with a shiny coating as it fell ever so slowly towards the bottom of its containment. When it finally dropped to the very bottom, the former brown, wooden rosary now turned into a shiny sort of metal.

I covered my mouth to contain my gasp as I had my realization.

My rosary turned into gold.

My spit turned into a tiny speck of gold dust.

All of my friends witnessed what had happened. They saw how the devil turned my rosary into gold proving once again that the power of my faith to the lord did nothing to faze the devil. One of them quickly grabbed my rosary with his hands from the bottom of the water, sprinkling a few drops towards the faces of my other comrades who were busy gazing at the once empty water. He was laughing manically as he grabbed the golden rosary with his own hands. The others did the same too while looking and pointing at the rosary while some of them did not move, continuing to stare at the water.

I took a step back. I realized that I stepped on something solid and hard; it even felt a bit metallic, if I do say so myself. I started to move my head to direct my gaze at what I had stepped on, praying to god that my assumption was wrong. I yelped and jumped back a few more steps back when I saw that my fears had come true.

The arms of the corpses on the ground all turned to gold.

I quickly looked at the people crowding around the water. I saw the hand of the man holding my rosary turning into gold. I also realized how the water lessened in quantity as if they threw a bucket of it out of the contraband though nothing of that sort truly happened for only a few drops were removed from its containment.

This was not the end of the hellish scene which I had seen though, mother. One man had a portion of her lips turned into gold up towards his cheek. One had his neck turned to gold. Another one's ears were shining golden. Most of them had a portion of their faces turned into gold, but none of them seemed to care at all. Some were even scratching their faces, and as they peeled their skin after clawing their faces too hard, it only revealed that a portion of their muscle had turned blood while the blood around it dripped towards their chin. None of them seemed to mind though. They only cared about gold. None of them seemed to care about the pain they might be feeling. None of them seemed to care about the reason why we are all here. They were all only concerned about one thing.

The miracles of the water.

The miracles?

The water.

The water.

They all cared about the water.

They loved the water.

Do I love the water?

I do not know but the water is surely a thing that exists.

The water gave us gold, and it turned them all into gold.

We all adored the water very much so and we could not even understand why.

In fact, one of them even stood up and stepped his right foot on the water, and to no one's surprise, it turned into gold. No one knew the reason, but everyone understood.

That was when our comrade who was letting his fear get the best of his at the corner of the room finally stood up and approached us as he yelled.

Stop, he said, stop, stop! You will be sacrificed to it and you will all turn into nothing! You will turn into nothing! He'd scream. Nothing! He would repeat! Stop! Stop! Stop!

I would never forget what one of my closest comrades whispered before he grabbed our screaming comrade's shoulder.

If you're so certain about that, he said, then why don't we make you go first?

And he pushed him.

With one final scream, an agonizing scream that I still could not believe a man could ever create, the water swallowed his body whole, face first, until the water covered the entirety of his body with the devil's caress.

He wanted to take his head off the water, but it was too late before he could even raise his upper body. He was already gone. He had already turned into gold, a huge chunk of gold in the shape of a man. A man I once knew.

I slid down on the ground as I saw my friends feast as they bathe in the water. All of them drenched themselves with it as I saw their bodies turn into nothing but a golden mess. As if a poetic statement from Satan himself, he had shown me a final look of my friends in the form of a golden statue. It made me remember the golden statue erected to show reverence in our great leader and how countless of our friends died to create it.

Now my friends who fought to destroy that same golden statue now all turned into nothing but the same thing we all loathed. Alas, after a while, the wooden contraband keeping the water could not contain the bodies of my friends and collapsed along with the fall of the statue of my friends. I approached what remained of the contraband, and I saw the body of the first person who was immersed in the water. His name was Allen. He warned us. Now what remains of him is his golden corpse and a small puddle of water trapped around his arms, shoulders, and a portion of his face. It could very much fit a large ball in it.

It was all rather interesting to look at.

However, that was all the end of this tale. Mother, I'm sure you may not believe what I am saying right now. I am sure you cannot forgive me. I am sure you think of me is nothing but a crazy son of yours whom you will forever know as a disgrace. I am sure there is nothing in this world you wanted more than for me to disappear.

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Know this though, mother, that I still hold a picture of you.

Remember what I wrote earlier?

Well, while I was writing these words, I finally calmed down and had an epiphany. I thought perhaps I am insane! Perhaps these are all but a dream!

I also do not know how I will send you this letter. What was I thinking? All I knew is that when all of those tragedies befall us, the only thing I could ever think about was you, mother. All this time I wanted to return to you and show you how sorry I am for being stupid. Even though you did everything for my sake and even sent me to have an education that you could not even afford for yourself. I wanted to make you proud! I wanted to have you live in a better world! I wanted to give the life you never once had!

I am a terrible, terrible son.

But never once had I ever stopped loving you. Never. Never!

I do not know how I will send this letter to you, mother, but I wish I could find a way right now to send it to you. I wish it would reach you.

I wish it would reach you. That's all I think about now as I unbound myself from the chair from which I am sitting. I am calm now, mother. I feel at ease. My heart feels content. I have not felt this great ever in my life. I feel so fulfilled. I feel as if my heart had stopped beating or perhaps, I was just so used to the life on the run that I forgot how it feels to have a heart that's not racing like my once trembling hand.

All I can think about right now is you.

However, more than my love for you, I just wish this would all end. I don't know what it is but I'm starting to see some insects prowling around my peripheral vision as I am writing these letters to you. I would feel them entering through my veins and they're on my nose and my ears I could feel some even in my mouth and they are everywhere and I feel like the end for me has come but I can't stop thinking about you still, mother. You are the only last glimmer of hope I have as I waste more of the remainder of my life in this hellscape I am living in.

I've been vomiting for a while now as I write this letter. In fact, this letter you are reading right now is just a rewrite for I have absolutely desecrated the former one with my waste. I wish to still give you one final moment of peace as you read these words.

Hopefully, this will not be the last time you'll hear from me. I will try my best to send this letter unto you, mother, and know that I will do all that I can to return to your arms again.

It's just that I feel like I still have something more to do. I feel like I not done here yet.

I am not done here yet. I have something more to do. I cannot explain to you what it is but know that it is something only I could do.

You will always be on my mind, from today till the next.

I wish you are well. I wish my sister is well with you. I wish the money I sent last month was enough. I wish I could be a better son. I have a lot of things I wish right now, but more than anything, I wish I'm there with you rather than here with death.

I love you, mother; I love you.

I am your loving son, forever loving you till the last of my breath,

Chapter end