"One wound up punch of intuition
Lays flat my whole take on us.
You're the girl on the wing of a barnstormer
The tidal rabbit who came of age before her time.
We could have been so good-natured
If you'd insisted when I relented,
But we've been backed against
All nature's walls far too long.
You felt abandoned by me,
I recall the sunshine as you were melting.
And though the comedy softens the fall,
They still hear us with their ears to the wall."
The Shins - Girl on the Wing.
---------------------------------------
I can't tell you how little returning to the day when I first set my feet on the dark soil of Praecord could change, and yet how much it tortures me not to be able to return knowing what I know now. My cowardice... my fear... what must have been attempts at relent that caused resent... it's impossible for the entirety not to stick with me, even as my flesh turns rotten and black before my eyes...
The haze had left me here. Confusion would follow had it not been for the guiding image of the towering city that met my vision near immediately. Most else was barren save for what I could see of an ocean through the seemingly perpetually grey, cloudless skies outside. Cobblestone streets, Industrial buildings, and yet the faceless individuals of varying shades and colors with no animals except squawking mechanical birds given "life" by some obscure craftsman hiding among the smooth-skinned masses. The realm was a place that almost felt like it could become a home for me... here rest, food and thirst mean nothing and things never change until you decide to lay down to sleep, but the without the city it would be nothing but an empty landscape. The atmosphere of the city could create a entrapping a night sky, even in light of the sunless sky, was unendingly mind bending and was to be the place I would find my only companion not held within the ensuing broken mind.
The geometry of the buildings inside the city is just as twisted
as the metaphysical powers that govern the land outside… and yet inside they
never seem malicious. You may run your hand over a diagonal incline only to
find that through touch it is a curving slope. Skyscrapers will seem to have
parallel lines at the bottom that meet at a peak right before they leave your
vision, the size gauged from the outside will often have nothing to do with the
amount of space inside, and even when you begin to learn the streets and venues
you’ll often find yourself out of place but never truly lost. The residents of
the city are just about as friendly to a visitor from another plane of
existence as one could be, fleeing and often shutting any entrances behind them whenever they notice my presence. With time they grew accustomed to me, and I learned their boundaries and a few customs... but at the very best they were indifferent to me. Strange customs and strange reactions... insecurities provoked by the littlest things and a dissonance resembling schizophrenia among them. Most would be frightened by all of this but at the time I was still unsure if it was some sort of dream, hallucination or another way the mind tricks with the concept of reality as the idea that it was some form of mental illness had not crept into my mind like someone tapping on your door at night with a metal object. The concept of losing my mind and the realization of my situation would come later, closely related but far apart. During my wandering of the city my attention was quickly grabbed by a massive spiraling spire composed of a white, marble-like material that stood out in the center of the city, purple staircases following the spiral made only for beings who could defy gravity. The spire grew from a building that to the outside resembled a small cathedral, but aside from the ceiling and walls the inside was a place of meeting. The walls and ceiling followed the cathedral theme but the hall inside was massive, a floor of sandstone, and all the furniture in the hall appeared to be roughly carved from part of the floor. The hall must have contained several thousand chairs, all in neat rows of 10, all stretching far back and arranged not unlike church pews. Brightly lit in some places and dimly in others... at the end was a crescent table, and at the other end was her.
Later on I would come to learn her name as she became something to me, but in that moment she was the smooth skinned figure across the room... she was the one whose skin reflected the light into the corner of my eye from across such a long distance. A glint, but it drew me to what I thought was a statue. Its figure was obviously feminine but not overtly, faceless like the others and yet still strangely beautiful... Her skin was shiny and reflective, her body wrapped in a long sleeved dress adorned in a chaotic checkerboard pattern of pink, purple and black. From her head draped a set of curlish hair, silver yet in the right light could shine golden... almost enough to hide the two divots in her faceless head that gave the impression of eyes on a face pressed gently into a sheet. Here she resembled stone more than I would ever know her to, cloudy and unpolished reflections with a touch that was rough and more object than alive. In her hands was caressed a book, folded outward, body language displaying a mix of interest and disinterest, something that at times could almost be called her trademark.
The illusion of the statue faded when I turned my head. When I turned back, I found her looking at me. I blinked and her head turned away. Again I looked away and looked back to find that she had moved, this time the book had turned a page. This continued throughout the rest of the day, her only moving when I wasn't looking at her and if I caught her looking at me, I would blink and she would turn away.So strange... almost eerie but... shy all the same. I found myself a room upstairs with which I took residence without asking, but before leaving I jokingly wrote my name in the dust on that book, a name I've since forgotten. Though I was not tired I felt sleeping would be the fastest way to leave this strange place.
