Chapter 5: Rescue Me

Even when it was freezing cold out, Marcus always enjoyed sitting outside on his patio to converse with friends, something Ami found slightly annoying at the moment. She had obviously been stressed the last couple of days, but didn’t want to dump all of her problems on Theo. Few amongst their group seemed to keep up with Marcus these days, so she had for whatever reason, hoped that he would offer more… discretion.

It wasn’t really a nice way to treat a friend, but Marcus wasn’t really a part of their group lately, and only Amelia knew why.

He sat nervous as their conversation hit a lull, his eyes very baggy, and his shaggy brown hair looked unwashed and matted. Ami decided she’d nudge the conversation a different way now.

“You need a fix already?” she asked.

“No,” he coughed out, “I’ll be fine.”

“Yeah, right,” she just assumed he was lying.

“No, I… I’m trying to cut back lately.”

When Marcus started to fade out from their little click, everyone assumed it was because of his family, or money problems. While both might have been contributing factors, what he really wanted to keep quiet about, is that he was a mez-head. He was never really known to be much of a party animal among their group, but from what Ami could see, he had been hitting Red M pretty hard. It was sad to see him in such a state, but she felt that Marcus always had that kind of weakness in him. He needed something to fight for to really make anything out of his self, and unfortunately, it seemed that nothing like that would ever come along for him.

He finally realized Ami was glaring daggers at him and what she perceived for be a lie, so he finally snapped back and responded.

“I really mean it, Ami. The stuff doesn’t do it for me now… used to be soft and gentle things, right? Stuff that could help me sleep, or whatever… now when I’m mezzed out, I just see a lot of fucked up shit. I don’t like it, and I don’t like how it crawls all over my head.”

“That why you’re so jittery right now?”

“Yeah…” he looked like he hadn’t slept in some time.

“Well… that’s good, be nice to speak to you sober again.”

He faked a smile, and then went back to his drink, and quickly wanted to move the conversation away from his history of substance abuse.

“I know I haven’t been keeping up with the old crew lately… so how is everyone?”

“Depends I guess,” Ami seemed slightly resentful at the new change in direction, in spite of it being why she was here in the first place.

“Well, how’s Theo, he and… forgot her name, Sara! Those two still dating?”

“Yeah, they’ve been well.”

“How about Ducky, how’s he been keeping?”

“I honestly have no idea.” She desperately wanted this to be the focus of conversation, but at the same time wasn’t very willing to walk into it easily.

“Oh, yeah, I heard about his mom and everything… must be hard on him. Just sitting around waiting for the end, that’s gotta be hell.”

“Yeah, he’s kind of started acting like you lately though.”

“What, mezzed out of his mind?” Marcus wasn’t very good at self deprecating humor, but he tried his best to cheer her up anyways.

“No, I mean… like he doesn’t want to talk to anyone lately.”

“Why you say that?”

“Well, he doesn’t seem to answer my calls or my texts the last couple of days.”

“Huh,” Marcus stared off at the streets far below his apartment’s patio, for whatever reason, he always seemed fascinated with this view. “You two get into a fight?”

“Not really… a confrontation, but…”

“Ah… I think I get it. Well, actually I don’t have a clue but…” Marcus trailed off, still looking out from his little perch. Ami was thankful that he wasn’t facing her. It made it easy to hide her embarrassment.

“I keep trying to push him into starting a relationship with me,” she started, finally blurting out the cause of her dismay, “but he never says anything about the subject, and now he won’t talk to me…”

“Oh, that again. God, you two have been at that game since you were still in high school.”

He finally looked over to her, and saw that she had brought her knees up on the chair, and had rested her arms and face on them to hide herself. She also enjoyed the added benefit of the extra warmth it brought. Marcus seemed to take a moment, realizing that this issue was of genuine concern to her now, instead of some game she had kept playing.

“Well… maybe you just need to give up on him. Find some other guy out there and get over Ducky.”

“I don’t want that,” she half mumbled. “I mean, I wanted Ducky to be…” she had started to trail off, but even then Marcus interrupted her.

“Whoa, okay. I’d rather just avoid that subject altogether now. Thanks for that though.”

Marcus slumped back into his chair, looking kind of bored and anxious at the same time.

“Honestly, Ami, that’s all I got. Either you push him into a corner, which will end badly. Or you just fucking get over it already. Boo-hoo, you don’t get your storybook romance. Maybe he’s not into Asian girls? Maybe he just sees you as a friend? Maybe a whole bunch of shit, it doesn’t really matter. If that’s why you came here, then I’ve got nothing.”

It was a strange and harsh outburst from Marcus, as Ami stood up to walk away from the Patio, he actually stood again, and still addressed her.

“I mean it Ami. You need to grow the fuck up.”

Now she finally turned around to address him again.

“Yes, because you’re such an expert on that. Why don’t you go shove some more pills down your throat and tell me what it’s like to be grown up and responsible?!”

Marcus smiled and waved as Ami left the apartment. Now she remembered why no one spoke to him anymore. He wasn’t actually Marcus at all, just some awful shell of the same person that couldn’t decide who or what it was.

The drive home was filled mostly with thoughts about how much of a worthless pile of shit Marcus was. She briefly debated going somewhere else to blow off steam, but eventually settled on just picking up some fast food on the way back. She gave a cursory greeting to her parents, and then went into her room.

Compulsively, she went to her bedroom window, and saw Duncan’s car sitting in the driveway. She went back to her desk and ate her not so substantive dinner, but as soon as she finished, she went right back and looked out her window again.

She didn’t like this, feeling like a dog waiting for someone to open the door. She felt sick of it, and wanted the knot in her stomach to go away. She checked her phone again, to see that he still hadn’t replied at all. Amelia had decided that she was finally fed up with it. Against her own internal logic, she began to realize that Marcus was right. Tomorrow she’d be done with this, she’d either make Duncan hers, or she’d give up on him for good. Finally, after all these years, she would have resolution, of any kind, it didn’t matter she thought.

Tomorrow…

-   -   -   -   -

Duncan was sitting at his desk, nearly falling asleep as some slob was standing on a milk crate at the end of the sea of cubicles, speaking on the subject of employee morale, or conduct, or whatever. He wasn’t actually paying attention to the bastard, he just knew that his voice was grating, and it was distracting him from actually getting any work done. So he stared at his screen and fooled around on the net instead.

It was by chance that his boredom actually had him resting his eyes on whatever local news page loaded up whenever he clicked on his computer’s browser. The headline on the front page seemed pretty awful and depressing… so he clicked on it.

The headline itself read: “Police on lookout for possible serial killer.” It wasn’t that which bothered him though. The story was pretty sparse on details itself, police comment to the media being that they didn’t want to issue a comment. It seemed a lot of stuff was being withheld, but the story did have the names, and pictures of both the victims. Duncan looked at the first as he scrolled down the page, and then saw the other…

“Holy fuck!” he blurted out, very much too loud for his work environment. No one seemed to notice or address his outburst though. Everyone just sat in their places and kept at their work.

He calmed himself for a moment, and then looked at the photo again.

It was impossible, it was simply impossible.

He looked at the woman he saw die in his dream the other night. That was crazy though, he had to be imagining things. He quickly began to take an interest in the article he was just glancing at. Two people found dead, no suspects, both were women, and both were mutilated severely.

Duncan’s mind raced back to the dream, the details he still wanted to shake out of his brain. The look on the woman’s face when she saw those things, what they did to her.

Bullshit, he thought nervously, That didn’t happen, those things don’t exist. This is just a coincidence.

Still rattled, he stepped away from his desk, and went to the break room. He ignored the idle conversations of coworkers, and instead just sat around taking sips of a soda he got out of the vending machine. Trying to focus on anything outside of his worried thoughts, he observed the world around him in a very bored fashion.

Woman talking to one of the older guys while they ate lunch, talking about how the consultant out there preaching was a worthless dipshit, and it’d be easier to work without supervisors breathing down their necks about how they got their work done. At one point the man addressed Duncan, asking about what the guy was talking about. He swallowed the lump in his throat, and shrugged his shoulders, smiling as he replied.

“I don’t know and I don’t care. I’d love to someone to kick that box out from under his feet though.”

They laughed, and Duncan retreated from the conversation again. He briefly tried to recall what the man’s name was. He thought it was Robert… or something similar.

He looked out from the break room to see a sea of very angered faces. A lot of them were listening to music or radio programs with their headphones, despite their supervisors expressed desire for them not to do so.

This was a good line of thought to remain on, he thought. Keep focused on how boring and annoying his day was. He’d get home, focus on taking care of his mother, and get something to eat. Nothing to concern himself with, it was business as usual. His life was still normal, he didn’t witness a murder, and little stuffed animal people were not the culprits for such a murder.

Whoever killed that poor woman was just your average every day psycho, and Duncan was only rattled because of a highly amusing scenario that led to a strange and haunting similarity. Sitting back at his desk, he decided he would think nothing of it.

So he stared at the article again, and the photo the press had of the second victim. She looked happy, looked like it was taken during spring break, as she was at the pier with a bunch of friends.

She has the same goddamn face, he thought, the same face I watched die…

He shook his head and closed the browser window. Thinking about something so pointless and silly was a terrible way to kill the time.

The annoying bastard preaching to no one also took a great deal of space in his thoughts. Most of the day he sat there going on and on, like a fucking machine. He would take some breaks to go over to some of the cubicles and talk to some poor bastard about what he was talking about the entire time. He laughed as employees shrugged their shoulders and did their best to ignore him, even when he was breathing over their shoulder asking them questions. The man was dedicated to his work, it’s just too bad he wasn’t very good at it. The only thing he accomplished was that he managed to get an entire office of people to want him dead… which is likely why he left an hour before most people clocked out.

Thankfully the annoying prick never came to Duncan’s cubicle. He contemplated what kind of misery he would have inflicted upon the man had he done such a thing… that is before he remembered that he was a coward and would just nod and smile the whole time.

Most of Duncan’s day was spent just trying to balance annoyance and an ever mounting frustration and sense of dread. He got almost no work done, and instead just stared at his computer’s screen, thinking either of the dead woman, or how he wished the jabbering idiot would have taken her place. As the hours ticked by, he thought that all that really mattered was getting to five o’clock, so that he could just go home, and take care of things there. He’d order pizza and watch a movie or… something. All that mattered was he wouldn’t be here, and he wouldn’t be thinking of the absurdity that he dreamed something that actually happened.

He took the mag-lev bus home, as he always did. It was a small commute, and he liked having his car at home in case his mother or one of her friends would need it to go somewhere. With practicality in mind as well, he also enjoyed that his bus fare was paid by the state, so it was a very cheap method of getting to work as well.

