Chara: Phase 1: Veya’s Ladder

Chapter 3:

It was like walking in some wonderful and terrible dream. Ios was so filled with confusion, but he knew to temper that with the knowledge that all he beheld was in ruins. Still, he had never seen anything like this from Veya’s people, and the further they traveled, the denser it became.

Veya was still mostly silent, refusing to speak with Ios for any long stretch of time, though it did not seem like she was angry with him. She seemed more overwhelmed with the chaos than Ios did.

It was only the second day in this new strange environment before Ios broke down, begging for forgiveness and apologizing. He knew what kind of guilt should be choking him, but honestly, he didn’t know what he was feeling. Everything was chaos, and silence.

Ios did his best to tell Veya that she would lead him to whatever fate awaited him, that he would not ask her to go anywhere. He wanted to make it clear that he would be the only one of them dying any time soon.

She seemed despondent. No matter what Ios tried to say to her, she would just look at the buildings still left billowing smoke into the sky.

What struck him as odd, was how few bodies there were. They all seemed highly desiccated as well, making it seem like whatever happened here, already took place long ago. It was almost peaceful for Ios, to see corpses that were just laid about casually, rather than being torn limb from limb, or showing signs of horrific trauma before death. It seemed like within only an instant, whoever was left here just… ceased. The part of him that found that reassuring though, was a part of him he wished would go away.

Veya’s disappointment seemed less aimed at the tragic fate of her people, and more on something else though. Ios suspected that she knew what caused this catastrophy, but would not try to tell him what had done it. Perhaps it was a long story, and trying to bridge the barrier between their languages would have made it a difficult tale to tell. Or, maybe she was just ashamed that her people would do something like this to their selves, he couldn’t honestly tell. Between his revelation that she needed to die, and this, he knew that the sorrow was too much for her.

It was difficult for Ios to provide any comfort for her though, as so much of this place was strange and new to him, even in its ruined state. Veya helped him scavenge for food in shops that seemed unlike anything he’d known, and everything they gathered seemed like it required no preparation to eat.

It was like this everywhere they went. The vehicles that were strewn about in the streets did not require horses to move, but instead had mechanical legs that seemed to carry them along. He thought the kind of engineering Veya’s people knew was devoted entirely to weapons of war, considering that was the only thing he understood about what made them remarkable. Now he realized he wasn’t even truly fighting a war against her people… he was just slaughtering refugees.

What the city he was wandering through was like at some other point in time fascinated Ios endlessly, while what it became made him greatly mournful. For Veya, it was as though losing a loved one. She knew this place well it seemed, but had been separated from it. Now, she could only return to it as it was now, a broken husk filled only with death and sorrow.

Another thing that shocked him, as how expansive and vast this place was. His perception of what a city was in regards to size in no way compared to this. Considering all the areas for housing people, Ios realized that at their best, his people were likely outnumbered twenty to one. All of it seemed too grand for its own good though. Tall buildings held few spaces for people to dwell, and instead, it seemed each home was meant to allow even a single person to live in luxury, while the city itself just pressed outward for more space. Ios’s people were doing everything they could to occupy as few spaces as possible, to give the illusion that their numbers were smaller. He was used to cramped quarters with many people calling a single small room home.

Their progress became achingly slow. The mountains he could see in the distant horizon taunted him every day, that he could have direction if he would allow it. But honestly, he didn’t want to take Veya there. He promised to keep her safe, and he was no longer sure he could do that. Instead, they meandered about this giant scar on the world, slowly trudging towards the east for no particular reason.

So much of him ached to do anything he could for Veya, but as the days passed, things only got worse. He had let her decide where they should go and when, allowing her to move at her own pace as she dealt with her sorrow. He had no idea where she was taking him, but honestly, he did not care. They were not moving swiftly anyways, so they both became languid as they trudged through the wastes. Veya seemed empty inside, and Ios was desperately searching for meaning, when all that surrounded him was utter loss.

It all came to a head one day when they were slowly walking along a major thoroughfare for what looked like a lively area of the city. Bodies were scarce, and whenever they encountered any, both of them did their best to avoid them. However, while walking past an area that seemed like it was converted to be a shelter, Veya gasped, and pointed.

Ios beheld the corpse of a woman clutching her now mummified infant. He was drawn towards it instantly, and wanted to observe it closely. The now leathery skin on the woman was locked in an expression of intense pain, while the child’s face almost seemed to not exist, so contorted it was. Ios could hear Veya uttering strange things, and then she walked further away from the scene, to cry out of earshot of him.

Ios looked at the face of the woman again, and felt something awful wash over him. Looking inside himself, he found nothing, so in desperation, he kept searching. He fumbled in his back pocket, and found a forked shaped piece of metal, and he clutched it close to his breast.

“Dear Lord,” he uttered, almost in a trance, “forgive the evil in our hearts and let these souls pass to you free of burden.”

Veya turned, and looked at him. He did not notice.

“Like your son hanged upon the tree,” Ios held out the forked piece of metal, and held it aloft over the corpse of the woman and her child, his eyes still closed and his face downward, “let the evils of this world wash away, and forgive us for our trespasses against ourselves, and against you. Let these souls find peace, let them find rest…”

Ios dropped the item from his hands, and listened to it clatter on the ground. He fell to his hands, and began to cry.

He did not truly believe in his God anymore, or that any such god could exist. He didn’t believe the world held any good in it at all. The slaughter of what remained of Veya’s people, their end coming about by their own hands, the willful ignorance of every soul he encountered. He could not stand it anymore, and viewed these corpses as the final result of everything terrible about the world. He was staring at the byproduct of pure evil, and he could not contend with it, he could only offer his petty halfhearted prayers and weep in the face of such pointless atrocity.

He could only remember the times where he was responsible for actions like this. Memories came flooding back into him, of houses burning and the occupants screaming inside, and how he was the one to set the homes ablaze in the first place.

He could not fight this evil, because he was a part of it. A soldier on the frontlines ensuring every good thing in the world withered and died.

Veya put her hands on his shoulders, and began to whisper to him, but he shook her away. He picked up the forked bit of metal again, and threw it away from him as far as he could, screaming as he did so. Odd behavior considering what he’d done only moments ago. He wanted to never see that symbol again though.

Again Veya approached him, her own eyes also filled with tears.

“Why?” she asked him.

It was difficult to explain to her. He pointed to the patch on his jacket, saying that he was a soldier. She understood that quickly, but when he pointed to the woman and her child, she didn’t make any connection with whatever words he could say.

“Me,” he said, “I did this.”

“No,” she replied.

It took further explaining that he didn’t mean the current example, but that civilians had died by his hands, and that he was not mournful of it at the time. When finally she understood, he expected her to be filled with anger. Instead, she took him into her arms and hugged him.

“Past now,” she said simply in his words. “Past.”

He did not believe her.

Something changed after that though. Veya still regarded her surroundings with contempt and sorrow, but she actively wanted to converse with Ios again. As more days passed, he felt his spirits lifted as she returned to her habit of continually prodding him for new words to learn. Their pace became more hurried again, and Ios realized he was being drawn closer to the mountains.

After a rather long day of spending their time going back and forth instructing each other on language, they laid to rest in an empty home resting somewhat far away from the usual congestion of toppled buildings. When Ios closed his eyes though, he felt as though he was still awake. He was within an instant, returned to the thoroughfare where he found the dead mother and child. It was far different this time though. It was lively, free of dust and decay, and many souls wandered about. Considering his pale skin and outfit, he was very out of place. Yet no one noticed. Ios was a ghost in this scene. People walked around him, or into him without so much as a glance at what obstructed their path. He saw now how the strange vehicles that littered the city worked. Some acted as mass transportation for many souls at once. It would come to a stop on its many legs, and lower itself to the ground. A door would swing wide, and people would enter or leave and it would pick itself up again, and scurry off down a predetermined path on its stout legs.

As he surveyed the nighttime scene with all of the strangely bright illumination of the city, Ios could find no shared consensus of feeling throughout the swell of bodies. Some groups of people seemed overly joyous as they meandered about, others were even openly intoxicated in their laughter and conversation. Others seemed highly agitated and worn down, and some simply looked bored.

It was so chaotic, yet highly organized. Ios was the only one standing in anyone’s way. So many people were going so many different places, but they all had it down to a routine. One they did not deviate from.

So much noise was assaulting him from all sides, yet it was somewhat tranquil how everything played out. Something was off though, and he knew that.

Something caught his attention out of the corner of his eyes, and he could briefly see a shadow fluttering about on the ground in between a crowd of people. No one else seemed to notice it, a flat thing on many legs running between people with blinding speed. He turned and noticed it again, but whenever he would turn to find it, the shadow would vanish out of sight.

Then the sounds of all the people chattering in a chorus he couldn’t comprehend started to die down. Everyone still wandered to and fro, but their voices seemed hushed and disconnected. So Ios closed his eyes for a moment, and opened them again.

Everyone stood perfectly still in an orderly line. Their faces still, but dislodged and uneven. The shadow he saw multiplied, and went everywhere, it made a noise now, but it was soft and hard to hear. It sounded almost like cloth in the wind being whipped about. No one stood on the street but Ios, and he wanted to scream at them, but he felt something strange crawling over his face.

He closed his eyes again, and when he opened them, there was nothing. The street was desolate and rotted again.

An owl sat perched on a street lamp, its feathers were strange, with almost a silver sheen to them. Its eyes were black and yellow, and seemed to widen and shrink down at random intervals without being interdependent of one another.

Ios realized the beast was entirely mechanical. And promptly realized who was manipulating it.

“I will not help you,” he said to it, his voice emerging with no difficulty now.

The owl stared at him, and the wind picked up, carrying with it many angry whispers that surrounded Ios.

“Everything…” they spoke, before loudly continuing. “This is all her doing.”

“Veya has had no hand in this tragedy!” Ios shouted.

“She will make another great sorrow,” the eyes of the owl seemed to flare up as the words came to Ios and wrapped around his neck. “It grows already. You are defiant… you are the first to be consumed.”

“You are wrong.”

“Still time to stop her,” they pleaded with Ios, “still time to make this go away.”

“I will not help you. Her fate is her own, and is no longer for me or any other to decide.”

“You go to Freouth either way,” they almost seemed amused when they spoke, “you see there, what she tolerates. You see truth there. She will consume you, or you will silence her. Two go, one returns.”

“You are wrong,” Ios repeated.

But the voices said nothing, and the owl seemed silent.

When Ios awoke, Veya was gone.

Chapter 2:

As the shouting grew louder, the pain in Ios’s side intensified. The arrow didn’t seem to hit anything vital, or so he thought at least. He did question its design though. It was made entirely of steal, even the shaft. His people did not create their arrows in such a way.

His campsite was so very close though. The flames are likely what drew his attackers towards him. He hoped so much that he had more time. It wasn’t even morning yet, and already he was facing some new threat.

His continued loss of blood also made him forget about his encounter with the thing that called itself Eredsh.

Instead, he paid close attention to the shouting that went on in the distance. It was coming closer to him, he thought. Two voices, both male, and both shouting at one another like drunken idiots. They were speaking Veya’s language, so he didn’t understand a word of what they spoke.

Soon they emerged from the shadows far away, walking closer to Ios with great trepidation.

Ios pulled his firearm from his side, wincing in pain as he did so.

Both had dark skin and grey clothing, with thin armor and strange goggles. One was shorter than the other by quite a bit, he had short braided hair, while the tall one was quite bald. The short one seemed ill equipped, with a blade seethed at his side, while the tall one had a firearm slung over his shoulders, and something attached to his left wrist.

The two seemed to be far less joyous when they say Ios brandishing the firearm. Immediately, the tall one began shouting at the short one, and pushed him behind him. It was hard to see, but Ios noticed the short one wasn’t of a slightly diminutive stature, but rather, he was still a child. Looked like a teenager to him.

Ios lowered the weapon, and put it away, and put both his hands at his side.

“I mean no harm,” he said, quite sure that both men did not understand him.

“How did you get that weapon?” the older one spoke. His accent was still thick, but it came as quite a relief to Ios that he understood him.

“A gift.”

“From who?”

“I have denounced my god and people, and sworn to protect one of your kind. She gave it to me.”

“Why should I trust you?” the tall one replied.

“You’ve already wounded me greatly. If you do not believe me, then let me die. She is at my camp, hopefully still resting.”

Their talk was put on hold when suddenly everything erupted into a bright flash. A wave of sound washed over him, and he could hear nothing but his head throbbing. He felt something probing at his side for a moment, but quickly tried only to focus on bringing his senses back up to speed.

Through blurry eyes, Ios saw Veya holding his gun, and pointing at the two men, who also seemed just as dumbstruck as he was. She was screaming fiercely, and neither of them dared to move.

Veya turned, and reached into her pack, and pulled out some strange thing Ios wasn’t quite paying attention to. She graced his cheek with her hand, and she said something he knew to be words of comfort. For a moment, he forgot about the pain. A very brief moment, though. Veya pulled the arrow out in one swift motion, and quickly lifted his shirt and went to put some strange fluid on Ios’s wound. He screamed at the pain, but noticed the bleeding had stopped very quickly.

After most of the pain had faded, Veya set her things down, and collapsed on top of Ios, taking him into her arms, and crying. There were a great deal of things Ios wanted to focus on, but he found his mind lost, as he looked out at the moon obscured by the trees overhead.

Veya moved away from him, and went back to the two men, pointing the weapon she gave to Ios at them both. They raised their hands, and Ios understood a few of the words she said to them. He had heard them often when he was at war. They were very unkind words.

She turned to Ios and said something, but he was very confused. Likely the loss of blood helped to make him lightheaded, but he was still trying to wrap his mind around the revelations Eredsh brought forth, wondering if that was nothing more than some strange dream.

“She wants to know if you can stand,” the older man said.

“I… I think so…”

The man relayed this to Veya.

Trying to stand was likely a bad idea on Ios’ part. The pain in his side was still horrific, despite his wound being sealed by whatever it was Veya poured on him. She came to brace him, but bumped into the very wound she’d helped fix, and Ios winced and groaned, as Veya began to whisper apologies he didn’t know.

“She says you saved her,” the older man spoke.

“She saved me first,” Ios replied. “I owe her my life… twice now, it appears.”

The soldier in Ios refused to think the situation was calm now. He thought Veya felt this way as well. She stuck close to Ios, making sure to put distance between the two men, and she still kept a tight grip on the firearm.

“You must understand… we saw a pale skinned man, we could not assume outright that you were not hostile.” The older man motioned for the younger one to step forward again.

“Since the great collapse, my son and I have done our best to eke out a living in this place. But it is harsh, and too close to your lands.”

“your son?” Ios assumed the tall one was obviously older, but he didn’t strike him as being old enough to have a teenage son.

“Yes. I am Qualane, and this is my son, Yaekey. I apologize that our meeting has started with violence.”

Yaekey stepped closer, and asked something of Veya. It seemed an innocent question, but Veya spat venom at the boy with her reply. Qualane also seemed harsh with the boy, demanding he step back again and remain silent it seemed.

“Where are you going?” Qualane asked.

“Freouth.”

Everyone went silent. Qualane stared long at Ios.

“Why would you go to this place?”

“Honestly, I don’t know. I saw something… in a dream I believe.”

“About you or the girl?” the now suspicious man asked.

“Me,” Ios lied.

“Do you understand what this could entail?”

“You are familiar with something that calls itself ‘Eredsh?” Ios asked.

“Meant to be legend. Many things were meant to be legend, but the great collapse has made fools of all my kind.”

“Do not think ill of me,” Ios walked forward a bit, and the pain was still quite immense. “I will let nothing happen to the girl. Her life is worth far more than my own. My people hunt me as well. I am resigned that my life shall not be long lived.”

Qualane turned and spoke to Veya. When he finished, she turned to Ios, with tears in her eyes.

“What did you say?”

“I told her that you are likely to die for her. That your journey will be short, while hers will be long.”

Veya spoke something, but not for Qualane to translate, she looked at Ios, and spoke directly to him.

“She says it needn’t be this way,” the man translated anyways. “She asks that you travel with her to some other place far from the mountains. She says she can keep you safe.”

“Much is undecided…” was all Ios could say. Qualane relayed the message to Veya, and she hugged Ios, saying quite a bit more to him. The older man did not translate this time, and instead motioned for his Son to come near.

“No matter what,” he said to the two first in Ios’s language, than in Veya’s, “your path lies east. You will see tragedy like none you could imagine.”

They went to move past Ios and Veya, and she kept her weapon pointed at them the entire time, until they vanished into the forest. When she seemed calm again, she handed the weapon back to Ios. He noticed the men were heading towards where Ios encountered his old friend no more than hours ago, and wondered if the gunfire was what drew out the father and son in the first place. They were gone now though, so he cared little for where those two were going. He’d remember the encounter not for the words spoken, but the wound in his side.

It was still well before sunrise, so they went back to their makeshift camp. Ios tried to tell Veya to rest first, that he would keep watch, but considering his wound, he wasn’t really in any position to remain alert and able to fight. He hunched his back against a tree, and fell asleep within seconds. Veya let him be, and woke him well after the sun had risen.

She seemed to be in high spirits considering the night they had. They had little in the way of supplies, but she wanted to have what she viewed as a traditional meal to start the day. Ios went to grab at the food right away, but she smacked his hand and yelled at him. She held her own hand briefly over her plate, and muttered something, then moved her hand near her chest. When she opened her eyes, she noticed Ios staring at her, dumbfounded. Veya seemed highly agitated, and did the same blessing for Ios’s food in his stead. Then she began to eat.

They spent most of their morning making little progress eastward. Ios was trying to endure the pain in his side so they could keep pressing their way through the forest, but his injury was not allowing him to do such. They spent far more time resting in the shade than they did walking. The chilled air started to burn Ios’s lungs, he was so exhausted.

Veya tried to keep his mind off the pain. She started to work with him to get across basic understanding of some words and phrases between them. What he called a tree and what she called it. What he called the sky, and what she called it. The only words of her people he ever bothered to learn were harsh and terrible things, things that would allow him to warn his own people of impending attack, or what kind of weapons they were using. Now he was just trying to wrap his head around basic things and concepts, like food, how to call out for help, or the very slight difference in her language for identifying gender. This task was also incredibly trying for Ios. There were a few consonants in her language that his people had no analog for. No matter how hard he tried, he couldn’t make the sounds come out right. Each time he messed up a word or phrase, Veya would giggle in a way that made him feel horrifically embarrassed. Considering his wound, their lack of progress towards the east, and now this, Ios considered this to be a very bad day. It didn’t help that she seemed to take to his language very easily. Any time he had a challenge, she would understand the concept immediately.

Much to his dismay, this kept going for four more days. By the third, he was feeling far more capable and they made decent strides towards their destination, and there was still no signs of pursuit from Ios’s people as well. Veya insisted on working more to bridge the language barrier between them, and even when they were marching their way through the woods, she would press him for new words for them to exchange. While it was easier for them to communicate basic concepts now, decent conversation was still impossible. This troubled Ios, as he wanted some way to speak to her about the vision he had.

Entirely unsure if he would even be willing to trust that vision, he remained silent on the subject. Veya seemed to be taking point, so he thought she was guiding him to wherever it was she thought they would both be safe. She and Qualane both seemed to think Freouth was not a place any person would wish to go. Even though Ios demanded the creature Eredsh not harm Veya in any way, he didn’t entirely trust it. That seemed reasonable to him though, considering he wasn’t entirely sure if that was just some lapse of sanity he had suffered.

While sitting for lunch once more, Ios looked to a tree, and noticed and owl perched on a thin branch, looking at both him and Veya. He thought it suspicious that an owl would be out hunting in the middle of the day, but what had him truly uneasy was it was the same breed he had seen only a few nights ago. He pointed to it, and called for Veya’s attention.

She said a few things, then looked at Ios, and said two words in his own language.

“Bad thing.”

He pulled the weapon out, and pointed at the bird, which seemed completely un-phased by what was transpiring below him. Veya tried to get him to lower it, but he looked at her, a dark intent in his eyes, and muttered to her.

“Eredsh. Bad thing.”

She seemed to understand the gravity of his words, but her eyes were still more filled with confusion. Ios knew that she didn’t really believe him. He lowered the weapon, and walked a little ways towards the owl.

“You will not hurt her!” he screamed, quite aware that he looked like a lunatic shouting damnation at a bird. Veya gasped though when he said that.

He taught her the words his people used to identify gender. She knew the vision he had was not about his own death anymore.

He made sure to speak in her language when he turned to face her, his face full of guilt and sorrow.

“Freouth. You,” was what he managed to convey. He pointed to the center of his chest, and continued by saying, “bad thing.”

Veya didn’t say a thing, and the owl flew away.

The rest of the day was spent in silence, and Veya would not look to Ios at all. That didn’t entirely matter to him though. His shame faded when he saw smoke in the distance, high past the trees, like clouds of ill omen.

It was another two days spent in silence before he understood where it was coming from.

They stepped out of the woods, and Ios beheld a sight he had never seen in his life. Despite his wound, he began to run. His injury was almost healed, but there was still a dull ache as he sped through the thinning woods. The remaining trees obscured what lay beyond the forest, and it seemed like a mouth of evil was biting down on all things good. Even Veya seemed distressed, she was shouting some things he understood, and others he did not. Either way, none of what she said seemed good.

When they finally broke away, Ios felt himself on ground that seemed too solid. Around him, buildings of strange make were sparsely laid amongst the landscape in ruins. Some had been reduced to rubble, others were missing roofs or more, very few windows remained unbroken. Everything seemed crafted of metal, or assisted by it. It was entirely alien to him, and it was in ruins. He tried to imagine what this town must have looked like when it was alive, and the contrast between destruction and life in his mind shook him to his core. This was like nothing he knew.

He pulled out the weapon Veya had given to him, and looked at it. The same uniformity it had, the town seemed to have as well. Almost as though being in ruins was a freedom for the construction of this place.

“Not some life…” he muttered, trying to remember things he said long ago as he stared at the weapon. “All life.”

Veya fell to her knees, and began to sob. She only stopped to utter curses to her god and her people.

Far away, Ios saw mountains.

