I am currently still working on an edit that will be fixing a few continuity problems between stories and basically make a massive edit to improve things.
Devotions [Six] - 1
Originally posted on Tuesday, April 23, 2013
I don't know why I never told you..." BE FAITHFUL! BE PRECIOUS! BE MINE!!!"- Slipknot "The Nameless"
And I don't know why I never tried...
1.I view the sights as if through a piece of solarized glass...
And I crept. And I ran... and I saw... and I took. Only I had not.
From afar the things I saw in my state of distorted sights, a sense of vision that would
change back into reality before the end of the week. But you'll keep working, unsure. Most of what you plan is not that which ever comes to fruition for you have not the complete devotion you feel you need yet at the same time you work towards that which certainty has not been ever present. Certainty walks through the same maze you do. Glimpses are all you ever notice, as every other place of a similar purpose you enter does not have a structure that like a maze, and by that I mean that you have no goal or beginning and end determined by a start and a finish. But unlike a maze, this "maze" you do not exit by finding the solution. Instead it goes away as it pleases. Glimpses of certainty walk through the maze as you do, and the pursuit of it may actually be the reason for which you decide to enter the maze... But it is not. You do not choose to enter the maze it simply appears and hinders that which are your normal actions.
-
This is everything to me.
She is The unattainable.
A song that no one sings
The unattainable, she's a myth that I have to believe in...
-
________________________________________________________________________________
Sentry - [Six] 1.5
Originally posted on Sunday, September 15, 2013
"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 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, almost as if they were hiding something. They were almost as alien to her as they were to me despite the 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 constantly 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. It just didn't seem right at the time to invest yourself in a fantasy.
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, almost as if they were hiding something. They were almost as alien to her as they were to me despite the 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 constantly 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. It just didn't seem right at the time to invest yourself in a fantasy.
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.
________________________________________________________________________________
Inversion, Imprisonment [Six]-2
Originally posted on Tuesday, April 30, 2013
What matters now is escaping a prison, one that entraps my sense of understanding input. Darkness surrounding most, if not all of my options, life ain't peachy. Is it me? Is it more? Is it my own body striking out against the shell that it is? Why do I claw at walls the same color as the light that casts in my cell, as if it helps to illuminate in the darkness as opposed to the actuality of it highlighting said bleak prospects. The candle that hope and effort would normally be still requires a spark, a spark necessary for survival as the surrounding darkness itself tries to creep into a brain with gates that could be open or closed at any time. How many others have died in this false asylum in this state, in this way? I do not know but is there a reason to want to? I can hear wandering husks of their former selves roam the halls, possibly more free than I, but even more crippled. They do not understand, they cannot understand, so instead they misinterpret. I know his place is taking control of me... I can feel their sinewy tendrils in my veins... I may not be the first, I will not be the last but I must escape. Confusion, is destroying what remains trapped here within, while other conditions take what is left.
Creeping finality, so soft, so powerful, at its most pure...
Regardless, escape is still possible... Riding atop a beheaded horse.
- "Nothing is real but fear now."
"Do you know that life is ending?
As we go, the dots connecting,
We had our chance to save the garden,
As it dies, my souls will harden..."
-Serj Tankian Feed Us
________________________________________________________________________________
Red Eyed Wolf [Six]-3
Posted on Thursday, May 23, 2013 The original version of the story was written and posted before this date, but was later on given a complete re-write which produced the version you see before you. The original date of posting of this and the writing itself have since been lost to time.
Walk the cramps off,
Go meander in the cold.
Hail to your dark skin,
hiding the fact you're dead again...
Underneath the power lines seeking shade..."
-The Shins "Caring is Creepy"
What is the purpose of tears if pain conveys through sound? Because the worst pain is silent.
Does she watch me even now as the dark grassy plain outside mocks me? Mocks my fate, mocks my future? I can hear its whispers while dark grey skies above do nothing but confuse with their psychic cacophony of feelings, lies, fragments and obsessions unfed. It speaks of the hands I've forced, the decisions I've made that will follow me for years and the times when I questioned the safety of my own actions upon my sanity...
What can I say or do to prove anything to her... the mistress of my fate? I am a convict now. I ran and through my cowardice I now suffer. The shining bone in my pocket provides a light and a window in the darkness but that can't suppress the dread.
I am sorry for the hands I've forced, the decisions I've made. All in the shadow of the silent mocking and the misinterpretation. Bonds broken and bridges burned, all for a false hope of peace and quiet. The ones about to be hung that I've cut free, the ones with their own hidden clockwork hearts and the ones half blind from birth all stand up in my memory. A shining distraction that could have led to hope that when true clairvoyance reveals the pitiful chance of any gears emerging from the mucky oozing clockwork fitting in any other machine... Some will live to become nothing more than pillars of salt, and others may die to become bumps on the road to nowhere.
My own corpse lies on the doorstep ripped apart and leaking wasted potential through a hole in its forehead.
The lack of a sun outside... the feeling of festering within your own skin are all signs of a creeping demise. Survival my only option no matter the cost as now all ends will justify the means. I don't even know if I can try to make this dream a paradise anymore. In the reflection of the dark upon the shining bone I can see the refracted image of the headless horse who visited me in the rare sleep. Its cauterized neck turns to me and spasms, a rain of crimson mist spraying through the reflection in front of of me. As it hangs in the air the mist curls into the shape of a man... an image suddenly split into two halves vertically down the middle. One half forms an open cage iron maiden, the other the skin of a wolf in the steppes with an eye of brighter red. My only hope of escape. I scream as my mind is ripped apart by my own claws, splitting my cell through a mental Mitosis.The mutt claws through the nightmare, while the convict watches and cries. The hound hits the ground running while the suspect is re-absorbed by the darkness. The Wolf heads for the sea while the innocent lays dying.
Until my strife ends I am the Red Eyed Wolf.
The Convict shall waste away in this false Asylum.
A left rib and tooth torn from my body torn from my body, infused with the energy of the shining bone to become a vessel, my wolf in rest as the boat forms from the translucent waters. A sanctuary formed from pain. Just a way to try to ease some of it away.
"I'm everything you've wanted.
I am the one that's haunting you.
I hold the lies inside of you that stare back at you.
There's nothing left to lose.
There's nothing left to prove.
Surrender your
It's all you can do."
- Skillet "Savior"
________________________________________________________________________________
"I'm suffering, I'm bleeding, on my knees...
Who's going to save me?
Suffering, bleeding.
Save me from this pit of frailty." -Skillet, Fingernails
I stare into the eye of the pale, near formless leviathan through the telescope, still unable to grasp the size no matter the distance. I can't tell the shape, I can't tell the strength and I can't find any information that could assist me in how to take a course of action. Is it too late? Is it too soon? The only way I can find to confront the beast would be to throw myself down the rifle's barrel and strike blindly. Haelstrom city sits in a state I'm still not sure I can live with and whether the gargantuan mass was summoned to protect the city from me or lure me back I do not know. It intimidates without end but is there anything I can do? There is but I am weak. I am weak and it will kill me. It will torture me. It keeps me from ever experiencing her again and I desperately want the strength to destroy it.
I collapse to the floor on the deck of the ship, which still rocks in the thick tan sea and try to put some of the pieces together. My actions in Haelstrom are why half of me lies in imprisonment... why I had to take the "offer" of the headless horse... why I had to become the Red Eyed Wolf who now stands on this deck of greying ivory... Will the inverted decadence of what time may show to have been a "climax" of all my minus opus. A well-earned infamy some might say.
It may pain or destroy me... but I must confront this lest it do worse should I run and survive.
As you look into my eyes I can only hope you understand no matter the outcome I can't walk away.
I've been hearing another voice in my head since I before was given the shining bone...
He's become more cryptic since I left the false asylum and I try to keep him out of my mind.
He whispers when I'm awake but now he screams in my dreams. The wolf won't tell me who he is,
saying to me, "He lives until proven guilty... that's all you need to know."
-We stumble through the broken streets, facial wraps and modified respirator masks cover our faces, just searching for something. Heavy clothing makes things difficult but is necessary. I look deep into your eyes through the lenses, I cannot see your mouth but I know you are smiling. Under my mask I do the same and just from your eyes, yet again I just know that you know. I turn and look ahead and we move onwards... Everything is broken and torn yet another makes it almost bearable. Almost...
But no, but no, but no but no but no but no but No... you violated the sealed environment that kept all the filth out, and in doing so crumbled to a pile of dust before my eyes. Your eyes still stare at me, blue from atop the pile. And just from your eyes... I can tell you're not smiling anymore."
I take a deep breath and sit up in bed... opening my eyes and staring at the ebony wood of my quarters to find it was but a dream. Just a dream, just a dream. I stumble out of my cabin, walking in a way resembling more death than life and stare at the ebony planks that make up the deck... many now stained with the blood that drips from my feet, all over the splintered wood.
Making my way to the side of the ship I stare over ivory hull to find that this one man crew has forgotten to drop anchor and may have drifted off course into a fog. It's too dark to tell and I lack the hope to illuminate my residence... The shining bone has grown dim. It just seems like every time I ride the tide I sink a few fathoms more... or is that just the nature of the ocean I now sail without ports? I fight the changes in location when I can but this plane seems to possess meta-physical properties that prevent it from forming a cohesive and constant existence. My entrance into this plane should have been a calamity that shook every cell of my existence but I was eased in through the grey fog by...
No... now is not the time to direct blame. Hers is an existence that does not deserve my spite. I cannot even tell if survival is what I should aim for anymore as it's lost behind much of the screaming and writhing that has shredded my vocal chords, crippling my communication. I can tell you all "Goodbye" all I want but until that day comes it would never be true. All whispers in my head... Voices of the left behind...
The dark fog approaches, hiding in the black of the night sky...
I am lost at sea and although my boat is afloat, there is no compass, there is no wind, there are no sails, and there are no oars. Taking this away could just bring to a worse plane of existence. Chains that bind dig so deep that when I heal they embed themselves within my skin... there is no lock and no key. Just chains and a foundation that is well rooted under the ground. A tug in any direction from one of these chains and I'd be pulled overboard... no way back up to the ship.