As he sat on the bus passing time, he listened to his radio, casually flipping through the stations. Electronica, heavy metal, a news station…

He briefly let the local news play. He heard something about how an investigation was ongoing, and how there was no witnesses, and he quickly turned his radio off.

This was growing very tiresome. Even he knew how stupid it was to contemplate this nonsense… but for the next fifteen minutes, it was all his brain could focus on.

The short walk through his neighborhood after he got off the bus was far more uplifting to his spirits, as he could finally see his home, and for whatever reason, he assumed that once he was there, all of these weird thoughts would exit his brain.

As he opened the door, he saw the TV in the living room was still playing some awful reality TV show as usual, but his mother actually seemed alert and in decent spirits for a change. For how long that would last, he had no idea.

“Hey Duncan, how was work?”

“Hell. Our supervisors are conspiring to drive us all insane, I’m sure of it.”

“Why’s that?”

“Some douche-hole consultant came in and spoke to us today.” He set his things down and got a drink out of the fridge as he kept speaking. “Some guy that’s supposed to I guess inspire more productivity and higher morale all at the same time. Every one of us just wanted to tape his mouth shut and throw him out the window though.”

His mother laughed at this grim notion. Duncan kept about his usual routine, but it did a lot of good to see his mother functioning like a normal person again. It was likely better for his state of mind than it was hers.

“So, you seem in decent spirits today,” he addressed her, “how you been feeling today?”

She rubbed her hand on her neck and seemed to pick her words carefully.

“Well, I haven’t thrown up yet today… so, better than normal.”

“Hey, any improvement is good in my book.” His smile was kind of weak, and he wanted to turn away from that line of talk rather quickly.

“Oh yeah, you feeling like you could handle a decent dinner, ma?”

“Going to order pizza from Tony’s again?”

“I’m a creature of habit, sue me.” He thought it was meant to be a bit of an insult at first, but then he saw his mother smile and chuckle at his indignation.

He made good on his word to watch a movie and enjoy his unhealthy dinner, though his mother seemed to have little interest in either. She only took a few bites of the pizza, and then went to bed early. He didn’t say anything, and finished watching the movie alone, content that he shouldn’t feel bad or lazy. This was what he wanted to do with his evening, and he wasn’t going to let anything in head bother him about it.

Still, it wasn’t his previous line of thinking that bothered him now, so much as it was a feeling of emptiness. As he took out the trash and other little things before retreating into his room, he felt great pangs of sorrow at how empty the house was. His mother so frequently indisposed, and him being as antisocial as he was, it was almost like living in a tomb. Soon the house would be his alone as well. On the one hand, being a nineteen year old home owner with a good job would make it seem like he was incredibly lucky, but Duncan felt only a pitiful anger about that.

Growing up an only child to a single parent, he often enjoyed how quiet and calm the house was. There was never any great drama or other such nonsense that pestered him growing up. Now though, it felt sterile, like just living here made his life irrelevant to the world. It didn’t help that his mother almost seemed comfortable with what was happening now. Sure, there was nothing left but time, but her ready and content admission of her own death seemed like some kind of great defeat.

As he sat in his room screwing around on the net while his TV sat on idly in the background, Duncan picked up his phone to look over some of the messages. A couple of co-workers had started a thread that was intended to be sent to their supervisors, letting them know that the idiot they paid to stand around blabbering all day had the opposite effect that management had intended. His office environment was nothing if not proactive. He added his signature, and very unkind thoughts to the thread.

This was to be how his days would go on forever it seemed. Boredom and tedium, with only pangs of regret at how the world he used to know was crumbling around him. A lot of friends he used to know went off to university, which isn’t shocking, all things considered, but he didn’t keep in touch to many people now. Despite the fact that he was still waiting for this kind of life to overtake him, he felt remarkably lonely, and afraid. He had resigned himself to just be some bitter man that sat around his house all day waiting for something to happen.

Much like that woman he dreamed about. What was she waiting for, death?

He didn’t want to trail off into those thoughts again, but they swarmed upon him. Some powerful draw to change his life for the better shot into his mind, trying to override all other sense of worry and fear. His trepidation for once seemed to be outweighed by his courage. Well, courage likely wasn’t a good word for it. Regardless of what was pushing the thoughts though, he felt that remaining on his current course was a formula for failure and disaster.

Another thing that caused him discomfort, as he glared angrily at the roof, was that he had no idea what to do with himself. He wanted some form of drastic change to come sweeping in and offer him a renewed sense of purpose, but he had no idea what that purpose should, or could be. He was angry, scared, but most of all, completely clueless.

He sat for a second, then went to his phone again, and looked at the messages from Amelia that he’d read over far too many times. Deeply wanting to be annoyed and tired, instead a sense of yearning came to him as he read over the short and blunt messages. In spite of any sense of internal logic demanding he put his phone down and just go to sleep, Duncan finally hit reply, and began typing a message.

-   -   -   -   -
Rewind, and take me back to start again
Ducked out, ‘cause paranoia’s setting in
But I’m with you until the end.
One ride, we’ll drive around the parking lot
No pride, ‘cause I don’t seem to care a lot
No cash, this change is all I’ve got.

Chapter 4: Guarantees

The crime scene crew was already busy cleaning up the place. Ryan took a smoke break while he waited outside for Walter to clear up something with the cop that had been the first to respond to the scene. Seemed that even with a few years on the force, the guy still hadn’t seen anything this bad, he seemed pretty rattled, which meant he’d fucked up on procedure at every goddamn turn.

Taking a long drag on his cigarette, Ryan felt a brief invigoration course through him, but only long enough to get sucked away by the freezing cold weather. The rain had stopped, but the wind kept up, and he’d been sitting outside of the apartment for an uncomfortable amount of time. Ryan wanted to be back home, or at least in his office, so that he could go over this mess while in a somewhat warm environment.

At last, Walter and the cop emerged from the apartment. Walt motioned for the cop to leave, and stood next to Ryan.

“So we have our details straight yet,” Walter asked, “or you want to wait for the CSU to finish mopping the place up?”

“We’ll let the local authorities handle this,” Ryan stiffened. “You tell the CSU about my instructions?”

“Yeah, panoramic photos, top and bottom. Bit much for something like this though, right? Should focus on cleaning and collecting first.”

“No, I’d have this damn scene frozen in a time capsule if I could.”

“So you already got some scheme in mind as to how this is connected to the other case?”

“Yeah, we’ll go over it someplace warm though.”

“I agree with you there, Kilburn. Goddamn freezing out today. Lunch at Nathan’s?”

Ryan just nodded, and then ground his cigarette out under his shoe. He wasn’t very hungry, but the idea of a warm place to sit and a pot of coffee sounded like the greatest thing in the world at the moment.

It was a little bit of a drive to their usual haunt, so Ryan made generous use of the mag-lev lanes. He briefly pondered abusing his power a bit more as well and entering one of the bus only lanes, but decided that he shouldn’t be so lazy, especially since he wasn’t actually driving the car at the moment anyways.

Walter kept quiet for most of the ride, thumbing over various details on his phone. Said he had some other loose ends on another case of theirs that he was keeping an eye on too. He was a very headstrong person, but the reason Ryan was able to tolerate being paired up with Walt, was that in spite of his appearance or tone, he was extremely dedicated, and painstakingly thorough.

Once they arrived at the diner, they took a seat at their usual booth. Ryan just asked for a pot of coffee, and considering his favorite waitress wasn’t there, he knew it wasn’t going to be as strong as he preferred. Walter on the other hand, seemed quite ready to eat lunch, even as he slid his phone over to Ryan, displaying some of the preliminary crime scene photos. He was glad that none of it fazed the kid, but he always thought that there was something awful about getting used to such horror. Hell, he thought that of himself very often.

“Make anything out yet, Kilburn?” All Ryan saw was a big goddamn mess.

“Not yet. What’d the CSU say in regards to prints or fluids?”

“Nothing that would suggest a struggle, likely all the vic’s too. No murder weapon, no signs of forced entry, no signs of robbery, blah, blah, blah, all the same as the last girl.”

Ryan furrowed his brow and took a sip of his coffee.

“Great,” he muttered, “same as the last girl. So we got no witnesses, no suspects… we’re working blind still. Both victims are female though, and both were Asian, so at the very least, it looks like we may have a pattern.”

“Not a good one,” Walt retorted. “Half the city is Japanese and the first victim was a young woman, and our latest is middle aged. Gender and race specifics also don’t make much sense considering there are no signs of sexual trauma on either victim as well.”

Ryan already knew his profile didn’t amount to much either, but he desperately wanted to put together anything he could. The city was highly diverse considering all of the Japanese immigration, so beyond both victims being female, he was likely grasping at straws with his theory. Both of the bodies being female didn’t mean shit to him either, that seemed perfectly in line with most serial killers.

“Still,” Ryan finally broke from his angered thinking, “I’d say our best guess right now is our killer being an Asian male, likely mid to early thirties.”

“Well that really narrows it down, Kilburn,” Walt’s sarcasm was particularly pungent.

“Cute, kid, but I’ve got nothing else to add really, until those photos get sent to me. You were there first. You’re supposed to be filling me in.”

Walter seemed more focused on his meal.

“You pretty much know everything already. Had the cleaning crew do the usual sweep, but if it’s anything like last time, we’re not going to get shit for trace evidence.”

“Could look at that as a positive in some regard,” again, Ryan was trying to comfort himself more than anything. “If our perp’s that good, that can tell us a little about him.”

“Like how he’d be so good at getting in and out of a spot undetected and covered in blood? Far as I’m concerned Kilburn, this guy’s a damn magician.”

“That’s what annoys me the most. If he’s this good, he knows it, and he’ll keep going until he gets caught. Though, I don’t think he wants to brag, in that regard.”

“That thing you mentioned in your little update?” Walter seemed almost bored with his food now, prodding it with his fork. “Looks like it’d take a lot of planning to get the blood splatters to be so ornate, and why a picture of goat, anyways?”

“I don’t think there’s any explaining it, kid. If this is a person that feels compelled to kill, how the hell is there any rational way to explain why he does it?”

“Yeah, well, I skipped out on psychology, Kilburn.”

Ryan wasn’t really going to bother explaining anything either, he was just making shit up at this point, really. He still needed to compile the photos of the scene to actually prove this case was linked. He was desperate for that right now, because it meant this couldn’t be ignored. It meant he’d be able to go through hell and back to find the guy, and that’s all he needed.

Walter seemed mostly interested in talking about unrelated things on their way back to Ryan’s office, and he couldn’t really be bothered to fully focus on conversation. Even as Ryan got back, he mostly just sat bored at his desk for an hour or two listening to the radio while he mulled over pointless things and passed time on the net.

When the photos he’d asked for from the CSU finally came in, Ryan was like an all too eager dog watching its master arrive home. He called Walter into the room as he started to download the file that was sent to him.