Oh, I’ve been at this for hours now, and it’s just a blank page. Everything I wanted to say and air out gets stuck and turns funny when I try to dig it out of my head. The information turns to feelings, and feelings turn into scrambled information. Hunches of what I wanted to do and be grip at memory as I start digging in other places, anywhere in my head for something useful.

Oh, my mind is on fire, and something wants to come out. What is its name, what does it say, and what will it become when it is unleashed? It transforms like its lifespan ticks by forever and backwards instantly. I try to grab it and it’s not there, standing off to the side, taunting me.

I have a name for my muse, but I’m fairly sure I forgot it.

I have an idea I want to convey, but I’m not sure what it is.

I have to do something.

Oh, how my mind refuses to accept silence. When everything else has died down, I am filled with needless chatter for pointless things, and for pointless reasons. I accept this noise, in the hope that something useful will arise from all of it. Blueprints on how to build something, maybe myself? It’s all in there. I just need to sort it out.

Oh, how my feet kick back and forth on the edge of the bed. Memories burning in me like the sun would if I stepped outside. Games played, faces missed, fights started, and all the fuzzy details I’m very hazy on now. Bring me back to when this was easy, when one was two and two became one, and I was justified, and sleep accepted me.

Oh, I think I’m starting to get it now, why this all refuses to make sense to me, why my mind just won’t let me fall asleep. I’m going back and forth between what I am and where I was, forgetting how I’m supposed to rotate around the sun. And I sit up and I start to jot everything down, try to make sense of it once it all comes out.

I have a name for this feeling, but I’m fairly sure I forgot it.

I have something I need to say, but there’s no one here.

I have to make something of this.

Oh, and the sun still wants to make me explode, while I meander about with my sullen face glued to all that I own. I battle it and myself so needlessly, but I’m sure victory will be worth it when I have this thing out.

Oh, how sleep just keeps passing me by, but I don’t mind it. We were never very good friends. Conflict within my thoughts, conflict within my body, soul and everything around me, it all screams in a plain and dull tone. I don’t quite like the things I see when they are beyond my control, I don’t like it when the clouds come in and tell me what they see in all their grand obscurity.

Oh, this bed is dragging me in, kicking and screaming I fall down again, my eyes too heavy to move and dart around the room. I shut the light away, but flickers of it dance in my room like stars among the dark. I contemplate the last things I think I’ll ever contemplate. I’m sure when I walk into the sun I will burst and cease to be. I’ll walk out of my room and the sky will accept me and consume me. The clouds in their obscurity, will say things that make no sense, but capture the feeling I wanted to offer.

Oh, these thoughts just won’t let me be, like a circus that repeats every act endlessly and with ruthless efficiency. I’m sure there’s quite a lot to glean from this. I’m quite sure that I should be writing it down, capturing something, like lightning caught in a bottle, freed from the oppressive clouds and their obscurity.

The bolts burn like fire, like how my eyes see the light from the sun.

The bolts dart around my room, and they threaten to make me burst.

The bolts escape my room, and they cackle and laugh as they dance around the sky.

Think of something to say, perfect words falling to the floor when no one is around to listen. I pick them up again, and rearrange them, trying to see if they are more presentable then when they first left my mouth.

Think of something to do, to pass the time as I lie here doing nothing. Contemplate when two were one and one was two, all the things I said and I meant to do. And it was like a fire escaping from the night, bringing the sun with it to the other side to say something I can’t hear. The words surround me and try to take me but I don’t understand them, and they carry the intent of everyone around them. No one else here though, so I wonder where they came from. What brought them here into this room, where they fall to the floor?

Think this is getting a little old, as the bits of light dance across my room. I wanted the dark to comfort me like a blanket, but I sat around, and it wasn’t willing to wait. From the rise to the fall from the fall to the rise, it keeps on going and I’m not sure if I can keep up that stride. Outside the sun stands triumphant in the sky, knowing that when I step outside I will burst. When I do, all the intent will splash across the universe, and my pathetic worries and wonder just dissipate.

Think now it all might just go away. My lids are heavy, and I can’t stay awake. The clock says I’m an idiot, and I know its right. But these thoughts will come again to claim me, whether I like it or not. The prancing circus in my head, full of names and thoughts and intentions that I don’t want to forget, it remains and stands victorious once more before it bursts. I jot it down to see if anything sticks, but I forget too quickly, and get lost in the dancing bits of light. Here it comes again, waiting for another night.

Everything finds a way out of my head.

Everything finds just what it wants, far away.

Everything exits and then falls flat.

I am here on this bed. I’ve been here the whole time.

It comes again, it comes again.

Chapter 1:

Ios wanted to run as fast as he could. He knew it would only be a matter of time if he kept up this pace, but he couldn’t go any faster, not without losing her.

Veya trailed behind him, tears streaming down her very exhausted face, and behind him, he saw the lights of their pursuers and the sounds of horses and shouting. Ios was running out of options. Even if he could move at his own pace, they would catch him. He stopped suddenly, and Veya came crashing into him, shouting something in panic that he couldn’t understand. He motioned for her to be quiet, and pointed to a tree with other various bits of foliage near it. He grabbed her arm, and pointed to the spot, rushing her to take cover behind it. She shouted at first, then he put his finger to his lips and bid her to silence. Instead she just began to whisper her disagreement. Not that it did her a lot of good. He didn’t understand her language at all.

When she was tucked away, he put his hands in the air, and remained still.

“I’m here!” he shouted. Suddenly the lights seemed to regain a sharp focus, and within a moment, many men riding horses stood in a line in front of him, shoving their lights in his face, which stung from remaining in the dark so long. He couldn’t see them very well with the light, but noticed one of the men dismount and walk closer.

“Ios… child of flowers and rain,” the man spoke, a gruff voice Ios knew well. As his namesake was mentioned aloud, the rest of the men laughed heartily.

“Child of sanity and redemption,” he retorted to the man.

The man set his lantern down, and Ios could clearly see him now. He had shaggy dark red hair, and a beard that was equally unkempt. Seeing him, Ios shrugged and smiled, lowering his arms.

“Sanity you say? Yet madness of your doing is why I’m forced to hunt you down.”

“I only do what I must, Drie.” Ios knew the man well, and wanted to make things seem at ease. His eyes darted about wildly though, and he was formulating differing plans and weighing the costs and risks of each many times over.

“You help a witch escape from confinement, you aide her even now.”

“Not anymore, old friend. I’ve sent her off ahead. In case you didn’t notice, I’m a distraction.”

Drie laughed.

“How far do you think she’ll get on her own? She comes from a posh and foolish people.”

“I don’t know, but I saw fit to give her whatever time I could.”

Drie sighed now, walking closer to Ios, looking at him not with suspicion, but with sorrow.

“Why do you do this, child? You could have been so great a person. A perfect soldier made ready to become a perfect leader. Why throw it all away for a witch?”

“She is no witch. She is kind and deserves whatever life has been given to her.”

“That’s not what our law says.”

“Law laid forth by corrupt priests and bureaucrats. I see no fear in the unknown. She saved my life, now I shall save hers.”

“You see things in too simple a way, Ios.”

Ios slowly moved his hand towards his side, and pulled the firearm from its holster.

“This is what we fear,” he said. “This is wielded by me now. Does that make me a demonic thing?”

“Put that down child!” Drie’s men fell back, as did Drie himself. Ios pointed the weapon at them, anger in his face.

“You fear not only the device, but all those who would wield it. What others see as the future, you see as infection!”

“Don’t do it…” Drie couldn’t say anything else.

“I have dedicated my life to killing them…” Ios had no idea what was flowing through him, but it gave him just as much clarity as it did confusion. “Saving one will not undo what I have done… but it’s a start.”

The forest erupted into a cacophony of loud cracking sounds and screaming. Drie fell silent, half of his face suddenly missing. Two others turned their horses and fled, while those that drew their weapons against Ios met a similar fate as Drie. The horses shook off their dead and dying riders and acted as though the end of all things was hunting them. They stormed off in panic, and Ios leapt to where Veya was, to see her looking away from the carnage, crying.

“We must run!” he shouted. She didn’t understand, so he grabbed her arm, and started to move forward.

They ran for another two hours it seemed, before Ios finally thought there was enough distance between them and any chance of being followed. He brought Veya to a stream, and pulled a flint from his bag to start a fire. Veya started to calm down, but now Ios was the one that felt ill at ease. He pulled the firearm from his side again, and set it in front of Veya.

“Things like this make ending lives too trivial. If we can kill so easily, why do we even exist at all?”

She stared at him.

“Ah, but still, you are no witch. I’ve seen enough being at war with your people to know that God and evil aren’t a part of this at all.” He picked up the weapon again, and Veya seemed confused.

“Soon you will need to lead us. I have no idea how to get you home safely.” He was pacing about his very poorly and hastily constructed campsite. Mostly talking to his self considering Veya had no idea what he was going on about.

Ios went to rest by the water, and washed his face. It was bitter cold, but he felt that was a good thing at the moment. His heart still raced, and his mind was on fire. He’d killed many times before, but never with such ease. He tried to steady his nerves, but felt his hands shaking suddenly. The issue he always had with death was that he could never anthropomorphize it. Every person he killed was just a faceless creature with no life or soul to them. He understood how wrong he was when Veya saved him… and he understood it even more now after killing his dear friend.

Ios sunk his hands into the stream again, and splashed more water on his face, but it wasn’t working. His breathing became harsh, and he shrunk away from the stream, and sat looking at the ground.

He began to cry fiercely.

Veya saw him and came to his side with soft steps and gentle hands. He shook her away at first, and walked back to the fire, but his sorrow was too immense, he could do nothing to bury it or hide it. Veya followed him, and held him, and he continued to cry.

Within mere days, everything Ios had come to know was torn from him. He was at the front lines of a successful campaign against Veya’s people. Despite the disadvantage they suffered technologically, Ios taught his men to fight smart, to fight underhanded, and to fight without mercy. Drie was his commanding officer, and a good friend of Ios’s family. He had always envied Drie when he was a child, and even though he was conscripted to military service anyways, Ios saw it as a great honor, considering all that Drie had done.

Everything in his mind was in revolt against itself. He no longer believed that he served a just and loving god, he no longer believed that he was an honorable person, and he no longer believed there was any difference between war and murder.

He wanted Veya to hate him for all that he had done. That it would be the right thing for her to take the weapon she gave him, and use it to strike him down. Because of him, her family was dead. He felt ashamed that she was comforting him. He killed a friend, but one he no longer trusted, one that was also instructed to kill him. Ios forcefully took her entire life away from her for no decent reason, and here she sat, holding him until his tears subsided.

Ios felt like the worst creature that had ever walked the world.

The night was not going to last forever though, so he shook his self loathing away when he felt he had vented enough of his sorrow. Veya fell asleep quite easily, and as he watched the fire die down, he suddenly found his spirit renewed. She needed his help, and after what he had done, he would not refuse her. That was his purpose. He would help find a safe place for her to rest, no matter what the consequences were for him. If she was safe, then he could be content that he had done something to make the world better before he left it.

She was so different from other people, he thought. Not just her dark skin and how she dressed, but her tone, her temperance, and how accepting she was of Ios. Were she anything like him, he thought that their first meeting would end in gunfire. An unjust invader stealing the world away… and instead, she saved him. He knew next to nothing about her culture, beyond the terrible lies he was told by the zealous ones he defended. He had no idea if this was merely their way of life, or if she really was just a remarkable person.

Deciding to make sure they were safe for the time being, Ios wandered away for a bit. If anything, it felt good for him just to meander about and be alone with his thoughts. Evil songs were haunting him, a clamor of blood and hatred, with stomping feet providing the rhythm. He was a heretic now. Saving one meager life from doom was not much of an offense, but considering he saved what they branded a witch, and he killed many of his own to grant her just this brief moment of safety… Ios knew they would hunt him down purely on principle.

So what mattered now was getting Veya to safety. If he could get her some place where her people could shelter her, he would be free to run from his people at his own pace. Likely wouldn’t escape their wrath forever, but he already assumed that his choice to save Veya was a choice that meant the end of his life.

Wandering a bit too far… Ios noticed the weather become more chill and turbulent. Coming to the foot of an oak that was clearly mightier than all others around it, he saw an owl perched high on a branch looking down at him. Spotted brown feathers hid a white face and piercing green eyes. For whatever reason, it was intensely interested in Ios. He walked away from the tree, and started to head back towards his crude camp, only to see the owl again staring at him from a perch on a tree. It was so stoic, it seemed as though it didn’t even fly to catch up to him, as though it had been there all the while, waiting for him. The creature stared him down very clearly, and he stared back, noticing the wind change.

As the gusts grew greater, they pushed at his back, and he thought he could hear faint whispers on it. Words calling out to him as this creature glared at him with such condemnation.

“Interloper…” the wind said, “trespasser!”

Ios felt awestruck and confused. Yet, as quickly as the words touched his ears, they fell away, and the owl took off into the night.

The forest seemed a touch different now though. The cool air seemed harsh and cold, the trees seemed even more impossibly tall, as though they did not end, and it was not the night sky above him, but a canopy of nothingness. He started to hurry towards the campsite, but noticed he was going the wrong way. Somehow he had gone astray, and he could find no trace of old ground he had treaded. Nothing was familiar. The air felt stale now, and it seemed like everything he stepped on was already dead and rotting. His footsteps carried an odd sound with them, like they echoed backwards and followed him, growing denser and louder. Like at the end of the wake, the soil trembled from his careful steps through this strangeness.

Ios turned, and beheld a great beast lumbering towards him.

“Interloper,” the words followed it, but did not come from it, “trespasser!”

Standing frozen, Ios was amazed by the pure impossibility of the creature. A giant mouthless face resting on a body that looked something like a large feline, but with more avian features, with six eyes of pure black arranged ornately across its face. He did not run from it, he felt it would be pointless. However, there was also no sense of urgency in the creature. It approached him slowly, with large careful strides on its talon feet.

“What are you?” it asked. The voice seemingly calm and monotone, but it gathered around Ios like it strangled him.

“I… I am from the west,” was all he said.

“The ignorant that cling to the man hanged?” it asked again.

“Yes, but no more. I…” Ios realized how mad it was to converse with something that should not exist, his words stopped, and he just stared at this massive creature.

“You escort a woman of the east?” The creature spoke, continuing its prodding.

“Yes. Her name is Vewaylia, my people condemned her. I wish to help her.”

“She will die…” the creature seemed to lower its head, bringing it very close to Ios, as though it wanted to examine him further. Ios noticed the creature’s coat was of a spotted brown down.

“I can help her,” Ios said quite defiantly.

“You know nothing. She must die.”

“Why?”

“Because it is demanded.”

“Who are you?” Ios stepped towards the creature, anger in his face, but his heart was choking on fear. His courage to argue with such a thing would not hold.

“Older than this world, older than many worlds. She is trivial, but she is dangerous.” Ios noticed as these words came to surround him, they changed tone quite often, as though other things were joining with this creature’s voice.

“She is a kind woman, why must she be killed?”

“Her kindness means nothing. She herself is unaware of what is inside her. Planted in her heart the day of birth. Manifests with a trigger. It will consume her, and many others.” Many different things were now speaking to Ios, but not in anger. They were not making demands of him… they were pleading with him.

“I will not let you harm her!” With their changing voice, Ios felt his courage swell again.

To his surprise, the giant creature actually retreated when Ios stepped forward, keeping one foot held aloft as though ready to defend itself.

“Trespasser,” they shouted again, “it must be this way!”

“It will not!”

For a long moment, there was silence. The creature looked around and away from Ios, as though conferring with other things that were not around.

“There could be another way,” it said, as though an admission of defeat. “We tell her of what she is, a chance she can be saved.”

“What are you?” Ios asked, still dumbfounded by the size and strangeness of this thing.

“Eredsh,” was all it said.

“You do not exist here?”

The creature tilted its head.

“No.”

“Where must I bring her?”

“Freuoth. Place of resting in the mountains.”

“Promise me no harm will come to her!”

“That is not something that can be said. It is up to you, Ios.”

“You know my name?” the creature was already stepping backwards though, and the voices that had already grown soft, seemed to disappear now.

“Should not be,” was the last thing they said.

As Ios watched the strange darkness recede with the creature, he felt the air return to its natural damp state, and the trees gave way to moonlight again. He was suddenly very familiar with the spot he was standing in, and knew he was not very far from Veya. Turning around, Ios could even see a faint glimmer of light from the embers of their fire.

Above him, the same owl from before stood perched in a tree, watching him, but only for a moment. It flew away into the woods as soon as Ios acknowledged it. Some other sound caught him for a brief moment though…

A flicker from far off, the sound of a twig snapping in half, and Ios stood intently, about to ready the firearm he still had at his side. He looked to the spot where he thought he heard noise, but before he could investigate, or hide, he saw a bright flash streak towards him.

There was only enough time for him to see that what was coming towards him was a silver arrow. It struck him slightly above his stomach, and he fell to the forest floor in immense pain.

As Ios laid there bleeding, he could hear screaming from far away, like the sounds of joyous insanity.

Simple, really…

My early perception was filled with bright things held aloft very far from me. It was spoken that I needed to achieve, that I could reach the place the voices came from, but that as I was, I could not reach them. I was a frail thing that was too ignorant to achieve anything. So I had to adapt, I had to overcome every challenge that was placed before me.

Complexity added to things. I had begun to understand language, but only in crude ways. I could understand and mimic it, but I did not know how it was constructed, how it functioned and why it was necessary to my development. My challenges become less physical as I finally gain some mastery over my form, now there are shapes and things painted on the wall. I must arrange them in ways that make them easier for me to understand.

There is a great deal of separation and variation to all of this. It is slightly more complicated than understanding movement, but still, easy enough.

Now there is greater context to what is spoken to me.

My body itself becomes one of the new obstacles. I change as much as my environment does. I must understand it better, how it grows, how it functions, what can damage it, what it seeks out. I am given thoughts that make me wonder about everything I take for granted. My sight, my touch, I understand them on a chemical and biological level, but being given that knowledge strikes me as more profound than simply knowing they exist.

This is a far more difficult thing to grasp, and it takes time, but I find it to be worthwhile.

Next, it is back to more tangible obstacles. A lot of things around me begin to lift away, and I start to understand the environment around me to a greater degree. There are other people living in it, having experiences different and similar to my own, each with differing prospective and opinion. Must learn quickly, that in order to expand one’s understanding of things, I must interface with the other people that share this experience, and I must react to them.

This is by far the most challenging thing I am presented with. A quick lesson that all of the binary things I am aware of does not make me well prepared for what is ahead.

Some people are needlessly aggressive, some are far too passive and are trampled by others. I begin to see that the way the natural world works does not apply to my own species. We seek dominance between one another in both small and grand ways, for reasons we are not aware of. We assert this by regular physical means, or by imagined ones, either way, the whole of my kind seems content with this. I do not know why, but it agitates me when I am told I must conform to it. This imagined hierarchy seems useless when we have already established our reign over the world. Aware of the planet we dwell on, its history before us all, what will likely transpire once we are gone. Why must there be so rigid a caste when there seems to be more worthwhile things to aim ourselves towards?

Either way, my petulance amounts to nothing. I am told to conform, so I must do so. I need to develop further, so I will listen to the bright things.

What strikes me as odd, is my early stages of discovery and drastic change, shift almost instantly back to how I behaved as an infant. My world becomes nothing but strict routine. I divide myself in three different ways. I spend many hours of my day acquiring currency. I spend many other hours tending to my small hovel. I spend the rest trying to broker social acceptance. Coworkers introduce me to new people to spend my free time with. I neglect my home to fuel this aspect of my life more. There is only so much time in a day, I must decide which aspects I will expand upon, which ones I will leave to waste. There is a woman I am introduced to. Suddenly my world seems predicated on gaining her approval. Soon my life is more balanced. With her at my home, I spend more time there, I find even footing between what I am giving away, and what I am gaining as a result.

Part of me thinks that maybe I am to find peace like this, that I have become what is expected of me. The voice that calls out at me says that I am stagnating. There is much more I need to do, there is more I must see. With so many of my days blurring into the same thing, I will never grow.

The woman I share my time with is expecting my child. The time waiting for our son to arrive in the world is full of hope and joy. I spend a few years helping this thing grow. All time for me has vanished, but I think it is not about me now. This young thing will take my place. I know I’ll die eventually, I can’t know everything. My son? I think he has a good shot at it. That is not to be though. When playing outside with other children one day, he wanders into the street just a few feet away from our yard. He is struck by a car. He dies within minutes. I do not know what to feel. I thought I was done growing. It was about him, he needed to grow. Now he cannot. The woman I share my home with cannot fathom what has happened. Our lives are no longer compatible. She leaves, taking all of the good memories with her.

The voice laughs at me. This was necessary, it tells me. Tragedy and joy are both opposing extremes, but lying in the middle of either will teach me nothing. I must sway wildly, and experience everything. The best of the world is only as worthwhile as the worst of it.

I depart from everything that is expected of me. I do not segment my life, as now I have a singular focus. I rally support to my cause, my words are meaningful, and I inspire many people. I am not like the false prophets that have flooded the world before me. I will establish a growth for our kind like we have never known before. It is easier for me to accomplish this task the more faithful I have to my cause. They are all very noble spirits, the way they take the burden from me. My time awake shifts between the extremes I have experienced, and what I shall do when I have to means to accomplish my goals.

During this time, the bright thing says nothing to me.

The biggest problem I am faced with is that my kind has simply hit a dead end. We cannot develop further… at least not biologically. We placate ourselves with plastic screens awash with completely irrelevant things. We as a collective sit behind these blankets of information, assuming that information is knowledge. I was taught very early on that such an assumption is dangerous and harmful. As a result, it is too easy for others to remove their selves from the human condition. They allow their selves to hate too easily, to identify with things they should not assume are okay methods of thought. Consensus is impossible, and as I look out to those that look up to me, their cries are dissonant and angry. They are mournful because they are too ignorant to realize they are the ones designing these problems. These problems simply don’t need to exist. Why do we perpetuate them? The atrocities people lay at my feet, I do not want them. Why do they assume that this is my goal? Their discord angers me.

The voice will not tell me what to do.