It was strange I won't lie, but at this time it still seemed to be no more than a vivid dream or some obscure quirk of the mind...
Awaking next morning to see the same sandstone walls began the breaking of that pitiful illusion.
The existence of a reality so different from my own was terrifying... it was impossible... this couldn't be the vein connected pump I had heard so much about could it? This couldn't be the walnut hidden in the brain could it? No... too impossible... to improbable... it had to be some of crack in my brain... I can't act on this, this can't be real... I was mad, I was hallucinating... it had to be one of those. Hours and hours must have gone by of me rocking back and forth in my room, unable to move any more than that. All that I had strived for in my life was down the drain as somewhere else I was likely a gibbering vegetable indulging in some obscure phantom allegorical tale only he could see.
After a time, something that glinted walked past my doorway, almost beckoning me up the stairs. With no other objective I followed this blur upstairs. My eyes met the statue again... her skin now polished and more akin to the mirror that she could have been, her hair short with a single bang covering half of her "face". As I stepped into the room, she turned around, moving in my presence and in my view with wordless warmth. Gaze and gesture beckoned me to walk upon a widow's walk jutting from the spire to my right. Her hair is golden in the light from the orange dusk of the sunless sky, the 2nd I've seen today. Turning and gazing out into the dusk stretching over the city I felt her hand on my shoulder. Warm, fleshy, familiar and unlike the stone I had felt before... and then a stabbing pain erupts from my shoulder with a sensation of drawing and injecting insides. From her right index finger protrudes a shiny needle of her flesh, just taken out of my neck and still dripping in my blood. A door opened in my mind which I shut in fear... flesh and bone fleeing to my room. Sitting on my bed, the door tried desperately to open despite me holding it back in fear. Her lines emerged and faded in my skin, letters that spoke for she could not. Don't be afraid, her name was Aphid, she tried to care for the masses who inhabited the city she called Haelstrom, she wanted to keep order and build it to something greater, and she asked the help of even the roughest definition the technology and science of what my world grew on to make that something greater a possibility. I read but I didn't want to listen... this was all a perverted illusion... this was not reality... the fear in me of everything around me crashing any hope of coherent thought. Even as I shouted no at her pleas she withheld the same interest in the only other being on this plane she knew to be sentient as I had discovering her, but unlike her I was scared and deluded... I fell asleep clutching the bed as the locked door was picked open in the night by swift hands. I cannot defend my actions.
The third day, the longest and most held in permanence... I awoke with no more an idea of the reality of the situation but a determination to make the most of my prison regardless of unstable ground. I sought Aphid to find her in the ground floor of the cathedral, looking over blank slabs of incomprehensible symbols... I hid in the corner of the archway, watching to find it was some form of meeting as a great number of the faceless residents sat in attendance in the chairs in the hall. It was one of many meetings I came to bear witness to, the attendance never full but always containing some. Aphid at the crescent table and they would seem to converse silently... never seeming to come to a form of agreement or resolution as if they were hiding something. They were almost as alien to her as they were to me despite their physical similarities. Every meeting when most dispersed a few with broken limbs, severed parts, or cracked frames would come to her in a line. She would take the broken parts and mould the imperfect parts like clay, fixing any problem in the ones who chose to approach her. She cared for them but was unending frustrated with their alienation.
She grew to be my only friend in this confusing, ever changing city within this plane of existence... I hid things from her, but still I can't help but wish she trust me enough to bury some of her secrets in me... that way when the tourniquet was formed it could be stopped... She was slower this day, her interest had waned and yet mine had only improved, but the lack of a confirmed reality stunted whatever my mind decided was worth it.