Standing over him and looking, Ryan got a far better image than he did of the first scene, and was able to simply view the entire crime scene in three dimensions. He was quick to simply flip to an aerial view, and looked down at the scene, turning the display slightly to show Walter.

“Is that,” Walt squinted for a moment, readjusting his glasses, “is that a bull?”

“Yeah, it is,” Ryan replied, taking it in his self. He was so intensely relieved that he had been right about this.

“So we’ve got a goat, and a bull,” Walt walked to the other side of Ryan’s office, taking a seat on one of the chairs. “So, this guy has a weird obsession with animals?”

“Or the stars,” Ryan spoke, putting things together in his head.

“The stars?”

“The zodiac, kid. Goat, and a bull, which means we have Ares and Taurus. The ‘paintings’ are also set up so that the only way to view them would be if the roof of the house was removed and you looked at it from the skies.”

“Like an offer to the heavens?” Walter almost seemed disappointed, or annoyed. “Great, means the guy might be a religious nut. Those are always fun to deal with.”

“It also means if we don’t catch this guy, we could have ten more bodies left to find.”

“Fucking hell,” Walter seemed very taken aback suddenly. “You think it’ll go that far?”

“Not if we can help it.”

“I know, but…” Walter seemed very distressed, something Ryan rarely saw in the kid. “If this happens, that means this guy will go down as the city’s most rampant serial killer. That’s a fuck ton of bodies on our desk, Ryan.”

“Yeah…” it seemed now all of Ryan’s lecturing had started to take root in Walter. Ryan was going to have to send this all further up the chain now, which meant their days would be far busier, and they’d be dealing with this extra work under the pressure of wondering when another body will show up.

Ryan hated that. With all he’d done for this case so far, he was still chasing a ghost, and had absolutely nothing but the knowledge that more people were going to die on his watch. With such contempt for himself nestled in the back of his mind, he spent the rest of his day in a kind of angry yet apathetic frame of mind. He tried a few more things to see if maybe he could add more to his report at the moment. He looked at where the first two victims were murdered, their proximity to one another, what they did for a living, who they were related to. The first was a young girl, lived in one of the ghettoes north of the coast, she didn’t even have a job. Second was a successful woman, middle aged, lived near downtown.

He furrowed his brow in annoyance. No matter how hard he tried, he couldn’t do anything to connect them, he couldn’t pin-point a safe area the killer would likely remain in. He had no idea who he’d kill next, or where, just an inkling that it would be another Japanese woman.

Briefly conversing with Walter about it, Ryan was still hesitant to admit that it could be a racially motivated crime. Considering the elaborate blood portraits, he thought the only way the race of the victims would matter, would be the killer having the frame of mind that killing minorities would draw less attention. That was a laughable thought to him though, because clearly whoever was doing this was trying to gather attention in some way… if not the attention of authorities, than the attention of God, some weird cult, or whatever. The only thing Ryan took out of all the bullshit he dealt with today was the fact that both victims were women. That said something to Ryan, while nothing else seemed to make any kind of sense.

Driving home his usual route, he enjoyed the fact that he could arrive home at a normal hour tonight, because tomorrow shit was going to hit the fan, and he’d have to likely repeat the same pointless details to a lot of other people that wanted to rub their noses in this case. He’d be busy for the rest of the week, and it pissed him off, because he knew he’d be busy for no reason. For all the shit he would be putting up with, Ryan had a dark feeling in his gut that nothing would happen, and another body would show up.

On the upside, his cat seemed very pleased that he was home early. The sun was still winding its way down the sky, and Ryan still just wanted to procrastinate for the rest of the day. There was a desperate urge in his mind to block out today’s events, or block out any contemplation of the near future. He slipped into some warm clothing, turned the heater up high, and decided he’d use this time of his to catch up on a few episodes of his favorite television shows that were just lying around on his network. He’d order pizza, sit on his ass with Mibbie by his side, and enjoy his night inside.

Ryan figured it’d be best to just try and enjoy himself for once, but unwinding didn’t really bring him much joy. At the very least, he felt like he’d have his batteries recharged for tomorrow, but as he went to sleep for the night, all of his nagging doubt came back to swarm upon his thoughts. He briefly wondered if he just wanted to enjoy himself because of how badly mutilated the body had been at the crime scene today. It was an odd paradox of thought that came through him, that seeing the worst in life should inspire someone to enjoy the best. Likely it was just a method of distancing his self from his profession. He was a workaholic, and considering his line of work, that was a surefire way to drive a person nuts. Some feeling rested in the back of him, that thought he needed to force himself to enjoy life, otherwise he’d only be caught up in his own little world, where everyone had terrible secrets, and suffering was the most abundant resource.

Perhaps it could have been some call to just enjoy the little things, but Ryan didn’t really care. Even his method of unwinding was habitual. Delivery food and time with his cat was more therapeutic than any other activity he could think of, but then again, he was getting too old to really enjoy life much. Now he felt it was more a matter of just finding contentment with life. Never one to be a people person, which was often why Ryan pushed himself to work as hard as he did… it was the easiest way to stay active, to keep his mind sharp.

The odd thoughts of mutilated Asian women and his own pathetic existence kept swirling within his head as he tried desperately to fall asleep at a decent hour. Thoughts on how he had seen so many killed before they could really live their lives the way they wanted, and how he had lived comfortably for most of his life doing nothing. Ryan had no family, no real social circle… he realized the only person that would miss him when he was gone was his cat, and even then he thought she’d get over it quickly.

He’d spoken to many families, watched them weep uncontrollably when they hear the news of a loved one’s death. Life was a frail thing, and yet the thought of it ending still always seemed like an impossible thing to comprehend to those people. Ryan knew there wasn’t anything that separated a victim from a normal person other than their state of being alive or dead. Circumstances and chance was largely how it worked, sometimes premeditated, but the impulse was never logical. A person could go to sleep at an old age though, and never wake up again, and some would find that natural. A great amusement within him popped up when he considered such a fate to likely be his own. How he would pass out drunk one day years from now, and the only person to inform would be his siblings. Figured most of them would just shrug their shoulders and congratulate him on lasting as long as he did.

In that way, he kind of envied the dead people he dealt with. Theirs were traumatic and violent endings. They got their faces on the news, and the whole city would know about them once they died, no matter how insignificant their lives were beforehand. In that way, he thought the richest person in the world could achieve the same level of fame as the poorest.

Trying his best to push these thoughts aside, Ryan really wanted to sleep. They kept storming back into his head though. Finally at an hour far later than he’d first intended, he managed to find focus enough to draw his mind away. He turned over to his side and that seemed a cue for Mibbie to jump onto the bed, making a comfortable spot to rest next to one of his legs as she purred contently.

Best to enjoy the little things, he thought. A comfortable and warm place to sleep seemed to be all his cat needed. He thought that if such was good enough for her, than it was good enough for him as well, and while his sleep wasn’t very comforting to him, at least he slept.

-   -   -   -   -
The only guarantee in life
Is a life worth dying for
‘Cause death don’t wait for no one
It’s sitting on your front door

Chapter 3: All There Is

To see it, to know… we burn when that is inside of us.

Trying to open his eyes, oddly because it meant he would be blinded to what was before him.

We guess at our origin, you guess at yours, and I’m sure what made us will guess at its own. What would such pointless answers ever yield? Why ever ask such stupid questions?

He was watching it all begin, yet he already knew how this would end.

When it all falls into place, there is too much chance, too much chaos…  you will bind it, bring it to a head, and smash it!

There was a woman, middle aged, and boring. She was talking on the phone and seemed in the middle of a very amusing conversation. It was gossip about someone she worked with, and as the conversation carried on, she got some bland microwave dinner out of the freezer ready to eat.

Absolutely nothing remarkable, and then out of the corner of his mind’s eye, he saw them standing in the shadows, smiling with dead eyes.

Where they went, darkness spread like a virus, making mold and fungus spread over the walls. Their eyes were wide and bright, but dead and plastic. Their mouths were forced into smiles, and closed with large zippers. Their skin was made of cheap fabric, meant to mimic fur, like their bladed hands were meant to mimic claws. He saw them scrambling over each other in what might be considered a comical fashion, but for some reason, he could feel their intent, and knew that they were very wrong things.

The woman stirred her not-so-appetizing meal with a fork to see if the middle was still frozen and cold, and all the while she carried on her conversation, ignorant of the strange teddy bear looking creatures that were fluttering around her.

The woman laughed, and bid farewell to whoever she was talking to. At this moment, he saw one of the creatures lift a hand in the air, and then make some sort of signal. One of the others took this to heart, and stood on top of the kitchen island that the woman was eating her food over, and unzipped its mouth to reveal some awful configuration of fangs and teeth underneath the face.

“Hey guys!” it shouted, raising its claws into the air. Its voice was like that of an ignorant child, but as it spoke, the woman finally saw it standing before her.

She had only one moment to gasp at the thing and become transfixed in terror… then the bear plunged its claws deep into her eye sockets. As she began to scream, another instantly leapt from the floor, and began to tear away at her neck. Within seconds, her desperate cry was turned into a soft gurgling sound, and was then muted entirely.

She tried to fight, but very pointlessly, and not very effectively. She was quickly losing a lot of blood, and now the strange bears were dragging her in a strange manner towards her living room, weaving an odd trail of her own blood as she tried to grab at her neck, before they tore her hands away.

He wanted desperately to be pulled away from what he was seeing. He could offer no cries of warning for her, he couldn’t help now, and his form still felt frozen, as though this was something he needed to see.

They ripped her clothing off, to better begin clawing and dissecting her. Her gaze was already dead looking, made worse by her torn and bloodied eyes, but still the monsters paraded about as though proclaiming their victory over her. They took turns tearing at her skin, ripping her organs out as she still desperately tried to breathe, biting and hacking; they were doing their best to turn her into nothing but a bloody pile.

“I do good,” one yelled proudly, as it stood on top of her, slashing at her breasts, “I make good for everyone! All is joy!”

The one that seemed to have handed out the order to kill the woman stood in the corner of the room, his foul festering presence now lessened, it seemed like he was looking intently for something in the room.

More of the small monsters began to join the one standing atop the woman, now they were united in a victory chant, as they paraded about her fingers, limbs, organs, whatever they could get their grubby little paws on.

“Finish!” the one in the corner screamed, halting the festivities. The others quickly took on a look of defeat.

The scene started to fade from him, and already he felt haunted, the words that began his dream started to return to him.

There is no fate, but what tireless minds set their selves to.

He wanted desperately to wake up.

We can not only alter our lives, our minds… let us set out, to alter heaven.

Duncan screamed at the top of his lungs to make it end.