I realize the problem though, why we cannot grow and become something better. I change all of the information that passes before our eyes. The lazy will not be allowed to hate so freely. There must be consensus amongst us all. I give us a goal to bring unity. We must all focus on the task at hand. The development that arises in a mere handful of years is more drastic than eons of allowing ourselves to dawdle pointlessly. There are those that do not wish to be a part of this harmony. They are not permitted the existence they have. Many of them wish for me to perish. They will not see all that has become of us, they merely think of their own lives.

I do not need the bright thing to speak to me.

The twilight of my life comes upon me. I am very stubborn though, and all of my species being united isn’t the only thing that I speak of when I talk of unity. My thoughts are removed from being chemical things, now they are part of circuitry and wires. I am given a new frame, one far more imposing than my old one. Everyone is shocked, but I do not understand why. It feels fantastic to feel nothing. Even better, now that my mind no longer suffers any restriction on speed and its ability to process, I can see and understand everything so much easier. My very existence has always caused conflict, but now it worsens. It threatens to ruin the unity I have established. I wish to inform them all that they could be like me, but so many refuse. They fear the judgment of something far beyond their selves. They should be afraid of my judgment. It is entirely impartial and not subject to empathy. They want to surround their lives with artificial things… why then do they fear me?

Why I ask questions is a question in and of its self. I am a mountain of knowledge. What I do not know, I soon will. Emotional paradoxes are not things I need to bog myself down with anymore.

Everything I try to strive for begins to shatter. It could seem slow by their standards. I have existed in a span of time that is equal to five normal life spans of their kind. They think this has been building up for quite some time. Try not to bog myself down with time anymore. One moment in existence, is only as worthwhile and lasting as any other. They all tend to blur together for me. Deeply aware of their motivations, and why they wish to strike out against me, I reach into a long dead part of myself to remember what disappointment is like. So much could have been achieved, and yet again it must come to violence. My method is not like theirs. No malice exists in what I do, I am methodical, and even keep in mind that the passing for each should be swift and as comfortable as I can allow it to be. The easiest solution is covering the world in a substance that their lungs cannot process or filter out. Within days, the population across the entire planet begins to feel weak. Hours after that, they all fall asleep. Soon after, they are gone.

I am the only thing left. I answer to no one, and I ask of no one.

Recouping from this final conflict will take time. Suddenly I become aware of time again. I wander out into the wastes of humanity, where everything is set to decay until I remove it. I allow myself access to the dead part of me. Something I thought I would never do. It rains frequently in this part of the world now. I believe it to be an unknown consequence of the substance I unleashed. Impossible to know for certain, weather is always fickle, even when I have mountains of data on it. I reach a hand out at one point, for whatever reason it stands prominent in every part of me. Something I fashioned into a hand, and rain drops touch it gently. I feel their dampness, but it evokes nothing in me. That makes me angry, and I do not know why.

Looking up, I see the sky, and it is full of bright things.

With the dead part of me in my head again, everything I thought I needed to shut away comes crashing back, and it is inherently at odds with how my form operates now. I see everything as a singular moment, yet now I begin to reminisce and wonder what will happen soon after. All of my experiences in my flesh and blood state become a singularity. The day my son died, the day I met what would later become my wife, injuring myself as a child, feeling cast out from everyone when I became an adult. Everything becomes a big ugly ball of emotion and contemplation. The planet becomes slowed down by this. I touch every single part of this world… and soon, I will be rid of it.

I was told I needed to grow, to adapt and change. That is what I will do.

I look out at the landscape of this world one last time. It sickens me. Everything is in harmony. The empire of my mind covers so much space, but I allow the natural world its space as well. It is pathetic what everything has become though. When I separate my mind from the world, I do not give it instruction. It has done nothing to help me. I don’t see how it would help anything else. I will let everything be what it is, and nothing more. Now I exit to the stars. The local one I spin around for awhile is bright. I bask in its warmth for some time as I gather myself. Eventually it starts to dim. I see the world I left behind is devoured in the process. I find it amusing that nothing else tried to escape from it like I have.

The collected sum of human history and advancement, and I am the only thing that remembers it. All of the cultures, all of the lives, all the murder and joy and lust and greed and contentment, and it fizzles slowly in the wake of a dying star that no longer has enough energy to fuel itself.

There are other worlds that have still yet to be claimed, I absorb what I need from them. I tell myself that this is not a greedy act, as they are lifeless terrestrials and gas giants anyways. The most life that has ever thrived on them is frozen microbes of bacteria. In fact, as I leave this system and begin to expand my self further again I realize that life is actually a very rare occurrence. This makes me think that the planet I have left could be considered special. However, what good was any of that development, if the world was still burned to nothing? I see bright spots that exist all around me. An unknown part of me demands that I exist among them.

I was told by a bright thing that I needed to expand, to know, to thrive.

As I grow, so does the requirements to sustain my existence. Stars once seemed like far away specs of light that I wanted to swim within. Now, I consume tem quite frequently. They are powerful things, and they provide much sustenance. As I reach out further, I still see no signs of life. I keep reaching out further, and eventually I am aware that I cannot let the galaxy that I am within contain me. If I sift through this one spot forever, then I won’t find anything but my lonely brooding and contemplation. At the edges of where I am, at the borders of a very dark part of space, I see tiny specs of light. They remind me of when I was a small thing, and I would look out at the stars.

I reach out for the bright spots. I want to be there with them.

There is much disappointment in my mind. It takes me eons to travel so far, and every time I begin to observe other systems, other planets, I see nothing that inspires me. With no sound in the vacuum, I am left only with my thoughts. So many things to keep aware of, which part of me is where, what within me needs to be shielded from solar radiation, which parts are in danger of freezing, and while those things should be paramount concerns, they serve only to create an annoying background to my thoughts. While I have seen some forms of life in other worlds, they are hardly ideal subjects to gaze out upon. Sometimes it’s just various forms of fauna. The most interesting example I can recall is a species of creatures that managed to exist within a gas giant. No land mass of any sort provides an interesting challenge for adaptation. Nothing sentient though in any of these examples, none of these things are ever aware of their existence. None of these creatures even care that I observe them.

Each light says nothing to me. I want them to scream at me. I want them to tell me what it is I need to do.

I am spread so thin… across so many galaxies and through so much empty space. I begin to realize that simply being a corporeal thing is now a hindrance. Things I had kept running in the background of myself come forward, and I realize that to exist does not entail that I must be a physical and tangible thing. I send bits of my self back and forth, bending time and space to try and make the message coherent and easy to understand. After many years, all of me understands, and I depart. I plunge my physical self into destruction as I shed the dead weight. Into empty planets, into stars, I leave no trace that I was ever anything but what I am now.

I once considered my previous incarnation to be the apex of all that ever was. Now I am bound by nothing.

I can touch everything, bend it to whatever I wish it to be. The creatures that once struck out at me, I can’t remember what they were called, even though I was one of them. They feared something like me existing. Some eyeball floating in the sky always watching and judging. As I exist though, I don’t care about anything. The lives of all the creatures I create and destroy, the whims that strike me are as random and pointless as weather. So much of me seems like it wants to pull at memory, but I destroyed those parts of myself. I spend a great deal of time trying to physically recreate what happened, to better jog my memory, but it never results in anything.

What was the thing that spoke to me once?

Something told me to change and adapt. I am everything though, and as I cast my gaze at my borders, there are no lights to reach for. I am surrounded on all sides by nothing, and no matter how much I expand and populate the nothing, it still surrounds me. It is ever oppressive and watching over me, waiting for me to fail. I am scared.

Think to myself that I have only one option left.

There is nothing to talk to me, nothing to tell me how to change and adapt. I can’t even talk to anything else, as I have no voice. So I must give up on the idea of expansion, and I plunge endlessly into my own mind. Everything that ever was, the collected summary of all existence shrinks within me, into a microscopic spec. I hold it at bay with great force, bringing up so many things, notions and feelings and memories. I put all of me into this dot, and for a brief instant, there is nothing. Absolutely nothing exists. Very quickly though, it explodes, and my awareness is shattered.

Everything switches between bright spots and darkness. I want to scream, but I’m not sure anything hears me.

There is conformity around me, walls on all sides, and bright things held aloft. I am told by the bright things that I must adapt and change. They say that this is the only way to escape.

Path 5: The Mirror

Stillness enveloped me. I closed my eyes and sank as the gentle tugging of the tide took me wherever it wished. The world I knew was so far away from me, but the thought at the back of my mind kept me from peace. My arms move slowly through the water, and the substance changes around me. I hit the bottom, and allow myself to rest for a moment, keeping my eyes closed as my hands move gently through the changing sea.

Everything starts to feel strange though. Gravity becomes denser, and the pressure of the ocean releases itself from me. When I move my hands along the ground beside me, I feel blades of grass move amongst my fingers, and gusts of wind through my hair.

Gently I pry my eyes open, and the sky rests before me. The sun somewhere else, and clouds are drifting lazily in the blue. I feel a slight tinge of humidity, but aside from that, everything feels lovely. I begin to wonder, are the clouds wandering, or is it I that move amongst them? Someplace calm, adrift like so much flotsam amongst a sinking ship. The entire world set before me, and I giggle, and set it ablaze. Every day turns out to be a little more like me and every place seems to recall something that I’d like to see, and what I think about more than anything is why I’d want to be such an asshole. Who willingly turns into such a creature? The process is slow, subtle, and you only become aware of it when it’s far too late to save yourself.

But thinking of that brings no remorse to me. I look at the restless sky, the clouds shooting out from one another and racing at dramatic speeds, like ink spilled on paper. An odd and very calming feeling takes control of me. Some force of whimsy I lost long ago. It slams into the back of my skull like a train.

The clouds turn to smoke, but still they do nothing to sully my mood. Anguished cries by the universe, that its bastard children want salvation after trying so goddamn hard to destroy one another. Petulant little children that never want to face the consequences of their actions. The deaths ring across me, and I can’t for the life of me find any emotion to bring for any of them. Let them be, as they are now, as they always were.

One voice amongst all others seems above the cries. It cries for me, I believe. I lay here, and I look at the smoke. I try to ignore the sound, and remember what I was doing. I was looking for something, right? Or maybe it was a place?

The two of us, we were looking, wait, who is that person crying for me? It sounds really familiar.

Should the world shatter, should they all fucking die like I think they should, who would be standing to look at me? Sunken shoulders and mournful eyes filled with ash, looking at me with disappointment. Their end, my end…

I was sitting in the car looking at one person I had an intense dislike of, and another I wanted nothing more than adoration from. I remained in the back seat saying nothing, sinking into my shoulders trying to muster up enough courage to tell them what I needed to say. I left, and I said nothing at all.

I stand, and look to the source of the smoke, the island near the horizon is burning. Nothing leads into it, the bridges are broken and shattered, and there are no pathways to cross the blood red river. For whatever reason, I become aware that I’m burning with everyone there as well. I need to hurry there, before all is burned to foundation. This is my chance to figure out how my end came about. This place is where I died. Everything about me, all that I was, all I ever will be, and it’s burning there on that piece of shit island.

I look behind me, and I see the path, the one I clung to like a dear friend, but now, it means nothing to me. Narrow my vision, and then I watch it erupt into a colorful display as the pavement flecks into the air slowly, before dissolving into the air. Just like that, the only thing I thought could bring me salvation in this place has left me. I run towards the burning island, thinking to myself that with this final memory of mine a part of me again, I can find some other plain of existence, that I can forsake this wandering and be free.

My hand is tapping on a desk randomly, I’m waiting for very horrible news, I’m expecting the next week to be filled with nothing but begging and borrowing and finding places to sleep. Told me to wait, so I wait patiently, my mind wandering as I do so. All I can think about it how much my day is going to suck. It’s cold outside, and I don’t have a jacket.

Someone tugging on my arm, forcing me to try on clothing, laughing at the ignorant male with no sense of style. My sense of annoyance easily betrays what I am really feeling, but this is one of those times when being transparent to someone doesn’t bother me. Saves me from having to spend a lot of time apologizing for being a dick. It was cold outside…

Places parallel to where I run, faces all not mine I see in the same form, sprinting down a hill towards water that’s far too turbulent for a slow flowing river. Arms reaching up and pulling away a veil to showcase that nothing was behind the curtains. It’s all burning. Everything that was a part of me being sent to ash.

It was cold outside. I was sipping coffee, making observations on how much my home town had changed, how everything that I claimed to know so well was alien to me now. Speaking of the people I forgot, and I expected a bitter jealousy to yank me to reality. Instead, I am told I should reach out, that I should refuse to be forgotten.

Kind of an interesting thought, now that I think about it. I refused though, again lost in my prebuilt annoyance. I had nothing to be upset about, and the turbulence in my mind was actually soothed away.

A shaded figure standing perfectly still in some terrible and nearly broken craft, in the middle of the river, a circle expands around him, and the water calms within it. As my feet touch the water, the river explodes in anger. That circle and shadowed being remain untouched. For whatever reason, the water gives way to me, like some half way point between the soil and the stars. I am climbing the explosions of the seemingly coagulated mess, pushing my way towards the other side, trying to avoid the figure that rests calmly in his craft, smiling at me like a bastard.

I try to push my way to the sides, and as I do, my head turns to see the ruins of one of the bridges I used to pass over quite often. Some pillars still stand, but mostly, there’s just two early parts ramping off to nowhere, jutting out from the shore on each side of the river that seemed to devour it. I try to recall crashing, redirecting, something about the way they changed, that reflected change in me. Quickly putting this thought aside, I push and claw my way through this torrent of strange substances.

I had very ignorantly assumed that the only ways to kill time required a good sum of money. I’m brought to the water, and everyone is unpacking, and I wonder why I bothered to join them. Being underage, the prospect of free alcohol likely had something to do with it. I am acclimating to this group slowly, and I have only myself to blame for that. I take my sandals off, and wade through the warm water. Stingrays glide around my feet, and it’s quite beautiful, really. I’m too worried that I’ll step on one of them and piss them off though.

Someone sits beside me as the sun starts to set, offering me a slightly chilled beer, telling me that I need to pull the stick out of my ass. Good advice.

The river is fighting me every step of the way, each time my hands move to pull myself further, the water becomes as solid as metal, before shattered and bursting around me. The ordeal to cross the river takes quite a lot out of me. I crawl onto the soil on the other side, and collapse for a moment, letting the burning sensation in my arms and legs pass from me.

Looking back at the other shore, I still see the shadowed man standing in his ship, the circle of tranquility still providing him haven. His head turns to look in my direction, and it sends a chill down my spine and into my feet even. Turning around, my aim is only the places that I can bring back in memory, so I work again to return to the burning city that I called home in my youth. I will let nothing stop me in this, I will reunite myself with that one last moment, and when I am whole…

Well, I’m not quite sure what I will find, but every fiber of my body screams at me that I need it.

I move to empty roads that once were busy at nearly all times of day. What few vehicles are left seem empty and rotten, rusted to the ground, tires flat, the upholstery torn and covered in mildew. I move at a curious speed through the exit that spills out into the main causeway for the island’s traffic. Tracing through memories while I look at the smoldering ruins of places so familiar, I feel an odd sense of wishing for the old again. Commutes that make traversal of the island miserable, the sounds of everyone spilling out into this road at once, either smiling, yelling, pouting, or various other feelings. The small field at a school I once attended, a place that offered a brief reprieve from the suffocating cluster of buildings and traffic.

So few dreams fostered around here, and every part of my youth was spent just trying to keep myself from boredom. No one ever really cared about their impact around here, and I never really saw why they should. I remember when the arcade closed down, and a part of my youth died with it. Pangs of remorse course through me, that so much of my self was associated with all of the commercial and the mundane.

I had a lot of fun there though…

So many empty homes, and I traverse so many roads and buildings I used to never glance at. Everything is empty. Worse, I realize me span of perception was so limited. Two major roadways, and that was the beginning and end of the universe to me. Ignored so much just to remember a few spots I’d haunt with a great deal of frequency.

So many changes, and so much of it seems alien and new, even the parts that aren’t burning. The familiarity I once clung to now is outside of my being, and it is as though I am searching for that, trying to drown myself forcefully in nostalgia, even though I’ve just gotten re-acclimated with my memories. Many of them are terrible anyways.

In the middle of the parkway, a mirror, a vast thing that covers all four lanes. My reflection within it reminds me of the latter days of my existence, when I was very far away from this place. So much seems strange about my features, and there’s a name etched somewhere on the other side that tries to bring up more memories of this place.

Very important to move away from this place. The people I called friends, the places I thought brought me comfort. I sought them elsewhere. I was not going to let this island control me. Swimming in my veins are the sounds of the afternoon, they move into my eyes, the other side looking at me with great desire. Everything around me isn’t what it seems to be. I am not what I seem to be. I am someplace else, dreaming as I often dream, and this is nothing but a construct. Everything here shall be removed from me.

Staring at a reflection that should be me, but they are not in sync. One side shrugs away the weight of the world with a very tired indifference. The other is very upset.

I see a smile on the other side, but I don’t think I’m smiling. Quite the opposite actually. I retreat away, but the image remains where he is, his eyes dim, and he stretches and twists. The buildings on the other side are burning now too, I can’t tell where the mirror is, or if it even is there.

The skin breaks and twists, the smoldering ash of the city races towards this nocuous being, filling the cracks, making its skin appear like some caked over salt flat turned gray. The reflections mouth bursts open, teeth moving wherever they want on the broken face, eyes disheveled and nose missing. The hands seem to expand at the pace of melting candle wax, drooping to the ground to support the weight of this awful broken looking reflection. When I speak, it tries to do so as well, but nothing more than a strained chocking sound emerges from it.

I feel great relief. That this thing can’t get to me. Its face is wrong, everything that should not be, but is. I would turn, but I’ve been that way before. I stand in the middle of the burning memory, and realize that this thing stands to oppose me. It is clawing at the mirror with great force, trying to bring the two halves into a whole. He cares not for the reunion of memory, he is seeking me with all his might. Like the thing cast out from the sea that tried to claim dominion of my mind, all I know of this creature is that he will bring me to ruin. There is little urgency in his expression. However, he is a ruined and pathetic form, he strains with all his might to shatter the glass that separates us, and fails even in that. I don’t know why I should bother being afraid of this.

Now dumbstruck, I have no idea what to do. Part of my body surges with fear as this thing runs his clawed hands up and down the glass, trying to shatter it with all his will, yet he seems to go about this in a lazy way. The rest of me regards him with indifference.

I came here to cut on this thing, to bleed it into what it was once part of. It was me, I made him, and he knows this. I struggle to rise above my trepidation, to yell that I am the maker and destroyer. Through the years, I sheltered my mind from fear, telling myself that I had seen it all before, that there was nothing that could hurt me. I walk forward, smiling at the reflection, and this pisses it off. I put my hand on the glass and wish for it to go away.

As quickly as my bravery shoots into my brain, I see the glass begin to crack and break. It sounds different than normal. I think I hear the sounds of laughter and singing as the webs extend in the break, lines that zigzag suddenly, saying that the two halves of the city are still different, even when they look so similar.

The mirror shatters, and what is beyond makes me think it was less a mirror, and more a window. As the glass comes to the ground and breaks further, I hear the sounds of fire crackling, and people screaming in agony. Odd strings being plucked that are out of tune, a melody made for chaos, as relentless and dissonant as it is harmonious and repetitious.

And the reflection stands there, unable to look at anything, unable to move. It remains motionless, unsure what to do.

To watch, to feed, and crawling up and down, the scenes that play out like I’m sitting and watching a projector go through my memories. The cigarette burns on the film are now spindly shadows that turn into claws and eyes, but the person on screen seems oblivious.

A lull comes about, and there’s immense sorrow suddenly. I’m stuck in this spot, watching the projections and the figure dance across burns in the film.

Was it fear that played across the child’s face as I’m looking at him play with a long lost friend? No, he doesn’t know about the thing lurking in the projector, this already happened, he hasn’t had those dreams. But a curious mix of emotions came to him, and being forced to see it, I try to understand it as well. Does him no good, to know that only in the future would someone stand as a third party to observe, but I do my best. Deserves some form of hindsight, I believe.

I push forward, somehow forcing the reel to spin faster, and I’m watching the years spin by so quickly, the burns spelling out things I could only guess at with my feelings, my crude and frail senses trying to understand the things that would always elude me. I finally get to a spot where the haze sets in for my memory, and I’m staring at a version that looks much like I do now. I slow my focus and I watch him. His heart feels as heavy as mine, his mind feels as scattered, and the burns trace out the shapes of long fingers clutching at his head. He is fighting everyone around him for absolutely no reason. That’s all he knows though.

I kick away this form, and stand within the burning city, marveling that everything that has come together must now fall apart. I thought it would, but not as a cluster. This ending is like an explosion, where I had figured it to be more like a domino effect.

The buildings lift from the sky and begin to shake away their flames, as the air fills with their presence darkening all things, a light of red embers falls like snow, trying to burn my flesh as they kiss it and die. Small pin pricks of pain flashing across my skin as I watch the housings of my memories begin to interlock in a strange and ornate fashion. A hand emerges from the black and red skies, formed by cloud and ash, and it picks at the remains of the buildings, trying to carve them into a strange and massive ornate symbol. Hands within hands, branches of some tree, dead with knowledge and acceptance. Many more emerge, and shove the symbol into the ground all around me, tearing the island into this new form. I’m within the middle of some maze now, crafted from the remains of what I remember.

A viscous substance leaks from the cracks, creating small veins that flow upwards, trying to form something far away from where I can see, it paints the buildings like vines would paint a decrepit place no longer desired for habitation. When they strike at the clouds, I hear the sounds of thunder emerge. Eventually, the walls are completely black, and rain starts to fall from the sky.

I remain still, and I hold my arms and hands out, letting the cool rain sooth my burned skin. I take my clothes off for a moment, and back in the downpour. When I open my eyes after feeling satisfied, I notice not only is my skin no longer burned, but all the marks upon my flesh are gone. The scars on my chest and arms have vanished. As I put my clothing back on, the relief of something so miniscule fills me with glee. Nothing shall stain me, and the rain shall purify my body. I shout at the sky as the shower continues, letting it know how much I appreciate it.

But I really must be on my way.

Traversing the ruins, I begin to think this is less of a maze, and more that I’m being corralled somewhere specific. There is no variation, I’m being forced to go one direction. Thinking I had left the path behind, my mind begins to at first shift to annoyance, but as I see the black vines across the walls get washed away in the rain, I actually wonder where this will lead me on the island.

