You might as well just give up. You can't stop them. Oh .. don't get me wrong. You can rip them to shreds, tear them apart, leave them in a pile on the ground - after all, they're just bits of linen and rotting straw - but they can't be stopped. They'll always come back for you, if you're the one they've Chosen. And you will always die.
When they come, first they whisper. Whisper about how sorry they are, how miserable. How they don't want you to hate them. How they abhor violence, how - how they just want you to forgive them. Their voices are dry and raspy, like dead leaves brushing along the ground -
- like Autumn's last dying breath before she collapses into Winter.
They have no faces to speak of. No eyes, no lips, ears, noses .. but they stare. They turn their heads and stare into the very depths of your soul - the most private recesses that you don't even know about. Every single thing you've done in your life is set out before them. They rasp and shuffle closer to you. But don't worry. This isn't the worst part.
Now that they've found you, whispered to you, stared at you - that's when they try to take you.
Fingers unwind and linens curl through the air. They come slow at first, sobbing to you, begging you to come quietly. They're not intelligent men, just hollow men. Run, if you can. You might be able to escape them, outwit them. For the moment. Because they always come back.
No exceptions.
Sheer numbers will wear you down in the end - and the end always comes, no matter how cunning you think you are. There are so many ways for them to snare you! Maybe you'll feel the strip of linen wrap around your ankle, your arm, or even your throat. The grip tightens and they drag you towards them. Kicking, screaming, praying, crying. It doesn't matter. They drag you.
There is a tenderness, though, even in those final moments. They don't want to do it. They have to. It's nothing personal, nothing personal at all. The whispers become a chant - a solitary chant.
"Remember us, if at all .. not as lost, violent souls .. but as the Hollow Men."
Like I said. You might as well just give up. You can't stop them.
.We are the hollow men
We are the stuffed men
Leaning together
Headpiece filled with straw. Alas!
Our dried voices, when
We whisper together
Are quiet and meaningless
As wind in dry grass
Or rats’ feet over broken glass
In our dry cellar
Shape without form, shade without color,
Paralyzed force, gesture without motion;
Those who have crossed
With direct eyes, to death’s other Kingdom
Remember us—if at all—not as lost
Violent souls, but only
As the hollow men
The stuffed men.
The eyes are not here
There are no eyes here
In this valley of dying stars
In this hollow valley
This broken jaw of our lost kingdoms
In this last of meeting places
We grope together
And avoid speech
Gathered on this beach of the tumid river
Sightless, unless
The eyes reappear
As the perpetual star
Multifoliate rose
Of death’s twilight kingdom
The hope only
Of empty men.
This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
Not with a bang but a whimper