It did end, and he found himself gasping in his own bed. He quickly sat upright, brushing off the brief wave of dizziness that followed, and rubbed his eyes, making sure it was really his own room he was looking at. He tried to follow into some kind of wakeful routine, but kept coming back to his dream. It seemed too life like, even the abstract and strange parts. He looked towards his window, and all he could picture was the strange devilish smiles from whatever those things were.

Looking at his clock, he saw that it was still four in the morning. He studied his darkened room, and turned the lamp on, figuring that getting back to sleep in such a rattled state would be impossible. He was still half hung over, and now with little sleep, and work in four hours, he anticipated the day being spectacularly shitty.

Making his way downstairs, Duncan decided to try some aspirin and orange juice to calm his head. He’d spent a lot of his night out drinking with some of his co-workers, but he left early considering he needed to go to work today. Still got drunk enough for a hangover though, it seemed.

His limbs felt stiff, his eyes couldn’t focus on anything, and drinking the orange juice was like swallowing acid.

Duncan decided he would call in sick today once he threw up the orange juice. He felt it burned more on the way out than it did going in.

Once he felt slightly composed around five thirty in the morning, he remembered that he had his phone off the whole night, and he made his way back to his room to check his in box of messages. Two were from other people he barely knew, continuing conversations that weren’t very interesting, and one message from Amelia dated just last evening, around an hour or so after he left the house. He opened it.

“I’m sorry. Please call me,” was all it said.

Fuck her, he thought bitterly, if I ever see her again, it’ll be too soon.

His bitterness would obviously subside later, because he also thought that he would never drink any alcohol after last night’s escapades. There was an entire mountain of shit Duncan wanted to never concern himself with ever again at this moment, but once he would stop puking and shake his foggy dream out from his throbbing head, he would likely reconsider things.

When his alarm clock went off and woke him up for normal work hours, he instead just called his supervisor and told him he had been throwing up all morning. He wasn’t lying at the very least, a somewhat comforting thought as he drifted back into a shallow sleep. He spent most of his morning thinking how much being alive was an awful thing at the moment, and remaining perfectly still.

Returning to the world of the living was a slow process, but once he was able to keep breakfast in his stomach, he figured the worst had past, and drank as much water as possible to try and ease the transition.

He spent most of his day in somber reflection of events past, trying to constantly steer himself away from how vivid his nightmare was. The downside to this, was he now felt very guilty and awful. Constantly looking at his phone, he was determined not to give in and call her, considering walking next door and seeing her face to face would be an easier and more proper thing to do. The idea of a face to face conversation also seemed entirely tiresome as well though.

At around one in the afternoon, when it felt most of the annoyances of his hangover were gone, Duncan went out to procure lunch for him and his mother, and then decided to take a walk a few blocks away to visit his friend Theo after he finished eating.

While he strolled through his neighborhood, he took in deep breathes of the cold and damp air and felt somewhat relieved. While the sun was an annoyance, getting out and moving again felt somewhat refreshing. His head still ached a little, but now that he was hydrated and moving, he felt the stiffness in his limbs ease, and began to reflect a little more positively on his choices.

Duncan knocked twice on the door and quickly decided to just waltz in of his own accord. Theo never had the place locked, and Duncan visited often enough and knew both Theo and his roommate well enough to make it no trouble or bother. He saw Theo sitting in the living room playing a video game, and greeted him.

“Ducky man,” Theo exclaimed, “You look like a bag of ass!”

“Got a little too confident last night,” was his hint as to why he was in such a frazzled state.

Theo paused his game and turned his wheel chair to address Duncan better, but he had already made his way into the kitchen to see what kind of soda Theo and his roommate had stocked.

“You just come here to steal my shit, Reynolds?”

Ducky’s response was to walk back into the living room sipping his drink.

“So what brings you here, Duck-Duck?”

“Bored. I called in sick from work today. What’re you playing?”

“Vantica II.”

“Ah, explains why I had no idea what the hell it was at first glance.”

Duncan sat on the couch and made himself at home as Theo wheeled himself back to resume his game, quickly moving to conversation, as foreign role playing games weren’t very appealing to Ducky as they were to Theo. Oddly enough though, it was Theo that soon shifted the conversation into real focus.

“Oh yeah,” he spoke during a lull in their talking, “Ami called me last night to talk. Sounded really upset, you know why?”

Duncan just sunk his head for a moment, trying to think of a kind reply to offer.

“She’s had some stuff she’s been worrying about lately. Trying to pin a lot of it onto me.”

“Why, because you won’t put out?”

“Man, fuck you, Theodore.” Despite goading him with his full name into argument, Theo just laughed hysterically.

“So what, you pal around with her since you were like, six right? Do you really not have any interest in her, or are you just trying to play a straight face?”

“I don’t know. I’ve got better shit to worry about.”

“Not getting any younger though, Ducky.” Theo kept talking as he moved into the kitchen to get himself a drink. “Were I a man in your position, I’d be shitting myself over how wonderful life is treating me, not scoffing and trying to focus on the negative.”

“You say that about anyone that can walk, Theo. Without bothering to take into account how different people’s lives are.”

“Well, consider this then,” Theo ignored the insult, “how would you feel if she stopped hanging out with you, and started dating some stuffy wealthy actor type guy?”

“Relieved. She wouldn’t be so clingy anymore.”

“You’re rich, Duck-Duck,” Theo laughed again, taking some sort of pain medication that Ducky likely couldn’t guess the name of. “But I think that’s what you need to consider. You say I’m jealous of people that can walk? You’re fucking right I am! You need to be the same way with Ami, I think. Don’t really understand what you have, and how good it is, until it’s gone.”

Duncan didn’t say anything, so Theo drove the knife deeper.

“At least I figure you’d know what that frame of mind is like with your mom slowly dying and all. But I guess you won’t get there until she’s actually dead.”

It was cutting, but considering the person speaking, Ducky didn’t bother to counter it with any bitter words of his own. He sat sullen and looked at the TV, as it displayed a static screen of a menu overlapping heroes on some grand journey.

“Listen, Ducky, I don’t mean to be a dick, but you and Ami are both friends of mine, and honestly? This game between the two of you is kind of old. The reason you’re so quiet right now is because your mind is perfectly made up and you know what you want. She’s just better at articulating it than you are… or you’re just too proud to admit you’re wrong, or… whatever the hell, I don’t care. So can the two of you just fuck already?”

“So eloquently put, Theo.”

“Don’t you think it’s just a little funny though, that your gimpy friend gets more action than you?”

“You can play the sympathy card,” Duncan retorted, with a sly smile.

“And it works! That’s what’s important.” Quickly turning away from idle amusement though, Theo quickly got back to the topic at hand.

“Seriously though, why the hell do you just run away from anything that bothers you?”

“I avoid it because it bothers me in that it annoys the shit out of me. When things calm down with me, then everyone can start bitching and yelling at me again.”

“What, something about your job or your mom bothering you again?” Theo looked him up and down, unsure of what it was that was on Ducky’s mind, but he knew it was beyond Ami now.

“I’m not sure, might be a bit of both?”

“What?”

“Last few nights…” he realized what he going to say would make him look foolish, so he spoke the rest wearing a worried smile. “Last few nights I’ve been having some bad dreams. The one I had before I woke up today was particularly bad.”

“Huh…” Theo looked puzzled for a second, “You drop any Red M while out partying last night?”

“What? God, no! I’m not into any of that shit. I rarely even go out drinking like I did last night.”

Theo seemed relieved at the answer, and Duncan knew why. Red M was a popular street drug that screwed with brain waves, making the user feel like reality was some hazy dream. For most, it was a good way to get high, but it was also known for disrupting the brain’s ability to tell the waking and sleeping states apart. Most addicts rarely sleep well, and are always plagued by nightmares, or worse. Duncan wasn’t the type to delve into even the most recreational drug, much less the hard and crazy stuff.

“Well, in that case Duck-Duck, what was the dream about?”

“Some woman… I didn’t know her but I could see her clear as day. Just kind of… living her boring life I guess, and then these weird animals mauled her, killed her.”

Recalling the details made the images flash though his mind again. Duncan felt sick again, but not because of his hangover.

“They enjoyed it though, I understood that. They acted like killing her was some kind of game.”

“Well…” Theo seemed stumped, “that’s odd.”

“I know. I’m not ever really bothered by shit like that but… it was so vivid.”

Theo remained silent, thinking deeply about some kind of reply. Despite his seemingly constant jovial nature, Duncan knew Theo well enough to understand that he was actually a very profoundly deep person. After being diagnosed with his condition, Theo seemed to leave the whole world behind for more than a year, never speaking a word to those close to him. When he came back into everyone’s life, he’d confessed that he spent time going to churches and temples for various religions, and spent lots of time reading about philosophy. He wasn’t overtly spiritual or philosophical, at least not that Duncan thought, but he was a far more involved and interested in meaningful conversation. Among their circle of friends, Theo now often acted like something between a parent, a priest, and a therapist.

“Between this and other shit,” Ducky continued, “Like my mom’s been sick the last couple of days, but still keeps trying to push her luck, and yesterday was my first day off in two weeks… just mounts up, you know?”

Now Theo offered his voice.

“You need a vacation, man.”

“I don’t really want to just get some rest and relaxation to cure what ails me.”

“Why the hell not?”

“I wanted to save that time for when my mom dies. I’ll get a leave of absence, sure, but after that I was going to use my paid vacation time to… I don’t know, sort shit out, or get some time to myself? Something…”

“Ah, I see,” now Theo was contemplating something else. “That does put you in a bit of a bind I guess. I can’t really argue with your plan, but at the same time that doesn’t leave much else…”

Duncan kind of sat still, not willing to say anything. He figured if Theo didn’t have an answer for him, than he was in real trouble. Theo always had the answers.

Theo rolled to the front of his television, and turned off his TV and computer, to better focus on the conversation at hand, it seemed.

“Maybe what you need is a change of ideas, Ducky?”

“Like what, just pretend every day is better than the one before it? Something lame like that.”

“No, you confuse my meaning,” Theo looked odd for a moment, as though he lost the intention of his words as well. “I mean a shift, not a change from good to bad or vice-versa, just, a new direction, you know?”

“Like what,” he chuckled at the notion, “saying that I should take some time off to find God?”

“Maybe,” despite Duncan’s jesting, Theo remained serious.

“If you feel like you’re in a rut now, and you don’t like it, then you need to consider something drastic, Duck-Duck. But the thing is, climbing out of a hole isn’t easy. I think that could be your problem, you’re looking for an easy way out. There never is one. So you can either face what’s bugging you, or find the long way to get around it. Either way you’ll have your problems behind you. Use that thought on the long term to stay focused now, something like that… get it?”