One cold night I was drawn out of my room when I was trying to decide whether or not to sleep by a white glow that passed by my door. No light in Praecord until then had ever come not from the sky... "this is odd" I thought to myself. I followed the light outside to find Aphid standing, holding a small bone on a string that seemed to radiate light which reflected off her face and hands. Placing the bone in my hand, on my arm was inscribed by her "It's not that the darkness can't touch our lives, I know it will in time." I sat in my room for some time studying the bone. Imbued with hope, the bone shined even in the darkest places. I did not sleep that night, desperate to find a way to repay her for the gift. I probed the winding streets, the mechanical squawking birds following me without end, searching for something among the faceless creatures, buildings and winding streets to repay her. As dawn yet again broke against a building I spied two broken pieces of material that had come off of a building somehow. The bone in one hand, I carried them back to the courtyard outside the spiraling cathedral. With the metaphysical materials I created a machine that would make flame through friction. I turned it on, the flame was a pure blue whose I would later see in the first bullet. I left my signature and began to walk away as I saw Aphid staring at the device, walking to the doorway to see what I had been doing. The wind blew and the flames nearly touched Aphid. Out of the corner of my eye I saw one of the faceless inhabitants turn toward me. Then it started to run... run at me. And so I ran. I ran from them... I didn't know why but I had unintentionally does something with an impact greater than I'd ever known as every single figure I saw charged for me... sprinting as fast as their forms would allow to try to take me down. It didn't matter how fast I ran, where I hid or for how long... as sooner or later they WOULD find me and beat me to the ground. I saw my cowardice reflected in Aphid's skin, in the flesh, in the mirror. I don't know if she ran with them as at the time I couldn't look back. How long it took I can't tell you but eventually the unforgiving cobblestone let me down and I tripped. I broke myself against the stones and collapsed in a pile. They caught me and pulled me down as I struggled to get up. Their limbs melted over me and froze. I began to weep as the crushing force pushed me further and further into the dirt. Aphid's face looking down was the last thing I saw before I fell unconscious, waking up later in the dark prison.
--------------------------------------
"Agents of the law...
Luckless pedestrian
I know you're out there, with rage in your eyes and your megaphones...
Saying all is forgiven...
Mad dog surrender!
How can I answer?
A man of my mind can do anything..."
- Steeley Dan - Don't Take Me Alive.
Later on I would come to learn her name as she became something to me, but in that moment she was the smooth skinned figure across the room... she was the one whose skin reflected the light into the corner of my eye from across such a long distance. A glint, but it drew me to what I thought was a statue. Its figure was obviously feminine but not overtly, faceless like the others and yet still strangely beautiful... Her skin was shiny and reflective, her body wrapped in a long sleeved dress adorned in a chaotic checkerboard pattern of pink, purple and black. From her head draped a set of curlish hair, silver yet in the right light could shine golden... almost enough to hide the two divots in her faceless head that gave the impression of eyes on a face pressed gently into a sheet. Here she resembled stone more than I would ever know her to, cloudy and unpolished reflections with a touch that was rough and more object than alive. In her hands was caressed a book, folded outward, body language displaying a mix of interest and disinterest, something that at times could almost be called her trademark.
The illusion of the statue faded when I turned my head. When I turned back, I found her looking at me. I blinked and her head turned away. Again I looked away and looked back to find that she had moved, this time the book had turned a page. This continued throughout the rest of the day, her only moving when I wasn't looking at her and if I caught her looking at me, I would blink and she would turn away.So strange... almost eerie but... shy all the same. I found myself a room upstairs with which I took residence without asking, but before leaving I jokingly wrote my name in the dust on that book, a name I've since forgotten. Though I was not tired I felt sleeping would be the fastest way to leave this strange place.
It was strange I won't lie, but at this time it still seemed to be no more than a vivid dream or some obscure quirk of the mind...
Awaking next morning to see the same sandstone walls began the breaking of that pitiful illusion.
The existence of a reality so different from my own was terrifying... it was impossible... this couldn't be the vein connected pump I had heard so much about could it? This couldn't be the walnut hidden in the brain could it? No... too impossible... to improbable... it had to be some of crack in my brain... I can't act on this, this can't be real... I was mad, I was hallucinating... it had to be one of those. Hours and hours must have gone by of me rocking back and forth in my room, unable to move any more than that. All that I had strived for in my life was down the drain as somewhere else I was likely a gibbering vegetable indulging in some obscure phantom allegorical tale only he could see.
