A memory. A faint trickle of a tune we haven’t heard yet. A feeling. Her hand rests, cradling shoulder. Mainlining emotion, teeth shine brightly amidst a crimson backdrop. Saliva spreads into a paste, then explodes across the sea of red. Some distance away. A melody is always heard before the message.

SPLIT

OPEN

UNDERNEATH
THE STATIC

Flame around us. Bursting through the atmosphere? A cosmic hard boiled egg, colored green and then gold screeches through the waves of static. Like an apocalyptic radio signal, we writhed in a sea of sonic pixelation, protruding from what seemed to be sky. There was fury in the air. Elephantine bellows all around us, echoing into millions. Some sorta in between zone? The expanse of fuzzy particles bubbled and frothed. We could see rapid glimpses and glitches of fragmented forms. Ever erratic, these frantic shapes appeared to be advancing, and advancing and advancing. Too close. It was hard to discern that something was there, but something was definitely moving towards us through the fog, showing only bits of whatever it is.
wait.
teeth.

Each step was a flurry of frequencies, conflicted and numerous. Movement ceased to make sense, I was stepping through a swamp. I was vomiting into a sink, I was falling to my knee.

Have we moved?

oh shit, teeth again.
We feel the ivory press on the skin before the inevitable chomp. Velvet flesh torn like tissue paper in an instant. Body being torn apart. A flash of a face, too terrifying to comprehend before darkness

A second later, a bustling intersection. Cars? No, not exactly. Something from a David Cronenburg film. Strange, insectoid vehicles, they drive in random patterns that should result in countless accidents, but they whizz by each other harmlessly. Upon closer inspection, they are driven by no one. Suddenly, the air is lit with many strained voices speaking as one. I couldn’t tell if they were speaking to each other or to me, or if their words even had meaning. I could feel a palpable tension. Where was I? There were no other humans to be seen, and all I could even see were strange snakey roads spiraling off in any direction. I could feel myself being hit consistently by these alien vehicles but pain refused to register. As if they were just gliding right through me - I could see horrific accidents in my mind, but they had no bearing on the present. If this was the present?

Rip, rig and panic! The technicolor mist around decays in real time. If the sky was a fabric to be torn, it was coming apart in every direction. I was hit repeatedly with barbs of nostalgia as images came into focus underneath the shredded sky.

A sundial....

Masked masses falling by the thousands

A rolling ball of thorns....

Hooded figures encircling.....

A hedge maze?

All is delayed.
It’s blurryitsblurryitsblurrrrrryitsbluuuurrrry
Suddenly snapped back. Going fucking Mach speed down one of those snakey roads winding into infinity.
“Don’t look back, say a little prayer.”
What? The voices were echoing again but that one was so clear. I suddenly felt my head turning around by some unknown and impossibly sinister compulsion. I resisted. I felt something behind me, that if I looked, it would become real. Couldn’t look. Could not.

Too many planes of where? My vision refracted through the lens of a fly’s compound eye. I felt still zipping into infinity, as Dalmatians danced somewhere in my head. The voices became noise for a moment as a light up ahead grew brighter and brighter.

Alone.

Wait, no.

Tentacles, baby blue, materializing from the nothingness, bathed in throes of an angelic choir. Suction cups vibrating like the throatal vibrato generator lifting me, stretching me, compressing me, blurring me, bluuuuuurrrrrrrrrrrrringgggg meeeeee
A man is stabbed in a shower,

then burned in a church.

A statue of a rapist falls,

then is pulverized.

An indecipherable booming.