“I guess…” he looked away from Theo, stuck far in reflection now his self. He was trying to be far less melodramatic about it like he was earlier in the day though.

Theo seemed content to let Duncan stew in his own reflection for a bit, before interjecting with a slight sense of urgency.

“Anyways, good talking to you, Ducky… but my girlfriend’s coming over in a bit, so…”

“Ah, right,” he snapped himself out of his thoughts, suddenly feeling like he was being entirely too rude to Theo. “Sorry man, didn’t mean to come over and drag you down.”

“Nah,” Theo remarked, “I like that people come to me to talk about stuff like this. Makes me feel like I’m actually good for something, you know?”

Despite the fact that his handicap was often the butt of many jokes, it always tore Duncan up inside to see his friend say something like that. He’d only been confined to a wheelchair for a few years now, and seemed to be adjusting, but Ducky could always see a trace of an everlasting resentment and sorrow from Theo regarding his condition. Theo was always the strong member of the group, not physically, but if there was anything that anyone needed, Theo would be the first they called. It always seemed to Duncan that Theo felt people looked down on him now, as though losing his ability to walk somehow made him a terrible person. Everyone would always say otherwise, and Duncan respected Theo more than any other human being around, but he could see that Theo would never fully allow himself to understand that.

As he walked back home, he felt sorry for Theo, not because of his handicap, but because he was always the one helping, he always knew the right thing to say… yet it seemed no one else could find the right thing to tell Theo in return.

A sudden turn in thought, and Duncan back tracked a bit, and walked to a park he lived close to. He walked around the shade and the trees along the many paths that crossed through the place, before deciding to sit on a bench that overlooked the water fountain that was the main centerpiece of the park. He wasn’t one to really sit an admire anything, but for whatever reason, he was compelled to rest here all alone, compiling his thoughts into something manageable.

It amazed him that in spite of mostly being very secure and having such a comfortable lifestyle, Ducky felt completely out of control and felt every event he dealt with, was some form of fate conspiring against him. Tomorrow he would go to work, and come home, and all would be well, and as normal as normal could be for him. Yet he still felt like he was on the brink of disaster. Worse, he felt that if disaster came, it would somehow be his fault.

Another thing that was bothering him greatly, was even with his comfortable suburban lifestyle, and how he was so in control of his finances and future at such a young age, Duncan felt that he was missing something.

It wasn’t that he felt he needed a relationship, or greater success to be happy, Duncan felt that there was an entire part of his life that was missing. That it was something he should have had at one point, but didn’t. There was longing involved with such thoughts, but he had no idea what he was longing for, or why. It was as though someone had erased a part of himself, and while he knew it wasn’t there, he wasn’t allowed to know or understand what it was in the first place.

Duncan felt empty, because of this… because of many things.

With such lovely scenery around him, and so many people walking around enjoying the sights, or jogging, or whatever, Duncan felt out of place, so he finally left and returned him. As he opened the door, he noticed the TV was on, and his mother was asleep on the couch again. He turned the TV off, and went to get a blanket to throw over her. He couldn’t really be upset, rest was good for her, and he knew that some days, merely climbing the stairs in their home to sleep in her own bed was simply far too challenging a task.

Leaving her to sleep for now, he thought it would be better to see if she had the energy later to eat something for dinner, and he returned to his own room to brood.

He saw that he left his phone on his dresser while he was out, and the flashing red light to show that he had a new text message was flashing. He checked it, and of course it was from Amelia.

“Can you call me soon, please?” was all it said.

He sat it back on his dresser, and fell into his desk chair, looking apathetically at the roof. He knew this time that he couldn’t just blind himself to what was bothering him, but he was still highly hesitant to do anything about it. It was a strange and foreboding sense of trepidation that kept him at the brink, ever looking down as the world spun around him. Duncan recalled his last conversation with Amelia, how she didn’t want to leave next year to university, how she didn’t want to give up her old life, and he realized now he related to that feeling greatly.

It was impossible to see the future as some grand and wonderful thing when his social circle was shrinking, his mother was going to die soon, and realizing that all his hopes were pinned on his career, as he had no other family to fall back on once his mother was gone. Now, the future looked like overtime on a weekend, bills, boring and overly critical conversations with his supervisor, and returning to a home that would likely feel more like a mausoleum. It wasn’t anything drastically horrible to think about, but the bleakness of it just seemed to suck all of the motivation out of him to do anything. Even when he got out of the house to partake of activities he usually enjoyed, now it felt rote, like he was just going through the motions to say that he had done something even remotely productive before the day was finished.

It wasn’t that he hated his life now, he just wished so dearly the last year or two hadn’t come to pass, as though he could steer his life down a different course. Such a strange sense of lost optimism seemed to permeate everything, as though a different direction for him would even cure his mother’s cancer.

He picked up his phone again, read over the messages again and again, and let out a moan of displeasure as he set it back down and looked at the roof in both boredom and annoyance.

What Duncan didn’t like to consider more than anything, was the sinking feeling in his stomach, that things were only going to get worse for him from here on out.

-   -   -   -   -
And everything is barely mist, blood relations and bricks.
My expression, my confession, add it up, extract a lesson more than this
Once again, like a bullet as a friend, tell me: can that be all there is?

Chapter 2: Rogues

“Yeah, I remember the girl,” Walt poured himself another cup of coffee and rubbed at his eyes. “That was thrown into the cold case files, right?”

“Yes,” was Ryan’s solemn reply. “You remember how long ago that was?”

“Shit…” Walt scratched his head trying to remember, likely he wasn’t even going through academy yet. For a moment, Ryan doubted that he’d even graduated from high school at that time. “Six or seven years ago at least. Remember it was all over the headlines. When I was still on the force I remember a couple of folks trying to dig it up saying they had leads or whatever. All turned out to be bullshit. No one knew what happened to her.”

Ryan didn’t say much, he just took a bite out of his Ruben.

“Why you so interested in talking about a cold case, Kilburn?”

“Just kind of where my mind goes this time of night. No body ever found, makes me wonder if the poor girl’s still alive somewhere. Shit, maybe she never wanted to be found, how could I know?”

“No one could know.”

“That’s the thing, kid. We’re paid to know. Everything that gets thrown in cold case, I don’t see that shit as lost opportunity, I see it as a failure on our part to do what we’re trained to do.”

“Yeah, sure old man, and now I suppose you’ll tell me every crime that’s ever committed is a failure on the department’s part too? No one or no individual thing is perfect.”

“Excuses.” Ryan took a sip of his own pot of coffee. The benefit of being a regular was the waitress always brewed the strong stuff just for him.

“You’re dealing in absolutes, Kilburn. Not a good thing to be doing in our line of work.”

“Not absolutes, I think of it in a career oriented way. Either way, I’m doing it more as an example of what we dealt with today.”

“Think that’s going to get dumped into cold case?”

“Unless another body ends up that way? Absolutely. You and I have spent two days on this, and what do we have to show for it?”

“An angry wife, for one. It’s three AM, Kilburn, I’m going to take off. We’ll talk about it tomorrow.” Walt dumped enough cash on the table to pay for his share, and took off pretty abruptly, bidding his partner farewell while heading out the door, not looking back.

Ryan finished the remainder of his very late dinner, and gave his thanks to strangers he felt closer to than his own family. He got into his car and tuned his radio to a news station as he began his journey home. As any other typical day, he was still mulling over details on things. His newest case was bugging him to no end, and reminded him heavily of other times he was forced to close out his work and dump what he knew into cold case. In a prideful way, it felt like defeat, but moreover, as he got older and had to contemplate all the times he’d done it, he felt like a failure. So many dead with nothing to validate their lives, just a bunch of excuses to families that never got justice, or a body to bury, or some other terrible scenario no one would ever want to be confronted with.

He took a different route home, as the coastal roads were much more devoid of traffic at this time of night, so he figured he could get back home quick enough to pass out for a few hours.

As he scratched at his eyes he looked at the storm that had been brewing all day. It seemed on the brink, and he knew that’d likely make his life awful tomorrow, dealing with the cold was bad enough, but adding rain on top of that was a recipe for a delightfully shitty day.

Finally bringing an end to his very long day, Ryan pulled his car into the driveway of his wonderful model home. A perfectly groomed exterior of which he could claim no part of, and a facelessness among the whole neighborhood that made it so you would have to read the address of each individual home to tell one apart from the others. It was the only real thing he had to show for years of dedicated service, no family to return to, unless his cat counted as family.

Speaking of the devil, as soon as he opened the door, he could hear the impatient wailing of her as she stormed towards the door to circle his feet.

“Good evening to you too, Mibbie.” He gave her a reassuring pat on the head, and made his way to the kitchen, and opened up a can of food for her.

With the attention of the cat now gone, he made his way to his study. One of the smaller bedrooms that he’d filled with dozens of filing cabinets, and a couple of computers to help him actually keep track of things. As he entered, the lights and machines flipped onto life, and a holo display on his desk instantly demanded his voice to confirm his identity.

As he began to mull over some smaller stuff, he took a piece of paper out of his pocket. Everything he had on the current case was stuck at his office, but he wrote down some other small details to check on his home network, trying to better assess the victim’s past and career, try to find any sort of pattern or whatever. He knew he likely wasn’t missing a damn thing, but that was a fear he couldn’t deal with. He ran information on her credit history and previous addresses, but gave up shortly after. No amount of rubbing his eyes or coffee could keep his sorry ass awake for very long now. He was too old to pull an all-nighter, and his new partner wasn’t dedicated enough to bring his work home with him, either.

No, not that, Ryan thought, he’s got family. This isn’t anything to him but a way to provide for them.

Ryan had no idea why he was still doing this though. He’d saved up more than enough to retire. He could just wake up tomorrow and be done with it all, and sleep as much as he wanted without having to worry about failing anyone, or without having to see another horrible scene like the one he did today.

A sudden burst of energy surged though him. He thought back to the crime scene, the body, and the room. He sat at his main computer and went to access his files from work. Always an annoying process, but now he could review the crime scene photos again.

For a moment, he just sat there, and tried to summon up whatever it was that was clawing at the back of his very tired mind. Then it finally struck him. It was no crime of passion, no deranged killing. The body was mutilated, yes, but the blood around it actually seemed to form a pattern. He started to screw with the photos, and eventually, after angling everything from a top down prospective, it looked almost like the blood around the room formed an image of a goat’s head. All the splatter, it wasn’t from a struggle.

“Someone was painting,” he spoke aloud.

With that, his burst of energy faded away, and he felt even shittier than he did before.

“Great,” he said, the only thing there to hear it being the cat that had now taken residence on his lap. “Either we’ve got a fucked up ‘artist’ out there, or this was some weird ritual killing.”