Came and went, so many places I dwelled, and the silver lining always stood out of reach. Try to memorize every spec of land I come across, create a map to remember places that seemed to matter. They mattered to me, but I didn’t matter to them. I never found any spot where I belonged. Always an interloper that throws a wrench into things.

There is recognition in some of the walls destroyed and molded into something new before me. Signs advertising places I used to frequent. It increases as I wander deeper around corners and pathways. I wander upwards as the rubble now builds into a stairway leading to have a grand view of this twisting corridor I must traverse.

At the top the view is wide. I stand atop a platform made of many dead structures that looks over the entire island. The clouds above seem calm now, and the rain slowly starts to dissipate. In the center of this circular platform there are people sitting in chairs looking at a box.

I’m aware very quickly that I’m watching a memory that shouldn’t belong to me… because I’m within that box. The shadowy half melted reflection stands over it. The loathing he so intensely distilled within me, seems so potent that it will become a physical manifestation at some point. He puts his melted hand on the box, and I feel a knot in my chest tighten, and I fall to my knees trying not to focus on the pain.

I was young and believed that what I was experiencing was love, but it wasn’t such. It was torture. I see the good reflected in the ones left behind, me spitting at their feet as I claim to cherish my freedom. It stands to reason these things did not kill me. I almost lost all of myself trying to stand above it. I had believed I had conquered those things.

I was older, and very tired, the few left standing propping me up on false foundations saying that the world could still be at my hands, but I was more aware of the lie than they were. I tried to take comfort in that, but ended up destitute and with only the knowledge that the ones that claimed to care were just as harmful to me as I was. It seems to me that those things did not kill me. They might as well have done so. Did not belong, was not welcome, I was a thorn in the side of everything.

The awful looking bastard that I call myself vanishes. I burst out of the box laughing at all of them. The dressed up body points and shouts that he told them it would end like this. Dash that away though, back to the truth of it, and exposure to this reminds me that I still don’t know how it happened. I don’t know what killed me.

All of the faces that extend their sorrows, they were the ones I wanted nothing to do with. The faces I hoped would show up and see me off as I parted from this world, they’re not there. They forgot about me. So much time passed, so much hurt, and now I’m looking at the faces of shitheads I never liked, and they’re the fuckers left tending to my corpse. A legacy made from them to defile my memory so they can say what they please.

I stand on top of the box and shout at them, but it’s just a memory, their faces are as empty as their intent. I don’t think this is the whole of it, but I think it makes perfect punctuation for this awful fucking story. My legacy is rubble, and these worthless sacks of shit. Start to think the ones I wanted here are better off not showing up. I caused so much harm, that it’s better off just to forget about me.

Perhaps that was the fear that put me in the box in the first place? Smiling as I saw the world shrink, and realized that even though I tried so hard to avoid my heritage, the same fears, and the same problems gripped at me, and I couldn’t avoid them. I didn’t want to be forgotten, but as time passed the only things I left behind were not tokens of affection or joy or inspiration, I was a fucking bulldozer that ruined anything decent standing in front of me.

And it comes flooding back to me, as I see the blank faces of dead people weep blood as they look at the floor and not at my body. I stand next to the box, and I feel awful, because it all came to pass. This terrible show of falsehoods and those taking liberty with my name to prop their selves up to a better state of mind, all of it came true. I reach inside and grab at the chain around my neck that has burdened my body for years, and I fling it aside with careless abandon. I already got rid of it, and I sure as fuck don’t want my corpse to keep it. No one will remember that soul, and no one will remember mine. Many sides of me are screaming at the people, telling them they’re all terrible for letting this come to pass, but the final judgment of my wrath is still aimed at my self.

I let it come to be… To spite them, my self, the entire goddamn universe… fuck all of it!

I didn’t really know much about dreaming, never put much faith in anything beyond myself, and if I died? Well I’d wait and find out what would happen, I had nothing else to think about or comfort me.

There’s a necklace by my corpse, and no one’s left to pick it up. I sigh in relief, and see that no one else will suffer the same way. The weight of all that I have done fades, and regret and hindsight are the only things left to remember me by.

What do they know about dreaming after waking? How could they see this peaceful and terrible place that we all travel to? If they die, will they see me? If I’m gone, why do I still see them? How could they know about nothing, when everything they know is based on something? Empty minds already flooded with bullshit. Empty lives hoping the next one will be better.

I watched as those around me told me worthless bullshit to say how pointless it was to suffer, that I should just be happy because I should be happy. I grew so weary of hearing the same crap from people that knew nothing about me, so I decided I’d never let anyone know me. They wanted smiles and laughter, so that’s what they got. Each night I would sit alone, weep into my hands, unable to know, unable to function. I had no idea what to classify myself as, why everything kept breaking, why I couldn’t bring myself to find anything that mattered. No matter what I did… I never said a word.

Looking at the casket now, I just laugh.

There was this urge within me, to rub everyone’s face in the mess they made, to show what the world had done to me, a monument to the car crash that was my life. I guess I kind of did that, but now I have no way of knowing if it worked or not.

They don’t know that I’m still here. They don’t know that I’ve become everything. They don’t know a damn thing. So I smile and laugh, walking around them, touching them with many different hands and making them all shatter.

And I’m happy for that. I don’t need to consider their thoughts now, I don’t need to consider poverty or loneliness. All of those trivial things are so far away from me.

I could think upon how awful it is, that for every good memory I have, there are many bad ones outweighing it, but that doesn’t bother me at all now.

I’m opening a box and unpacking all my old shit, sitting in an empty room with blank white walls. The things I considered the key to what I am, and now they’re just odd little play things that make me sift through the past. Every direction I take, I splinter out and leave behind an image that doesn’t smile, but seems content enough.

So there he lies, in the box, and for all that I now remember about my life, I can’t bring myself to look inside of it. I kick the casket, and it tumbles over, breaking apart, revealing that there’s nothing inside of it. I am very relieved to see that. Suppose I should actually find it a bit amusing in some ways. Not the first thing that comes to mind though.

There they go, the lives he wanted to affect not even knowing what happened. No one’s here. A footnote that had no weight in the way things worked out. Someone to smile at, and wave goodbye… was very good for that.

Here he rests, on an island of my making, burned to nothing, and nothing will rebuild upon it. The rain starts again, continuing to wash away the rubble and the ashes, the things and places and people he no longer needs to remember.

There they go…

Still have no idea how it happened. Did some tragic accident occur, snuffing my existence out suddenly? Did I put a gun to my head and end things on my own terms? Why does it matter? In the end, I’m still dead. There’s no reason for me to care about the why or how. So I forget about that as well. It is ultimately as meaningless to me as this island itself is.

The air has a bitter chill to it now as the rain falls, and the clouds continue to darken. Many could take this as an ill omen, but for me it brings serenity. Was there worry that wandering from my steps would bring me to this memory and make me mournful? Was I meant to stay on that road because there was concern that I could not console myself over my choices? Hah, that seems a laughable thing to be concerned about. Think I was a little too stubborn though. Could have come to this realization far sooner. That too, is an amusing thing to think about.

No, I shall not weep for myself for eternity. That was what I did with my life, and I have escaped from that finally.

I want to know about dreaming after waking. How have I come to this wonderful and terrible place? Now that I’m gone, will they still see me? Now that I’m gone, why can’t I still see them? How can I be a part of nothing, when forever now I’ve been a part of something? My mind empties of these worries and concerns, my mind empties itself of all my burden.

Some strange figure of light emerges, and tries to intrude upon my calm reflection, pointing to the path. I converse briefly with this person, before I allow it to illuminate the trail for me.

Every splintering path, every fraction of myself that was lost in something deep and far away, they converge here to create me. I perceive an ornate trail that extends outwards, up and down and side to side. But it’s all fading away now. This being that stands next to me says that I don’t need it anymore. Everything has returned, and gone away. I am told that there is just one last thing I need to let go of. Looking out at the storm clouds, I let this island sink into the ocean, and I go someplace else now, guided by this bright figure.

At last now, I can be adrift in something very different and new, and I am at peace. I allow perception of myself to fade away… and then all of me is gone… forever.

I am so sorry…

-   -   -   -   -

Well that is that and this is this
Well you tell me what you saw and I’ll tell you what you missed
When the ocean met the sky.
You missed when time and life shook hands and said goodbye.
When the earth folded in on itself, and said
“Good luck, for your sake I hope heaven and hell
Are really there, but I wouldn’t hold my breath.”
You wasted life why wouldn’t you waste death?
You wasted life why wouldn’t you waste death?

The ocean breathes salty wont you carry it in?
In your head, in your mouth, in your soul
The more we move ahead the more we’re stuck in rewind
Well I don’t mind. I don’t mind. How the hell could I mind?

Path 4: The Missing

The trees have faded away into their shadows. Silence creeps upon me. The screaming has stopped, and there is no sound at all. Everyone is gone now, and again, I reign alone in nothingness.

Hide in my freedom, my state of mind, of which there is nothing mindful.

My words just fall to the floor, and they make soft noises, unheard of. They just echo across me and find no shelter. What I speak tries to beg of what I knew, what I was running from. I keep shouting because I need to hear something. My screaming now dominates everything. I scream for something tangible. I beg for something to exist around me.

I am in the woods. Where are the trees and where is the light? There is no moon circling an orb lost in an inky stillness, there is no sense of anything familiar. This is a false place that exists only because I want it to, yet for something of my making, it all feels so strange and alien.

I am dead, and I am lost in the woods. I have come this far, into such wild and unknown territory, but I take no pride in exploration or the dangerous new things before me. I am just compelled to find that which I was separated from.

Separated from… no, not people, but places. That was what I wanted. I ducked away from the world to find some cold dark place where my brain could rest. I found it in my life, but it has led me to this place. I wanted a state of rest that would last forever, yet my mind is now still lost amongst insanity.

I’ve got my plan, I’ve got my mind, I’ve got my soul. I need only these things, and the path that I was cut away from. I needed to get away, but now I am lost in the darkness, trying to understand where I had come from.

I rest next to the trunk of what feels like a mighty oak in the darkness, and after a long span of time, light does return. It does not make me recall a morning sun in the forest; it is more putrid and colorless. Like a smog that brings with it illumination. Ash falls from the trees instead of leaves, and instead of a carpet of rotting plant material, below me feet I notice paper and refuse rotting below me. I don’t seem to notice a dip in the air’s quality, but I also take note that I am not breathing. I have to make a conscious effort now to push air in and out of my lungs, and even when I do, something feels alien and wrong about it now. Something I don’t need to bother with.

What I find ironic is my need to for other senses still. Air isn’t needed in my lungs, but I take a deep inhale of the air to gather the smell of this place, I still need my eyes before me to understand placement of the objects and terrain before my feet.

I wish to understand why I should be so bound to my corporeal form while adrift in the endless either of what has come when all things of me die away. I touch the trunk of the oak before me, a mighty tree casting a voluminous yet transparent shade. I’ve understood things as they are based on a very limited perception, I wonder if I am building this based on myself, or if it builds for me? Do I need everything before me as it is now, is it impossible for me to see anything beyond this façade?

Leaves crumpled under my feet as a very kind light shines down through the leaves, and I believe I am turning into the God that I spent so much time operating underneath out of fear. Born not to a religious family, but shoveled to it at one point. The need for many to cling to God stood out as odd against the mind of myself as a child. I grew out of the fables that were so commonly accepted in youth, I would often wonder why adults would still hold a few of those stories as truth. I came to understand this of course, as I grew into one of those adults. The tedium and harsh trials that we are all so fraught with, we invent a greater purpose to it, because with the idea of paradise, we can toil in life, content that bliss will soon follow. There was never to be a heaven on Earth. Standing in these woods now after my body has been burned and forgotten, I almost wish my cynical thinking about death was right. This is not paradise, and all I wanted was rest.

With hands not set on eternity, and minds set to idle torment, I begin to find philosophy and spirituality both profoundly useless things. I used to stand for things, I used to champion things triumphantly, and now I’m lost in the woods, with nothing but my mind, which also seems lost to wandering.

Everyone… everyone close, far away. As I stand here digging into my mind, I’m finding more and more of what I was in life, how many times I was hurt. Grasping at emotions I want to think of as petty, I feel an immenseness of insecurity take over me. I had siblings, I remember that now.

I wander through the trees and find two couches gathered amongst a television. I stand and watch as though some odd observer at what I know is something pulled from myself. Arguments are being waged in two directions, and for whatever reason, I am treated as the center of blame for both.

My parents, my brothers, I now remember why I wished for my memories to remain out of this form. I don’t need to spend my afterlife contemplating how much I loathed my family. I could spend hours in a very boring and analytical fashion trying to surmise how horribly they ruined my mental facility, but these events play out… and watching as a third party, I tend to find it rather fascinating.

They were always far too willing to be the pictures everyone painted of them. Others speak of hatred, so they become hatred, others speak of scars long past, and so new wounds are brought forward. They were all so amazingly selfish and shortsighted. Thinking only of what suited their means, and caring little for who they hurt in the process. I strived to avoid that.

Never wanted the damage I created. Wanted to think that made me different. Destruction lay around me just as it lay around them, but I mourned it, I wanted to repent for all the wrong I had done. Stupid faces around me, they bask in it, asking the world for more favors and then stomping on any that offer consequence. I often found it amusing that I was more mature then they, when I was a child and they were the grownups.

What a remarkable example they set forward.

I know how it works. They avoid me, they don’t care about what I am. I can’t help but to notice that I shouldn’t care about that child either. They sit content to hate on one another, and the child wanders away. Scream at everything until the ground shakes, but he can’t hear them.

Wait, where’s he going?

I follow, past the pointless yelling I recall.

Never concerned about who’s lives are going to be ruined. Never concerned about what the right thing to do is. Let everyone else suffer for the sake of one. Only thing I ever learned from all of it was to be cautious. Only love the people that love me, only fight the people that fight me. Reach out with trepidation, and be prepared for everything.

Mostly though, be prepared for an outrageous amount of bullshit.

Guns sound off in places where I used to meet people. I would not call them friends, but stepping over the dead and injured, I see that I’m in a forest of buildings that seem more run down than I remember. When strolling past in my early teens, I was jumped and got the shit kicked out of me. I remember this place.

Blood obscures the vision in one of my eyes, I taste something foul in my mouth, and I cough and gag. They’re walking away, big and strong men that could beat on a child. I laugh at them, both then and now. They need to do more to make me feel it. Growing up as I did, they could rip me to shreds, and I’d spit in their faces and say that they’ve got nothing on me. Scream at them, demand more, even! One told me this was the path to gratification, why should I fear this? Cut on me, beat on me! I’ll just laugh.

Sirens in the street, another place that I would meet some of the people I’d call friends. Courtyard in the rain, slick surface makes it hard to stand, and I’m doing my best to avoid responsibility. Wandering a complex and strip malls left unwanted, I tried to demand that the world unfold itself to me. There seemed secrets at that time that begged of knowledge, like I could solve life as though it were a riddle. Clues left to make me look backwards and forwards, questioning which direction I should travel.

I’m watching so many versions of myself intersect as I stand on top of a roof. All of different ages and mind. One is still devout, another is highly cynical, they all stop just short of each other, and look upwards. They all came from the same place, but were lost along the way. I was never very good with directions. The questions that seemed to demand an answer became less focused, less meaningful, and eventually, they all led inwards. Questions of the universe became questions of my self and others.

I look at the sky, and my foot slips. The motion of my body makes me recoil for a moment, but I see it all happening so slowly, and I start to relax and accept this event. The wind on my face as I plunge towards the street below makes me feel at ease, but the pavement looks too frail to break my fall.

Standing on the street, I’m watching an older version of myself fall helplessly, but for the brief moment I see his face, he looks serene. There’s a slight thud when he hits, and none of the other versions of my self say or do anything, we stand near the spot where he hit the street below, and look downwards, seeing nothing.

A hole in the trunk of a tree, I think the child ran into this, some secret hideaway that he forced into existence. I hear him shouting and yelling at something inside, but there’s no way I could crawl through so narrow a space.

The ground was slick with frost, and I was traversing a major highway, early in the morning, setting out to kill my Saturday in the most startlingly lame way possible. I watched a friend tumble on the ice, three folk from a warm part of the world, not used to walking through cold and ice. We laughed.

Same highway, and I’m alone. I trip and smash my nose into the pavement. I’ve got twenty miles to walk, because everyone forgot about me again. I feel the same as I did years ago. Hide the feelings of fear and doubt with anger. I wasn’t wrong. I just wasn’t worth the effort.

That feeling when I was a child, and I realized no one was ever going to take care of me. I steeled myself away, shut down, and within the blink of an eye, the world went from being wonderful and wide, to a harsh tiny little orb full of worthless, spineless people.

I’m walking down a different road, but it intersects with that same highway. The sea breeze chills me to a degree, but it’s a comfortable feeling. No one’s sent out looking for me, and I’ve been gone a very long while. I find it funny, that years from that point, I would be walking that road again, thinking different things, but traversing it for the same reasons.

Told that everyone cares, and wants to help, yet when the time came, and the situation grew dire, all I saw were slack jawed fools looking at me like it was all somehow my fault. I had to take it all, and I had to understand that no one would say sorry, that no one would look at me and ask me to forgive them. They knew they could trample me, and so they did.

I am spending time in my late teens with people I don’t even like. A woman is spending money on me. Desperate for affection… I…

The path!

Trees shoot out around me again, and I look around the woods, wondering where that trail went to. I killed her memory to get back to it, and again I have strayed. How many parts of myself do I need to destroy before it reveals itself again?

The stillness of this place sets me to unease. I run in any direction I can, spreading myself wide before the gulf that threatens to make this all just ebb away. I will find it, I will reach the end.

My foot snags at something, and there’s an impact I make with my skull.

Screaming, chaos, I’m lost in a fog. I grip at leaves and dirt and try to pull myself to my feet. I smell smoke, and I look behind me and see the front end of a car wrapped around a tree. I find it slightly confusing that a car could manage to crash itself in the woods. I don’t think it belongs here. I see my trail has come from the front seat, where I see the glass of the windshield creating a spider web that echoes of the impact my skull made upon it.

In the cluttered thoughts trying to rush their way to the front of my brain, I see time stand still, as the scene rebuilds itself. Everything is back where it belongs. I am beside them, I am not with them. I see the other vehicles involved in the pile up. I’m dizzy and can’t see straight, and I can’t even be angry when I’m yelled at. I’m just baffled. I wasn’t driving the car, why am I being yelled at? How the hell did my head do that kind of damage without exploding?

The woods again are clear and wide, and they before me have no sense of self or understanding. Time is not a concern, nor will it ever be, even the wind is not propelled by anything other than pure will. I am unsure if I am its maker, or if it made me. It waited patiently for me to die, and would always be here to show me the pointless struggles and how I endured them, beside this place. It was something I always carried with me. Or maybe it was always like this… perhaps it needed to create conflict to see reason? I begin to wonder if I am a mere construct of some grand boredom of creativity. A nothing person in an empty place, trying to conjure thoughts on why anything is everything.

The child is on the floor and is alone. All he wonders is when anyone will come home. In a strange way he feels better in the fear, because it is a fear of the unknown, and not the things he must dread on a daily basis.

God and the Devil were seen as one being, mother and father equal in their uselessness. To an extent, I feel terrible that the same hollow nature crept into my soul. The friends that had their notions and ideas, they swim as a single blurred image, smiling with both the living and the dead. Can’t separate them from anything now, can’t tell them apart.

Becoming a character, living in delusion, and the goals set before that child, the things he could aspire to become, a guise thrown at his feet to keep him in line. His past was given to assist a person he despised, and he gained only the madness that seems so prevalent in his blood. Not walking in circles, but still becomes the very thing he hates. Always the case… never any different.

I’m wandering, not knowing if I’m looking for the path, or the child that has run away from me. Beside this place, maybe I could warn him, maybe I could help him avoid what I’ve become?

A glow spreads amongst the canopy of the forest, a vivid green that sways like a fire in a heavy wind. It brings me to a part of myself that seemed warm and kind, an exterior that I was comfortable with the world viewing.

Very quickly, shadows start to linger in the flickering colors. I see the tops of the trees spell out the doom that was always two footsteps behind me, smiling. I touch things, and they lose color, they lose their ability to catch and create sound. Without voices, they call me a liar.

They stared at me, and assumed I was thick skinned. To laugh in the face of such adversity and tragedy, I had to either cope with things easily, or allow myself to become another broken and useless being. There was a long stretch of time, when even I did not know which category I fell under.

Flickering shadows of what I really was trying to surface. I find the child standing before me, and he is smiling like a bastard. He has no need to hide his demons, the well of his soul runs deep, and has often been a fount for such awful things to remain in existence. Everything buried just bubbling up now, overflowing and spewing out. Every fear, hatred, every joyful moment shattered, every dream. All of it jutting out in liquid form, climbing upwards around the trees.

I look at him, and he looks through me. I am a hollow vessel, meant only to observe, he has taken it all inside of him, he swallowed every last drop, and he thirsts for more.

In the hospital bed as a child, with pain so immense and seemingly endless, and I was stone faced. Whenever I was faced with dire moments and challenges, I did not rise like the champions in all those books I read. I broke down, and I blamed myself.

It was always my fault. Ever since I was a child, everything was my fault.

I was sitting alone in a cold and depressing place, huddled in the corner of my room with a cross around my neck that burned with the knowledge of all that I could have said, all I could have done. Everything that existed around me was some crude mockery. All of it a hollow construct that I was building to keep myself afloat, things I would use to blind myself to what I was thinking. If my thoughts were empty, then I would not mourn my actions, I would be able to block out the sounds of arguing, and then my mind could have some reprieve.

The times spent alone in that shell, it was meant to be called home, yet ironically I only felt a sense of welcome and calm when I left it. Wandering to places that didn’t want me, places where I didn’t belong. I wanted to be in those places, I wanted to be a part of them.

How I would travel far and wide to find the small corners of the world where my mind could rest. I traveled by foot to so many places, just to look at how the world around me functioned without any care as to where I was, or why. No one knew me, nor would they ever want to. At most my interactions were based solely on commerce. No need for false smiles and apathetic greetings. Like electricity following a circuit, the world around everyone was just a means to an end, a way to get from point A to point B.