I am a captive audience to the antics of the black fog as it taunts me. The fog particles move together densely to form vague shapes, many animate and some moving closer and closer to me. When they form from the fog it never seems as if the total volume diminishes... as if the total mass of this fog is too great to be constrained by such rules. A serpentine specter grew closer and seemed to direct its attention to me. At this my eyes grew wide and my mind was suddenly filled with insight... Insight that filled me with a set of holes that drained my resolve and I dare say my sanity even further. A different darkness, toxic.
This was not a result of my meddlings in Haelstrom... this was something older... something stronger... something that had lied in waiting and had always watched me... something that if it willed it, it could take this place from whatever nature, god, or sentience controls it... twist the knife in my side further and make the blade branch off and burrow until it finds my heart and pierces it. As my heart turned black it would look into my eyes and dissolve me. It doesn't want me anywhere else.
"Cleric's fog will recede before your eyes.
So long to this wretched form.
Them's grey eyes on the subway.
Long before you were born,
you were always to be a dagger floating
Straight to their heart."- The Shins, 'Rifle's Spiral.'
Liar.
Into the Tides [Six]-4
Originally posted on Wednesday, May 29, 2013
"I'm suffering, I'm bleeding, on my knees...
Who's going to save me?
Suffering, bleeding.
Save me from this pit of frailty." -Skillet, Fingernails
I stare into the eye of the pale, near formless leviathan through the telescope, still unable to grasp the size no matter the distance. I can't tell the shape, I can't tell the strength and I can't find any information that could assist me in how to take a course of action. Is it too late? Is it too soon? The only way I can find to confront the beast would be to throw myself down the rifle's barrel and strike blindly. Haelstrom city sits in a state I'm still not sure I can live with and whether the gargantuan mass was summoned to protect the city from me or lure me back I do not know. It intimidates without end but is there anything I can do? There is but I am weak. I am weak and it will kill me. It will torture me. It keeps me from ever experiencing her again and I desperately want the strength to destroy it.
I collapse to the floor on the deck of the ship, which still rocks in the thick tan sea and try to put some of the pieces together. My actions in Haelstrom are why half of me lies in imprisonment... why I had to take the "offer" of the headless horse... why I had to become the Red Eyed Wolf who now stands on this deck of greying ivory... Will the inverted decadence of what time may show to have been a "climax" of all my minus opus. A well-earned infamy some might say.
It may pain or destroy me... but I must confront this lest it do worse should I run and survive.
As you look into my eyes I can only hope you understand no matter the outcome I can't walk away.
I've been hearing another voice in my head since I before was given the shining bone...
He's become more cryptic since I left the false asylum and I try to keep him out of my mind.
He whispers when I'm awake but now he screams in my dreams. The wolf won't tell me who he is,
saying to me, "He lives until proven guilty... that's all you need to know."
-We stumble through the broken streets, facial wraps and modified respirator masks cover our faces, just searching for something. Heavy clothing makes things difficult but is necessary. I look deep into your eyes through the lenses, I cannot see your mouth but I know you are smiling. Under my mask I do the same and just from your eyes, yet again I just know that you know. I turn and look ahead and we move onwards... Everything is broken and torn yet another makes it almost bearable. Almost...
But no, but no, but no but no but no but no but No... you violated the sealed environment that kept all the filth out, and in doing so crumbled to a pile of dust before my eyes. Your eyes still stare at me, blue from atop the pile. And just from your eyes... I can tell you're not smiling anymore."
I take a deep breath and sit up in bed... opening my eyes and staring at the ebony wood of my quarters to find it was but a dream. Just a dream, just a dream. I stumble out of my cabin, walking in a way resembling more death than life and stare at the ebony planks that make up the deck... many now stained with the blood that drips from my feet, all over the splintered wood.
Making my way to the side of the ship I stare over ivory hull to find that this one man crew has forgotten to drop anchor and may have drifted off course into a fog. It's too dark to tell and I lack the hope to illuminate my residence... The shining bone has grown dim. It just seems like every time I ride the tide I sink a few fathoms more... or is that just the nature of the ocean I now sail without ports? I fight the changes in location when I can but this plane seems to possess meta-physical properties that prevent it from forming a cohesive and constant existence. My entrance into this plane should have been a calamity that shook every cell of my existence but I was eased in through the grey fog by...
No... now is not the time to direct blame. Hers is an existence that does not deserve my spite. I cannot even tell if survival is what I should aim for anymore as it's lost behind much of the screaming and writhing that has shredded my vocal chords, crippling my communication. I can tell you all "Goodbye" all I want but until that day comes it would never be true. All whispers in my head... Voices of the left behind...
The dark fog approaches, hiding in the black of the night sky...
I am lost at sea and although my boat is afloat, there is no compass, there is no wind, there are no sails, and there are no oars. Taking this away could just bring to a worse plane of existence. Chains that bind dig so deep that when I heal they embed themselves within my skin... there is no lock and no key. Just chains and a foundation that is well rooted under the ground. A tug in any direction from one of these chains and I'd be pulled overboard... no way back up to the ship.
I am a captive audience to the antics of the black fog as it taunts me. The fog particles move together densely to form vague shapes, many animate and some moving closer and closer to me. When they form from the fog it never seems as if the total volume diminishes... as if the total mass of this fog is too great to be constrained by such rules. A serpentine specter grew closer and seemed to direct its attention to me. At this my eyes grew wide and my mind was suddenly filled with insight... Insight that filled me with a set of holes that drained my resolve and I dare say my sanity even further. A different darkness, toxic.
This was not a result of my meddlings in Haelstrom... this was something older... something stronger... something that had lied in waiting and had always watched me... something that if it willed it, it could take this place from whatever nature, god, or sentience controls it... twist the knife in my side further and make the blade branch off and burrow until it finds my heart and pierces it. As my heart turned black it would look into my eyes and dissolve me. It doesn't want me anywhere else.
"Cleric's fog will recede before your eyes.
So long to this wretched form.
Them's grey eyes on the subway.
Long before you were born,
you were always to be a dagger floating
Straight to their heart."- The Shins, 'Rifle's Spiral.'
Liar.
________________________________________________________________________________
Self-Fulfilling Rapture [Six]-5
Originally posted on Sunday, September 29, 2013
"Can
you hear the evil crowd?
The lies
and the laughter?
I hear my
inside...
The
mechanized hum of another world...
Where no
sun is shining, no red light flashing.
Here in
this darkness... I know what I've done,
I know
all at once who I am." -Steeley Dan "Don't Take Me Alive."
-----------------------
Feet
Inches from the bow of the ship, the forms from the fog hold me still. The Hydra’s eyes were filled with
insight deadlier than any poison could ever be, what would be the point of
escape when it would just follow me for the rest of my existence? This snake is
not quick like the cobra nor waiting in warning like the rattlesnake…
Melancholia is a slow killer, a twisted hybrid of the crushing force of the
anaconda and the bite of the black widow. Watch on in apathy as spiders crawl under
your skin! As your friends fall away from you! As your life seeps away slowly
before your very eyes! Try and hide it but they’ll know, they will see the lack
of life behind your eyes and desert you to your wastes while you wait for the
final sleep to come for you if it feels that mercy is deserved. This surrounding black fog is sentient corruption riding high
with its chosen name of Melancholia, willing to turn a mother against child,
willing to turn a man against himself and then his mind against the world. Its
victims catatonic in their own thoughts and shattered hopes, its touch is
numbing to flesh and brain. I never needed to hear the words I heard in my head
when the phantom serpent opened its eyes, but if I had not…
I felt a point press against my back, pressing into my spine. Its approach was slow but with a force not unlike gravity’s overbearing relentless push downwards. Into my back it began to dig... it took its time as the skin and bone started to break. Looking outward and unable to even cry out or even weep, my eyes held nothing but darkness. Fog becomes more and more difficult as you try harder and harder to gaze through the impenetrable layers of mist... a direct contradiction to the tried and true thought that the harder one works the more he gets done. If anything can destroy a man's moral it is to destroy what he knows to be most true.
I felt a point press against my back, pressing into my spine. Its approach was slow but with a force not unlike gravity’s overbearing relentless push downwards. Into my back it began to dig... it took its time as the skin and bone started to break. Looking outward and unable to even cry out or even weep, my eyes held nothing but darkness. Fog becomes more and more difficult as you try harder and harder to gaze through the impenetrable layers of mist... a direct contradiction to the tried and true thought that the harder one works the more he gets done. If anything can destroy a man's moral it is to destroy what he knows to be most true.
The
serpent's tale coalescing from the depth of the fog, moving toward me slow...
agony, agonizingly slowly, provoking a slow horror as I watched it move toward my
mouth. I struggled, I struggled I tell you, I tried. The more struggled the more
they pulled on my limbs an... I'm sorry... It's still happening, I can still
see it coming, it's not over, but god do I want it to be. JUST FINISH ME! JUST
FUCKING DO IT!!!
I almost expect Melancholia to giggle... almost. Think about it, have you ever seen a snake laugh?
I almost expect Melancholia to giggle... almost. Think about it, have you ever seen a snake laugh?
The
arrowhead in my back just broke skin; soon it will make its way to bone. I
can't feel it, why do I pretend? The truth is so hard to take, always so
difficult to take. I can only force moments of clarity in this soup... When
I
looked into Melancholia's eyes it... it told me more than I'd ever want
to
know. I could see things from its eyes, its mind, reflecting me out to
its
perspective. From its view I learned things, I learned it was... a
guardian... a guardian here to protect us from ourselves and end us if
we reach too far. It told me of the childish "ambition" of Aphid, of
her working to bring me here in the hopes of using me to improve the
lives of
the apathetic creatures around her, possible denials, decline,
struggles, the
slow drain of color from her skin, even her f-...Oh god I know thatNO!NO!NO!NO!NO!NO!
Memories that are not my own, thoughts and opinions not my own flood my mind... not my own... not my own... Not my own... Not my own. The tip of its tail touching my lips as my jaw becomes slack against the protest of my body, the serpent's tale sliding between my teeth and down my throat, spreading its poison. No... no.. NO! No.. no.. non- NO!!