He stood up, greatly annoying the cat and everything in the room began to shut down as he left. Finally laying down to sleep for awhile, he thought of a grim tomorrow, knowing that whoever had killed the girl, did so in a very precise way, to do something even more specific… which likely meant that whoever it was, they were almost assuredly going to try and do it again.

As Ryan closed his eyes, he also began to realize that the only way to catch this person, was to let him kill again. The only way they could find him as of this moment, was to find a pattern in who he killed, where he killed them, how he killed them, and hopefully… why he killed them. Another grim thing to contemplate was this might not even be the first victim. For all they knew, another older one could be found a day from now, or weeks, or months, depending on the location.

“Shit never ends,” he could very easily be seen as pessimistic, but he didn’t like the idea of sitting around waiting for something to happen.

Ryan was only getting older, and he knew that sitting around and waiting for something to happen was an open invitation to disappointment. The world didn’t wait for anyone, certainly not the old and feeble. It didn’t wait, and it didn’t care. Ryan felt that he was almost forced to act in cases like this. Walt would be more than content to watch it all happen and never get an arrest. No one would get off their asses to try and piece anything together. In favor of trying to enact a sense of justice to allow himself some feeling of usefulness, Ryan felt he needed to prove something. He wanted a good record to leave behind, to show society that he was a useful and productive person. That he helped those who no longer had anyone looking out for them. It was less chivalrous, but rather a creeping insecurity he felt thumping in his head. The world turned very quickly, and mass murder one day could be seen as triumphant revolution the next. A hero could be someone that saved the day, or killed everyone that didn’t agree. Ryan felt he had to do things his way, because the world spun very quickly, and he desperately wanted to keep up.

For now though, he thought rest to be more important.

-   -   -   -   -
I’m keeping an eye on the pulse
An ear to the track and penance in a locket
I’m dropping from the highest floor.
When it hits the ground I watch it smash to pieces
Songs of liberation echo from the dust.

Chapter 1: Love is Not Enough

“Ducky…” a whisper that grew louder, eventually drowning out the noise of the horror he was forced to view. He felt his arms and legs bound, and as the vile display before him began to fade, the voice grew louder still, and he felt free, in control of his limbs. “Ducky, wake up!”

He snapped out of his sleep, the terrible dream that was gripping him, and realized who woke him up. A new level of revulsion took over now.

“Fucking hell, Ami, what are you doing here?” He slapped his hand on his head, and then tried to rub some form of wakefulness into his face.

“Mmmm… do you sleep naked?” She was sitting on the floor, her face perched on his bed, and she had an odd look as she glanced at him.

“What? No. Get out!”

Duncan sat up, revealing that he did in fact sleep in pajamas, which seemed to greatly disappoint Amelia. She stood and walked towards his bedroom window, and opened the blinds, revealing what was to him a crippling amount of light. As he gasped and held his arm over his eyes, she giggled.

“What the hell are you doing in here anyways?” he asked.

“Your mom let me in.”

“No shit, I meant why are you content to piss me off this early?”

“It’s your day off…”

“Which is why I was still asleep!”

“I meant that I wanted to use that as an excuse to hang out with you today.”

“I’m busy today,” he waved his hand dismissively. “Go bug Theo or Sara or… someone not me.”

“You were still asleep and it’s almost noon, how the hell could you be busy?”

“Could you please leave so I can put some pants on?”

“What if I promise to turn my back and not look?” She smirked as she stood with her arms folded.

“Get out, Ami.”

“Fine.” She stepped out of the room, finally leaving him in peace for a moment.

Duncan stretched, got dressed, and briefly considered again the awful dream he was having before Amelia woke him up, but already the details of it were slipping away, and all he was left with was a vague feeling that something terrible was happening to someone.

He opened his window for a moment, and felt how cold it was outside, and put his jacket on, contemplating that he did sleep in a little too late, and it was likely a good thing that Amelia woke him up when she did. The downside to this, was now he realized she would be clinging to him for the rest of the day, a prospect he found entirely irritating.

Duncan had known Amelia since she was very little. She was always an odd person, and his early life with her was almost spent in a role of protector, keeping bullies from picking on her, and acting as a friend considering she wasn’t the easiest person to get along with. As the years passed though, Duncan wanted to shift his attention to his other friends, but Ami was always there beside him, as though she were his shadow. He couldn’t find is surprising though, she lived next door to him, and ever since they first became friends, she was always bugging him. It seemed impossible for him to escape her grasp.

Putting his shoes on, and placing his sun glasses in his jacket pocket, Duncan opened the door, to see Ami standing right beside it, smiling.

“Don’t give up easily.” Mostly a half finished thought, he was still trying to shake the cobwebs out of his skull.

“I’ve been very patient, why would I stop now?” He didn’t bother to think about if she was talking about the current moment, or something else entirely.

He brushed past her in a slightly rude fashion and walked downstairs, to see his mother excited to see him as she worked in the kitchen to cook something he wasn’t quite sure of.

“Oh, Duncan, amongst the living again huh?”

“Yeah, sure, what’s for lunch?”

“You wanted to eat, you should wake up at a decent hour.”

“Figures,” he bemused as he grabbed his house keys from a shelf on the wall opposite the front door. “I pay the bills around here, and still I get treated like dirt.”

“I treat you good, sweetie,” Amelia piped. “I got my car too, so you don’t need to take the bus today.”

“I shouldn’t need the bus anyhow. Wait,” Ducky turned to his mother again. “Ma, you going to need the car today?”

“Yes, I’m picking Carla up, and she’s going to help me with my grocery shopping.”

“Fuck.” Now he knew he’d be stuck with Amelia all day.

This was confirmed when he saw her reaction to such news. She stood smiling and giggling and waving her car keys in the air.

“I’ll drive!” she shouted.

And so she did. He didn’t actually have a plan for his day, but didn’t want to admit this now after trying to fight her off for so long, so he settled on going out to get something to eat first. A local diner that he enjoyed for serving breakfast all day served as the location. As they waited for their food, Amelia couldn’t help but prod a new conversation out of him.

“So,” she spoke coyly, swishing the straw in her drink around, “what was on your agenda today Mr. Busybody?”

“I didn’t have a plan really,” he didn’t bother trying to lie about it; he was always way too obvious. “I just wanted to get out of the house and enjoy myself for once.”

“It’s not like your job is that stressful.”

“Feel like the rest of my life is though.”

“How’s that?” she smiled at him. He knew she was trying to get at something else.

“For starters? I could use a better set of friends.”

“You’re lucky anyone’s willing to put up with you, considering how much of an asshole you are.”

“I’m only an ass because you don’t seem to take hints very well.”

“No,” again the smile crept onto her face, “I just don’t really care. At some point you’ll break down.”

“If I ever break down, I’m going to go on a shooting spree, so don’t wait for that to happen.”

“What is it with you government employees and shooting sprees?” He actually laughed at the comment, considering he didn’t even think of the connection until she pointed it out. He quickly tried to hush the brief spout of cheer, but she saw enough of it to bring about another odd look that made him uncomfortable.

“You’ve got to have some vacation time saved up though, right?”

“Two weeks’ worth, yeah.”

They quieted down as their food came to the table, but as soon as the waiter left, Ami was quick to return to her train of thought.

“So, why don’t you use that time, unwind a little?”

“Because I don’t get paid enough to go anywhere to unwind.”

“I’ve got a little saved up thanks to my folks, maybe we could go to Rechter Heights for a couple of days?”

“Not my idea of a getaway.”

“Well then, tell me, Ducky. What is your idea of unwinding? What would you do if you had the means?”

He half ignored the question as he took a few more bites from his omelet, but Ami clearly wasn’t going to let him dodge it, so she asked again, and waited politely. After he felt his stomach was content, he pushed his plate forward, and stared into space for a moment.

“I have no idea. I don’t try to think of crap like that. Feel like there’s enough for me to worry about now without getting caught up daydreaming.”

“Is that to say you’re content with your life?”

“I guess. I was a slack ass as a kid, and now I’m earning my own way, I’ve got things taken care of, all that crap. Might be boring, but considering the alternatives.”

“Alternatives,” she laughed, “like what, going to school and doing something you love for a living?”

“School and a full time job, plus having to take my ma in for her chemo and deal with that, the hell are you on, Ami?”

“So you’re just going to sit around a bitch all the time, like Theo and Marcus?”

“In case you didn’t notice, I don’t bitch about it. You’re the one that seems at odds with me.”

“I just think it’s weird that you’re so focused on your job and shit.”

“Why?”

“I don’t know… I guess because I just find it annoying how you put so much focus on your professional life. This is the most time I’ve spent with you in weeks.”

“You’re not nine anymore, Ami. Now it’s time for us to be all grown up like.”

“I know that!” She seemed very indignant. She always found it annoying how Duncan would treat her like a child, mostly because she was older than he was. “I just mean… well…”

Now it was her turn to sit awkwardly in silence. Duncan was much more focused on his food, and was again completely oblivious as to why she suddenly felt such a way. As if on cue, once the waiter passed and refilled their drinks, she perked up and motioned for his attention.

“I know, why don’t we go to the beach?!”

“Today?”

“Yeah, nice and cloudy out, no one to bother us.”

“It’s freezing outside, idiot.”

“I don’t care. I’ve got the car, so I make the choices.”

“Again, it’s goddamn freezing outside.”

“I’m not talking about going in the water or anything, and like I said, I have the car, I make the choices.”

He didn’t attempt any rebuttal, instead he just finished eating. As they made their way out, he pulled his jacket close as a wind gust roared past him. Ami instead seemed to revel in it. She stretched her arms out for a moment, as though to savor it. He stared for a moment at her narrow eyes and bright face, and wondered how it was possible for such a person to be so carefree. He then remembered that she didn’t have a job and still depended on her parents for everything.

She was quick to set her car to drive itself as she pulled into the mag-lev lane, and as they slowly made their way along the highway, Ducky stared carelessly out the window as Ami listened intently to some boring news program. There was an odd feeling in him lately, that his surroundings were both too familiar, and also completely foreign. He looked at the commercial district of the waterfront on his side of the car, and the condominiums on Ami’s side, and pondered the places he visited far too often, and the places he’d never been at all. He always thought the city to be rather small, yet when stuck with someone like Ami, he was always dragged to every corner of it, and covering that ground felt exhausting.

They eventually escaped the city, and drove along the more remote parts of the coast. He knew the spot Ami was heading towards, a park that was rarely ever visited. She finally took control of the car again and moved out of the mag-lev lane. As she pulled into their destination and parked the car, Duncan sat confused in the seat for a moment, honestly clueless as to why Amelia wanted to come here.

“Come on, lazy-ass,” she punched him in the arm for good effect, “we’re here.”

“Great, now why are we here?” She said nothing in response, but instead dragged him out of the car.