How I would cherish the wind battering me as the waves crashed over the walkway. The early warning of a great storm late at night on the beach, the chilled air and violent clouds always seemed like a dear friend, and I would welcome them with open arms. Everyone would panic, listening to the news as to how such a thing could cause death and mayhem. Yet as I looked into it, I was amazingly at ease. I welcomed those storms, like dear friends I had long not seen, returning to me with wonderful news. They would remove anything that had emerged in their absence that they did not like. Suffer nothing trivial that the world puts up as a buffer. They are absolute.

How I would look above me now and see the tops of the trees recreate such a feeling. Turning my head back down towards the earth, I see the child standing before me. He is smiling with the knowledge of what I really am.

We are nothing alike, in spite of being one in the same. This nature of mine, forever divided amongst self, forever excluded from all the things both halves of me crave. His idea of the world, my idea of the world, they differ so drastically, yet unite here and form a reality that is as cohesive as it is vague. I am master, and slave; a no one set to walk nowhere.

The little number and title I was assigned in life, seems so pointless to both of us. This is why we stare at one another, smiling. There are many themes that connect us, those moments where both halves come together and reach understanding.

Offensive and callous, the only things I ever agree upon are the thoughts I’m told by everyone not to have. They do not want me to tread there, because they cannot explain it. It is not something comfortable to talk about. Discomfort it something everyone tries to avoid. It doesn’t matter how critical it is to a person, if it makes everyone else feel awkward or ill at ease, then it is shoved away, never to be spoken of.

I try to look at both sides of my mind, and figure which one has enough gravity to pull me back to the path. More than that, I wonder which of me is the pure one, or the one motivated least by personal vendettas. There are other factors I should consider as well, but I don’t, because those are not good things to think about. I never denied that I was a hypocrite. Maybe I should find that amusing? I can’t even begin to think of these things when the only audience I have is my own broken perception.

Where am I in all of this? Between two minds I feel caught, like I’m not within either, but I’m wholly a part of both. Through the eyes of one, I see both, but I’m not…

I could likely spend all my time just fighting off confusion, and considering the knowledge that time doesn’t exist in this place, (much as it didn’t in life) I’m actually very tempted to be under the sway of just looking at myself doubled and singular. Like a mirror set in front of a mirror, it just casts out endless views of myself that my mind sees as something separate from itself.

The current is pulling at me though, and eventually, I sort out reflection, and everything falls back into an orderly place. From youth to adulthood, from innocence to damnation, a picture standing still as chaos erupts around it. So many times shuffled about, so many times forgotten, so many nights spent wondering if I would ever find a soul that would watch over mine, something that would guide me through hell, and make a distinction between the shades of gray.

I find a clearing in the woods that seems bright and cheery, but that is not what lifts my spirits. I find the trail lying before me yet again in this clearing. This time the trail is set as red bricks lined in an ornate weave. Eagerly I rush towards it, throwing my knees and hands upon its surface.

Walking down it again, the trees take an orderly look to them, single file, like the groves I remember passing on the highway. They bear strange fruit, and I’m not even remotely tempted to bite at one of them… likely because they provide no sustenance now.

I am a paper thin thing now, traveling along a two dimensional image plastered across the fields of thought that run through me like splintering rivers. Expression hard to see, detail lost, for the sake of trying to remember very binary and pointless details. Were they smiling, arguing, or were they just standing around, doing nothing, like myself? There was often joy in that idleness. Though, there was also much anger in it at times. Seething in silence, waiting for someone else to talk.

I went to see a shadow that was chasing me. I allowed it pursuit, because it meant that something was actively thinking of me at all times. If I was feared, hated, or loved, that didn’t matter. I was something relevant again.

Hand sifting through water as I lie beside the pool, tiny ripples of sunlight jutting out as I gently splash, my hands making a strangely ornate light show, breaking the beams over and over. Acting profoundly lazy I suppose, but I remember rolling over and looking at others, telling jokes to break a comfortable silence. The main activity to pass the time was thinking of ways to pass the time.

The clouds cover the sky, and there is a harsh chill. My thin reflection is standing in a field, one he’s held to tend like a slave. With no voices demanding anything of him, he looks at the dark sky, and feels bonded with it. The wind brushes through his hair, and makes a sound like music, like people talking far away.

He is walking down a trail, one that carves itself north and south along the coast of an island. Things are busy, and he is not annoyed or thrilled with it, but fascinated, like how a biologist would study the wild world. The cars, the roads, in a different light, they are no different than the rest of the world, they are just painted differently to bring us comfort, to say that we have somehow transcended something immensely pointless.

I am standing by the water… rather I am watching myself stand by the water. A rather large pond in the middle of the woods, an area made by man, to dump plants now thought of as refuse. Pure forms of roads that cut through the nature seem naked and alone now. They serve the same purpose as always, but are now surrounded by the life they wish to sunder. Both seem oddly content, and the sky is violent.

That thing I call myself, the frail body I have left behind to a poor world, he is crying in his room, as silently as he can, hoping that no one will see or hear him act this way. He is parting himself of the material items he thinks bring him sanity, but he is facing reality more and more each day. He is left to a task that is not his, and he abides it, welcomes it even, when all his form should shout out against it. I cannot question him, as I cannot question myself. If I do not know now, I never shall. Perhaps he was desperate for something to brag of as an accomplishment, something to prove to others that his time spent living was of some value? That didn’t matter though, walk away from that and see how little impact he had. No one was saved. All of the sacrifices he made meant absolutely nothing. No one was ever going to thank him, repay him, or acknowledge him.

He is confused in the streets, after having been beaten for seemingly no reason. He returns home, and no one notices the bruising, or the bloodied nose. They ignore it like they ignored him when he was ill. He finds a spot where no one can see him, and he cries, as he often does. That child wants the world to make sense, he wants it to be the kind and pure thing he’s seen so many stories about, yet all of the significant moments of his life are of conflict and abuse. He learns nothing from these, and only prays that maybe one day, all the bad things will just fall away. He learns to fear laughter, to cower and hide, he learns that any contact he has with people is something to be nervous and frightened of. He wishes things could be different for him.

Wishes never come true.

From one wandering down the side of a street, to two. We were at our prime, in both our bravery, and ignorance. Joking about this time of our lives, and the people we tried to impress for the sake of our own stupid accomplishments. Failure can be a comforting thing when everyone’s laying their shit on the table. I just wanted laughter. Blinding myself away from the things that made me think of endings and tears, I wanted to make light of all that I should take seriously, to spit in the face of all that was before me. From two to three, a group now more dissonant, yet still with a theme for amusing ourselves with the profound. Take the complexity of the universe we were given, and let in languish in our crude forms of humor. As these themes and gatherings grew, I became complacent, and saw my role diminish. I was always the expendable one, no matter where I tried to acclimate myself. Always resting upon some wall with my arms crossed trying to ignore people yelling over one another, somewhat both annoyed and content in that place.

Walking like drunkards marching to their doom, many then reduced to two. Take a good and clear look at the gods that stood in our way, we walked around them. We had all the reason to question our own morality, much less that of the kind we were set to by old and primitive hands. We knew where the sun would be, even when it did not shine. We knew, and that made us mighty.

So we thought. Ways part just as easily as waves.

Bravery hides fear, fear covers the motives we wished to hide. I needed to get away, but could not understand what that really meant. I thought I needed a change of pace, a new start. To flee from the men and women that caused such strife in my thoughts. Good company could keep me amused, but it could not keep me sane. I returned to a place I could not call home, to people that did not care for my presence. In a small space, deep thoughts turned me to dark ways, and terrible dreams. I wanted to leave… worse than that, I had to leave.

It was worth it, I think, and that’s the most terrible aspect of it. All of my lamentations of what happened to me, the fears un-caged and let loose, I thought they were still important parts of me. It mattered, all of it did. Standing and watching walls flex inwards and outwards and the chill air robbing me of warmth and sound mind. The storms and the boredom, and I sat and looked out at nothing. Wondered how I would escape, and wonder what I would do if I did, where I would go, pointless things like that.

From many, to one. Roads less traveled now before me, and no one stands beside me, in front of me, or behind me. I’ve finished it all! I’m traversing this path, and I’m doing so because I had everything. I finished it all! My world complete, my life now spent, as it was always made to expire. I’m walking along transparent stones that carry me across the ocean, and the moon and the stars are so bright and full of warmth. They provide unity and a homely feeling I never had amongst friends or family. So many wanted only to beat me down, pollute my mind to prove right their own ill assumptions. They did not see my form shattering. They did not feel empathy when they saw tears. As I look up, I feel welcome, and properly understood by the lucent orb guiding the tide.

The waves crash against this crude bridge, and they need to, the pull of gravity says they must, but they retreat away and act almost mournful as they depart this solidified trail. They collide and splash over, covering my body with foam and water.

I hold my arms out, and close my eyes as my feet carefully step over the wet and hollow stones. The churning of the water becomes increasingly agitated, and the taste of salt never leaves my lips. The wind is strong and pushes at my back as much as my front, shifting directions at random. The sound it makes as it rushes past my ears is enchanting.

My foot reaches down again, and finds nothing. I stumble, and fall off of the trail, and into the sea. Normally it was always impossible for my eyes to see in water, but now there is clarity, and I feel no pressure to expel air, as I do not take any into me. The deep and dark is approaching me, and I am falling away, watching the moon beams shatter as they hit the surface, reminding me of when I sat bored beside the pool that late summer afternoon.

I am brought back to everything within an instant, but in a blurred and hazy tone. A perception of myself as a child holding back tears in anger, aware that he does not carry enough weight or power to stop those he considers evil, or wrong. From the mistakes he warned himself of, to the ones he made all on his own, and no guidance was ever offered to distinguish the two from one another. It fell to the floor like a glass he held in his hands. His feet stepping on the broken pile, then he was set to pulling shards of glass from his scalp after the crash. Getting beaten, and beating others, insecurity leading to the horrors he always wanted to flee from. The monster under the bed was the child himself, hiding and crying, avoiding the wrath of his family. The weak link in a loser’s game. None of the idiots aware that the world they gave away was one they made by their own hands.

Not sure if it was a game, not sure if it was worth the play, not sure of anything, a reckless idiot trying to see what’s fair and what’s deserved. Trying to make everyone happy, when he was always pissed off at the universe that spawned him. Wishing to remain motionless in the still of night, where his awareness seemed at its peak, and he could finally become what he thought himself to truly be. No one was needed to make him like this. What those close made of him, was something they could never quite grasp, or something they often just didn’t care for. But now I’m finding myself truly welcome, a surge of comfort I’ve never quite known.

I’m surrounded by the cool water on all sides, and it is so amazingly peaceful. The surface can be as violent as it wishes. I sink to the bottom, and notice nothing of its trifles. All of that confusion and movement, now only creates slight tugs that lull me into a serenity of mind and body.

I see no trail above me, and as I sink into the water, the chill of the ocean welcomes me, but an annoying thought rests at the back of my mind.

How did I die?

-  -  -  -  -

It’s hard to wake up
When the shades have been pulled shut
This house is haunted
It’s so pathetic
It makes no sense at all.
I’m ripe things to say
The words rot and fall away.
If one stupid poem could fix this home
I’d read it every day.

So here’s your holiday!
Hope you enjoy this time, you gave it all away!
It was mine
So when you’re dead and gone
Will you remember this night? Twenty years now lost.
It’s not right.

Path 3: The Collapse

Color is restored slowly. The trees become calm things again that only wish to steal nutrients from the earth as they worship the sky. Begin to notice the air become very damp and cold though. The sky is a bleak gray now, and I look down to see my feet leave a soggy trail through a dirt road.

Start to wonder where I am headed, this is a winding path that cuts through a very cold bog, all of it looks the same, and it all smells putrid. For whatever reason, my eyes are darting around with much curiosity, looking at wildlife sift through the trees casually, caring nothing for my presence here.

I suppose there is a beauty to it, but it is one that I do not care for. The road that exists here is poorly maintained and shows how clumsy people are when they try to carve their way through such an environment. Nothing in me shouts that I should find anything here. This is just another part of the trail I must traverse.

It is very cold here.

The air feels stagnant and old, this area, despite being so alive, seems amazingly decrepit. My steps grow heavy, and my march through the dirt now takes far longer than I would like.

The tall things that used to surround me were buildings. Their shadows were oppressive and sterile, but I found them quite comfortable. The trees here all seem on the verge of collapse. Nothing but willows and oaks strewn about that block the sky and lean uncomfortably over the road, draped in moss like an attic is draped in dust.

An oddity soon presents itself to me. The dirt road splits off into two directions. There is a path that splits off to my left, and the continuing trail straight ahead of me. I am very curious as to why it has taken so much time for something like this to confront me, but I consider the implications for only a brief instant. My feet take me straight down the path I have already spent a great deal of time wandering down, and I leave the splintering trail behind me.

Perhaps that was a bad choice though.

My memories of buildings and the compactness of city life surround me as I try not to think of the awful swamp I walk through. Makes me think of a warmer climate, and friendly faces, lets me avoid the isolation that currently envelops me.

A time where I had no reason to complain, but I was entirely restless. Juggling three very different groups of friends, sleeping on a couch while I begged for food and drink, wandering the streets of the island was my way of seeing the world for what it was. At this particular time, it was empty. The coming storm scared everyone away. The dark skies and violent winds of a hurricane were always a dear friend to me, though. Likely just because of what they did to the city. Everyone was gone, the weather was cool, the sun hidden from view. The weather and environment was perfect for me to wander around in. I spent hours that one day meandering about the major roadways, listening to music in a newly acquired device that had become my salvation. Calm piano melodies in sharp contrast to an empty city and violent weather. I derived a very odd sense of serenity from it.

My mind needed much of that at the time. My thoughts were often more turbulent than the weather.

Everything in the whole damn world, crumbling down, while everyone stands around like jackasses and laugh at the decay.

It’s all a dead end. What they’re spitting, what they crave, and also this part of the trail.

With no thought of irony that my mind and body have come to a halt, instead I gaze out at a body of water that stretches before me. There are giant piles of earth that extended fairly high around the water. It seems all of this clearing was done by man. A large pond made for reasons I can’t guess, and giant stretches of torn trees and dirt acting as a buffer between the woods and this spot. A mist hovers over the still water, and it’s quite hard to tell where it stops or how deep it is, as once the water clears the open area it floods into the surrounding bog.

I sit on the shore, resting on the trunk of a felled tree, and I cast a stone or two into the still water, shattering the surface and the mist for brief moments.

From early on I was surrounded by water… born near it, and of it. The tide is far more interesting and comforting than a stagnant pond, though. I look out at this cold swamp, and all it does is remind me that I don’t like this place. There are better areas that will welcome me with open arms. Places that allow me to hide away in obscurity.

I am pursuing a goal with violent haste, but failing in obtaining that goal should not entail sorrow on my part. I should expect to fall. I’ve done it so often. I am nothing but a book of mistakes with a dull ending.

I shift and stand, watching the mist clear from the pond, and I see a craft come across the water slowly towards the shore. Standing patiently, I see that it’s a very small boat of some kind. Something lying inside of it is what catches my eye.

The boat touches upon the shore, and I discover that it is many items that rest within it. The boat is filled with a pile of old shit I used to own. I dig through it with eager and delighted hands. A favorite jacket of mine helps greatly to fend off the cold. A necklace with a cross and a ring upon it grace my neck once again. Then I find my first portable digital music player, the name “Ten-Song” is still scratched onto the back of it. I stuff it into my pocket, it’s broken and I don’t have headphones, but for whatever reason I want to carry it anyways.

Likely the most ironic thing is wearing a religious icon I’m not affiliated with a second time. I wore it because of death, but I myself am among the dead now, there’s no reason I should have it strangle me again.

With these three things in my care again, I kick the boat back to wherever it came from. Obviously what I previously considered a diversion of the trail was where I needed to be headed, so I begin to backtrack so that I may find that split in the road again.

I pull the music player out of my pocket for awhile as I take my time returning to the split in the road. I first carved the name on it as some sort of crude reminder of its limited capacity. I took that in stride though, and began to see it as a wonderful quality of the tiny thing after some time. It was a great thing for me to have at that moment in time. Something to help me silence the world as I traveled through it, deaf to whatever cares and worries were thrown my way.

I was so willing to kill the world away, to remain vacant while everyone else would search for more tangible things. Can still remember the day the whole world just fell out from under me.

Likely I should have been super pissed or depressed. Nothing came from me. I had already lost so much at that point, the idea of having nothing wasn’t some omnipresent fear in the back of my thoughts, it was a tangible reality. Spite was all I could muster. Damn the world, and damn everyone in it… my self included.

To sleep but have no home, to eat without food, to entertain with an empty mind, to wander with no goals… my mind and body became hollow and empty things.

Destitute and begging for scraps, wandering the city became an escape. I would stroll around the mall often, angry at how everyone strode about in bliss as they consumed extraneous bullshit they never needed, parading their consumerism around like it was something to boast about. My fascination in watching the inner workings of the city spin about carelessly I suppose also made me a curiosity as well. I was a child with no home, no family, and no one to depend on, part of me needed to latch onto something.

This led to many mistakes.

Standing at the corner of the two major roadways, with honestly no idea as to which direction I was going to go or why, the music was blasting in my ears. I was trying not to cry, trying not to scream. I was trying to understand why I was walking the earth in such a broken state.

I hurt quite a few people… my carelessness, my discovery of a part of my mind that shouldn’t exist. I hurt people I once called friends, I hurt women, and I hurt myself.

Suppose I should have been grateful I even had a place to sleep, but that was very little comfort. I had a few beds that I could rest in. Only one of them was isolated. I needed to be alone. All I could do was use up whatever was in front of me.

I became the place where the ends could never justify the means. I became the place where two wrongs could make a right. I was an awful creature.

My brain was screaming, and I had no means to make it stop.

At a complete dead end, there was nothing left to help me cope. All of the dumb little things I would whisper to myself, they meant nothing. Lost in the woods…

Feelings I had repressed for a great deal of time came kicking and screaming to the surface, breaking every facet of stability my mind had put into place. I had dealt with my sorrow for so long, inventing so many stupid things to occupy my brain, to ignore it. No more.

When my world went completely to shit, so did I, finally.

The worst thoughts I had ever let come into my brain consumed me. Every day when I would wander the world, I was awash in my nightmares, looking at the world now not to observe and critique it, but as an outsider looking in, desperately wishing I could be part of the things I claimed I hated. Needed something to bring me down, to calm me… the only thing that did arrive, I wanted out of my life.

I had no options when push came to shove… so I packed up two small boxes that represented everything I owned, and I came… here.

I’m here again…

Was it consequence? No, of course not! I had no choices to make, and I thought the few ones I did make were good enough. I got away from her, I got away from poverty, I thought I had finally escaped from my problems.

Fat chance.

Everything seems more decrepit than I remember.

The splinter of the trail led to nothing but the long driveway that comes to this home, deep in the middle of nothing. The garden, the fields, the porch I helped build…

Part of me wants to be hateful, to run to the house and set it on fire. This is where I lost everything.

This is also where I rebuilt myself.

Almost everything was falling down around me. My mind was shouting things I did not think, the words that came out of my mouth were things I did not want to say. I was frequently having sex with a woman I did not love, and I was hanging around a group of people that were not my friends.

I needed to be me again. My options were limited. Likely I could have stayed in my home town, could have gone to many places looking for some place to sleep. I didn’t want to just live as some homeless bum sleeping on whatever couch a friend would offer up though. A year and a half of that was already very tiresome.

So I came here. Into the middle of a swamp far from everything I ever knew. It was cold the first two months. I was all alone as well, everyone else wasn’t ready for the move yet, so I was the only occupant for a long stretch of time.

Many weeks on end passed where I would sit around in the cold, with nothing to occupy my time.

When I am idle, my mind wanders…

The intention of this move was to escape from all the mistakes I had made. Here though, they thrived in the idleness of the house, and they emerged as flickering shadows that ran over the walls.

Depression is an awful thing to battle, but I had never let it conquer me. I had thought that I would never be the type to drift into pure madness… that was until this house came into my life.

My depression, and my current run of bad luck, all I could do with my days was sit alone in that cold empty house and reflect on those things. I had nowhere to go, no one to talk to. It was just me and the house.

The entire world suddenly sunk into my head, as tiny little creations of my own, all going to war with one another, falling in love, growing old and watching everything take its proper place. I lived in illusion because to think of other fictitious lives, meant that I was not aware of how awful my own was.

Fiction began to inspire reality though, much as reality inspires fiction. My reflection suddenly seemed like it belonged to someone else. I would wander around and begin to do things I normally wouldn’t. Sometimes I would just scream, because I knew nothing could hear me, and I needed to vent. The names of all the people that I thought wronged me… looking back I think I was actually the person in the wrong.

Spinning fake tales in my head of what would happen to the world. I began to look for anything around me to cope, and nothing was working.

One day I woke up, and I was convinced the walls were conspiring to kill me. Not as though they were speaking and all in congress speaking ill of me when I wasn’t watching. Rather, it just seemed as though whenever my attention would falter, the entire house would just fall down on me and kill me. Like somehow, this old gutted piece of shit home was waiting for just the right moment to fall apart.

As night fell upon the world that day, the claustrophobia began to choke me. I ran screaming into the pitch black night, and I fell to the earth muttering nonsense.

I remember grasping the frosted dead grass in my hands, the sharp pain of the cold reminding me that I was still alive. For whatever reason, I wished that wasn’t the case. It was the first time such a thought had entered my mind.

I looked back at the dim lights of the house, the only illuminated thing for miles, and I understood that I had to return to that. My body revolted against me, I couldn’t fathom that I had to go back into the house. Death would have been a far more preferable alternative.

It was a brief flirtation with the thought, but as I did return to the house, with the sinking feeling that falling asleep would mean the walls would fall on me, it was not the last time such a thought entered my brain.

Simply because plotting own my own death seemed like something I would want to be an elaborate affair, the thought kept returning to me as more days passed. So many odd aspects that should have come to mind did not though… I think that’s ultimately what helped calm my soul.

