What Is This Life

What Is This Life
By Pig-Pen

Each day of my life is an absurd hellscape in which I am trapped inside a shroud of permanent filth. My only desire is to make sense of this ludicrous nightmare.

For as long as I’ve lived, this godforsaken soot-cloud has followed my every footstep, and foiled my every attempt at escape. No one has ever talked to me about anything but this.

In addition, I have no life, no friends, and no education whatsoever. Whenever I try to take my seat in school, I am mistaken for tumbleweed and swept out of the room by the janitor. I am commonly mistaken for garbage.

The only true companion I have in the world is Franklin the African-American. He and I have a great deal in common, as I am the only person with my condition, and he is the only black person in existence.

I know I am hardly the only person in town with problems. Charlie Brown has lost all of his kites to a monstrous human-like tree, and cannot bring himself to distrust Lucy. My parents speak only in shrill, heart-rending trombone honks. Shermy, once a mainstay in my circle of friends, seems to have disappeared off the face of the Earth entirely. Still, my dirt-cloud seems to me the most chilling penalty of all.

I pray that one day I might escape this baffling existence.