In the black my brain struggles to grasp the paw of the Red Eyed Wolf, struggling against the curdling ideas laid into my brain by the serpent. Scraping my thumb against the shining bone, still clutched in my right hand, a rush of feeling spread through my body for just a second and I felt it. I felt the cold sting of the arrowhead in my back as it forced itself into my spine through an open wound. It drove me forwards, cutting through the barriers in my mind and taking the paw of the wolf with earnest need. Starting to suffocate my eye turned red in the dark of the fog, my mind consumed by the instincts of the wolf. In the red and orange haze of the wolf's mind I saw something new: Melancholia had no reason not to lie. Unable to struggle, tightly the Red Eyed Wolf gripped the bone. He can't let this happen. No, he won't let this happen. Survival. Existence at all costs no matter the means. All factors considered, all paths scouted, all eyes gouged out, all joints smashed, urges crushed beneath a steel boot, all threats eliminated, the quickest and most effective way no matter the cost...
Memories that are not my own, thoughts and opinions not my own flood my mind... not my own... not my own... Not my own... Not my own. The tip of its tail touching my lips as my jaw becomes slack against the protest of my body, the serpent's tale sliding between my teeth and down my throat, spreading its poison. No... no.. NO! No.. no.. non- NO!!
In the black my brain struggles to grasp the paw of the Red Eyed Wolf, struggling against the curdling ideas laid into my brain by the serpent. Scraping my thumb against the shining bone, still clutched in my right hand, a rush of feeling spread through my body for just a second and I felt it. I felt the cold sting of the arrowhead in my back as it forced itself into my spine through an open wound. It drove me forwards, cutting through the barriers in my mind and taking the paw of the wolf with earnest need. Starting to suffocate my eye turned red in the dark of the fog, my mind consumed by the instincts of the wolf. In the red and orange haze of the wolf's mind I saw something new: Melancholia had no reason not to lie. Unable to struggle, tightly the Red Eyed Wolf gripped the bone. He can't let this happen. No, he won't let this happen. Survival. Existence at all costs no matter the means. All factors considered, all paths scouted, all eyes gouged out, all joints smashed, urges crushed beneath a steel boot, all threats eliminated, the quickest and most effective way no matter the cost...
The Red
Eyed Wolf closed his right hand like a vice.
The
shining bone shattered in an eruption of searing light which consumed
and
pierced even the dark fog of Melancholia with a thunderous blast as the
hope in
the bone was sacrificed and a bright white, golden and yellow heat,
penetrating the atmosphere. The arrowhead in my spine broke off and
Melancholia screamed a
desperate scream before being consumed by the waves of heat, an "eternal
guardian" no longer. The wolf just smiled the wide open mouthed
smile a wolf does as the blast seared away his hide from my body. As he
was ripped away I shut our eyes.
Moments
later I hit the tan sea with a resounding crack, emerging relatively unscathed
from the wreck. The sanctuary was destroyed, its ivory hull sinking into the
tan waters like a frosted cookie in milk.
Still clothed, yet I felt so naked
in the unfamiliar seas. The.. I didn't hear the
wolf's voice alive in my head anymore. I... I.. I remembered his last
words were to get to shore. It took more time than I thought it would to
reach the shore, so easy to stay afloat when working yet so easy to
sink when you start tiring in the tan seas. Reaching the shore gasping
and vomiting tan jelly, climbing on rocks and
scraping the wet sand off my limbs with my body weak from the exhaustion
I was
no longer exempt from. I coughed and I sputtered but most of all I
wondered to
myself, confused "Could the wolf really be gone?" So
strange, the
thought never oc- AGH! I could see shards from the bone were still stuck
in my hand while dripping sounds and a sting from behind told me that I
was also bleeding from
my back. I wrapped my wounds in pale dying grass, impromptu bandages
that I
didn't care if they absorbed anything. It hurt, so much hurt. This world... this world hurts far too much...
My skin feels as if a layer had been peeled off, my mind was still reeling from the loss of something it thought could never die... and I was bleeding in at least 3 different places so to call my gait shambling would be putting it lightly. I needed his numbed feeling and endurance but... I couldn't hear the wolf anymore. It was chilling, all the things I had gotten so used to in the countless hours upon hours upon hours upon hours I had grown used to the company of the wolf, the crimson steel mist of his mind, the red tint in his eye, and the snug fit of his skin. The Red Eyed Wolf never tired, even when hurt. He rarely felt pain, was striven for safety without need of it himself, would strive for that survival using methods that didn't always make reasonable sense, and was all in all a freakish, occasionally paranoid, frequently destructive, determinate beast... a beast who's lack of an objective aside from safety had made things ultimately pointless since I left the prison. Another angle on the wolf I hadn't realized until now, that despite being all these things he only cared for the immediate future, something maybe I saw before but I hadn't seemed to matter seeing as a threat was present... But now's not the time. I'm bleeding, I’m stuck halfway in the middle of an unending hilly open field where the only shelter I could see was the very thing I sought to avoid. I'm drained enough to collapse but I can't... not yet, not now.
My skin feels as if a layer had been peeled off, my mind was still reeling from the loss of something it thought could never die... and I was bleeding in at least 3 different places so to call my gait shambling would be putting it lightly. I needed his numbed feeling and endurance but... I couldn't hear the wolf anymore. It was chilling, all the things I had gotten so used to in the countless hours upon hours upon hours upon hours I had grown used to the company of the wolf, the crimson steel mist of his mind, the red tint in his eye, and the snug fit of his skin. The Red Eyed Wolf never tired, even when hurt. He rarely felt pain, was striven for safety without need of it himself, would strive for that survival using methods that didn't always make reasonable sense, and was all in all a freakish, occasionally paranoid, frequently destructive, determinate beast... a beast who's lack of an objective aside from safety had made things ultimately pointless since I left the prison. Another angle on the wolf I hadn't realized until now, that despite being all these things he only cared for the immediate future, something maybe I saw before but I hadn't seemed to matter seeing as a threat was present... But now's not the time. I'm bleeding, I’m stuck halfway in the middle of an unending hilly open field where the only shelter I could see was the very thing I sought to avoid. I'm drained enough to collapse but I can't... not yet, not now.
Turning, I am nearly
blinded by a streak of glare standing between the city and I, the leviathan
obscured by buildings. The glare is concentrated, like a signal mirror, frozen
at one position and reflected either nearby or in my eyes. Then suddenly the
glare moves in a swift arcing motion, almost like a wave and behind me I hear a
loud blast of air which blows toward me. The glare disappears, replaced by a
figure off in the distance who stares for a moment before turning away and
walking toward the city... a clothed figure.
There's only one person
it could be...
I turn back and to see a
hole where there shouldn't be, in thin air, white curling mist seeping out.
Could this be what I think it is? Could this be a way "home"?
Twisting my neck again back in the direction of the city I see she's gone.
Mercy? Spite? A trap? How can I answer?
Does it matter? My
options are few... so I'll dive.
Diving back into the haze of a fog was so easy now that it was there. It's less of a maze now, and more of a
hallway, the smoke curling and winding and curling and winding beneath and between my fingers as the air suffocated in the haze.
And it's lead led me...
It should have ended
there with a return to earth, everything turning out fine and I returning to my
normal life with tales of this strange dimension and proof but
no, apparently I don't deserve a happy ending... Apparently, god is
bitter like that.
My eyes
opened and hurt
incredibly, like looking into the sun, which turned out to
be fluorescent lights in a hospital ceiling. Tubes, transparent tubes
running out of just about every orifice, a needle of a
less gentle kind in my vein pumping things inside and the feeling of
waking up from bad sleep were all too surreal for their own good. The
nurse was just outside and heard my struggling, she rushed in to help.
Her scrubs were light blue, her skin was tanned and her face...
was unimportant. She was the one to inform me that I had been in a coma
for three years because of complications with a surgery to remove a
cancerous tumor, her delivery cold, honest, brutal with only a hint of
serious caring. This was just work to her and she made no attempts to hide it.
Several weeks of physical therapy went by before I could walk again, muscular atrophy is a bitch. Later I learned that most of my friends and family had moved away after I fell into the coma and every single one refused to pay for my stay so it all came out of my checkbook. Someone... I don't know who, had been kind enough to leave a large stuffed rabbit with a zipper in its back by my bedside. Opening it later revealed an ornate box, and inside that was my favorite gun: a revolver my niece had once painted over in a mix of yellow, pink and green one day in July. I remember not being able to get mad at her for it; it hadn't ruined the gun and it was strangely fitting for the white and blue paper targets I shot at on the range. She's gone now too... Hit by a drunk driver while playing in the driveway. God, I loved that little girl and I love my gun, it's becoming my only friend in the world against the magnetic whispers in the back of my mind. I made sure to take great pains to hide my friend from the prying eyes of the hospital staff.
Nobody believed that the things I had seen and felt were as real as they seemed, but how can you blame them when all the facts point to no more than a vivid coma dream? The days that went by proved that to me and me alone. My ruined financial status left me with less than a thousand dollars to my name, and all my possessions sold to help pay for my treatment... all except my clothes and the revolver. For a while I slept in a homeless shelter among other vagabonds, hiding my gun beneath my heavy brown leather jacket, seeing all that dirt and grit that we hide behind new coats of paint...
Memories and visions crept back in like a walnut in a man's lung. The black skies of Praecord... people, places, things, ideas I heard all around me all drawing connections to Praecord... And there she stood in the center of the cosmic mix that was my mind, reflecting any beams of light in the darkness to blind me. It couldn't leave me alone, none of it... It stayed there in the back of my mind, heckling at me. It was supposed to be over... IT WAS SUPPOSED TO BE OVER! But no, they still talk to me in my dreams... letters written and sent from across plains of reality in my dreams. Lay me down to sleep mama, let me hear the words of pieces from a world with no sun...