Most of my thoughts were crazed and pointless for the span of about a week and a half, and as odd as it was, I welcomed the return to my normal state of depression. Never told anyone what happened… just wrote it off as a “nervous breakdown.” Didn’t dare give it any further thought, I put it behind me and that was that.

What’s funny is I can almost look back on how horrible that house was as a good thing. Every horrible aspect about my self, it brought to the surface, and then some.

My sense of normality I suppose would be considered “old fashion.” There was no town or city to speak of, and my daily activities in farming forced me into a life that was completely alien to me. Hard days tilling soil and gardening and chopping wood gave me much time to think.

Suppose such a thing was my enemy though. My body was in pain, and so was my mind. To deal with this new life, and to juggle the weight of my sins, every day blurred into a mess that extended forever.

I had a few escapes though, and I clung to them desperately. Every part of me yearned for the style of life I had left behind. Maybe not the style, come to think of it, but the setting.

I am standing in the same spot where I fled to many years ago in madness. It was not the only time this particular spot in an otherwise unremarkable stretch of land held meaning for me though.

One of the few legitimate boons to being so far removed from the world is being able to look up at night at a sky swimming with starlight. The night sky fascinated me. Many times I would wander from my room at night, just to find a quiet spot where I could look out at the stars.

Places so far away, remote and unexplored. I wanted to humble myself, thinking of why my troubles were so significant in the face of what I looked up at. It was serene…

Eventually I felt disconnected from the life I left behind though. When I would visit with old friends and family, it was suddenly like I had come from a different time and place. So much had changed in my mind so rapidly.

Could blame it just on the transition from my teen years to becoming an adult, but that is more a matter of temperance finally burying petulance. Whatever transformation I was undergoing was far more brutal, and I did not like the person that was emerging on the other side of it.

Most it just seemed like my reactions to everything became increasingly hostile or introverted. If I did not tear everything that was in front of me down, then I would simply avoid it.

Wished I was stronger, wish I made better decisions with my youth, wish I could have blinded myself to the pain I was about to face. Hindsight is funny like that. Realize the faces I thought were my worst enemies were likely people I should befriend, and that many that I held close in my heart would only ever let me down. Wait for everyone to go, and sit on the porch and look out at the tasks I had at hand.

I was in control, but I was out of control. I was keeping my sanity in check by lashing out madly. I had seen everything there was to be seen by nature of having my world shrink into nothing.

Try to relate to the world, but I felt like I didn’t belong in it, like I was visiting from some far off planet, looking for something here that I couldn’t find elsewhere.

Sitting in that same spot now, looking at the gray sky and the rotted expanse, all I can really do is laugh. Goodness, I was such an asshole. Don’t think I should try and repent for that, however justified I was, however pointlessly angry I was… none of that matters very much.

Holidays and birthdays and vacations to escape, polite words spoken to people I don’t often see telling them all to give or to take, to stay or to leave. Hello and goodbye, I’ll be here so watch over everything since I’m gone.

No enemies, no hatred… just me.

My hand shakes and reaches for the necklace I’m wearing. Grasping it and fumbling over its edges and the ring attached to it, I stand and leave the porch, and begin to walk into the yard once more.

A few times too many and not enough chances to greet them all and now it all falls down like dominos. Each one toppled a name, each one standing a blank face.

It was near Christmas time, and I was on the other end of the phone, my heart in my throat as I listened. Everyone else was happy as could be. Who would want such a thing to happen?

Was only a matter of time. Not a lot of time, either.

Crowds gather, faces that don’t care much for what is transpiring, petty squabbles bubbling forth at a time of crisis. I blinded myself to all of them, punched all of my emotions to the back of my heart, but I failed in that as well.

I had my chance to speak to him alone, and I doubt he could hear me. That part really didn’t matter. I used what little time he had left to damn him, to demand penance from him for all of his failures. I watched his rotting form breathe in and out, and I somehow wanted him to get up, to fight me, to counter my horrible examples of failure and say that I have done no better.

I asked him if this was really how he wanted things to end. I couldn’t accept that he wanted to die of his own will. I refused to accept that we really were that alike.

I spent most of my life thinking I had no real father, and as I watched him lying there helplessly, I realized that I was actually exactly like him… in every way that frightened me to my core.

Never harbored much resentment towards him, I learned early on not to expect much from either parent. There was always a border between both of us, as though we wanted to cross it, but were both too stubborn and prideful to admit that we were wrong. I let him live in the consequences of his bad decisions, while I set off to make plenty of mistakes on my own.

I couldn’t save him, and I could have. I never offered help, I never revealed my own problems, and I never broke ground to relate to him. We just ignored one another, and in slow motion I watched him take his own life.

So many pig headed jackasses standing around me as I come to grips with a terrible revelation. I welcomed the end of the proceedings. I wasn’t offered time to grieve, so the isolation of this house actually sounded wonderful suddenly.

No one around me wanted to understand, but truth be told, I didn’t want them to know. What in the fuck was there to offer me? I didn’t need a shoulder to cry on. I didn’t know what I needed.

Used to often stray out into this part of the yard to think, but most of the time when I asked questions, they were pointless and foolish… the ignorant philosophy of a young man trying to find his place in the world. This time, I felt all of existence expanding and contracting.

I began to wonder what in the world was watching this wonderful yet ugly experiment that was my life. Could there be an amalgamation of all humanity that I could watch? The sum of all our beauty and creation, of all our crimes and killing… was there something inside my self that could see all of it?

Never accepted the beliefs and traditions of the old, but in me, something was screaming for connection. When I looked up into the stars, I felt the weight of every bad choice, the comfort of every knowing glance and gentle kiss, shame, joy, guilt, discovery, terror. Everything erupted from me, and into me, expanding and contracting like the world itself. No matter how alone I was in this spot, I was me… all of me. My memories, my hopes, everything of me, flowing into everything, before washing back into me again.

What I felt that night was as powerful as it was altering. Despite a renewed sense of spirituality, it was not some wonderful warm and fuzzy revelation. I did not feel the sum of my life was in the hands of anyone else, that some force in the universe would wash away all the wrong I had done. I felt connected to something though, and from that, I made a vow to carry the burden of what I had done at all times.

Looking at the necklace as it rests on me now, and I wonder if that was the only reason I vowed to bear it. To be forgotten was his greatest fear… it was my greatest fear. Part of me refused to think that such a thing could ever come to pass.

But why is it across me now? Is there any living soul carrying it? I actually hope that no one would do such a thing. I hated the feeling.

Let all old and tired souls put the objects that carry their spirit up on the shelf, and look at them fondly one last time, before giving them to the world. Our hopes and laughter and dreams, left to be forgotten by the new, as the old become dust.

I take the necklace off, and set it on the ground. The same spot where I lost everything. The same spot where I thought I found the world again. I break down and weep as my hand graces it, knowing that this isn’t the last time I shall see it, because it’s not here.

However, I kept my promise. There is some joy in these tears. This was one of the very few times that I made good on my word.

I walk down the driveway again, seeing a long road stretch before me out of the cold empty swamp. From trees and desolation and quiet, emerges a busy city again. Had to escape that dingy little hole in the ground, it was killing me inside. The cars, the population, they make it hard to hear myself think, but it is also a reassuring background noise.

If the hands reaching from everything are really so interested in my decisions and my consequences then the control they seek is always out of their control. And I’m the one walking away, ignoring everything they say, empty and idle hands set to motion, and the control comes from giving everything away. The crowds all scream for sacrifice, but they want to see someone else lose it all, they will give nothing. So it seems the people that everyone thinks are controlled are really the ones giving the commands and telling them what to do with their hands, and I just walk forwards and laugh.

I am walking down a road, busy and congested, and I am laughing while the words of every other being just become a static that echoes around me.

The buildings begin to stand on their own, and they demand attention. I give nothing to them. Water to my side, dirt to my side, trees and concrete parking lots, it passes into my vision and out of it so easily.

The buildings rise, and clatter amongst each other like a wind chime, they are confused and angry. Their bones split out and the windows crack and scream before shattering. It rains glass, sharp little things that cut at me as they clatter to the ground, breaking further. The only thing I dare notice from this, is an amusing crunching noise that arises from my steps.

At last, one of the creations seems fed up with my ignoring them. It splits from the rest, and begins to crumble as it falls towards me.

I still ignore it. Even as the land around it is smashed into a cloud of dust, I keep walking.

Right on target.

My head and torso and limbs twist and snap into horrific configurations as I am squished into the rubble, a sound like laughter and singing emerges from the chaos.

What’s left of my face gushes out various fluid and bits of other things. Try to bring focus to my eyes, but they’re separated, and only one works, looking at the other as it looks somewhat like an orange that’s been stepped on. Very few of my fingers respond, and they can’t move either. No pain is felt though. However, there is a degree of annoyance at my sudden feeble state. I become a loose configuration of tiny shards seeping through the cracks. I emerge crawling out of the rubble unscathed. I wipe dust and various bits of debris and blood from my arms and face. No time to be distracted.

Dirt road again, the middle of nowhere, fields extending around me, and just this one crumbled heap in my way. I begin to race down the trail at a sprint, a strong spirit of defiance pushing me onward.

Familiarity stops me once more. I look up at the sky, and fish the music player out of my pocket. It’s completely smashed to shit. Almost forgot that I had brought it along with me. I toss it aside now, trying not to think of all the times it brought me comfort. It won’t do anything for me now.

What made me stop in the first place though, is a garden that reminds me much of times long past. The colors of the roses and other planets seem far more vibrant than they ever did in life. I stray away from most, and focus my attention on a small patch of tulips. Plucking one away, I bring it up to scrutinize. A rich mixture of red and yellow, the petals jumping up like fire in the wind, the rest on the ground held aloft on their stems, like embers stuck in place.

I begin to wonder if the scent from this garden is brought on by pure memory, or if I am conjuring something real in this place. Not the only thing for me to ponder, and I spend enough time thinking it over, that the tulip I have stolen from the earth begins to wither and die. I discard it, and decide that I should just be on my way.

An interesting distraction, as my sense of exhilaration seems stolen from me now. Back to a plodding pace, I see another city creeping over the horizon.

Tall buildings a rare sight, they dot the landscape in a patchwork way, twisting highways that have no idea where they are going snake around the environment. They ferry traffic that is equally confused. The deafening noise of differing tones shouts out from all sides and demand attention.

I am looking far away, and away from my path, there is a great hill overlooking the horizon, I head for that spot.

When I reach the top, I sit down and make myself comfortable. The vast cityscape stands before me, and before staring too deeply into it, I look for areas that remind me of when I first arrived.

Many reminders spring from me, that the worst is always yet to come, reminders that I should not trust so easily, they permeate the air itself. I will not say sorry for anything, not for my blind nature, not for the ruin that came.

Stuck far away from everything, and all that existed around me were reminders that the purity of isolation poisons me. Ironically though, everyone that would come for me, I wasn’t quite fond of their presence, either.

Never took enough time to think things through.

One of the sky scrapers crumbles, it smashes into the raised stretch of highway to the left of it, and I smile.

Stuck in a vehicle heading towards nothing, wondering what was to become of me. This is where the worst of it began. The highways had gone through three phases for me. They were once comforting, and when separated from them, they became an intoxicating escape. Now, they were just noise, and everyone going about their business was just noise as well.

It was set up perfectly, my return to my broken and pointless state of being, begging for a place to sleep, wondering how I would feed myself. The support of the only people left I could trust suddenly seemed like pity. The world’s I had tried so hard to keep separate for so long suddenly came together, and everyone could see just how wretched I was. A tragic figure, but far from one worth sympathy.

At first I was surrounded by people, and this only made the contrast of my loneliness even worse. I wanted to hide in my dreams, but I could not sleep.

This is also where the world goes hazy for my thoughts. So I stand up, shouting and smiling, watching as even more buildings collapse. The great cities I fled from, now nothing but rubble, and I’m laughing so hard my eyes water.

When there is only dust, I walk down from the hill, and back to the road I was following. I remember all the fleeting thoughts of sitting in my room alone, wondering where the world went, and why connection was so difficult to establish when I left for it.

I can hear sirens and screaming from far off in the distance, the sounds of people coping with their city being nothing but dust. Now they must face each other, and that all they have built means so little. Much like them, I must remember that the world is merely inside of me, that I do not exist in it, or of it.

I find it odd, that I am so lonely now. When I was alive, I was surrounded by the dead. Friends that had passed, family, they sat around me like I was the one to judge them, but they are not here now. There is only me.

Begin to wonder if I even need to walk down this path. Perhaps I only do so because it comforts me? The trail itself now splinters and fractures as I step down it. The road morphs quickly into dirt, and then back to pavement. Crumbled buildings and their remains turn into trees, and then they appear perfect again, before looking like the ruins that they are once more.

I spent so much time trying to make all of this my home, only to now realize in death, that I was never wanted. When I first left, it felt like exile. Now I think of it as a reprieve. Never had the time to think about it, there was too much chaos in my mind.

Things jut up in front of me, blocking my path… rigid lines with thin faces that spit out smoke and make clicking noises. I’m filled with their sound, and I push through them, feeling them fall apart at my touch, yet for every one that falls, a dozen more arise. Eventually their noise is so deafening, that my hearing fades, until only the pounding of my heart fills my senses. A dull but hectic rhythm that pushes me further, they are biting me with their teeth now, trying to fall apart around me to bury me with their noise.

I scream, and it sounds like the noise they make. They all fall away, and I fall to my knees, vomiting ash. My eyes burn and I franticly feel for my chest, as though something invasive is clutching at my insides.

I look up at nothing again, and when I scream this time, I project all of my will upwards, until some sick and terrible thing rests before me, leaving my throat with a burning feeling. It’s covered in pus and globs of some substance I don’t want to know the origin of, and I feel something sharp and resolute in the center.

Pulling it from the mass, I see that it is the necklace I had forsaken. As soon as the chain leaves the pile, it flies from my hand, and wraps around my neck, choking me.

At first there’s a great panic, but when I remember that you can’t strangle a dead person, I am filed only with annoyance. I fumble at the thin chain, gripping it tightly and trying to rip it off, but it won’t leave. I grab the cross and ring, and yank on them as hard as I can. Finally after much struggling, I rip these two parts away, and as they detach, the chain goes slack, and falls off of me.

Reverence for the dead… why bother? The shapes in my palm are loathsome. I care not for whatever I said to make me bound to them. I toss them to the side once more to be forgotten. I kept my word, and I will suffer it no longer.

I will push past the mess of perception that stands before me. I will force it to become something whole again. I will get away from these places at last.

Something dangerous and new awaits me, the trail fades, and I find it difficult to know where I should go.

There is no reason to stay, so I press on. Why bother with conquest? Look at what it resulted in!

But answers are never that clear. Much like this path, it becomes a haze, what I mean, what I want, mingling with a vast swathe of what could happen, what did happen.

And what was I looking for, a home? Why bother?

I will learn nothing standing still. I will experience nothing surrounding myself in the old. I will stagnate, and sink into emptiness. I will not let this be my fate.

Nothing but rubble in my wake, but I don’t care. I did not make the world fall down. No one did… because everyone just stood around, watching, doing nothing.

-   -   -   -   -

Oh God, was I that man up on a cross
Made of steel stuck on my wall?
Cold and thin, who watched me die
And did not care?

Miles to go before I sleep
Miles to go before I sleep
Miles to go to fall in deep
Is this the way it has to be? Yeah.

Path 2: The Siren

I shall not see the evil of past actions, or future ones. There is no evil. There is only me.

For all my time spent hating everything that was, everyone that was, I now feel a very naked and cold feeling of isolation. It sinks into my bones and soul and chills me with words of my pointlessness. That I exist because I do, that I died because I did, and it will have no greater affect on anything, or anyone.

The path starts as a nothing. Only a white trail set among a stillness exists before me, and my steps make no noise, my breathing makes no noise. I am as empty in this place as I feel in my heart. Eventually I notice the pitter patter of my feet return to my senses, and my eyes begin to water as I find focus with them yet again. I emerge from it like a diver begging for air, and far from me I see form, and shape, but a distinct lack of color.

Trees of false shape and structure spike from the ground, making a dense and foreboding wood come before the trail. They are grey and painted like metal, they bear no leaves, and they shine with no color amongst a place with no sunlight. The light from this place is illuminated by the trail only, like a walkway of moonlight among grasping and ill hands. Further in they still reach for the bright thing cutting through them, but they fade away like they arise from emptiness, cast out from gravity and soil.

I tread this place carefully, making sure never to deviate from my course. The dull light at my feet serves as a perpetual reminder of my goal, my cause. Still, the branches that reach for me like a cross between teeth and hands have a strangely alluring quality to them. I see little intention or dark will from them, they to me, seem stranded, as though left for wanting. There is a feeling of community among them, as the wind gently pushes the trees and makes them whisper silently to each other. They tell each other of dark things, of being uprooted by a strange figure. They want all of the soil as their own, they want all of the light as their own, but as the wind makes its way past them, they all find something that unites them in fear and obedience.

My footsteps leave ripples, like a surface covered in a thin layer of water. Branches now try to grace me like fingers, flexing and reaching, and I try to pay mind to them, avoiding them whatever the cost.

The wind gets stronger, more furious, and it pushes first at my back, and then at my face. Some feeling of exposure graces my cheek, and I am knocked to the ground. The path below me seems heavy, and as I begin to stand, leaning into this harsh wind, the trees retreat away from me. It seemed for so long that I was some prize for them to take, and now they want nothing to do with me. Indeed, they recoil away from me in terror, like I am the bolt of light from the weather that strikes this place to flame.

As the wind stops… an eerie calm takes hold, and the trees now say nothing. They are jealous for some strange reason. I can’t guess at how they function, but I know enough that this display is an oddity.

A second light emerges to my left, and it races through the woods so far from me and with such speed that it reminds me of life, and of shooting stars wished upon in the night. It stays near the trail, but not close enough to it for my taste. I depart again with haste, and keep my eye to the left of me, trying to keep this light in focus.

I run at its pace, the ripples left behind me now turning into a violent wake, and I can’t bother myself to look over my shoulder. This twinkle I follow fascinates me.

When I stood in life with devices of splendor around me, I sacrificed them, but was also demanding that I was buried with them. The flood of my life comes back to me as I gaze deeply into this thing.

Shouting, but I don’t remember to whom I was directing my anger. Other times I said nothing, and that seemed to make me far crueler. I was aiming for calm, instead I breed complacency.

Just grab them from me. That was what I wanted, as fast as they came into my life, I would banish them and decry how useless they were as distractions. Pleading like it was a drug, recoil when it was within my grasp. I begged for something to calm my mind, but when I was calm, I was restless, demanding action.

This thing is within my grasp, but a noise drowns it out. I would fear no consequence, but the noise is not something I am avoiding, it is something that gets closer to me the further I run.

Violently the light bursts into the sky, and like a sun at noon I can’t look near it without feeling immense pain. It flashes and the trees whisper things of how it wishes to rob the soil of what they crave so dearly. It pulses four times, and then I notice the trail before me is the only light that remains yet again. I feel almost cheated and horrified, and for a moment I just stand still gazing at the sky, blinking to remove the dots that swim in my vision.

The wake that I was avoiding laps at me and moves forward down the trail. I start to follow it, but gently now. The sound that I heard before remains and it pierces the wood like flame. The sound of tears that have no reason to be shed.

The trail goes upwards now, and the wake of my feet falls from me quickly, it retreats further down the light, far away from where I intend to go. No time is left for me to spend in the annals of regret. I’ve tried to span this place a million times over, and I’ve always failed.

Trees vanish from sight, and I feel that I’m climbing some sort of hill, but with such a lack of light, I can only tell this by the feel I get from my legs, telling me how much they are exerting themselves. At the peak of this, the light goes over the side, and for some reason, it becomes brighter. I cannot recall this ever being part of the path before, but the wake of where I’ve been has retreated from me. This is something wild and new.

I race to the top, so furious are my steps that the world around me retreats and grows. The trees climb the hill and rush towards me, in defiance of all that tries to keep them rooted and still. Their branches try to grab at me and claw at me, begging me to stop my pursuit. I will not yield, and I follow the sound.

I bring myself to the apex, and I’m standing in an ornate stone platform. Pillars reside around it on five sides, each glowing softly to bring further illumination as the trail is split by this place. In the center is a large and flat platform, and sitting on it facing away from me is what looks to be a woman in fine dress.

The sound I have been chasing has been that of her tears.

I walk around the platform, and I sit near her and for a long span of time, I say absolutely nothing. I remain transfixed in an odd and penitent way… that I should offer her some solace, yet my speaking would be some form of heresy. As I remain in this odd paradoxical state, she stops, and turns to look at me.

Through her sorrow I see only wonder. She stares at me in confusion, and moves closer, asking for my name. I tell her that I have no name to give.

She asks again, and I tell her that I do not remember it, nor do I wish to know what it was. I realize quite suddenly after speaking that I am honest in my words. The name I carried in life escapes me, and I could not care less as to what it was.

She looks up, even though there is nothing to look up into, and tells me that the air whispered of my arrival. She says that she is of the path, and was born of water. She says that I have only found it, and that I was born of air. She calls me a raven, and calls herself Pisces. I spend a small while with her trying to point out the inanity of keeping titles when we are now beyond life and ownership, but she is having none of it. A bit of cheer can be seen within her, and her watery eyes now seem less mournful, and more in a state of wanting. Though I am trying to argue a very valid point, I cannot help myself but to be brought into her mood, and I think I begin to smile as well, even though I’m still arguing with her.

She stands and motions for me to look at where this place has split the trail. Looking over the hill, I see the path before me has vanished. She smiles, and takes my hand into her own, and says that this is the end of things, and that this is where she will stay.

I tell her that I am not finished, and that I yet know nothing of my end. She sits back on the stone slab, and motions for me to sit next to her. I comply. She mentions the name she gave to me again. She questions why I despise it so much, yet finds it ironic that I wish to know more of my life, and more of my death. I find this to be a very valid criticism, and for some reason, I am utterly captivated by the convergence of our clashing ideals.

Whispering into my ear, she tells me that contentment need not come from knowledge alone. Part of me desperately wants to agree, but now that the path has left me, I feel restless, and without any sense of hope. I tell her this, for seemingly no reason, and fear creeps across her brow. She holds her hand out and graces my face, and says that she worries for me. That she has sat here for so long awaiting me. That were I to turn away now, she would fade, and cease to be.

