I can stare blankly through my words and the statue of my soul. My eyes grazed the symmetrical cemetery and a woman I didn't know fondly enough, watching my infamous expression upon a large tombstone covered in keys.
It was incredibly cold outside, where the former republic of Zubrowka laid, so naturally the woman was dressed in a pink fur coat paired with gloves and a beret to match. From her long jacket, she also revealed a key and added it to the tower that stood in place of my body.
I do understand why I sat like this. Covered in a cement block with a bronze head attached to it, because bluntly, it represented precisely who I was: The one who brought a society to light, the one who wrote a story and became the national treasure, and a simply and utterly dead man.
Once dwelling on this fact was not uncommon for me. All I can tell you is how I left before things became too difficult and each key that hung from my statue's edges is apart of the mystery that I have created by writing my story.
The woman in pink then pulled out a picture that was worth a thousand words. The one that makes this famously told story and my untold one true; The Grand Budapest Hotel. Yet, the Old Lutz Cemetery may not have been the place to diminish the wall between the author and the book. Then again, the Old Lutz Cemetery had never toppled the wall between itself and Zubrowka either, and I believe that will never be completed.
Other authors give false ideas to the public about what we truly think and how we discover our stories. That our thoughts of creativity arrive anonymously from our heads.
All lies.
When the world knows you're a writer they bring the characters and events to you.
We are not writers was what someone once told me, we are a stretched out grapevine of thoughts and inconspicuous scandals. When he who tells, we will listen. He who regrets, he will perish without exemption. I listened to him because I could and I never told him, because I didn't care to.
In 1985, I gave my final speech. I caught it on camera, but my lobby boy interrupted it with a bruise on my thigh from a BB gun bullet and I deceased not long after.
My desk still sits in that quiet, empty, and peaceful building. It was the same desk where I gave my last speech which I ended with the words "the incidents that follow were described to me exactly as I present them here," In which after said, I immediately bubbled with regrets for I had betrayed my society.
The society of the crossed keys.
It was my conclusion and my choice to make. Die a short fulfilling life or live a long poor one with tiny scraps of nonexistent memories that I didn't care for. I knew that I wasn't making enough money to stay afloat, but I never did it for the money.
It was simply vindicating my horror of a world without meaning or crystal clear legacy.
The way you picture the world is exactly how you picture yourself. I, being symmetrical and a listener, not a true author, but a gossiper.