The Innocent:
"Pain… There are so many different kinds so far removed from one another it’s almost seems senseless to keep them all under one word. It’s because we don’t want it… What drew me here should have fled when it had the chance but it was brainless… brainless, blind, horrible, despicable, adorable, destructible, untrustable, unsociable, unbreakable, divisive, seductive, reclusive, elusive, deluded, end of all… So close my rose and yet so far from my prison as I fall apart, hiding myself from your eyes… hiding myself from my eyes… My Muse… my derailer… my friend… my victim… I victim... I innocent… You prepared in a field dressing… I criminal… you doe… you hunter… I prey… I lost… I’m lost… I’m tossed. I'm lost. I’m so horribly lost. Pathetic, blind, obsessed, vendetta, the bars of my cell can’t hold me without a shell of form… No golden lantern to shine a way out as I rot before my eyes I cannot sleep, I cannot rest, I cannot relax, I cannot even delude MYSELF ANYMORE as that’s when the worms crawl inside my brainandgiggleas theyeatme fromtheinside. I want it more than anything, but none the means or time. Pieces betray THE VERY FLESH THEY CLING TO for utility or waste away. WHY DID I WAIT SO LONG TO SEE the cloudy fog before my eyes with the straw man lying pretty in the center of this plain of rotting hay. I have no crimenorrhymeorreasontrappedforevernomattertheseason…
Aphid… Aphid… I can hear your silent, tortured whispers even now… Deaf I still hear them… Lobotomized my mind still clings to you… empty shell I still feel you… Oh god if I could only still touch you I would rend the flesh from your chrome bones while I lick your brain clean of the filth that covers me now in my cobweb hollow. Cometomemyrose, fadeintothedarknessofmyabyss,myribknifeawaitsthenectarinyourneck. It's all running together... "7 years bad luck is worth 4 years of torment." Shelved, I spoiled, trapped I toiled… and now the audience watches as the decayed yet undying missionary goes to kill its god.
Several weeks of physical therapy went by before I could walk again, muscular atrophy is a bitch. Later I learned that most of my friends and family had moved away after I fell into the coma and every single one refused to pay for my stay so it all came out of my checkbook. Someone... I don't know who, had been kind enough to leave a large stuffed rabbit with a zipper in its back by my bedside. Opening it later revealed an ornate box, and inside that was my favorite gun: a revolver my niece had once painted over in a mix of yellow, pink and green one day in July. I remember not being able to get mad at her for it; it hadn't ruined the gun and it was strangely fitting for the white and blue paper targets I shot at on the range. She's gone now too... Hit by a drunk driver while playing in the driveway. God, I loved that little girl and I love my gun, it's becoming my only friend in the world against the magnetic whispers in the back of my mind. I made sure to take great pains to hide my friend from the prying eyes of the hospital staff.
Nobody believed that the things I had seen and felt were as real as they seemed, but how can you blame them when all the facts point to no more than a vivid coma dream? The days that went by proved that to me and me alone. My ruined financial status left me with less than a thousand dollars to my name, and all my possessions sold to help pay for my treatment... all except my clothes and the revolver. For a while I slept in a homeless shelter among other vagabonds, hiding my gun beneath my heavy brown leather jacket, seeing all that dirt and grit that we hide behind new coats of paint...
Memories and visions crept back in like a walnut in a man's lung. The black skies of Praecord... people, places, things, ideas I heard all around me all drawing connections to Praecord... And there she stood in the center of the cosmic mix that was my mind, reflecting any beams of light in the darkness to blind me. It couldn't leave me alone, none of it... It stayed there in the back of my mind, heckling at me. It was supposed to be over... IT WAS SUPPOSED TO BE OVER! But no, they still talk to me in my dreams... letters written and sent from across plains of reality in my dreams. Lay me down to sleep mama, let me hear the words of pieces from a world with no sun...
The Innocent:
"Pain… There are so many different kinds so far removed from one another it’s almost seems senseless to keep them all under one word. It’s because we don’t want it… What drew me here should have fled when it had the chance but it was brainless… brainless, blind, horrible, despicable, adorable, destructible, untrustable, unsociable, unbreakable, divisive, seductive, reclusive, elusive, deluded, end of all… So close my rose and yet so far from my prison as I fall apart, hiding myself from your eyes… hiding myself from my eyes… My Muse… my derailer… my friend… my victim… I victim... I innocent… You prepared in a field dressing… I criminal… you doe… you hunter… I prey… I lost… I’m lost… I’m tossed. I'm lost. I’m so horribly lost. Pathetic, blind, obsessed, vendetta, the bars of my cell can’t hold me without a shell of form… No golden lantern to shine a way out as I rot before my eyes I cannot sleep, I cannot rest, I cannot relax, I cannot even delude MYSELF ANYMORE as that’s when the worms crawl inside my brainandgiggleas theyeatme fromtheinside. I want it more than anything, but none the means or time. Pieces betray THE VERY FLESH THEY CLING TO for utility or waste away. WHY DID I WAIT SO LONG TO SEE the cloudy fog before my eyes with the straw man lying pretty in the center of this plain of rotting hay. I have no crimenorrhymeorreasontrappedforevernomattertheseason…
Aphid… Aphid… I can hear your silent, tortured whispers even now… Deaf I still hear them… Lobotomized my mind still clings to you… empty shell I still feel you… Oh god if I could only still touch you I would rend the flesh from your chrome bones while I lick your brain clean of the filth that covers me now in my cobweb hollow. Cometomemyrose, fadeintothedarknessofmyabyss,myribknifeawaitsthenectarinyourneck. It's all running together... "7 years bad luck is worth 4 years of torment." Shelved, I spoiled, trapped I toiled… and now the audience watches as the decayed yet undying missionary goes to kill its god.
The Central:
Even if I run they will find me… the scarring may be too
great and it’s likely too late. The things that I’ve suppressed the nudges I’ve
repressed always waiting in dark places… My brain pulling away at itself... I don’t know what I want nor truly
need and it… tortures me, keeps me in a rack while I’m pulled till I snap, and
self-destruct. They advise me against who I am, they are me but they are not. I
fear the urge to kill or even to harm one sooo close. Just the worst of days at
the best of times for me to finally face myself and collapse...To finally collapse... Pulling myself apart, hoping the
pieces don’t fit into the other clockwork heart lieing in a barrel by the train station. Lay me down to sleep, so
broken and beat… hoping to never awaken to find one of my halves has taken
control. I’ll try to hold control boss, but the scraps of what you got lefta’
you ain’t holdin these two together very well.
All for an easier life… All for an easier life… All for an easier life…
All for an easier lie… All for an easier lie. All for an easier lie.
The Red Eyed Wolf:
Morning left me with no ends to the cacophony in my brain... there was no other way; I was liable to hurt someone if I didn't deal with this. I had to go back to that place that horrible, intriguing, necessary, confused, evolving place named Praecord. This will never ever, never leave, never degrade, never hide itself, and always looking at me with its eyes from the corner. Things must be done, pieces of myself avenged, questions answered... Setting out on a walk, a walk about town trying to find the only place I could count on sending me back into that twisted plane of existence. The unpainted bits of gun shined under my coat, fingers fondling the small faded cardboard box of bullets beneath my sleeve. October air cold, sidewalks the pale color you grow up to know them to be as I take what may be my final looks at the world around me. Staring into shop windows, mirrors and other bits that give off a clear and unfiltered reflection I'm struggling to suppress the urge to smash or dent them. They just remind me too much of Aphid...
The sun is shining in that morning way it does, the few birds in this dusty little town are tweeting, and I can't enjoy a single blessed second of it due to the thoughts of her. Could things possibly have been different? Why was I such a coward? Was the interest ever even there? Why do I feel like such a child in a man's body? The questions wouldn't stop, no matter how hard I tried...
I don't think this place could possibly be for me... I could care less about who was seen as now unfit for his position because of public shaming and moral outrage, the values of things that should be common sense, the straw man arguments formed by opposing sides to make the fight easier, nor the masses who shout the coming of a 1984-esq dystopia from opposite masters while their own bigwigs with smokescreens good enough to hide their wrongdoings setup the frame for their own dystopia of hypocritical agendas. All this screaming and no action behind it... But what am I but a hypocrite to that as well? I'd like to see you push a power line pole a mile without removing it from the ground or tipping it over. But I digress, all of this is pointless to argue about...
The trees across the street, all the lower branches cut down that obscured only a blank wall. The smell of the trees in the wind briefly showed me an alternate path I had at several times seen... A path of freedom and friendship in nature, one of the one who sees pleasure in the simpler things, who sneaks out at night to talk to strangers by campfire mostly alone but sometimes with a companion... one "Clarisse Mclean" and a convict from another world. A child of the night who saw beyond the stacks of paper, the plaster, the green strips of paper and the lies we tell to ourselves silently at night so we have reason to get up in the morning. They are an extinct kind now gone in our world of houses partially covered in vines for that "rustic look" in rural areas because we're too lazy to choose between the sterile clean and living like wolves in our world covered by screens that will burn our eyes faster than a lifetime of taking glances at the sun. A world of the blind, a world of the vapid, of the apathetic lazy and self-indulgent masses hiding their eyes from those without the means to live such a life. That dystopia future is here and now ladies and gentlemen! You want to try to survive a zombie apocalypse? Try to be an individual in a crowd and not feel hurt into conforming by the looks they give you or the words they send your way. I need to go back. I need to find a place so simplistic and yet so impact-ful as Praecord... even if it means it may be a one way trip.
I arrive at the steps of the ramshackle church, abandoned by most these days and kept alive by a devoted few attacked by those punching a straw man formed of mentally unstable half a world away flying under the banner.
The cold steel of the revolver feels real in my hand... real unlike most is to me when my feeling is this numbed. I prepare the revolver and kneel down at the steps of the church... they'll accept just about anyone with regards to common sense, but I need not the church nor the man who may be watching from above. The cold steel of the muzzle I press to my forehead, the tip of the gun then moved to the spot between where my nose joins to my forehead and the corner of my eye. I stare up at the clouds for a brief moment... The strike of my left palm spins the cylinder and after it stops I count down, pulling back the hammer and pulling the trigger as the cylinder rotates.
"One." *click*
"Two." *click*
"Three." *click*
"Four." *click*
"Five." *click*
"Six."
----------------
.
.
.
Don’t
give me paper vipe… You know the score. You know the reason I’m here and you
don’t questions about what I do to keep you alive. I bailed your ass out, a
convict on the run from the law. She touched you in a way you can’t take back
and as retaliation is a rule of survival, I will end her for what she did to
you. I’m far from dead and so are you... WHY
DO YOU CALL HER A FRIEND?!?!?! JUST LET ME END HER!!! I CAN’T HURT YOU SO LET
ME HURT HER!!! What’s so hard about that? What’s so hard about understanding
that I can’t let you slip into the crevice you want to slip into? What’s so
hard about making her hit hard concrete? What’s so hard about seeing that life
is all that matters? What is so hard with letting me do what I am made to do?