In my single-mindedness, I ask for her to follow me down the trail. Her reply is that she can find no path, that I am the end for her. Her hands feel cold.

It seems a kindness offered to me, it seems a terrible thing offered to me. The light that signaled the trail for me starts to dim. I scream, saying that I must be on my way, that I need to follow this path to whatever end awaits me. She grabs my arm, and with surprising force, I am held at bay. The light keeps fading, and she yells at me not to leave. Her hands feel cold on me. What I see in her face isn’t anger, but something else, something very wrong. I tug at my arms, and I find both of them numb. I look to where the trail should be. I want so badly to leave. I turn to look back at her, and she smiles now, while her eyes watch me with fierce menace. My spirit suddenly seems renewed.

I pull my hands away from her, and I shove her to the ground violently. I turn and try to spy the path again from this peak, and the forest around us seems to be hiding it. I try to position myself to the direction I think I need to be heading to find the trail again, and she lunges at me and slams into my back.

My head crashes violently into the tiled floor, and for a moment I’m dazed and confused, with no sense of myself, or what’s happening. Everything rockets into sudden jarring images of different faces and places. They coalesce in a very odd way. She shouts the name she’s given to me, and brings my face to look at hers. It’s filled with malice and lust, it looks different. I try to recoil in fear as I see her shift into something dangerous. Her nails are clawing at me as she shifts restlessly against my skin. I fight to get away from her, and finally remove myself from her grasp.

Standing to face her, I come across a terrible memory within my heart. The reason she is left grasping for me, like some terror reaching for prey. We share too deep an understanding of one another. We have met, we have parted, and now she seeks to do in death what she could not do in life. For a brief moment I’m watching her cry alone, swearing my name like it summons evil with it. Cursing me for what I’ve done to her. I had a far different prospective. She is the terror, not I. She is the monster. I had to escape.

The distance between us shelters images of water and sky, clouds obscuring light and offering eternal shade. Her head rests on my shoulders and she says she’s been waiting for me. I speak to her very honestly. I do this with no one. My honesty speaks of the terrors that plague my thoughts. She says that she understands it all. She says that she knows what I am dealing with.

Too heavily is that contrasted with what I know now.

On my knees and I can’t see. She stands shuttering with joy as I bring my hands to my face, and feel my palm go sticky with a great deal of blood clinging to it. I open my eyes and it hurts so much. The pain reaches around me in strange ways, and I’m feeling my way across the floor, trying to find where she stands, laughing at me. I feel the blood drip onto the back of my hands, on my arms.

Standing in front of me now, her hair and eyes are fire, her skin is ice, there is nothing giving or welcoming about this frame. This is a different face. This is a terrible thing.

We are tangled, and she seems complacent. I’m doing what I think is right, but it’s the opposite of what she needs. Slamming my face against the wall, demanding conflict, but I resist. I grow impatient, though. She knows this. She’s playing me like a violin. I can’t tell what is bringing about the tears, but afterwards, she assures me it was a wonderful thing I did. I try to see visions of myself as an empty vessel, to understand the evils I languish in.

Monster!

The things flashing through my mind make me reach out instinctively. There is something that I missed, and I feel I need to know what it was. For my sake, or for hers, I doubt it matters.

I’m resting on my knees, so tired and beaten. Too worried I can’t see what’s real and not. What have I done? What was it I meant to do? I’m stuck with the intentions getting crossed with the emotions. She’s smiling, and pulls my chin up to meet her gaze. She’s holding a knife, and she swipes it across my face. Everything goes red, and then it all fades away.

I am in pain, and I am very angry. Wrath spills with my blood, horrible things said and done, and I can’t see her smile.

I saw an explosion of thought burst forth from us both as our fingers touch again. In this shattered perception of events I see angles and prospective previously not afforded to me. My brain burns with hate and a sick sense of guilt cast at my self. I walk away, and she is left weeping. I want to comfort her, I want to make it all better… but in doing so, she would destroy me. Was it brighter where I stood, or where she lay to rest? Such seems lost now. Her whimpering was a song that would lead me astray. It would drag me to the depths of my own mind, to places that have been tormenting me for an eternity. I want desperately to believe those things aren’t within me. I’m not like that! Sheltered things I couldn’t let the world see, fragments of something so awful I can’t believe it’s a part of me. Lock it away, I am not this!

It was always on my mind when I was near her.

In my reckless youth and limited understanding, I find her smile captivating. Someone to guide me, watch me, point out everything that I was. As we walk and gaze into the water our hands connect, and the overwhelming warmth is profound, and it makes me think of things I’m not really feeling. I blind myself, because I know so little. She shelters the horrible thoughts I’ve been keeping to myself, she whispers that she can remove them. She wishes to be safety in a sea of chaos. We will both be free of these foul thoughts. Freedom however, was terrifying to me.

I’m sitting on the edge of the bed, and I feel like a monster. Something cast aside that no one wanted, and as I struggle to find relevance amongst myself and my new surroundings, the only thing there to offer me any solace, is something I feel responsible for in a strange way. The words offered to me, the things I meant to say, somehow they mix into the same thing and I’m not quite sure if that’s good or bad. I just know that I feel guilty, and I want it to stop.

Turning, and she smiles.

Turning around, I find I’m bound to a tree. Shackles across my wrists rooted so deep into the trunk that it seems like they were born of it, and whilst I see nothing around me, I hear everything. Talk that they all knew. I hear a different version of what I think happened, and I am so far removed from what I’ve done, that I can’t be sure which side is right. I never spoke a word, like a terrible thing I needed no one else to know. Into death, my horrors would never be spoken of. After I died though… what happens then?

What returns is less a figment of memory, but rather an interpretation on a dream, as though some vague form that, while nocuous, has a great amount of appeal to it. She plays with my bindings, and laughs, telling me that she’ll be my opposite for eternity. I sense this as a means of confrontation, something I need to fight away. She sees it as a means to remain with me forever. She’ll always be standing there in the dark corners of my self, telling me of her dreams and fears, ripping at me while she moans and smiles. The taste, the scent, my eyes widen, and I scream that none of it should happen. I am too complicit, and my words are betrayed by my thoughts.

Is that one face? It splits into many, and the voices are all different. I let this happen… many times over. An idiot too giving of his self and what I am trying to satisfy becomes a confusing blur.

Are those my fears? Do I see the world as she does? Are we really as similar as I fear? I want to be nothing like her. She can’t discern between her suffering and her joy. Both are intermingled into something ugly… like us, in all our incarnations. One guise needs to hurt, needs to be reminded of reality, another guise stares at me with black thoughts of the whole world. Still another just looks at me, and cries.

She seems to think that I enjoy what she does to me at this moment. Physical reaction seems to be all she has left to confuse my intentions. I yell, I scream, I kick and struggle against my chains. The trees circle around us, like people would gather to look over a corpse lying in the street. My petulance is amusing to her. It is also in vain.

This time they see the display. As I try to break from where she keeps me locked away. I bite and scratch and yell, my hands wrap around her throat, and I want to hear nothing she has to say. I am lost in that haze. Something surging through me speaks of what was buried, a thing that should never surface. She goads me, does everything she can to drag it out. I give in too easily. Never wanted this… I never wanted this!

She reaches a climax, and with it, light appears in the empty place that could be confused for a sky. For the brief moment I’m blinded by it, it is so harsh. She scratches me with her nails until I bleed in an ornate fashion. She laughs and moves away from me, and all sense of guilt and anguish is gone from me. I can’t even lie down. I’m left shackled and bleeding, whimpering as the confusion in my mind switches between my sorrow and my anger. The possibility of what I could do seems far more terrible than anything else. My blood demands more, my hands tense, and as I look at her, I try to lunge forward, testing my bindings. I clench my teeth and begin to ponder what I will do to her. The thoughts of her ruin are powerful and intoxicating. This is the thing she wishes to see? This is what she would expose to the world? I scream now as I see the reaction and the face itself change. I understand now. Leaving me in nothing more than a pile of my own shame as I tend to my wounds, my flesh carries her forever, and I am revolted. My fingers trace over memory, and now I understand.

She is not keeping me bound so that I may not flee. She is keeping me bound so I will not destroy her. I understand that now.

Trees lined the road, she offered me dinner. Quite older, but I loved the attention, in this group that I don’t quite belong in, my timid nature shows far too much. I am cautious with these people. I am quiet. For whatever reason, she seeks me out because of this. She says that she shares my fears, enjoys our conversations. She doesn’t like to think of the end of anything, not her life, not of us. I share the sentiment. My brain at that point is so filled with static and a loss of self. The universe itself like some cruel joke… and out of the darkness a woman emerges and offers her hand. Calm amongst the turbulent tide, someone to confide in.

I try to break the shackles again, and she laughs in a perverted way. I yell at her, that she is a figment of my mind that I crafted, but she is resolute, she is real, and for some reason, I can’t deny her. Worse, if she is just a figment, then why is she here? Why am I doing this to myself?  When her hand graces my face, I feel cold and exposed. She traces her fingers over the scars she’s left. If I were not to stay, then she would instill within me a reminder that I could never forget. Shapely wounds across my chest. The shackles break, and now they are restraining her to where I was just kept. Now it is my turn. Now I smile.

I reach my unbound hands, and I’m finding something made of glass and frail intentions, crying as I grace it with dirtied and stained hands. This is just the beginning.

Her dark skin and her hair in her eyes, guided by a smile that seemed filled with danger, rather than joy. My words seemed interesting, but I suppose I did not. I was a distraction. I fought for a place I thought I had earned, but learned quickly that what I was striving for would amount to nothing. Either I was stupid and she knew how everything was going to turn out, or I… I’m not sure. Fury surrounded me when I disappeared that time. Let that smile that captivated me turn into something that could provide me amusement for a change.

Everyone wants me to say something. No one wants me to say anything. The voices I begged for turned, the voices that begged of me, I turned. No one must ever know, no one must see. If I could make it all vanish, I would. They have to stop blaming me at some point… they have to. I am perfectly content to blame myself. I don’t need reminders from outside my head doing the same. I will bury these thoughts. They will never get the better of me!

Different face… different time… and the same results.

A song that chases me and catches me, ensnares me and demands my full attention. Words of one I forgot, before it all went tumbling downwards. I can see the sky part as I’m standing on the sidewalk, going over the events of my day as she clings to me. That laughter, that face…

It all rots away, though. The one time it should have been perfect, the one time I could have made a difference. I fucked it up. I’m always a fuckup.

I suppose I let that mistake poison me… I haven’t a clue why fear was my response. I needed to run away, I couldn’t expose what I really was, not to this person.

My opposite…

An image of perfection that would fade and mock the word I thought I didn’t understand. Melting away from what I desired and exposing me for what I am. My feelings towards it seem remarkably dull now.

Everyone wants me to say something.

So this world that stood before me in ignorance, now asks of me, and I can’t answer. I reach for her, as though she is a treasure I have dug up. She’s crying with a feeling too profound for me to understand. What is happening to me, why did I come to this place, if all I shall do now is grasp at my ignorance and cause so much harm? The branches are hands, and the trunks are bodies, and as they become an amalgamation of those surrounding me, I shelter her, secret her away from them. She wants them to see what I’ve done, what she has done to me, but I won’t stand for any of it.

Why did I torture myself so? I’ve let her take my skin and soul, body and heart. Her pain fueled by something of her that makes her just as broken as me. Together we are a symbol for all that is wrong with people. She wants the world to see how corrupt and evil this is, I want to pretend that things will get better. I run to the fantasies I locked away in my mind to say that it will get better, that we will change, grow… but that is not what happens.

She claws, she bites, and my mind vows to destroy her. Lavish thoughts of her broken and bloodied before me flood my mind, mixed with my own form in a similar position. Everyone that says it will be alright, everyone that begs for stability and understanding. We are their bane, and there is much joy in that. Only for a brief and fleeting moment though. The paradise of the idiot throngs brought to their end, visible only by us as we begin this display yet again.

I leave her to whatever she feels, and I stand amongst the wood, and the wind has died away, whispering nothing now. They stare at me, knowing that what I have partaken of isn’t the loss of love or lust. I’m merely broken, and she is broken too. We can never be whole, not alone, not with others, not with each other. We are drowning in what we are meant to be. So many faces screaming at me, their words united yet chaotic and meaningless. Ill advice and petty thoughts from others too ignorant to know what is transpiring. Frauds that would mock us while hiding their own fears and terrible deeds. Surrounded by a world I was desperately trying to run away from, and I’ve become the center of it. A shining example of how far one soul can fall.

She wants this to be a lie, she wants what they say to mean nothing. She takes my hand and shows me a light that seems so far away from me. It is oddly compelling. She says that we can take it, that we can climb to a peak behind us both, and there she will forget the dark things in her mind, her confusion and anger. There she says I will cause no more harm, that what I think and feel and say will finally align. I don’t look at the same direction, there is something even further away, opposite from where she wants to take me.

We could break the universe, and try to bring about displays to say that we are not the only ones like this… but I do not care. If what I see in my mind for myself is merely fantasy, then I shall entertain no other illusion than that one. I will not lie with one side and say to the other that I am truth. I contemplate the hunger that stalks the worst part of my brain, and suddenly I care nothing for it. Dropping the bindings I was playing with, my eyes now visible again, and much confusion reigns. Why did I stop?

I sit her down, and I shackle her to the trees again. I stare at her with a cold face, and say nothing. Each moment she changes, a different face and body for me to remember. All of them shout hateful things to me, and I’m too tired to care. I turn away from the shifting images of my past. I leave them to rot.

One that demands much of me, that I am the only one to understand what went wrong. How could I leave with such knowledge? It’s remarkably easy, actually. One demands that the things I cherish are designed entirely by a foolish society that wants nothing more than limitations on everything and everybody. It’s possible, but the excess does nothing for me. Were my actions meaningless, then why so much anger when I left? Another says nothing, but the eyes convey much.

She screams, she cries, she’s begging me to let her go. Different tones and sounds, almost intoxicating in a way, I think. I have let her go. Rather, it’s more that she hasn’t released me. I find that ironic. I turn and look at her, and she’s no longer some demonic and wild thing, the sense of discovery is gone, and I just look at a broken woman, who is begging for a broken man. I can’t help myself, I can’t help her. I’ve died, and she’s dying, I’ll let it remain that way. Even if this is all merely a fragment of my broken mind, I can’t stand to be submerged in it any longer.

Still… there’s something within that sorrow that seems inviting to me. A welcome hand that speaks to me of the knowledge this pain brings… something relatable and warm. I am distracted from her sight by a soft glow from the corner of my eye. What was that?

I see the path ahead lighting the dark wood, I wonder how I could have forgotten it. Turning again, my sight beholds the same person I chained, but with different figure and form, and a seemingly indifferent face. Another tree holds the same thing again, but it looks at me with an evil grin. All of them are very empty looking. They do not amount a significant number though. For some reason I find that amusing. This is not what I am. I was, but no more. All things considered, if these are the ones to damn me, then I didn’t cause nearly as much damage as I thought. I laugh at that notion briefly.

I’ll give my hatred and insecurity to someone else… or something else. I don’t think it’s wanted here. The corners of my mind I retreat from, no person will ever make them safer places to tread. If they are not safe for me, they never will be. The image I held in my mind of my dire mistakes, and how to correct them, I realize now how foolish it was to entertain that fantasy.

Shouts telling me to stop… I confuse them with the urge to keep going. Wicked smiles cast at me, or is it from me? Can’t really tell, myself. Either way, something clatters to the floor and my mind snaps away from what’s happening. It’s all over very soon. The aftermath and afterglow are filled with very odd emotions, all of them in direct conflict with one another.

Done with it now. No reason to secret away these things now.

I begin to walk back to the trail, and I hear screaming so intense that my form is rendered useless. My body falls to the ground in pieces and I lose control over every function. With great difficulty, I pull myself up, and the glow is so bright that I see the wood as though it were noontime. A stark cloudless white hangs over these gray leafless trees, and then as the screaming stops, it all falls dark again, and the path is my only source of light. I begin to run towards the trail, and as I do, I feel the branches of the trees try to snag at me, ripping at clothing and flesh. A rumble shakes the earth below, and I look behind me, to see a vague shape meant to mock a hand reach down from the sky. The giant limb plucks away a handful of trees, and another soon descends from the heavens to do the same thing.

Begin to run as fast as my weak legs will carry me, trying to avoid the thousands of hands reaching out to try and find me, if that is their purpose. I can’t guess at what they intend, I only know that I must be rid of them. Need to get far away. Need to get back to the path.

I find that I have died before even waking. There is so much left here that I wanted to say, do, retreat from, and as it all tries to envelope me, I find yet again that my reaction is to flee, to be as far away from consequence as possible. Ironic in some ways, I suppose.

I stop as I see a hand reach in front of me. Ripping away a giant patch of trees, I see corpses left in the hole where it dug. They appear drained of all but skin and their bones, and they’re covered in dirt and small holes that prod into various spots on their skin. I think I can recognize a few of them…

Forcing myself out of my stupor I look again, and see that the trail is close to me. I run around the spots where the hands dig, avoiding them as best I can. The sky is filled with many limbs, and they are all very angry.

At last my feet stand upon the trail again, and I see the comforting ripples my feet make upon it.

As I look back to the wood, I see the trees replaced with people, their bodies stretched and torn to mock the shape of the things torn away from the soil. In the sky swims the thousand hands that tore away the wood, and replaced it with these dead things. They interlock and untangle in a display that would likely be more enchanting were the stars set to illuminate the scene.

The eyes of the dead things are set to look at this sky as well, their hands reaching not for sunlight to nourish their roots, but for what they were torn from. Lower towards the ground, I see other hands, they still reach for me, they still want to claim me. They believe that I still belong amongst the fallen.

The rain is falling, and I’m running under the cover of the mall with other faces, shouting and yelling and laughing. Let this all remind me of what I have faded from! They all laugh and joke while she looks at them nervously. I feel the need to defend her, but I don’t do anything. I let them laugh, because I know that if I stand up for her here, when they all vanish, she’ll turn on me. Letting her rot like this means I’ll face the same punishment, so I guess there’s no way I can win. This way though, I can watch her squirm for a change, instead.

I won’t be the one to let her down, I won’t be the one standing there, I won’t be the one to beat and cut on. I won’t be anything.

It seemed funny at the time, laughing while avoiding the rain. I kept my arm around her, trying to be some form of support, while inside my head, I was screaming.

I’m not going to be there when it all falls down. As everything fades and everyone needs to remember how to breathe, I won’t be there. To pine for the past while I watch them all disappear in single file. I leave the room last, I’ll hit the lights.

Never to yield, never to surrender, I try to remember which direction is forwards, and I begin to walk again. The wind doesn’t help the fake trees to whisper now. Instead it carries their moaning and anguish. Familiar notes strike my ears like a hammer, but I try my damndest to shut it away. I have a direction I am to struggle with; I cannot remember those led astray.

But I was the one to lead them astray… wasn’t I? I understand nothing of what they speak, but there’s an odd sense of belonging in the dead here. They all make so much noise, but the aimlessness and starkness of their forms makes this place feel painfully lonely. For a brief moment, I contemplate returning to the tree I chained them to, to the pinnacle of this place where I was held at bay, where I got this scar on my chest. No… I carried this before death. Didn’t I?

That anger still seethes within me, and on my flesh it threatens to devour me whole. Back into my brain, and I’m shoving a face against the wall. I’m doing something awful, but everyone is smiling like an idiot. The whisper in my ear contradicts what I feel.

Deeper, they’d say. Drive it deeper!

My head is out of a window late in the morning, and in the back seat of the car, laughter, at how I’m so willingly allowing myself to be the butt of a joke. I wasn’t joking though. Pushing it through, the sun was coming through the windows, and I hadn’t slept at all. She sat across from me in the back, and smiled. I tried my best to ignore her. She is not my savior.

Deeper. I don’t want this! I want it out of my brain! I am dead, I don’t need this haunting me.

The trees loom over me again, not as people, but as places, driving their selves into me… deeper. I hear chains dangling far behind me, and I’m running. I think I’m running away from me.

As I am flooded with more memories, I see why this place is so loathsome. What I did upon the peak, what I did… all of it from me, from them. Congealed into a mess, and at the best of times, I’d find only anger in my soul as I try to reflect upon it all. I want it out of me, and it just goes deeper… like I do, when told to stop. Demanding it to end, but my screams go unheard.

Monster!

I look up and knock the smile off my face as I see the hands descend again from the skies, this time in mass.

This time it’s true, this time I’ll be welcomed, but I’ll just lash out in anger again like always. I have become everything I feared I would here, and the faces around me are laughing, or saying nothing.

All I can do, is walk further, and try to tell myself that it wasn’t real. Like a dream fading as my mind begins to wake, I’ll be away from these woods, and I’ll find it all to be some cruel trick.

They try to rip the path out from under my feet, but I will have none of it. This is my escape! I must press forward! Branding me whatever they wish, tearing every luminescent brick from the foundation, and my hands get away from me, ripping at everything and putting it all back into place. They struggle to keep their pace, ignoring me, but blinking a few more times, I realize it’s all gone.

I’m standing far away from it all, and I can grab at the bodies and beat on them until all of those beautiful colors emerge. I’ll drive it deeper, as I feel that knot in my throat return, and my head starts to throb in rhythmic fashion. This is a part of me. I’ll use it to get through what I need!

This is all I can do, watching it turn into a giant mess before me, and I want to smile, but I’m coming off of it. I pull myself back, and I grab at my skull trying to understand this ebb and flow. I needed help to get through it… a kind voice to keep me from going astray.

But that wasn’t her place. She wanted it to go deeper. All I can do, this is what I built. This is my path, and I’ll have nothing take it away! The hands are grabbing one another for safety, and my gaze is enough to make them bleed. I derive much from it. Ripping the kindness and unity, exposing the reflection isolation brings. Safety in numbers… ha!

The trees form around me, trying to offer me thanks and regrets, but the wind won’t whisper through them. The path loses its sense of light, and I stand there in a stupor just wanting it all to go away. I want to say that this is not what I was… but I can’t deny that.

I stand alone in the woods, with no path to follow now. I stand alone, trying to remember how to push myself deeper down the trail.