God, I don’t know if my brain can take more of this trans dimensional whiplash. The sky seemed to be breathing with the wheeze of a lifelong tobacco smoker deep in the chokehold of emphysema. My every waking moment had become a constant barrage of my every waking moment simultaneously. Fuck,
humans arrrrrreee not su pposed


to ex per ience lifeeeeeee

ALLLLLLLL AT ONCEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE

Am I walking?
My feet are hazy.
A dull whir and my body is coming apart.
No blood.
Stumbling, mumbling to myself.
Some nonsense language.
Fading angrily

Fading



fading


———————————————————


No memory, but waking up in cavernous space. The echoes of my phootsteps turn into florescent creatures as they bounce off the walls far off in the distance. I look down and notice a gaping hole in my chest. It had always been there, I thought. There was a harmonious rumbling through the tunnels, led by an emerging greenish blue light. The light morphs into an endlessly long serpentine creature. It’s face stood to face me for a second and I felt a deep pang of loss. I.....I am lost for words. I can’t even describe what I’m seeing with my eyes because the heartbreak is too heavy to think. It seems to acknowledge my sadness as a form of reverence and passes over me. It’s unfathomable body is completely reflective, images prance within the meadow of its immeasurable girth. As it floats above me, I see a man with shoulder length hair strumming a white telecaster right above its shoulder blade. Before my brain can even catch up to my eyes, tears are running down my face in lonely lines. Trey. He seems older. Older than when he left. Jesus fucking Christ. I wish I could hear him.

A shape skates by my ear. So fast, smells like smoke. Then instantly thousands more. All I can see is small scribbles of smoke zipping through the air towards the giant serpent. The air fills with their cackling as the serpent wails helplessly. The smoke scribbles are tearing it apart. The image of Trey goes through the shredder as I scream out, making my way towards the carnage but it’s just becoming farther away the more I struggle. Then darkness.

Something is missing. Some part of me isn’t here. I used to have it, but it fell off somewhere. Having a hard time organizing the memories chronologically. Not even sure which part of me is present. A wave of self loathing rolls on slow. Why is so much of humanity plagued by regret? Why can’t we see things as they happen? So many things in my life have just been out of reach, either mired by unfortunatestance or muddied by my own hand. Flashbacks of:

Waking up to that text. Trey is dead? This can’t be......

His hand trembles uncontrollably as he attempts to strum a chord. Nervous glances exchanged....

A congregation, seated anxiously in a church......

A lanky man crying to the audience as if on cue......

I feel like a bag of cat food with a hole in the bottom. With every step, a little bit falls out of me and is swept away by unseen forces. As I open my eyes and realize I’m floating on my back in another empty cavern, I look up to see miles of rusted machinery adorning the roof of the space. Their physical form remains, but they have been long robbed of any sort of purpose. Humans aren’t any different. We often exist far past our need and end up just like a rusted machine - forgotten and empty. We even forget our own selves. What was can never be in the same way. Are our identities destined to be fragmented and lost along the way? Is there no way to recover this shit? I sank into the water, spiraling peacefully down the drain.

———————————————————-

Oh fuckkkkkkkkkkk I see myself leaned over a toilet, spewing molten whatever. I look over and see Yogi staring at me. Her eyes were saucers of green milk, intersected by a sharp black spine. She clearly is seeing something profound. The vomit coming out of me has frozen and I feel her knowing paw on my shoulder. Her eyes have grown to fill the room and I can feel my body dripping from the faucet every last droplet laboriously and lugubriously oozing out. Tiwa is sleeping in the sink as my gooey essences mixes with her slimy fur. The absurdism of the current situation is not lost, although thoughts are difficult to crystallize when your brain and your shoelaces are mixed in the same pudding. The hairy mixture heads towards the drain of the sink, but is stopped by a scaly tree trunk erupting from the depths of the pipes. I struggle to open my eyes in a way that makes sense while your entire body is liquid. They sloppily reveal a shifting hydra esque creature in front of me. My mouth slides agape, as this creature appears to be addressing me. Four heads, each covered in various forms of human bile and excess. Half smoked cigarettes, shit, empty vodka bottles, bits of moldy fast food and saliva. Truly fucking hideous.

There’s an inundation occurring. Please, my friends!!!!!! One at a fucking time. The four heads look at each other, laughing, and the first one leans down towards me, rapping of getting fucked up and shit like that. There’s a hallucinogenic stream of images.