Cut the leash boy…
I’ll
make it all better. Force is something everything understands, from the rocks
to the trees to the birds and the bees…
Sin
and Guilt are only words child… open your eyes and see the great farce that you
unwittingly played a part in… After the first few messy ones you’ll stop
caring for the masses of pulp that perpetuate the lie below your feet.
Morning left me with no ends to the cacophony in my brain... there was no other way; I was liable to hurt someone if I didn't deal with this. I had to go back to that place that horrible, intriguing, necessary, confused, evolving place named Praecord. This will never ever, never leave, never degrade, never hide itself, and always looking at me with its eyes from the corner. Things must be done, pieces of myself avenged, questions answered... Setting out on a walk, a walk about town trying to find the only place I could count on sending me back into that twisted plane of existence. The unpainted bits of gun shined under my coat, fingers fondling the small faded cardboard box of bullets beneath my sleeve. October air cold, sidewalks the pale color you grow up to know them to be as I take what may be my final looks at the world around me. Staring into shop windows, mirrors and other bits that give off a clear and unfiltered reflection I'm struggling to suppress the urge to smash or dent them. They just remind me too much of Aphid...
The sun is shining in that morning way it does, the few birds in this dusty little town are tweeting, and I can't enjoy a single blessed second of it due to the thoughts of her. Could things possibly have been different? Why was I such a coward? Was the interest ever even there? Why do I feel like such a child in a man's body? The questions wouldn't stop, no matter how hard I tried...
I don't think this place could possibly be for me... I could care less about who was seen as now unfit for his position because of public shaming and moral outrage, the values of things that should be common sense, the straw man arguments formed by opposing sides to make the fight easier, nor the masses who shout the coming of a 1984-esq dystopia from opposite masters while their own bigwigs with smokescreens good enough to hide their wrongdoings setup the frame for their own dystopia of hypocritical agendas. All this screaming and no action behind it... But what am I but a hypocrite to that as well? I'd like to see you push a power line pole a mile without removing it from the ground or tipping it over. But I digress, all of this is pointless to argue about...
The trees across the street, all the lower branches cut down that obscured only a blank wall. The smell of the trees in the wind briefly showed me an alternate path I had at several times seen... A path of freedom and friendship in nature, one of the one who sees pleasure in the simpler things, who sneaks out at night to talk to strangers by campfire mostly alone but sometimes with a companion... one "Clarisse Mclean" and a convict from another world. A child of the night who saw beyond the stacks of paper, the plaster, the green strips of paper and the lies we tell to ourselves silently at night so we have reason to get up in the morning. They are an extinct kind now gone in our world of houses partially covered in vines for that "rustic look" in rural areas because we're too lazy to choose between the sterile clean and living like wolves in our world covered by screens that will burn our eyes faster than a lifetime of taking glances at the sun. A world of the blind, a world of the vapid, of the apathetic lazy and self-indulgent masses hiding their eyes from those without the means to live such a life. That dystopia future is here and now ladies and gentlemen! You want to try to survive a zombie apocalypse? Try to be an individual in a crowd and not feel hurt into conforming by the looks they give you or the words they send your way. I need to go back. I need to find a place so simplistic and yet so impact-ful as Praecord... even if it means it may be a one way trip.
I arrive at the steps of the ramshackle church, abandoned by most these days and kept alive by a devoted few attacked by those punching a straw man formed of mentally unstable half a world away flying under the banner.
The cold steel of the revolver feels real in my hand... real unlike most is to me when my feeling is this numbed. I prepare the revolver and kneel down at the steps of the church... they'll accept just about anyone with regards to common sense, but I need not the church nor the man who may be watching from above. The cold steel of the muzzle I press to my forehead, the tip of the gun then moved to the spot between where my nose joins to my forehead and the corner of my eye. I stare up at the clouds for a brief moment... The strike of my left palm spins the cylinder and after it stops I count down, pulling back the hammer and pulling the trigger as the cylinder rotates.
"One." *click*
"Two." *click*
"Three." *click*
"Four." *click*
"Five." *click*
"Six."
----------------
"Where
have I been all this time?
Lost,
enslaved, fatal decline
I've been
waiting for this to unfold, but
The
pieces are only as good as the whole...
Was I ever, even a friend?
Severed
myself from my own life
Cut out
the only thing that was right...
What If I
never saw you again?"
-Slipknot "Danger;
Keep Away"
________________________________________________________________________________
"It kills me not to know this but I've all but just forgotten
what the color of her eyes were and her scars or how she got them....
As the telling signs of age rain down a single tear is dropping,
Through the valleys of an aging face that this world has forgotten...
There is no reconciliation that will put me in my place
and there is no time like the present to drink these draining seconds.
But seldom do these words ring true when I'm constantly failing you.
Like walls that we just can't break through until we disappear.
So tell me now,
If this ain't love then how do I get out?
Because I don't know...
That's when she said I don't hate you boy,
I just want to save you while there's still something left to save."
-Rise Against, Savior
___________________
[It is here, dear listener that I give you a choice: The story can end with the gun or it can descend back into the dimension of Praecord. I leave the choice up to you as while some things are best not discovered, some things are.]
________________________________________________________________________________
[Six] Requiem [17]
Originally posted Sunday, October 13, 2013
what the color of her eyes were and her scars or how she got them....
As the telling signs of age rain down a single tear is dropping,
Through the valleys of an aging face that this world has forgotten...
There is no reconciliation that will put me in my place
and there is no time like the present to drink these draining seconds.
But seldom do these words ring true when I'm constantly failing you.
Like walls that we just can't break through until we disappear.
So tell me now,
If this ain't love then how do I get out?
Because I don't know...
That's when she said I don't hate you boy,
I just want to save you while there's still something left to save."
-Rise Against, Savior
___________________
[It is here, dear listener that I give you a choice: The story can end with the gun or it can descend back into the dimension of Praecord. I leave the choice up to you as while some things are best not discovered, some things are.]
The
rush pulled me back through the haze for the final time. Third time
around the haze was more familiar, passageways and canals, shifts of
gravity, shifts of mental levity and shafts of raw pain now all on a
first name basis. In time my feet collided with the chill, damp and dark
soil of Praecord once again, the cold steel of the empty revolver in my
hand an odd parallel. I hit the ground kneeling and knowing, that I didn't have
long before the voices of both severed halves re-entered my
consciousness… so the minutes of solace would have to be savored like
they might be my last. A weak wind blows through the pale grass, echoing
with a shrieking whistle across the valley. I might have gone past the
point of no return, but my gamble had paid off. As I start to get up,
something in the sky catches my eye and sends a shiver down my spine
that strikes a resounding chord where the arrowhead left by Melancholia
lies. A gear skips a rung in my head for a second and I’m left there
staring at the blue sky contrasting the grey mountains and fields while
my brain reaches to find out why I find this so unusual. Only here could
I consider a blue sky an ill omen but… the skies here have been reds,
oranges, greys, blacks, whites but never blue. What happened? Never
any shade resembling blue, never even a hint at a sky with a color so
unnatural. Before I can think too hard into it the wind picks up, now
blowing right in my eyes. They start to tear so I turn away and wipe my
eyes clear only to be greeted with the former skyline of Haelstrom.
Just… right there in front of me. My legs fell out from under me as my
brain just let go, my body going limp. My grip on the revolver slipped
and then came back, clutching it even tighter. What day was it?
There… right before me was the proof
of my failure standing up high, stories upon stories above me. Where
Haelstrom once stood now only the gargantuan opaque semi-solid mass of
the Leviathan persists, the city swallowed under its raw magnitude with
even Aphid’s lovely spire that breaks through the heavens barely poking
out beneath the oppressive muck. Finally the cruel consequence of my
failure stood before me, at long last smashing and splashing into the
moat that separated my castle from reality. It was all for nothing… all
for nothing… all the torment, the venture past the point of no return,
all the madness, the pain and all watching it crumble beneath an iron
boot. There was to be no solace, no conclusion, no recourse and no
requiem.
There and then I saw the value in
tears. Because you see… tears are there as a cry for help, and when no
help exists they comfort us as we await our inevitable demise.
I had given up everything to come back here one last time… possibly forever and this is what I return to find?
Through the tears, a mellifluous
sigh cut its way in and echoed in my head. Searching for the source of
the sound my eyes met with a grim image. A slim figure emerged unscathed
and untarnished from the center of the mucky, impenetrable mass. Slim,
graceful but with a look that cut me like a razor to my eyes. A cruel
visage, it was Aphid… It had to be, I tried to deny it but it just had
to be. Yes it was Aphid in all her beauty but oh god did it hurt mine
eyes. Her mirror skin was covered in cracks, with a red magma glowing
visibly within the crevices behind a thin membrane, her dress torn,
stained a dark dirty red, her back deformed, forcing her to lean forward
like an old hag and her hair tangled in some places, torn in others and
completely gone in patches. But it was her divots for eyes… now like
holes into pure darkness that descended back further than the confines
of her head yet never seemed to penetrate the other side. There was no
warmth in those "eyes". What possibly could have happened?
The lie was obvious, the joke stood
before my eyes and I laughed. I laughed, oh god I laughed as “Laugh and
the world laughs with you. Cry and you cry alone.” Those very words have
likely driven a few men insane. It was all gone… all possibility and
hope was gone. The words “Why are you here?” carved themselves
into my arm in open wounds that stung with a pain that only fueled the
dread which started to resurrect the black bile from my intestines.
Coming back here was a trap, a psychic joke played at the expense of
years of my life, my mind and possibly my existence. The Leviathan had
to be hers, the city just a whirlpool ready to drag me down with it and
end me.
That did it. Connecting to the
fragment in my spine, the steaming black bile spewed out from my throat
and onto the ground in front of me. From the vapors formed the serpent
Melancholia once again, this time with its piercing stab already
implanted there was little it needed to do to set up its control once
again. And oh god did it know exactly what to do, loading the six
bullets one by one into the gun, unable to resist as I watch through my
own eyes while Melancholia plays with my body like it’s a marionette,
its thin grey fingers in my veins. Blue skies… crushing defeat and
ascent back to a place where I no longer have a home… all by the hand of
that black serpent, was this to be my fate? Pressing the revolver
against the side of my head I became aware of a sound of pounding feet
against the grass which I quickly shoved into the back of my mind to
hide it from the serpent. Seconds later I heard a growl and felt
Melancholia torn away from my lungs and the arrowhead from my spine
removed with a violent pull out of my back. I fell forward, my face into
the dirt as the sounds the likes of which I still cannot fully describe
occurred behind me. I can’t tell you what the Red Eyed Wolf did to
Melancholia… But I can tell you it wasn't enough. You have to stomp it
out the minute you see it because like a chronic, sentient cancer, it
can come back every time stronger and stronger whenever it finally gets
the chance to bloom. It was just a child this time, mind you a dangerous
child but a child all the same. This has to end.