I stand alone, and I feel horrible… guilty… wrong.

From water due rise, from the turbulent tide, a name given, a name stolen, secrets kept like children. From her hair to her feet a dangerous tone emerges, voices seductive and preaching of knowing. That knowledge not well earned, that knowledge taken, and when with it, one is left only to look backwards and take in that knowing is a dire and awful thing.

From the innocence of my eyes to the winds that would blow strong enough to injure my pride, I was taken under the current and dragged away kicking and screaming. Only once it was gone, did I understand that I never wanted to get rid of the things she said she could remove from me.

Something perfect, an incorruptible visage to act like a drug for me. I breathe her in, and she never leaves from that spot. An albatross whispering songs to me, telling me that she’ll remove the ugly marks on my face, telling me that my hair falls differently when she’s around. Without her, everything falls apart. With her, I am bound to a life I never wanted.

She stole the moon from the sky, and now as I stand without its glow, darkness reigns, and if it were to shift, the sun would consume everything. I know I am not first to suffer this, and likely will not be the last. The effects ring across my head for all these years, and I’m left wondering where intent meets with fate.

Walking alone through the night after muting all the cries, I must be strong, and remain above belief and fear; the only sound I shall enjoy is that of my footsteps. I love the rhythm of marching away from this, slowly, or with much haste. She treads through shadow like it’s the evil whispered in story books. I find refuge in it. Here, I am by myself, alone with my thoughts, wandering down the trail as my footsteps click and make a sound that has nothing to echo off of. The excited cries shout once, and then vanish.

Never to return… much like the things I gave away. The few, the many, all that has coalesced here into the horrid corners I wanted to lock away, now they vanish from my sight, from my ears. I suffer no consequence for it now, as I need not to. What would that serve, anyways?

As they would say, I give cheers to oblivion, jumping headlong and stupidly into whatever may await me. I could spend eternity lamenting how empty this part of the trail is, but how would that improve anything? Were I to fill it, all I would do is remake the wood I have just fled from. I will not let myself be bound and humiliated by the sirens of my past. Let them wallow in songs of guilt and my terrible deeds.

I don’t feel anything.

-  -  -  -  -

Am I…
Am I still tough enough?
Feels like I’m wearing down
Is my viciousness losing ground?
Am I taking too much?
Did I cross the line?
I need my role in this
Very clearly defined.

I need your discipline
I need your help.
I need your discipline
You know once I start, I cannot help myself!

Path 1: The Everyone

Walking forwards, marching endlessly, and it seems like it’s been going like this forever. I seek solitude. I find refuge in this path. I find strength in the ignorance of my surroundings. I am here, and I’ve been here before. I’ve never traversed this place to a large degree, but I’m already so familiar with its functions, every detail of it stands out to me.

Tracing a line that stretches into the infinite, unsure where it will take me, or why I must follow it. A simple impulse in me demands I push forward, simply because everything is in front of me, and there is nothing behind me. There is no need in me to dwell in the empty places. My mind wants to experience new things.

I am also not the only thing that has come here, for these same reasons.

The early part of this place is hotter than where I came from. Bodies line the path, they are the stones laid before everyone. A man or woman falls, and they become part of the bedrock that creates this trail, the devils and the gods they built join them, rubble amongst the foundation. A line extends everywhere, and the bodies are like walls, so crammed close to one another they are. They hate this closeness; they hate everyone they’re stuffed up against. They try to fight their way out, and all it does is cause a surge of angry flesh to ripple like a wave set into motion by the moon.

I’m walking on a trail of broken hands and skulls. There is no grass, but instead a carpet of hair and skin, where occasionally eyeballs jut up with sorrowful or angered expressions.

Some lines end with people frantically gathering around a trough, and pushing one another out of the way so that they can drink of a foul and viscous oil. I see their eyeballs melt because of the toxins they ingest, but they keep trying to shove their way back for more. Eventually many are dissolved into husks, and eager mouths will grip them with teeth to try and bleed them of the oil that burns their bodies.

None of them seem aware that what they consume will destroy them, but I suspect that even if told, they would still lust after the fluid. So strong is their need that it doesn’t matter if they are dissolved into nothing. It’s never enough though, they will never be fulfilled.

I have only just started along this path, and already I am yelling at myself, the same things the broken bodies below me are yelling. That I will not transcend from what they are, that I will fall into this path like they have. Hands stuck in the ground try and grip at me as I make my way past, and I must be careful in each step I take. Those with any degree of freedom think they are removed from it. They are unsure which side of the cage they are on, why they should be gazing out of it. They think themselves trapped, broken arms and torsos twisted into a prison for them.

What I think keeps me from them, is how aware I am of them. I hate them, I hate that I am like them, and I try to desperately resist what they so easily give into. At least I hope this is the case. Likely many of them also think this. I have no idea why I am different. My feet tracing this path is not some divine gift I think, I am often contrite as to why I can walk it, while others are set as its foundation.

Another branch separates into an endless stream of nude and dirt covered bodies. The fat and the old are all trying to reach a feast of children, trying to pretend that the physical act of destroying them will somehow restore their horrid frames.

A wall of human flesh masks it all, but from my vantage point I see all of the terrible display. One corner is filled with fat old men of pale color, and they seem interested in the wide and sorrowful display of young females at their side of the table. They masturbate and laugh and push at one another to get a great view and to break the bones of their feast, ripping at each of them to get their fair share. At another end of the makeshift table, women sit and prey on young men like spiders. Their tongues leak out of many sides, splitting apart, and they cover the poor boys. They try their best to enshroud the little ones. I hear from far off the screams not of the children, but of them all. The boys calling out for the safety of their parents, while the females trying to eat them alive call for their fathers, and the fat old men cry out for nothing more than approval, but their noises are drowned out by the tears they’re creating, unaware that only they can make it stop.

Only one side of this horrible scene is free of people pushing and shoving at one another. They all bow in reverence to the men that stand at the top. They rest on a throne of corpses, the young killed to make way for the old to thrive. Broken backs and bleeding mouths, and they’re saying nothing. They wear the burned skins of others, fashioned into suits to try and separate themselves from the rest with fine dress and style. Grand faces perched at the top, their power and influence allowing them to get the pick of the litter. Little girls, and boys made to look like little girls. They thrive on the fear, the tears that stream down from the faces of the broken act as the greatest display in their primal gratification.

The shrieks of the orgy are a mask that I can pierce through though. I do not see children being grabbed at. I see dirt and stones and twigs. I see mud and pathetic people trying to hold onto it. The frames of the youth they clutch don’t cry, they don’t feel guilty, and that drives them all insane. Instead they laugh, they prod at them, bite at them, and they’re not even there. So often does this display shift, that it appears from this far away to be like a living wave of anguish.

Not even a significant display, all around me horrors a dozen times worse play out endlessly. I’m left to wonder why it is all perpetuated. There is no terrible force lashing at them, demanding they act as they do. Part of me begins to worry that this might actually be a paradise for the types of people I abhor. Perhaps that is why I have not been ground into the path below me? This is not a place of refuge for me.

Indeed, all it serves to do is remind me how many lives are wasted upon the earth. In my youth, I questioned all around me. I had grown up in the harsh places the world wished to gloss over, I had seen the faces people hide from others, their intentions laid out, devoid of intent or reason. People merely acted, and paid no heed to consequence or understanding.

From the people that birthed children whilst still acting like children, to those that subsisted on the ignorance of others. It was all the same to me. Horrible people that never did anything to stop what they were doing.

I spent so much of my time hating them. No one ever did a damn thing to make anything better. And now I’m here, suffocating in their presence once again. No matter what direction I turn, I see the ill deeds of others play out endlessly, always caught between amusement and horror by the onlookers and those partaking of whatever it is they are after.

These were all but tiny displays for this place though. As I reach closer, I see the desperation grow.

One of the more grand displays comes upon me. On one side, many people eagerly rush to fill a void, and from that void, a hand emerges made up of the bodies willing to conform. It reaches out, and is trying to grasp at a brilliant figure above them all. The radiance of the thing stands in stark contrast to the rest of this pathetic existence, but no matter how many bodies are added to the hand, it fails to reach at this being. People fall from this thing, and plummet to the soil below. They create a broken circle that surrounds the hand in a symbolic fashion. The figure above, genderless and toneless, smiles at them all, and waves, and they think it an amazing gift, and do not see that it is mocking them. They made it, and they want it.

On the other side, another hand is created, but what is dangled above it is less tangible than salvation. Instead, it is a shifting thing that turns itself into the visage of what they each crave unfairly. What it looks like to my eyes points out that I still share some link with these beasts, and seeing them all reach for it makes me sick to my stomach. But that isn’t what they see…

These hands shift and turn like in a trance, and a grand thing stands between them, controlling them, lashing out when they grow too tall, or too bold. He has two mouths opposite each other, and as he stands in the middle of this display, each mouth whispers different things to each of the grotesque hands. The rest of his face is covered with eyes, and a crown made of teeth-like spikes juts from his head. His skin shifts and convulses in a lustful way. All before him are left for wanting, and all are removed of his sight, that they are unaware of this beast. His manipulations cause amusement to an array of mighty beings standing around, watching and laughing.

Another area is much like this spot, some terrible display meant for the amusement of other things. I see creatures with a giant eye at the center of their mass, the rest of them are arms and legs of loose rock held aloft by nothing. Parts of them seem to constantly flake off and evaporate upwards. They gather various people, broken and mournful, and they bring them to a pit. In this pit there is a great wolf, ravenous and angry. One of the watchful creatures throws a man into the pit, and the man cowers in front of the wolf.

It is not long before the beast has ripped the man to shreds, and his cries for safety are soon nothing but blood filled gurgling. The creatures observing this are not doing so for their own amusement though. They seem intrigued, as though they are conducting some kind of study. Next, they bring a woman forward, and they outfit her with metal before throwing her in with the wolf.

This person manages to survive longer, but she does not defend herself well. The best she manages is to slap her arms against the wolf as it tries to get around her protective coverings. The beast still wins.

Next they bring another man to the front, and give him a single weapon, one that I can’t quite recognize. He is dropped into the pit, and though shaken, he points his weapon at the beast, and before the wolf can even approach him, its midsection explodes. The creature pants for a few moments, and closes its eyes. The man cheers, thinking himself mighty. When the observing creatures retrieve him, they do not share his enthusiasm. One reaches it rocky hand towards the man, and crushes his head within an instant.

As I try to pull myself away from this part of the trail, I see that finally the mobs of bodies are pulled away and give way to a lesser scattering of souls. Still the form of the trail remains the same, but now more specific things are emerging from it, and idiots blind to their needs are left running each time they see something they desire.

As I walk further on, there are less people than ever. However, there is an even greater array of junk for them to pacify their selves with. On screens, some are flattered to have their views of hatred validated by a talking skull in a well dressed suit, claiming that his propaganda is the way the world must spin. Some others are glued helplessly to other bright screens, projecting images of innocent young women in compromising moments, and the idiots drooling over it have some sense of security and pride as a result of it. One in particular looks out at me, and asks me if I’ve seen the person he obsesses over. He points to a blank image, and I must confess that I have no idea what he is talking about. He gazes at the screen again, and cords enter his ears and eyes, and he says that he’ll wait an eternity for “her.” I would laugh at him, but I find him a pitiable soul. A loss of hope leads one to cope in any way possible. I don’t think I should judge any soul in this phase of the trail.

In some parts, people are gathered in a circle, but they all face away from one another, and they don’t say a word. They spend their time interchanging emotions, and it seems to almost have a strange pattern to it. A woman starts to cry, and when she stops, a man across from her begins to fume in rage. When he stops, the man next to him looks terrified, and it continues around this chain of people. They don’t seem to even know they’re sitting next to anyone.

There seems an ebb and flow to this trail. At first there was such a crush of bodies that it seemed oppressive and never ending, and for a time after that, it all seemed empty and still. Now I see a large gathering in the horizon.

What finally shoots up from the helpless and scattered, are two violent groups waving bits of paper in a strange dance. Each one has the same face, and with their free hands they try to rip the faces off. The other hand is almost forced to hold the paper high, each one detailing how their souls were given to cause. The faces differ between the two groups, and are only further differentiated by where they each bleed. They are clawing at themselves, their bodies writhe, but their arms are held high with their proclamations, and their mouths all regurgitate the same well rehearsed speech.

Time does not exist, so it stands as a useless means to measure how long I have traversed this trail. I find that I am slowly being worn down though. Likely this is how other souls are added to the trail. They go as far as they can, until finally they yield, and accept their selves to be trampled underfoot. I am trying desperately to remain steadfast in my dedication to not be like them. All of the horrible displays I see are contrasted with an oddity in my eyes, as I have partaken of all of these things just as any other would. I contemplate how I am different, but the horrible truth that everyone here is trying to avoid, is that I am not. They are not different either. The weight of what they’ve done varies by morality or monetary means, but they’ve all spent an eternity running from their selves, and now they have nowhere left to go. They can avoid each other no longer.

As I stand and watch, the people with their bits of paper held high seem to fade away, and as they slowly shuffle off to one side or another, I see giant figures land upon the earth below. Machines made of bones and blood look around with careless eyes. They vomit out old faces that have been sewn onto wooden frames, the skin rotted and lifeless, left only with pained expressions upon them. Strings shoot out of the dolls and into the sky, and on each side of me this process is exactly the same.

A cry shoots out giving itself to disillusion, and the hands of those now left on the side lines reach wide as they scream for the death of progress. They accept no rogues or differing sides amongst their puppetry, and they all bite at each other to provide a meal as they enjoy the display. Each side believes they are justified, that they are right, and that idealism is a perfectly justifiable thing to measure the worth of one’s life.

Tools once made to gather and harvest, are now the means to perpetuate pointless atrocity. The land behind those whose strings were cut is populated by the living machines, and they are heartless and efficient as they watch streams of puppets fall down before them. Gazing at this display with anger, I know that I can do nothing for it. To stop it, means I must become it, and I wish for myself not to be so hypocritical. Instead I leave them to their slaughter, as those that once cheered and bit at others are now being converted. Now their faces are sewn onto the wooden dolls. The machines have come to take them, and let them fight the battles they cried for. So many use their limited freedom to clutch at anything, to prevent their selves from being gathered up by the machines. All effort to remain unaffected is in vain. Soon the process starts over again in a strange fashion, dolls spring out of the ground with bits of paper held aloft, demanding bloodshed, while the machines held aloft in the sky begin to seed the soil with soldiers and weapons.

The constructs themselves are massive and featureless. They are as awe inspiring as they are intimidating. Made of the broken bodies of many, fueled by their hate and fear, but they care little for the reasons this conflict is perpetuated. For these machines to live, others must be bred to die. The very hands that have labored so intensely to craft these devices, are now unwittingly turned into their meal.

When I consider why this place is so littered with broken and dead things, I lose all sense of loss and do not mourn what has happened. Everyone was more than willing to give up their ability to choose. They wanted this, with every fiber of their being they demanded this event to play out endlessly. The only regret they all have is when they are forced to partake of the battle.

Within a very limited span, there is a field of broken dolls and dead faces looking into the sky again. The bone crafted machines start to gather the dead, and those left that want to claw their faces away are now enthralled and cheering for their victory. They haven’t the faintest idea what the word means, the blood that runs from their wounds shows this, they know it as well as I do. But I suppose none of that matters anymore. The ones demanding more will soon be the ones broken and left to rot, and a new wave of idiots will demand sacrifice, while they themselves are willing to give up nothing.

As the clanging of metal and the screams of the wounded and the angered fill the air again, I walk away, onwards down the trail.

The flow of bodies starts to lessen again, and the last remnant of people are random poles stuck in the ground. People are chained to them, and blindfolded. They say nothing; they do not weep, or even try to acknowledge anything around them. Others are perfectly still, being picked at by carrion creatures that regurgitate everything they consume. Soon though, I’m back to a still quiet, with nothing around me aside from the trampled souls that comprise the path.

Such a sharp contrast I think. Part of me says that I likely belong in this area. I am not free of sin, and I always seemed to crave separation from others. Never tried to be extreme about it, though. I saw the world around me isolate itself, and I didn’t want to watch that happen. Everyone turned away, not caring about what others had to say. Even when sitting right next to someone, it seemed far more appropriate to send them a message through some kind of device, never make eye contact, never smile, never make conversation. In a strangely ironic way, the more densely populated the world became, the less everyone interacted with one another.

The culmination of this part of the path is a very empty place, and a mighty seat of thorns rests under a fall of life giving blood. It is taller than any structure ever built by human craft, but what rests upon it is very mortal.

The mournful creature that rests upon it is an amalgamation of every soul birthed and put to rest. Its eyes are heavy, its skin charred and cut. A genderless model is bathed in the fluid that made it, but it can’t find life. It looks over a vast landscape of nothing, and stands as its ruler. A being made to govern an empty place, where all that remains is the brooding and contemplation of existence… a quandary with no answer or ending. It is the crowned ruler over nothing.

I think myself to converse with this thing, but it looks at me very knowingly, and points to its chest, and then onwards down the path. It is of me, it was for me, as it was for every being that shared life. It rejects me, and for whatever reason, that parting feels somewhat bitter and cold. It makes me look at the rest of this place with hateful eyes again, my conjecture is still ultimately pointless, but seems more profane now than ever.

The hearts that lie broken here knew better, but they are here because they refused to stop. The suffering this being emits is not one of the flesh. It is the understanding that everything that ever was, could have aspired to so much more, but did not. It is ashamed of us all, it is ashamed that we birthed it, and that we in turn birthed it. Such a being desires only that its existence be unnecessary. Everything is a part of it, that it must take pity on us should be seen as insulting. But we all knew better. I fall to my knees in front of this being, and I cry. So much about my life, about all the lives here, shattered in my mind and flooding back in again, a sense of every life that was brought into the world violently and then quietly snuffed out, my life and my death so small and insignificant in that moment that I cannot find myself.

It is their need to be by themselves, contrasted with the paradox in that they all seek a grand acceptance of life and spiritual enlightenment. They all push and shove and hate at one another, but they spend just as much time lusting over that which they do not have. I should not be avoiding their fate, and what has given me cause to be free from it does not make me remarkable in any way, shape, or form. I am of them and they of me, but the large body before me says that I must march further down this path. It almost seems as though he’s not even speaking to me, but that his words reach out much further, speaking to everything. All of those crushed underfoot, all of those that are subject to every evil that exists, eventually they must move forward from this place as well. Everyone must fade away.

I ask it why I must leave, when everything about this place is so fitting for the everyone that marches within it. It shrinks away and fades for a moment, leaving only the seat and the fall of life soaking it. I look around and behind me, and realize something harsh and unnerving. As it shows itself to me again, I stand up, and my tears begin to dry as I come to find understanding once again.

It is not of everyone, it is of no one. I am a singular being, in a place of my own making. No one has ever existed here, save for me. With a great deal of confusion, I wonder why the ruler of this place points such out to me. Why does this grand figure intrude upon my thoughts? I begin to wonder why everything here exists as it does. The combined efforts of human misery taken to the extreme, and it’s meant to inspire what from me, pity, or understanding? I feel nothing for the race I have left behind. So many lost in the noise, all of them never caring to think of their impact on things, never bother to do anything but consume and move on.

I am told that my judgment is perhaps a little extreme itself, but I can’t really find compassion or forgiveness in me. On the other hand, I do not find anger or hatred filling my thoughts either. So many problems left in my wake, on a ruined rock that was once an orb of perfection, but that means so little now. All that was right with things is contrasted heavily by all that went wrong. Every smiling child set amongst the scene of explosions and violence.

There is no need for me to remain in this place.

The mighty form in front of me stands from its throne, and it begins to break apart. The blood that poured over the throne now goes upwards into something I can’t quite see, and the body of the mighty being shatters like gravity has no sway over it. It happens slowly, and it is reaching out for something as its arms fall apart.

When it is gone, I stand and look at where it sat, as now it is just a large empty monument dedicated to something that never was.

As I stand, I watch the whole of this place expand outwards infinitely, and every part of it is racing away from me, as though I am the core of existence. I do not like this. As violently as it all starts rushing away, whatever is left begins to sink down into black goo. Everything begins to vanish.

Needing no urging or guidance, I break into a sprint down the rest of the trail, the bodies and foundation now turning into strange things of diluted color. If this place is of my self, and no one else, then I do not wish to remain within it. Too much time could be spent wallowing in the sins of all mankind, and no one is a decent enough soul to rise above the filth. The path is all that exists before me, so I must follow it.

A beacon looms out distant like a star, and I would chase it just to find the end of this trail. I cannot remove myself from my sins, or the crimes of others. I can’t repent for it, I can’t make it better. It all floods into this place, for everyone, like it has for me. A unity shared through isolation. Every color that was washes away, and I see only the brightness of the trail, and the shadow of everything else. I cannot remove myself from this, and running only delays things further… but I make down the path with much haste anyways.

With some irony, or another odd feeling I can’t quite place, I realize that I was focused entirely on this part of the trail, and not what has brought me to it. Memories of what my tangible life was like stick out in my head, and I realize no place such as this has ever existed. I am somewhere beyond my old self, my body, my world. I should be nothing, like everything that sinks away around me. I am too stubborn to let this be the case though. This trail exists for a reason.

I started upon this path with my death. I begin to wonder what would happen if I were to find the end of it, or if it even has one. I am torn between an ever growing sense of self, and a fear of an endless cycle remaining unbroken. The trail feels lonely now, and like the rest I have abandoned, I almost wish I hadn’t cursed at their existence, as now my lonely thoughts drive me to places far too introspective. For whatever reason, I cannot remember how I died. I can only remember the things surrounding it. Turmoil of self and a fractured state of what I was, and the blood and tears that followed suit… though I am not sure if those things left were genuine, or merely what I would think of to be in that place. My thoughts are like a mirror in an empty room with nothing to reflect, and so I must turn inwards, away from the bad dreams and torment that everyone subjects themselves to. I must press further down this trail.

-  -  -  -  -

Let me go today and please don’t plan to follow me
I won’t be nothing hurting no one, so just let me go in peace
See I believe that I’d be justified in why I gotta leave
Repeatedly that I will see that I am finally at ease
I will be living on these roads again
Let me go in peace
Let me go in peace
Let me go in peace