I see the murder
I see the protests
Bodies litter the streets
Badges with bullet holes
A disconnected IV, fluid absent
A chimney, abandoned and rickety
Another dimension
A child picking a bullet casing off the street

The hydra is surrounding, laughing and spitting, as three more heads rise from the beast. I’m basically becoming a soup, it’s a delicious concoction, mixed together and swirling. The hydra rises, leaving the drain unguarded and my viscous form lolls down into its circular maw shooting down into darkness fucking again.

———————————————————

Heavy breathing and a purple sky. Elegant and ornate adobe buildings the color of the desert. A feeling a pure ecstasy. Her face flashes through the darkness as we rise and fall together. The feeling stretches out leisurely, expanding towards complete timelessness. Nothing occurs simultaneously, nothing after, nothing before. It’s a pure moment, a rare moment. A moment of oneness.

What was that name? That place? You know the one, the transcendent land that only reveals itself when the two of us are so utterly linked together by passion that reality ceases to exist. I need to go there. I need to be there. There’s nothing like it in any dimension, it can only exist with the two of us like we are right here, right fucking now. Right, now it’s coming back to me, if for a moment....

lushluxland

———————————————————-

Eyes struggling to focus, as they squint, it only seems to get hazier. A squelching sound brings it all into clarity. The atmosphere is decidedly less sinister here. Where was I just then? Lushluxland?

Like I was within a feeling.
Within every feeling, there is a world of its own. Each feeling for each person is of the most supreme uniqueness.

Around me is some sorta fuckin swamp. Hazy humidity, misted moss
A bug licks its legs
There is something in the air.....it smells like.....whiskey? I follow the scent, oblivious to the shifting of the leaves below.

A devious crunch. My foot betrays the earth beneath it as I suddenly sink below the leaves. I fall into an alcoholic stupor as my body sinks deep within the feeling of the nights with missing pieces.

A siren song lights up the forest. Their eyes fall to the earth below as some of the leaves are slightly out of place. No matter, they are always shifting. The thought does not linger. One leaf out of place is no bother. So why should they fret over their heads being a little messy? Messiness is the natural way, they always try to instill order in things. It’s a rejection, and rejection cannot be tolerated. Those will be buried, they will cease to be recognized by the world around them.

They defiantly gazes across the forest. Such things do not affect them, they think. She has existed in this space always, doused in regret and drunken loneliness. They deny.
They cry.
But the forest remains silent in its noisy way.
Compassion doesn’t exist in nature. Invented by humans to create some sense of unity and order in the messy world. But it doesn’t exist naturally. Manufactured. How can humans exist in a fully natural state while they’ve developed unnatural ways to bond with each other? The song of isolation echoes through the bog, twisted and distorted. No one can hear it in its initial form. It just passes over them like a television turned on in the room of a domestic dispute. Forever in the background, just waiting to be turned off.

.........I’m fine...............

Muddy darkness explodes, drowning me momentarily. My mouth feels full. I spit. Countless empty pill casings come out, falling into endless oblivion. I can hear the drone of a radio signal. Reality is a warbling, rotating disk.

Guess I gotta go deeper. The thought echoes in my head but I have trouble making sense of it. Opening further is my chest, shifting and splitting. A scream starts running from the deepest crevices within and gains momentum as it picks up steam. A greenish light explodes from my chest as the scream finds new shelter in the endless oblivion surrounding me. I can hear a vast myriad of sounds, insectoid and animalistic - they seem unaware of my presence, IF my presence. Flashes of color dart through the darkness, illustrating its immense capacity. It dissipates. Like a leaf floating downwards

And downwards




And downwards........

———————————————————-

Hey baby, welcome to the tantric birdbath!



.............................


Was that just speech I heard? I force my eyes open like a groggy ice fisher with a rusty pickaxe. Finally opening, greeted by someone standing in front of me? They were standing on the edge of a huge sundial, naked feet teetering playfully off the brim.