Standing up I could feel the wolf’s
skin standing empty behind me, staring at the back of my head with its
one fearsome eye. I clenched my fists and looked up at the crimson
silhouette of Aphid up high. “For now I won’t ask how you returned from
the dark embrace of death…” I rasped gently through my shredded vocal
chords, my thoughts seeming to almost scream at each other. “But this
has to end… rejoin me so we can do what must be done.” He drops the
arrowhead in the pocket in my shirt and give me a nod before slipping
back onto me once again, the skin’s familiar mix of too loose, too snug,
and fitting like a glove. It all just paled in comparison to the
determination behind those eyes. Warm, rough, he felt fresh once again,
missing only the smell of placenta in his jaws. To him the shredded
vocal chords were no bane, forming a viscous growl as he screamed words
to the sky that were not mine.
“Aphid! You whore of a sage mistress!”
In the wolf’s skin I sprinted on all
fours toward the Leviathan, pounding my paws against the earth, digging
my claws into the mass, and fighting the Leviathan’s pull inward. As I
started to climb its towering height, the determination I felt within
that skin like almost nothing I had ever felt before. The height was
incredible but with no limit to how far I could exert myself it seemed
like a long walk that just happened to take quite a bit of time. She
slashed down at me with words across my skin as I climbed, bleeding as I
struggled to stay up. I was numb to the pain but that didn't help the
fact that I could still feel them as they dug into my skin. Quickly
shutting my eyes to protect them, I continued the climb as despite the
bleeding as soon this would all be over. The wolf told me so, oh yes he
told me so.
Reaching the peak, against the blue
and grey Aphid stood opposite to me on the other side of the small
plateau, arms mockingly outstretched as if to welcome me home, but the needles
slowly grew out of her fingers. She almost seemed shorter than before
and skinnier too. The claws were out, the stage was set. She lunges, the
10 needles on her fingers going for my face but the wolf reacts,
interlacing his fingers with hers as they dance through the air. Hands
gripping claws, he shifts his grip and breaks her fingers and then
holding his grip on her broken, bleeding hands as her head recoils back
in silent agony. All 10 fingers fall to the ground, disconnected and
bleeding and he holds her hands tight in his grip, pulling her closer
while he snarls. I can see every thought going through the Red Eyed
Wolf's head... he wants to plant his claws in those sockets and rip her
skull apart, throw her off the leviathan and listen as she breaks across
the ground, open up her chest cavity and see if the mirror has any guts
to spill... but I stop him. My reflection in her cracked face catches
my attention.
There’s something in my eyes…
something I don’t like. Something that doesn't feel like me. The wolf
covers half my face, its thick hairy hide wrapped around my body, my
mouth twisted into a grimace of anger infused with smug satisfaction. I
don’t know this face, this face can’t be mine… I… I don’t look like
that. All of the actions, thoughts, many of the wants, all can’t
possibly be mine… Oh god what have I become?
As the wolf squeezes down on her
hand, digging a claw into her wrist I pull him back further and muzzle
him. He may be my skin but… I won’t let him do this. I let go of Aphid’s
hands and she falls back, recoiling in pain and curling into a ball for
a few seconds, bleeding before she suddenly sits up. Needles start to
form out of her face and arms through her clothing. I quickly grabbed
Melancholia’s arrowhead from my pocket and stab it into her neck. She
turns to me as she turns to stone once again from the touch of bitter
stone. Her face was… her face looked at me almost scared I’d say. Her…
her… I don’t want to think about it now. I don’t need that burden in my mind.
I turned to the Red Eyed Wolf and
grabbed him by the hairs of his neck, pull him off of me and lift him
below me, looking directly into his eyes. “What EXACTLY were you trying
to do?” I whisper to him, not breaking contact with the one eye on his
empty skin as I dangled him over the edge of the Leviathan.
“What the hell do you think? I think we both know about the organic origin of revenge vipe…” he
snarled back at me. Eye contact had probably been a bad idea. “What you
were going to do there... that's not survival, that's malice! That’s
not me. I… No.” I rasped back to him, turning my head away. “Don’t you lie to me-” “How would you know what’s a lie?!?” I strained my voice to say.
“You don’t have such good connections up here anymore do you? Or have you forgotten that this connection isn't a two-way street?” I said, pressing a finger to the side of my head.
He tried to bite me but stopped himself.
“Oh… forgot why you can’t hurt me didn't you? You’d fall apart and that would suit neither of us…”
He snarled, the anger behind that red eye was obvious. He hated me and like with Aphid, he had all the reason in the world to. But unfortunately, we were stuck together and as much as I hated to say it he had kept me alive throughout all of this and I may need him to keep it that way. What the hell had gotten into him?
“You don’t have such good connections up here anymore do you? Or have you forgotten that this connection isn't a two-way street?” I said, pressing a finger to the side of my head.
He tried to bite me but stopped himself.
“Oh… forgot why you can’t hurt me didn't you? You’d fall apart and that would suit neither of us…”
He snarled, the anger behind that red eye was obvious. He hated me and like with Aphid, he had all the reason in the world to. But unfortunately, we were stuck together and as much as I hated to say it he had kept me alive throughout all of this and I may need him to keep it that way. What the hell had gotten into him?
So much has gone wrong… so much… so
fucking much… but I can’t crack, I’m not going to crack. I’m stronger
than that or at least I want to be. Even as the Leviathan beneath me
seems to start to slowly melt beneath me without her presence I tried to
hold onto what I still could. I turned back to the wolf, careful not to
look him in the eyes this time… wolves don’t like that. “Look…” I
whisper to him. “I know there’s someone else… I've heard him in my head
and regardless of if you try to deny it, I know there was another part
of me when I pulled you out of me in that false asylum. He’s been
whispering to me. I feel he may know more than you and I about what’s
been going on... I know you know where he is but I can’t see where. Like
it or not, we don’t have much time and you can’t hide anything from me
as buddy, we’re still connected. I want you to take me to him.”
His eyes narrow, he twitches, he tries to bare his teeth further. “You don’t understand what you’re doing… but I can’t stop you.” He complied.
The walk back to the asylum produced
a painful silence in my head. It had been quite a while and I
still hadn't heard anything from my other half. I couldn't say I was
getting worried but it seemed almost foreboding. The dark complex stood
still as a testament to the deformed hands that sculpted this world.
Reflective in the light from the sky, impenetrable, sealed tight by
curses for quarantine, this was where the broken went when they could
not be fixed. There were no guards, only boundaries. No inmates for
long, only the walking husks. The wolf clawed his way back through the
walls which resealed behind him, his red eye showing the way in the ever
moving tentacles of darkness and the concrete foundation to the
facility of erosion. I avoided the blind necrotic husks that walked the
corridors and found my way to his cell. Cleaving through the wall, we
found his corpse lying in the center of the room. I stepped closer to get a
better look. The body was decayed and black, with very little flesh
still clinging to the skeleton. His left forearm was severed and left
lying next to him, several fingers including the 2nd digit missing and
the tendons torn out and wrapped around the wrist. His jaw had been
filled with dirt from the floor, his rib cage had been smashed open and
in his right hand was clutched a knife or hook made from one of his
ribs. Some of the wounds seemed self-inflicted.
Even though he’s lying here decayed… he is still a part of me.
“The
poor bastard is too weak to leave. When stronger he knows no boundaries,
but with what has happened, he is bitterly, bitterly trapped and very
unlikely to find that strength soon Central. He’s got the power to
control the life and death of nearly anything here that uses such
concepts, everything but himself that is…” After
the wolf spoke these words, The Innocent’s body started to move. That
which remained of the muscles in his neck tried to desperately to lift
his head up as if he was able to try to look around for someone else in
the cell, seeming to forget that he no longer has eyes, ears, a nose, a
tongue, or most of his skin. With this seeming to come to mind he let
go, letting his head fall and the back of his skull cracking against the
concrete floor. I take another step closer, almost afraid to touch him.
The stench is incredible and terrifyingly familiar. Then I notice there
is still something pulsing amid the mass of gunk and dirt in his chest
cavity… something grey, hanging by veins tied to his collarbones, his
neck and his spine inside his chest cavity… pulsing slowly, slowly,
patiently and persistently as if trying desperately to either fight back
or give in but unable to do either.
“He
seems to have lost nearly all his senses now… One shudders to imagine
what’s going on in that head of his. He’s always been stupid and
misguided, never seeing the risks involved given that he never has had
anything to lose… guess this showed him, heh. I can never say it to his
face though, thanks to the deal I made with this devil. Somethin’ got to
him here I’d guess and all of those things that you saw in your future
back here the first time I’d guess again."
He paused.
"He was the one who brought me back from that abyss if you’ve been wondering... He can’t leave and I’m the only one who can. I was supposed to help send you back and lead you here so things could be over… Guess I ended up complying anyways. He hates me, did you know that?” Examining The Innocent further, I tried not to listen too hard. There’s no value in the opinion of a maniac, but then again what was I getting myself into?
“If his senses are dead, is there anything I can do to re-establish communication?” I inquired.
He paused.
"He was the one who brought me back from that abyss if you’ve been wondering... He can’t leave and I’m the only one who can. I was supposed to help send you back and lead you here so things could be over… Guess I ended up complying anyways. He hates me, did you know that?” Examining The Innocent further, I tried not to listen too hard. There’s no value in the opinion of a maniac, but then again what was I getting myself into?
“If his senses are dead, is there anything I can do to re-establish communication?” I inquired.
“I can
only think of one thing and that’s re-establish physical contact, as
that should re-establish the mental connection as well.” The
wolf replied, slipping his skin off of me to stand by and watch. I tuck
the revolver into my back pocket, leaning in close to The Innocent as I
outstretched a hand. Hovering an inch above his skull, the wolf
suddenly grabbed my wrist and as I looked at him his eyes were fixed on
mine.
