Scales.

Jonathan was annoyed. A dark anger pushed out the veins in his neck to bursting point. He looked down at the scales. He hated them. They were reflections of his life and the way he lived it. They showed his differences to the world. Differences of which he was not proud. Differences he hated.

​

The weight of the world was upon him. The weight of this body. Not like others. Bigger. Bulkier. He so longed to be like others. To be small and insignificant. To not be seen. But when he was seen, and he was incredibly careful not to let that happen. The others would recoil in horror. His body, not accepted, not loved, not normal.

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Naked, he looked at the scales once again and wondered if they were always going to be a measure of his shame. His distress.

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He remembered when he had been younger and the sadness that had filled his life as he grew and realised what he was and what it would mean to be so. At first he saw no difference in himself, but he had seen others and realised that this was not what he wanted to be. But the others he glimpsed he knew would never accept him like this. He would never fit into their world. His size and shape just too ugly. Too different. Too outlandish.

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Oh, to be something we cannot be. The thought triggered a guttural laugh. A laugh, not full of happiness but a laugh that sought solace. A solace he knew would never come.

He looked away from the scales and examined his arms and torso. The bulk was taught flesh and hard firm muscle. A huge body perhaps that many would be proud to call theirs. But one that just made the rest so obviously wrong.

He wondered if there was a God and why he had been made as he had. Was there a purpose to him or was he just a joke that had been left unfinished. The punchline being his immortality.

​

Forever he would be as he was. Alone and a one of a kind. A salty tear dropped silently into the water surrounding him. He pulled back his long blonde mane of wet hair and looked into the distance at the red setting sun.

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He slipped off of the rock he was sitting on and into the sea and with one flick of his huge Merman’s tale he was gone.