After a time, something that glinted walked past my doorway, almost beckoning me up the stairs. With no other objective I followed this blur upstairs. My eyes met the statue again... her skin now polished and more akin to the mirror that she could have been, her hair short with a single bang covering half of her "face". As I stepped into the room, she turned around, moving in my presence and in my view with wordless warmth. Gaze and gesture beckoned me to walk upon a widow's walk jutting from the spire to my right. Her hair is golden in the light from the orange dusk of the sunless sky, the 2nd I've seen today. Turning and gazing out into the dusk stretching over the city I felt her hand on my shoulder. Warm, fleshy, familiar and unlike the stone I had felt before... and then a stabbing pain erupts from my shoulder with a sensation of drawing and injecting insides. From her right index finger protrudes a shiny needle of her flesh, just taken out of my neck and still dripping in my blood. A door opened in my mind which I shut in fear... flesh and bone fleeing to my room. Sitting on my bed, the door tried desperately to open despite me holding it back in fear. Her lines emerged and faded in my skin, letters that spoke for she could not. Don't be afraid, her name was Aphid, she tried to care for the masses who inhabited the city she called Haelstrom, she wanted to keep order and build it to something greater, and she asked the help of even the roughest definition the technology and science of what my world grew on to make that something greater a possibility. I read but I didn't want to listen... this was all a perverted illusion... this was not reality... the fear in me of everything around me crashing any hope of coherent thought. Even as I shouted no at her pleas she withheld the same interest in the only other being on this plane she knew to be sentient as I had discovering her, but unlike her I was scared and deluded... I fell asleep clutching the bed as the locked door was picked open in the night by swift hands. I cannot defend my actions.
The third day, the longest and most held in permanence... I awoke with no more an idea of the reality of the situation but a determination to make the most of my prison regardless of unstable ground. I sought Aphid to find her in the ground floor of the cathedral, looking over blank slabs of incomprehensible symbols... I hid in the corner of the archway, watching to find it was some form of meeting as a great number of the faceless residents sat in attendance in the chairs in the hall. It was one of many meetings I came to bear witness to, the attendance never full but always containing some. Aphid at the crescent table and they would seem to converse silently... never seeming to come to a form of agreement or resolution as if they were hiding something. They were almost as alien to her as they were to me despite their physical similarities. Every meeting when most dispersed a few with broken limbs, severed parts, or cracked frames would come to her in a line. She would take the broken parts and mould the imperfect parts like clay, fixing any problem in the ones who chose to approach her. She cared for them but was unending frustrated with their alienation.
She grew to be my only friend in this confusing, ever changing city within this plane of existence... I hid things from her, but still I can't help but wish she trust me enough to bury some of her secrets in me... that way when the tourniquet was formed it could be stopped... She was slower this day, her interest had waned and yet mine had only improved, but the lack of a confirmed reality stunted whatever my mind decided was worth it.
One cold night I was drawn out of my room when I was trying to decide whether or not to sleep by a white glow that passed by my door. No light in Praecord until then had ever come not from the sky... "this is odd" I thought to myself. I followed the light outside to find Aphid standing, holding a small bone on a string that seemed to radiate light which reflected off her face and hands. Placing the bone in my hand, on my arm was inscribed by her "It's not that the darkness can't touch our lives, I know it will in time." I sat in my room for some time studying the bone. Imbued with hope, the bone shined even in the darkest places. I did not sleep that night, desperate to find a way to repay her for the gift. I probed the winding streets, the mechanical squawking birds following me without end, searching for something among the faceless creatures, buildings and winding streets to repay her. As dawn yet again broke against a building I spied two broken pieces of material that had come off of a building somehow. The bone in one hand, I carried them back to the courtyard outside the spiraling cathedral. With the metaphysical materials I created a machine that would make flame through friction. I turned it on, the flame was a pure blue whose I would later see in the first bullet. I left my signature and began to walk away as I saw Aphid staring at the device, walking to the doorway to see what I had been doing. The wind blew and the flames nearly touched Aphid. Out of the corner of my eye I saw one of the faceless inhabitants turn toward me. Then it started to run... run at me. And so I ran. I ran from them... I didn't know why but I had unintentionally does something with an impact greater than I'd ever known as every single figure I saw charged for me... sprinting as fast as their forms would allow to try to take me down. It didn't matter how fast I ran, where I hid or for how long... as sooner or later they WOULD find me and beat me to the ground. I saw my cowardice reflected in Aphid's skin, in the flesh, in the mirror. I don't know if she ran with them as at the time I couldn't look back. How long it took I can't tell you but eventually the unforgiving cobblestone let me down and I tripped. I broke myself against the stones and collapsed in a pile. They caught me and pulled me down as I struggled to get up. Their limbs melted over me and froze. I began to weep as the crushing force pushed me further and further into the dirt. Aphid's face looking down was the last thing I saw before I fell unconscious, waking up later in the dark prison.
--------------------------------------
"Agents of the law...
Luckless pedestrian
I know you're out there, with rage in your eyes and your megaphones...
Saying all is forgiven...
Mad dog surrender!
How can I answer?
A man of my mind can do anything..."
- Steeley Dan - Don't Take Me Alive.
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