“Look vipe, you've heard the things he’s said, seen the things he’s thought, you know how dangerous he can be. We shouldn't have
shelved him but there was only enough strength left from the mitosis to
free one of us. You know that right? I warn you as your survival
instinct, this is unsafe, dangerous even. You’ll be resurrecting every
demon left inside that dead, broken form and the passionate yet twisted mind within.”
"I know the risk and I'm willing to
take it. All demons need to be exorcised at some time." I replied as he
loosened his grip and eventually let me go. My palm graced the skull and
near immediately he hit me like an electric shock. At first, a stream
of thought flitted past my mind, taking a look at the anecdote as the
thought sped by.
The innocent lied
there as his friend bounded across the field. "Goodbye fair friend… May
you find what I could not…" he whispered, helpless but to resent his
brother for leaving him behind and likely making that wolf no more than a
catalyst. The darkness would focus on him next. The shadows danced in
and out of his vision, when suddenly the innocent spoke out. "I know
what you are but you shall not claim me the way you claimed the others.
Unlike them I don’t have the misfortune of death." He boasted to it,
weak as he was and still confident that his immortality would save him
from this harm as it had everything before it. "Oh but little child,"
the shadows heckled back "we have been waiting for one like you… one who
won’t fall apart before we can truly get our fingers in. You
know this already, but soon you will be praying for that luxury of
death. Welcome to the cage that is built to be your grave in the
centuries to come... You lost your strength and us another potential
inmate and in the process, we can never let you free. Don’t worry, you
can always come to the shadows for counseling… we’ll always be
listening, and watching, and probing, and whispering, and… soon you’ll
likely become our favorite fetus…" The innocent tried not to listen, but
the fear was inevitable and so was the rotting and the falling
barriers. In a place where time passed so ‘days’ were a like a button
pressed and nothing ever really changed until a certain person lay to
sleep, these ‘days’ could last as long as they wanted, allowing for one
to rot, to listen and to fester for an eternity with no chance of escape
until you succumb to a catatonic state… and when the bastard who
presses that button leaves this plane of existence entirely while that
prisoner has not yet left...
Quickly after, a cacophony of near
viral ideas, notions, and words spoken or heard hit my brain like a
steam train. Near simultaneously, a disembodied guttural scream lasting almost half a
minute echoed through the halls of the asylum and though the bars to
its very cells. I had to struggle to shut a new door in my mind once
again, of a similar make but this time with a locking bar and a reason
to keep it shut for when that door was open I saw some of the most
depraved, most polluted and most corrupted things I've ever seen in
myself either rushing toward me or lying in wait beyond that accursed
doorway.
The corresponding muscular response occurred and my hand quickly pulled itself away. I blinked my eyes and shook my head a few times to rid myself of those mental images. On the floor The Innocent began to move. Most of his abdominal muscles appeared to be gone, forcing him to rely on his right arm and his left leg, the only limbs that seemed to have enough meat left to help prop himself up. His neck hung backwards, head pointing upward as if it to look at the sky. With some trouble the decayed form shifted his weight and leaned himself forwards, his head now hanging forwards, his jaw hanging open. As he sat up the pile of dirt and decay lying within his chest cavity began to shift, falling into his pelvis and all over his lap, that grey pulsing organ revealing more of itself behind the layers of dirt.
After a few seconds the disembodied voice came again, this time panting, coughing and wheezing, the wolf and I sitting in silence listening. Almost half a minute passed before that ended and he became silent again. Eventually he spoke to us.
“Is… is it who I think it is? Is it me? Is it me? Is it?” The Innocent spoke to us, his voice shaky.
“Yes… it’s me again. We've come back. Can you hear me?” I replied, trying to keep my distance while I leaned in closer.
“Yes, yes you are here… yes you are.” He paused. “Icansmellhim. He’s here too, isn’t he? Isn’t he? Thebigbadwolf? Here? Backtohiscoffin?” His words were starting to run together again, his voice still shaky.
I turned for a second to the red eyed wolf, standing in the corner then turned back to the innocent. “Yes, he’s here. We've come back to talk to you.”
“I don’t believe that, no no, no no. He’s notonetotalk, this wasn’t his decision, it couldn’t have been. Isenthim out to find you… that was the deal, to end this and get me out but nono, I knew I couldn’t trust him. He did something wrong, he had to have. He’s never trusted me, never seen what I’ve seen. Things are not better are they, they have to be worse are they not? What did he do, what did he do? Tell me what did he do?”
I sighed and then replied to him. “He tried to attack Aphid.”
Near immediately a series of giggles exploded from the disembodied voice and then stopped, waiting a few seconds before replying. “That wasn't Aphid. Look at yourself, you know that wasn't Aphid. You've been around Aphid, you've felt for Aphid... you know the aura Aphid has and you know what it feels like to be around that perception.”
“What are yo-”
“Central..." he said, keeping his focus on me "That wasn't Aphid. She left shortly after you did and that’s why you can’t feel her presence anymore. I'm not totally blind to the outside when I'm in here... Left behind was some form of ‘Golem’, made in her image to look after things and if The Wolf managed to get you here that must mean he’s done something terrible to that parting gift.”
“Don’t you dare-”
“You can’t hide what you've done wolf. He wouldn't be here unless you did something to that Golem. There’s no reason he would have come back here unless you did something terrible to that poor soul to make her want to broadcast out some type of lure or anxiety to draw him back. I honestly thought you’d be made of strong enough stuff to take such a small amount of darkness without letting it twist you.” The innocent nearly spat back at him, tone condescending and vile as he tried dragging himself over to a wall.
The wolf turned to me. “I didn't do anything, I promise you that.” But no, as he said that a memory tried running past my perception.
The corresponding muscular response occurred and my hand quickly pulled itself away. I blinked my eyes and shook my head a few times to rid myself of those mental images. On the floor The Innocent began to move. Most of his abdominal muscles appeared to be gone, forcing him to rely on his right arm and his left leg, the only limbs that seemed to have enough meat left to help prop himself up. His neck hung backwards, head pointing upward as if it to look at the sky. With some trouble the decayed form shifted his weight and leaned himself forwards, his head now hanging forwards, his jaw hanging open. As he sat up the pile of dirt and decay lying within his chest cavity began to shift, falling into his pelvis and all over his lap, that grey pulsing organ revealing more of itself behind the layers of dirt.
After a few seconds the disembodied voice came again, this time panting, coughing and wheezing, the wolf and I sitting in silence listening. Almost half a minute passed before that ended and he became silent again. Eventually he spoke to us.
“Is… is it who I think it is? Is it me? Is it me? Is it?” The Innocent spoke to us, his voice shaky.
“Yes… it’s me again. We've come back. Can you hear me?” I replied, trying to keep my distance while I leaned in closer.
“Yes, yes you are here… yes you are.” He paused. “Icansmellhim. He’s here too, isn’t he? Isn’t he? Thebigbadwolf? Here? Backtohiscoffin?” His words were starting to run together again, his voice still shaky.
I turned for a second to the red eyed wolf, standing in the corner then turned back to the innocent. “Yes, he’s here. We've come back to talk to you.”
“I don’t believe that, no no, no no. He’s notonetotalk, this wasn’t his decision, it couldn’t have been. Isenthim out to find you… that was the deal, to end this and get me out but nono, I knew I couldn’t trust him. He did something wrong, he had to have. He’s never trusted me, never seen what I’ve seen. Things are not better are they, they have to be worse are they not? What did he do, what did he do? Tell me what did he do?”
I sighed and then replied to him. “He tried to attack Aphid.”
Near immediately a series of giggles exploded from the disembodied voice and then stopped, waiting a few seconds before replying. “That wasn't Aphid. Look at yourself, you know that wasn't Aphid. You've been around Aphid, you've felt for Aphid... you know the aura Aphid has and you know what it feels like to be around that perception.”
“What are yo-”
“Central..." he said, keeping his focus on me "That wasn't Aphid. She left shortly after you did and that’s why you can’t feel her presence anymore. I'm not totally blind to the outside when I'm in here... Left behind was some form of ‘Golem’, made in her image to look after things and if The Wolf managed to get you here that must mean he’s done something terrible to that parting gift.”
“Don’t you dare-”
“You can’t hide what you've done wolf. He wouldn't be here unless you did something to that Golem. There’s no reason he would have come back here unless you did something terrible to that poor soul to make her want to broadcast out some type of lure or anxiety to draw him back. I honestly thought you’d be made of strong enough stuff to take such a small amount of darkness without letting it twist you.” The innocent nearly spat back at him, tone condescending and vile as he tried dragging himself over to a wall.
The wolf turned to me. “I didn't do anything, I promise you that.” But no, as he said that a memory tried running past my perception.
I chased her. She was
fast, but I was faster. I tackled her and held her to the ground with
claws around her neck. I was empty, but soon she would be. The first
smash shattered her skin, the cracks moving their own way along the skin
as they crawled, intersected, paralleled and broke along her body. She
was hurt, but I would further it. I pulled at her hair and tightened my
claws around her throat. She screamed, but I screamed back louder. I let
the red from her neck drip down and stain her dress. I ignored the
bumps in my skin, no matter how hard they pushed outwards. I took my
claws and gouged them into those divots, deeper than they would go while
I let the crimson in my eye vent through my claws and into her veins.
Earlier on I had come to the realization that this wasn't the true
Aphid. This one was weak, frail, a pale imitation to the genuine
article. It didn't matter to me. It didn't matter as the red glowed
through her veins, as I removed my claws, as the holes dug themselves
further, and as I broke her back. I didn't care, it's deserved... I
won't let him destroy himself through this pitiful endeavor. My eyes widened. "My god, that's what was wrong with her..." I thought to myself.
The Innocent propped himself up against a wall, leaning into his skeletal leg like a prosthetic.
“You dare sit here, look me in the face and lie to me wolf? Becauseofyou I am so very, very close to gone but never there. Becauseofyou, I watched one by one as my organs rotted away or betrayed me, all of the courage, all of the wonderful metaphor just seeming to chip away in the eyes of emptiness. My guts, my stomach, my eyes, my tongue, my genitals, my ears, and even my lungs have all decayed away into the dirt on the floor, all because of you! YOU LEFT ME BEHIND!”
