keyword: hollow, title: the hollow man in misc. flash fiction

At first, I was ecstatic, I couldn’t believe that they picked me. I mean, I was nothing out of the ordinary, maybe a little bigger than the others but what in the hell could that count for? But for whatever reason, they picked me and for the first time in my memory, I felt so special. I mean, who doesn’t want to be plucked out of nowhere and adored? Who wouldn’t want to be a star?

Oh sure, I needed to make a few changes here and there, it was clear, a nip here and a tuck there, parts of myself excised, other parts inserted and at my core, I will admit I was a little bit insulted but I believed at the time, it was all part of the game, all part of living up to a household’s name. No one can glow on the outside the same as within without a little help, no matter how good you seem kicking around on a piece of ground in your hometown. When you’re getting compared to others on put upon a proud display, augmentation is just the natural unnatural way. You buy the ticket, you take the ride, there is painful change to make if you want to be remembered, they say.

On the internet, all the influencers and stars and businesspeople say you’re supposed to act as if you are a brand. Brand this, brand that, brand yourself, brand everything in sight bar none. And maybe that’s how you succeed but the other side of it is the other meaning of being branded, to have seared into your very flesh the fact that you do not and cannot belong to yourself anymore.

Communist revolutionaries are used to sell t-shirts in the mall, of course. Religious pacifists find their followers waging forth bloody wars in their names in two generations’ time, of course. Like everyone else, I thought I’d be the exception. Like everyone else, I was wrong, built up for glory and admiration but always with one eye toward being disposed of when my brief season passed.

To be celebrated, to hallowed is in a sense to be hollowed out, guts rent and disposed, filled back up with whatever the people want. A vehicle for everyone else’s idea of what you’re supposed to be, grin wide and bear the cross of giving up what you once were to be fleetingly remembered as a thing of glory briefly shining like a beacon in the night. Until something newer comes along.

But that’s the life of a Halloween pumpkin, I guess. I will glow brightly for just a bit longer then I’ll get thrown off a bridge at a cop car by drunken kids. It’s not so different from being a human celebrity after all. If nothing else, my suffering is going to be comparatively brief. Until then, all I can do is continue to smile as I slowly rot away. Kind of like a human celebrity does, I suppose.