Where?

The tantric birdbath, dude.

Their eyes are red and heavy lidded. A smoke drifts lazily. They beckon to me. Circling the sundial is a cavalcade of hooded figures. They appear chanting, beckoning again to me listlessly. My steps take me to the edge of the sundial and my ears are suddenly oppressed by a deep booming. The booming sound is visceral as fuck, I feel like I’m gonna throw up. The figures are circling as the booming grows until.....

In a hedge maze at light speed, zooming through the pathways. Heads to either side of me, poking out unassumingly from the brush. I’m moving too fast, but I can tell that some of them are people I knew, but it was hard to tell. Singing, but I couldn’t quite make it out. A meaningful sense of hope, though. But picking it out of a sea of misery is another fuckin thing. A roiling ball of thorns corners me in the maze and my vision flashes white.

The booming returns as I fall from below and land on the sundial again. The hooded figures are closer now, their chants snaking through me like a rogue earwig. I feel clammy hands on my exposed flesh. I am naked, covered in bubbling boils. They touch me, every touch an unwelcome probe into the deepest parts of myself. It’s personal, goddamnitttttttt

ITS FUCKING PERSONAL

Nothing is mine anymore. The deepest most painful memories are being forced to the surface by the countless hands. A corpse lying in the desert surrounded by vultures, picking every last emotion from the bone.

A dog fights another, tearing its its nose off
A man clutches a small ziplock baggie as he is shot in a grimy alley
A man is crushed by a car falling from the sky
Stumbling through an alley covered in vomit and shit

I run blindly, tears forming a blindfold of impulsivity. Crashing through the wall of hooded vultures, ending up in another hedge maze? I stumble naked and alone, wearing my emotions as a raggedy ass sweater, torn and stinking.

Aw fuck.

They flipped back their multicolored dreadlocks, giving way to a deep bellied laugh. Fuckin people, they said. The birdbath just swallowed another useless man. Psh. They yawn.

———————————————————-

Huh? How? Just a second ago I was walking, shredded and beaten down, until the air around me glitched uncontrollably and the deafening sound of static filled my fucking headdddddddddddohhhh god make it stopppppppppppMemories flooding in. When did this happen, is it happening again? The flickering of forms bore its witness to me again.

A psychedelic stampede at some point in time, revealed slowly. A memory burnt in the transistors of time, forgotten and floating. Tusk and trunk, spazzing and and out of vision, advancing. Brain feels like tug of war between angry children. A bruised guitar slices through each breath I try to take and I disappear beneath the shadow of a behemoth hoof.

Confronted.


On a minuscule grassy pedestal in the middle of the endless void. The only thing to be seen: a holographic, pinkish amoeba type creature.

Are you sure you’re all here?????

Did the blob say that? It’s behind me now as I swivel clumsily to face it. I’m definitely not all here.....before the thought could finish, I notice that I’m missing a terrifyingly large chunk of my body?

How long have I been like this??!?!?!

You came like that, sonny boy. Ya lil terpingular state seems to have taken a huge bite of itself.

I struggle to process that statement as sarcastic laughter erupts all around me. How long has there been a literal chunk missing?

Why don’tcha marinate on that shit for a bit.....

Vomiting...impaled on a shuddering tusk. As blood is bubbling up in my tear ducts I look down....swarming with centipede like serpents. I just couldn’t shake the mind altering roaring coming from so fucking far away and right up close to my ear. I felt the sounds were hallucinogenic, I could feel my brain trying to break free from my skull as the environment around me melted and warped into itself.

thestaticthestaticthestaticthestaticthestaticthestaticthestaticthestaticthestaticthestaticthestaticthestaticthestaticthestaticthestaticthestaticthestaticthestaticthestaticthestaticthestaticthestaticthestaticthestaticthestaticthestaticthestaticthestaticthestaticthestaticthestaticthestaticthestaticthestaticthestaticthestaticthestaticthestaticthestaticthestaticthestaticthestaticthestaticthestaticthestaticthestaticthestaticthestaticthestaticthestaticthestaticthestaticthestaticthestaticthestaticthestaticthestaticthestaticthestaticthestaticthestaticthestaticthestaticthestaticthestaticthestaticthestaticthestaticthestaticthestaticthestaticthestaticthestaticthestaticthestaticthestaticthestaticthestaticthestaticthestaticcccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccc

Well? How’d that work out for ya?