“There wasn't enough strength left in us to let both of us leave, you know that!” the wolf barked back, narrowing his eyes and baring his teeth.“You know you’re lying! When you left you cleaved a hole in the wall. You could easily have taken me through it with you and this could have ended without either one of us being left to rot. The truth is you’re scared. You were scared then and you’re just as scared now…”
The Innocent propped himself up against a wall, leaning into his skeletal leg like a prosthetic.
“You dare sit here, look me in the face and lie to me wolf? Becauseofyou I am so very, very close to gone but never there. Becauseofyou, I watched one by one as my organs rotted away or betrayed me, all of the courage, all of the wonderful metaphor just seeming to chip away in the eyes of emptiness. My guts, my stomach, my eyes, my tongue, my genitals, my ears, and even my lungs have all decayed away into the dirt on the floor, all because of you! YOU LEFT ME BEHIND!”
“There wasn't enough strength left in us to let both of us leave, you know that!” the wolf barked back, narrowing his eyes and baring his teeth.“You know you’re lying! When you left you cleaved a hole in the wall. You could easily have taken me through it with you and this could have ended without either one of us being left to rot. The truth is you’re scared. You were scared then and you’re just as scared now…”
The wolf went for the revolver in my back pocket, managing to fire off a
round before I could wrestle it out of his hands. The wolf backed away
for a second before almost lunging at me but stopping inches away from
my face. He turned back to the Innocent.
“Someone needs to end you, you sick fucking corpse. You can’t understand why because you’re a frivolous piece of shit!” I turned back to The Innocent and he appeared completely unscathed, checking the cylinder, the bullets were still in the chamber and unspent. How the-
“You couldn't even do it could you? He pulled you back didn't he? See, THIS is why you need me wolf. My nature forces me to see things through… to the better end or the bitter end. You could so easily have ended this… so easily you could have killed that golem and stab a single needle into the whole she was made from, but no… Your piece of the center didn't let you hurt her. If you had pulled me out with you things could have been so much better, but no, now we’re forced to take the route through the thorns. Why couldn’t you just hurt her? Why couldn't you just end this? Why couldn't you just end her?!?” he nearly shouts, his focus seeming to turn to me with the last few sentences.
Right then a bright light cut through the north wall, an image, the silhouette of the headless horse as he stood just over the hill half the valley away. He was here, not a vision or refraction but a metaphysical manifestation that suddenly split down its spine and folded outwards then twisting to form the silhouette of an hourglass, spilling a golden light over all that the skies may see from their perch up high, ripping away the dark walls and the husks from the asylum. My eyes then closed themselves as the voice of the manifestation filled my thoughts.
“Someone needs to end you, you sick fucking corpse. You can’t understand why because you’re a frivolous piece of shit!” I turned back to The Innocent and he appeared completely unscathed, checking the cylinder, the bullets were still in the chamber and unspent. How the-
“You couldn't even do it could you? He pulled you back didn't he? See, THIS is why you need me wolf. My nature forces me to see things through… to the better end or the bitter end. You could so easily have ended this… so easily you could have killed that golem and stab a single needle into the whole she was made from, but no… Your piece of the center didn't let you hurt her. If you had pulled me out with you things could have been so much better, but no, now we’re forced to take the route through the thorns. Why couldn’t you just hurt her? Why couldn't you just end this? Why couldn't you just end her?!?” he nearly shouts, his focus seeming to turn to me with the last few sentences.
Right then a bright light cut through the north wall, an image, the silhouette of the headless horse as he stood just over the hill half the valley away. He was here, not a vision or refraction but a metaphysical manifestation that suddenly split down its spine and folded outwards then twisting to form the silhouette of an hourglass, spilling a golden light over all that the skies may see from their perch up high, ripping away the dark walls and the husks from the asylum. My eyes then closed themselves as the voice of the manifestation filled my thoughts.
“Because
regardless… Regardless of what has happened, regardless of what could
have happened, regardless of what she is or ever may have wanted to be,
regardless of what you were or what you became, regardless of
intentions, regardless of actions, regardless of fears, regardless of
regret, regardless of the grand façade and its ever present masquerade,
regardless of everything she is your friend and one of the few you have
here in this wasteland. That is why and you know it well enough to
understand. Unless for some reason there’s some hidden candle lying in
all of this, it’s all memories. Untouchable, unchangeable, all that can
be done is try to throw them away if it turns out they are not needed .That
vision I sent you was intended as a warning of what could easily be,
but the wolf’s fear got to you before what was to happen could be prevented.
Anything you saw may have easily just been a refraction due to a
reclusive nature born of factors you could not change but desperately
fight against. A feeling of growing, learning all while knowing that you
may easily be steps behind everyone around you… It’s only natural for
one such as you. Don’t lose your mind on things, instead observe, react,
and adapt as you know you can. Whatever has happened can be fixed if it
needs to be, you have the tools, all you need is the will and a
self-chosen direction.”
And just like that, as
quickly as he appeared, the headless horse vanished, the golden light
soon after with him with its affects not as potent as they could have
been but it had set things up for rebuilding from the rubble. The dark
walls of the false asylum were gone, its concrete foundations and small
piles of ashes now all that remained of the horrid "sanitarium". The
Innocent started to stand up, I saw that some of his joints and
circulatory system had started to grow back albeit slowly. He would have
to take time to heal from what had happened as it was evident that
horse’s power wasn't as godlike as I may have liked but I expect him to
make a full recovery without too many scars. The gashes on the Red Eyed
Wolf’s hide sealed up on their own without trouble as the wounds of a
puppet are never as dangerous as they may appear. The little corruption
the wolf had picked up from the Innocent washed away quickly, the malice
with it but I’m still unsure how much I can trust him after
what I've seen of his moral compass. The sky returned to its normal hue
but there were other things still that needed to be fixed after what I’d
let happen.
It was a long walk but I made
my way back to the now empty city of Haelstrom and climbed my way back
up the spire to the widow’s walk where I had left the golem encased in
stone. I had left her fingers on the empty mantelpiece nearby.
Aphid herself had so much
furniture in the cathedral whereas the rest of the buildings in the city
were completely vacant… It was strange, but out of everything it felt
strangely fitting for her.
I walked over to the golem
and pulled the arrowhead out of her neck, snapping it between my index
and middle finger then letting it burn into ashes on the sandstone
floor. Quickly the golem slowly seemed to regain consciousness as the
stone skin peeled off and fell to the floor. It stood up and looked at
me, unsure of what to do as I paced over to the fireplace and back to
her. I offered the severed fingers back to her in my outstretched hands,
saying something to calm her down as she started backing away. I don’t
know if the attack or the wolf’s corruption had lessened the golem, but
she seemed almost animistic in her demeanor. Eventually the golem took
back her fingers and began re-affixing them in a manner similar to the
clay molding like method I had seen Aphid use to heal the forms in the
city.
The Innocent had told me
they’d be back soon from the remains of the Leviathan, but it would take
a little bit of time; not as long as it would for his wounds to heal,
but time nonetheless. When she was done she looked back up at me, the
holes in her face beginning to recede back to their original depth and
the cracks in her skin were already beginning to seal back up, the color
beneath a silvery white. I smiled and brushed a lock of hair away from
her face as it blew in the wind on the widows walk. Her hair too, was
starting to grow back. A close copy but she was shorter than Aphid, her
skin a hint less reflective and she almost seemed skinnier than Aphid in
her tattered dress. I sighed, looked away then looked back to her. She
started to write something on my arm but I figured I knew what it was
and I already had something to say. Looking back I probably should have
looked.
"If you can reach Aphid… I want you to tell her something.”
“I want you to tell her I’m
sorry if there’s anything I've done. It took me too long to find what
may be certainty and now that I live once again in the present, I can
say that it took too long for me to find what may be certainty. I’m
honestly not sure if this is what I think it is or if I’m just reacting
to her being gone and if it’s anyone's case of Kotov Syndrome, it was
mine. She may be the only one I've ever connected to in this wasteland
and if that’s ever meant anything I don't think it means much sitting in
the debris of my cravings. I can try to live with the way things are
now and time may show that I’m happier with it... I can’t tell you how
things could have otherwise worked out but… try not to worry about me.
I’ll be fine and if I can’t I’ll find a way to pretend… I promise you
that. I can only try to accept what I've done… I can only hope to say I
know her well enough to think that she has if she indeed knows.”
Standing on the
balcony, the golem stared at me in silence. I smiled at her and took th
revolver from my pocket. The Innocent had given me a 7th bullet,
coated in a brilliant gold with an hourglass carved into the casing. I unloaded
the cylinder and slid the 7th bullet in. I put my hand on her
shoulder and pointed the gun up in the air, counting down as I cocked the
hammer back and pulled the trigger, counting down.
“One.”
“Two.”
“Three.”
“Three.”
“Four.”
“Five.”
“Six.” *click*
“Seven.”
The gun went off, the round
sailing into the air like a flair before bursting like a firework in a
shower of sparks as another vacuum-like portal was created… above my
head close to the tip of the spire. The golem fell apart and blew away
like leaves in the wind, the pieces circling and spiraling in the wind
up to the portal that slowly closes after the last of the fragments has
left. I'd like to say I know she’ll find her way back but I don't because I don't know...
Leaning on the railing of the widow’s walk that upon inspection in the
light of a sunless breaking dawn seems to more closely resemble a
balcony, I think of the outside world, the realms outside of this one
and where Aphid must lie… but most of all I think of hope. I hope that
Aphid has found another city out there in some other plane, with a
better resident and a less complex allegory whereas I… I now sit here
and hope to myself that some day I will find another city across my own
plane, another chance, now with the lessons I have learned... but god do
these plains seem to stretch on forever and I haven't seen much but
hills upon hills. The 3 named skulls I found in Aphid's chambers and the
workshop where it seems she made those mechanical birds showed this
wasn't the first time she's hurt someone... but from knowing her I can
tell you that I doubt it's ever been her intention.
_____________________________________________________________________
"You
could end everything right here , finish it off and disappear.
Isn't it great to have the choice, quiet
it down and stop the noise?
We know those people tell you things, like what
to say and what to think.
We know you're not needed for your mind, just
your money and your kind.
We know you're not wanted for your heart, they
knew it was black right from the start.
You could end
everything right here..."
- Archive, Funeral
No comments:
Post a Comment