They left the parking lot and up the steps to the boardwalk that rested on top of the hill, before leading down to the water. Once they reached the top, Ami found a bench, and sat down, motioning for Ducky to do the same.

For a moment she didn’t say anything, so to try and understand, he copied what she was doing and looked out at the beach. The water was turbulent thanks to the weather, and the breeze from the ocean was cruel, filled with salt and cold air. The clouds off the water looked grim but lazy, while over the mainland behind him, it looked as though a storm was coming. He kept most of his focus on the waves, and their very uneven pace.

“I don’t know if you really remember or not,” Ami began, shattering Duncan’s focus, “my twelfth birthday party? I had a few friends and stuff show up, but everyone went home early. I got upset and didn’t want to go home. I sat here and pouted like a child…”

She trailed off and looked out at the waves again. Duncan felt shocked to see how introspective she was right now. He’d never really known her to be regretful or contemplative of anything. From what he could tell, he doubted that she had any regrets about life at all, yet when she turned to look at him, she seemed on the brink of crying.

“I was so furious,” she continued, “and you came over and sat right there…”

He remembered now. She had raised such a fuss about everyone leaving, and instead of things going her way, her tantrum only further cemented the end of the party. He didn’t recall much of what he said though. In fact, he didn’t recall saying anything at all. Duncan only remembered sitting next to her, watching the waves roll in and back out again.

Much like they both did now.

Her gaze lowered, her lips pursed, on the brink of confession, but still wanting deeply to say nothing. Duncan felt a bit of a tug of war, as though he should try to comfort her in some way, yet at the same time, all he did was wait for her to finally speak.

“This is the last winter we’ll have together, right?” She finally spoke.

“I don’t really think of things so absolutely.” He didn’t know if such a notion should be wonderful, or damning.

“I’ll start university next year though, which means I’ll move away from the city… I won’t see you or any of my other friends anymore.”

“That’s why you’re supposed to make new friends.”

“I don’t want to do that, dammit,” she burst out in anger, then calmed herself. “I mean… I have friends here, I have a life here. I don’t want that to just go away because everyone’s older. I know we’re not all children now, but…”

She sunk her head in silence again, and Duncan didn’t dare offer anything in the way of kind words or advice.

“The world just seems so bleak now.”

“Not entirely,” now he figured he should spew out bullshit, “just have to fight for those comfortable places and times now. Can’t expect everything to fall into your lap, Ami.”

“Every time I fight for something I lose…”

“Give me an example then.”

“You don’t love me…”

He didn’t say anything, and now he couldn’t even stand to look at her without a powerful sense of guilt choking him.

“I just…” he attempted speech anyways, but didn’t get beyond those words before retreating to silence yet again. The knife was driven deeper when he noticed she was crying.

She’d been flirting with him very obviously for years, much to his disdain, but this was the first time that he’d seen her in a mournful state at the notion of his rejecting her feelings. Duncan didn’t dare delve into his own thoughts, fearing the conversation would just become a minefield of potentially hurtful remarks.

“I just never really wanted to think about that,” was all he managed to say.

“Never think about what?”

“Just… everything,” he wanted some kind of a defense to put up, but he was very obviously pulling it all out of his ass. “Yes I know how you feel, but ever since high school, I just never got time to consider my own life. Put right to work, and now my mom’s dying…”

“I know, I didn’t mean to put any of this on you today,” oddly her apology made him feel like he was in the wrong.

“Yes you did. You’ve been on my back since we were kids,” he smiled to try and show that he meant it in jest. “Not like that’s wrong. I’m always just standing around until someone tells me to do something. Every time I try to branch out and handle my own shit, something else comes up.”

“Either way,” she tried to bring her sorrow back into focus, “I’m waiting for something that’s never going to happen.”

“I don’t know…” and he truly didn’t.

Amelia did her best to stem the flow of her tears, and Duncan kept his focus on the turbulent clouds offshore, holding his jacket close as the cold wind seemed to intensify. Eventually they both silently got back in the car, and Amelia drove him back home. Even as he left the car as she pulled into his driveway, neither of them spoke a word to each other.

Duncan came back inside to find his mother sleeping on the couch, the television still playing some god awful drama she had recorded. He left that scene as it was and just instantly made his way to his room.

He shut the door, and just sat on his bed, trying his best to be pissed off at Ami. It was his day off, and he planned on relaxing and enjoying himself for once, and now he felt like his day was over despite it only being around four PM. Duncan stared at the ceiling, sorting though a very annoying list of emotions, all of them tying themselves to his very awful day. He wanted to feel sorry for Ami, and to comfort her, but knew that tomorrow, she’d likely be over again, and do nothing but irritate him yet again. The image of her crying on the bench today contrasted with the same image from her twelfth birthday party. He partly thought that to be the reason she dragged him out there today, to force him into guilt.

He looked over at his feet, and body, noticing that he hadn’t even taken his shoes or jacket off yet, and an idea emerged.

He stood with not much of a renewed spirit, but rather with spiteful vengeance. He quickly went downstairs and gathered his things again, and got in his car. He smiled and congratulated himself on his new way to salvage his day off. Duncan had decided he’d go round up a few people and spend the rest of the night acting stupid and getting drunk. He thought that it couldn’t be an awful day if he didn’t remember most of it.

At least so he hoped. He was not going to let this mood overtake him until he turned in for the night, he was not going to let those thoughts stay in his head one minute longer. He wasn’t going to let Amelia ruin another day, not this time.

-   -   -   -   -
Now you got anything left to show?
No, no, I didn’t think so.
Hey, the sooner we realize
We cover ourselves with lies
But underneath, we’re not so tough
And love is not enough.

Prologue: Stockholm Syndrome

She sat nervously as the imps stood at the altar tinkering with the display. Years of religious brow beating still made her think of the Slate as being a very mystical object, worthy of respect and reverence. Her new mistress though, treated it like a toy, and half the time didn’t even bother looking over the imps as they did their work.

“Thingy turn on,” one of them shouted, and it ran away to inform everyone.

Below the altar, the holo-display began to fill the room with images from space. The light rose from the pool that rested at the feet of the altar, a display that took up most of the free space in the dimly lit room. She wanted to be impressed by how much such a device would cost, but remembered that half the parts for it were likely stolen.

The display sequence kept going as the imps fled the room in search of their master. Images that filled the whole room shifted from star cradles, various solar systems, entire galaxies, and potential super novas. None of what appeared was significant, it was just the Slate’s way of making sure the universe was just as it left it. Thinking this would be her only chance to really use the Slate for some time, she walked nervously to the altar, and began thumbing over the pages, looking for a particular planet in a particular solar system.

Within moments, the room was filled with the image of a system very far away, and then its focus shifted to the fifth planet in that star’s orbit.

“Ios,” a voice called from the other side of the room. “Ever the watchful maiden, aren’t you, Dahlia?”

The lady Fade stood opposite from the altar Dahlia stood upon, gazing at the planet.

“A terrestrial with a molten nickel core, and a thin nitrogen atmosphere. Quite unremarkable, isn’t it?”

“Shut it. You look at the whole, but Ios is the most significant planet in the game you wish to play, you’d do well to monitor it more often.”

Dahlia stepped aside so that Fade could grace the altar, and sat on the bench near the display again, and sulked.

“You have no lesson to impart,” Fade said, bringing the picture out to that of the entire system Ios inhabited, “you have you own reasons for being so fascinated with that singular aspect. I want to see the whole person, not just a part of him.”

Fade then brought the image out further, bringing other systems into view as well, and bringing up tags that jutted up displaying names of important objects and planets.

“Amazing, isn’t it?” Fade asked no one but herself. “Spend enough time with this terrible book, and you don’t even see the stars or planets anymore. All I see is a person… a very important one.”

Dahlia noticed Fade biting her lower lip to hide her glee. She wanted very badly to slap her. The most she could do now though was hide her utter contempt for Fade and her intentions. Dahlia was playing a very dangerous game, and Fade obviously suspected that she would turn on her at some point, so timing and composure was everything.

“This brings me to something,” Dahlia interrupted Fade’s daydreaming, “now that I’ve provided you the Slate, what do you intend on doing with it?”

Fade looked down towards her, and smiled.

“You’ve seen it as it was before the old idiots screwed with it, right?”

“Yes…” she didn’t want to speak further on that. She’d made edits of her own.

“You know that he’s not some savior, you know he’s not going to lead some kind of revolution or other such nonsense. The religious fools we were enthralled to want to use him to further their own means.”

“So explain how you would use him differently to further your own means instead then?” Dahlia was growing bored of Fade’s self righteous rants.

“Cheeky… I’ll be blunt. I want to take him as a husband.”

“What?!” Dahlia stood, her revulsion of Fade now so powerful that she couldn’t help the outburst. “Absolutely not, I won’t allow it!”

“Why?” Fade seemed as calm as always as she stepped down from the altar. “You hoping to get him all to yourself? I could certainly understand why, after all.”

“Never!” Dahlia didn’t have to fake disgust, that was a highly awful notion to even consider for a second, but she couldn’t tell Fade why. “My needing to speak to him doesn’t delve into perversion, you twisted cunt.”

“Perversion? Oh my, where your mind wanders, Dahlia! I do not want him as some trophy. I want him just as he is… all of him.”

“That isn’t all of it,” Dahlia challenged.

“Of course, but I won’t tell you the whole story until you tell me yours.”

This argument always ended in the same stalemate. Any time Dahlia tried to get information out of Fade, the same questions were always bounced back and forth perpetually, but Fade was plotting out something far more grand, and far less personal. Dahlia needed only to see him once, to clear her mind, but Fade had dozens of imps with her, and wasn’t actually so concerned with pinning down his location. For all Fade knew, they could be living mere blocks away from him, but she didn’t seem to care.

“If you just wanted to woo him, then why the army?” She was content on getting something out of Fade this time.

“Why, Dahlia, surely you’ve read the Slate enough to know that there’s still a lot he must endure!” She said it all in a cheeky tone, but Dahlia didn’t like at all what Fade was hinting at.

“Fuck you, I’ll ask again when you’re not such a bitch. I have work tomorrow though, and it’s late.”

“Shall I have my guard see you off?” Fade said slyly, motioning towards her personal pets.

Dahlia flipped her off and left the room. She couldn’t stand the imps. It wasn’t much a fault of their own, they were made to be loyal and unquestioning and they did their jobs well, it was just the look of them that bothered her. To forced smile on their zippered mouths, the button eyes that they did not see from. The deteriorated condition most of them were in made them seem like demonic toys for children. It was even more grim a thought, to think of what Fade intended to use them for.

The bullshit ‘prophecy’ the Slate spoke of, demanded blood sacrifice. The pompous zealots intended to misread that as a reason to kill off any opposition, but Fade was far more plotting and far less motivated by vendettas or such petty things. She was obviously setting her sights very high.

