The American Nightmare

Chapter 11: The Ghost of Gay Jatsby

Alone in his room, Edward paces back and forth. Y/N said she would help him...but what about the strange look in her eye? Was it...love? Or was she just an actress, playing her part?

He wrestled with the idea for a moment, lost in the implications of that one terrible gaze. With a burst of fury, he races out the door of his room, slamming it behind him. He clomps down the stairs like a hippopotamus.

Racing into the forest, he turns left and right, darting back and forth. His mind is racing, just like his cold heart. Where are they?

After many minutes of searching, he drops to his knees.

"Why do I chase after a dream so senseless? What do I want?" He cries out into the cold air.

With a whoosh of the soft breeze, a figure steps out from behind a tree. His magical and utterly beautiful presence leaves Edward speechless. He is dressed in a cream colored pirate shirt, complete with rippling ruffles and sleeves as big as the sails on a ship. The extravagant shirt is unbuttoned, revealing a gorgeously tanned chest, and it is tucked into a bedazzled rainbow speedo which sparkles in the sunlight that pokes through the forest foliage. His legs are outfitted with fishnet stockings, complete with long, shiny black boots.

"Edward," An angelic voice sighs. "Where are you going?"

"Edward? How do you know my name? Who are you?" Edward askes, utterly bewildered by the incredible presence.

"I am Gay Jatsby, young sport. I have learned everything. I have experienced life and death, love and loss, pain and joy, hunger and thirst. I know what it is to lust and lose. And to find happiness where it presents itself to me. No more do I suffer as my counterpart, Jay Gatsby. For I have been freed."

"How did you get here? Where did you buy that speedo?"

"Jay Gatsby once walked in this forest. It was only a moment ago, but yet a thousand lifetimes for us. He was a slave to his dream; his love for Daisy put him in chains. I suffered as he suffered, but I found a way out of the endless cycle. A miniscule difference between us created a gap so wide across the millennia that I must never be in his presence again. The speedo is from Speedo USA dot com."

"Why have you come to me?"

"It was you who summoned me with your torn soul."

"I have no soul."

"Everything in life has a soul, young sport. Even the breeze and the sea, the birds and the--

"Well, you're wrong. My soul was forfeit long ago in exchange for this cruel existence I have now. The darkest place in hell is reserved for those who maintain their neutrality in times of moral crisis. Y/N was a finger's reach away from me and I did nothing. My hand froze in place, and even now I hear my father telling me it was her choice, but was it? Was it truly her free will? Or is that just another falsity I tell myself."

"You seem to be in a similar predicament to myself, when I was younger. See, if I was Jay, I would tell you to chase after her. I expect that's what he told Proctor when he visited him earlier today. Look at yourself, young sport. Is this person worth pursuing? Are you being blinded to the possibilities right beside you?"

"What sort of possibilities?"

"When I was a young man, young sport, I came into contact with a man named Nick Carraway. He was young and full of rash judgments about the world. What should and shouldn't be," Jatsby chuckles. "I found more than a little enjoyment in being in his presence and he looked at me like I was the sun. Like someone saw my efforts and believed that despite my cruelties, I could be a good person. For a long time Daisy blinded me to him. Her glimmering light was like sequins and champagne, shallow and glamorous, but the fever dream ended and I saw her for what she truly was--nothing but a golden trophy to lift higher and higher above myself. I would never be good enough for her, and in pursuit of my senseless dream, she would never be good enough for me. My memory of her, which for years I had polished and refined, was a figment of the past that escaped reality. My dream of her was only a way to fill the loneliness that I seemed to collect with each dime I earned."