Dahlia passed the quarters that Fade had stuffed the imps into, and she briefly looked in on them as they were all gathered around something. She saw that they appeared to be playing cards, but it looked like it was mostly pretend. They had no idea what game they were playing, or knew of any rules. They just seemed to like the idea of gathering around with cards in their hands, as they made the game up on the fly.

She pressed on further, and came to her bedroom, or what could pass for a bedroom. She wasn’t really the vain type, but converting an old industrial warehouse into a home didn’t work well for her. Fade seemed to spare no expense on her own room, but no matter how much she decorated, it didn’t cover up the fact that this place was a shithole.

She locked her door and turned her TV on to drown out the noisy squeaks and yelps of the imps as they played their games, and she sat on her bed trying to sort things out.

The whole key to her plan was getting to him first, but she had no idea how to do that yet. Helping Fade would likely go down as the worst decision of her life, but between her and the zealots, Dahlia felt she had a better chance of screwing Fade over and ruining her plans. All Dahlia needed was an hour or so alone with him, to explain everything that was going to happen, and how he could stop it. The current problem, was if she tried to track him, Fade would know, and use that to her own advantage. She had to figure out how to contact him without the bitch knowing, and then it would be easy. She could fake going out for work or food, and get away from this terrible mess.

Now though, she made her concerns far more immediate. It seemed like Fade wanted to use the imps for something terrible, but Dahlia wasn’t in much of a position to fight any decisions Fade made. She didn’t think herself very culpable for any losses, but would still delight in finding a way to mess things up.

For now though, she turned her TV up louder, and tried her best to fall asleep and ignore the noises the imps made. She hated being a part of this nightmare, and wanted to dream again, to pretend she could wake up one day and live a normal life, something she’d wanted since she was a child. She hated the balance of responsibility and criminality, she didn’t like the forces she was now screwing with, she just wanted to wake up in a normal bedroom with a normal family there to greet her. Helping Fade would likely go down as her greatest sin, but if she could play things just right, she would screw over the zealots, and Fade too, and bring all of this insanity to an end. She wanted that so badly, but it was hard to forget the price she now needed to pay. She didn’t want blood on her hands; she didn’t want to see anyone hurt.

She also didn’t want to go to work tomorrow.

-   -   -   -   -
This is the first (thing I remember)
Now it’s the last (thing left on my mind)
Afraid of the dark (do you hear me whisper?)
An empty heart (replaced with paranoia)
Where do we go (life’s temporary)
After we’re done? (Like New Year’s resolutions)
Why’s this so hard? (Do you recognize me?)
I know I’m wrong (but I can’t help believin’)

I pry my eyes open, 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 and at peace. The entire world set before me, and I giggle, and set it ablaze.

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. 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?

The two of us, we were looking, wait, who is that person crying for me?

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.

I stand, and look to the source of the smoke, the island near the horizon is burning. Nothing leads into it, no bridges, and 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.

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. I run towards the burning island, thinking to myself that with the final memory a part of me again, I can find some other plain of existence, that I can forsake this wandering and be free.

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.

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.

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 jutting out from the shore on each side of the river that quickly become nothing. 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, and after hours of clawing and kicking, I find myself on the other side, with a strong smell of smoke stinging my nostrils.

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 this 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, 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 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.

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.

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 feel I have of the rest of the city is emplaced upon this nocuous thing floating before me. Shadow covers him, but the smoke and choking death of the city avoids him at all costs. His smile becomes too wide for his face, jagged teeth jutting out from the shadows in a wide grin that brims with ill intent. Bright eyes pierce out of the darkness this thing is enveloped in, each of them a different color. Tall and thin, with outstretched fingers, I see him claw at the glass standing before him.

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. He just stands there… smiling.

Now dumbstruck, I have no idea what to do. All 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.

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 fear, to yell that I am the maker and destroyer. Through the years, I sheltered my mind from this fear, that this creature would put me in a box, and laugh while the world forgot about me. I will tear the world apart so that it can remember nothing!

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.

And he stands there… smiling.

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 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.

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.

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 childhood 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. 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.

Traversing the ruins, I begin to think less of a maze, and more that I’m being corralled somewhere. 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 fade, I actually wonder where this will lead me on the island.

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 an upper level of this desolate trail.

At the top the view is wide, a platform made of many dead structures that looks over the entire island. The clouds above seem calm now, and the smell of smoke dissipates. 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 figure stands over it, smiling. The fear he so intensely distilled within me, complete. He puts his 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 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.

The smiling 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 of what did kill 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.

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.

That was the fear that put me in the box. 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. 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. No one will remember that soul, and no one will remember mine. Many sides of me are screaming at the people, telling them their all terrible for letting this come to pass, but the final judgment of my wrath is still aimed at myself.

I let it come to be… because I did it. To spite them, myself, the entire goddamn universe… fuck all of it!

I sat on my bed with a revolver in my hand, loaded, and the hammer pulled back. I placed it against my skull, and wept one last tear as I said goodbye.

I said my last words, rather than writing them, because they were what was most important of me, and I wanted nothing after my death to skew them and twist them. I said them for those that I still longed for, those I harmed. I spoke them alone and in silence, where they would be pure and untouched, unheard of.

Then there was a brief sound…

My body lies in a closed casket, no one takes one final look at me because half of my face has been blown off. If they did look inside, they would see that what’s left is smiling.

I’m holding a necklace, one that holds a cross and a ring. I bore it as a burden of memory and regret, and as my life is snuffed out, I see no other generation to pass this onto. I think of all the torment, how ceaseless my problems were, how much I wanted peace… and I’m standing here alone, looking down at the world as it burns. Dropping the necklace to the floor, I wander away from this scene, from the island, and to a different place, far from memory.

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 any joy no matter what I did… and I never said a word.

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.

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, all of his fears come to pass, gripping at him as he cries with the gun to his head.

There they go, the lives he wanted to affect not even knowing what happened.

Here he rests, on an island of my making, burned to nothing, and nothing will rebuild upon it.

There they go…

I considered many things, options, escapes… I suppose I was always drawn to this, not that it seemed the easiest way out, more that it was the option that always made the most sense.

The air has a bitter chill to it now, and the clouds 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 this road because there was concern that I could not console myself over my choices? Hah, that seems a laughable thing to be concerned 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.

Some strange figure of light tries to intrude upon my calm reflection, pointing to the path. I converse briefly with this person, before I allow them to guide me down the path.

I am adrift, and I am at peace. I allow perception of myself to fade away… and then all of me is gone… forever.

-   -   -   -   -

I never conquered, rarely came
Sixteen just held such better days
Days when I still felt alive
We couldn’t wait to get outside
The world was wide, too late to try
The tour was over, we’d survived
I couldn’t wait, till I got home
To pass the time in my room alone

The trees have faded away into their shadows. Silence creeps upon me.

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 am in the woods, where are the trees, where is the light? There is no moon circling an orb lost in an inky stillness, there is no sense of anything familiar.

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.

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.

Wait, where’s he going?

I follow, past the pointless yelling I recall.

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.

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 some 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.

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.

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.

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?

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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 all 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. My father was a mirror of what I would become, at least so I thought. I never tried to tell him of that fear, never tried to show him that others had that pain. His family rejected him, I never had a kind word to say, not a single person offered him hope, so he decided his life was not worth living.

The first time I stood alone in that room, and it was also cold. My mind crept into places cobbled by boredom and paranoia, and I started to see the shadows flickering behind me, the seeds of my own demise. In fits of panic I was never quite sure if the walls were moving, or if my eyes simply lost focus on how they saw the world. I felt the room itself wanted me dead for some reason. That it knew what I was going to become, like it had to put a stop to me.

How I would walk into the night to escape the suffocation, the frost covered grass at my feet sending my nervous system signals of how I was still quite alive, quite aware of myself. I would look to the moon and see the air from my lungs obscure its visage. For whatever reason, standing mad before the moon in such a turbulent and harsh climate, offered me the only sense of serenity I ever knew in that home. I fell to my knees and clutched at the dead frost covered grass with my hands, the pain of the cold was a welcome reminder, all that was happening. It was there… I was there… that’s all I needed to know for some odd reason.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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 that seems bright and cheery, but that is not what lifts my spirits. I find the trail lying before me yet again, this time 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?

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.

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.

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?

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 brevity, 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.

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.

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 of the world they gave away.

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?

-  -  -  -  -

I wasn’t always cargo
I was once kind of my own
I guess I’ll pack up my mind.
Oh it took so much effort
Not to make an effort
Oh, what a flawless design.

Even as I left Florida.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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. I tug at my arms, and I find both of them numb. Turning my attention back to her, I see a twisted smile, and a renewed spirit within me.

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. 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.

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.

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 backs 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.

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. I grow impatient. She knows this. She’s playing me like a violin. I can’t tell what is bringing about the tears, but afterward, she assures me it was a wonderful thing I did.

Monster!

The things flashing through my mind makes 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. 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.

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.

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.

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.

What returns is less a figment of memory, but rather an interpretation on a dream. 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.

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.

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.

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.

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, 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 guilt and anger. The possibility of what I could do seems far more terrible than anything else.

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

Trees lined the road, she offered me dinner. Quite older, but I loved the attention. 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.

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. 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 not forget. The shackles break, and now they are restraining her to where I was just kept.

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.

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.

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 love 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…

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.

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 sit her down, and I shackle her to the trees again. I stare at her with a cold face, and say nothing. I turn, and I leave her there.

She screams, she cries, she’s begging me to let her go. I have, 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 new 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.

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.

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.

I am not this. I… was, but no more.

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.

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 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.

I 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.

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.

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 hold in 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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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 violence 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 upon waking, 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.

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.

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.

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 affects 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. 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.

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 still tough enough?
Feels like I’m wearing down (down, down)
Is my viciousness, losing ground (ground, ground)?
Am I taking too much?
Did I cross the line (line, 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

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.

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.

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. 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.

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 me points 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, and his name is Greed. All before him are left for wanting, and all are removed of his sight, that they are unaware of this beast.

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 pure faces that have been sewn onto wooden frames, the skin rotted and lifeless. Strings shoot out and into the sky, and one 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 evolution. 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.

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.

Within a very limited span, there is a field of broken dolls and dead faces looking into the sky. 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.

The flow 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. Soon though, I’m back to a still quiet, with nothing around me aside from the trampled souls that comprise the path.

The culmination of this 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 Crown 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.

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.

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 kneel before it, and I begin to form what I think are tears, but it feels so new and cold.

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. 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 myself, 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.

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.

I started upon this path with my death. I begin to wonder what would happen if I were to find the end of this trail, 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