The blob has returned. Back to the void.

Nah. Worked out like shit. What the fuck was I even supposed to do in that situation? I didn’t even know what was. You’ve got some nerve bringing me to this supreme emptiness just to say some predictably cryptic shit. Gimme a fuckin break you asshole.

Have it your own way, lil pidgebooper. You won’t find your way out of here without me.

The amoeba performed a series of erratic, convulsive gymnastic moves, bounced around rapidly and dove straight into my left nostril.

Oooooooooooooooohhhhhhhhhhh baby. This was some shit. Mother-m-motherfucker is on somethin spicyyyyy. This felt like coke....and acid......and ecstasy......and somethin else. I felt goddamn supercharged, I was high as shit, this is.......

THIS IS DISCO

Hoo boy I never played dance dance revolution, but this is it the floor was a gay checkers board filled with swiftin feet Hundreds of faceless people but it didn’t matter this was the first time I really feelin somethin fuck jigglin fingies tearing tracks down myfacedontfeelnothinthough I saw people passing shit to eachotherigottahavesomegimmegimmegimme I was shoving shit up my nose down my throat through my ass every possible direction can’t crash now my fingernails were takin a hike well see ya later my joints were accordionizingbilliafyingmysterpolizingbendrivenafied

BLOOOOOOOORRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRP

GUESS THE PARTYS OVER MY FRIENDS WERE FADING FAST INTO A BLACK HOLE THE MULTICOLORED FLOOR WAS SUCKED FROM UNDER MY FEET HURTLING FAST TOWARDS THE EYE THE EYE GUESS IM NOT GETTING OUT OF HERE

The cyclone swirled and gnashed as everything I’ve known was sucked in like an extra long noodle. Soon I won’t know nothin.

———————————————————-

It was the timid brush of a fern leaf that woke me up. Metallic ribbits. Small little clunks. Miniature tapping. Familiar echoes. I know somethin. It’s coming back to me. We were in that old apartment where we found the bird with parasites in its brain in the backyard. We were on the bed, completely naked. You had just told me you loved me. It was one of those rare moments where time exists on either end but never during. Pure euphoric suspension. I was feeling the same thing but was too cautious to say it out loud. When you said that classic trio, I felt foolish for holding it back. It came out like a busted dam, and holy shit, it keeps coming. My eyes drifted closed like, intoxicated by a breeze smelling something like sweet corn.

YO

I SAID YO WHAT YA DOIN HERE? THIS MY LAND

I look up to see an incredibly tall....man? standing over me, hair adorned with a variety of gems and stones. He’s so fuckin tall, I can barely see his face. Fuck, I forgot where I am, too wrapped up.

Sorry dude, I musta dozed off. Where am I exactly?

I DONT GIVE A FUCK WHERE YOU ARE I GOT MY OWN SHIT. YOU FORGOT YOURSELF MAN

Well I’m out of here - soon as I said that, I was embraced by some thick living green mist and my eyes fell asleep yet again.

Where is me? Who is this empty shell? Thank god I haven’t come across a mirror because my parents used to tell me about stranger danger. Can’t be caught dead seeing whoever is operating this body right now because I don’t think it’s me. Right now I just feel like a ramshackle collection of hazy memories. Last I remember, I was barely there. Now I’m barely here. I don’t know what silence sounds like now. I can’t just fade away. I just need one moment of peace. Just a small fucking moment........

We were packing a bowl on the windowsill of the house in Oswego. It was past midnight. There are those small unassuming moments that just stick with you. Moments that exude a special type of substance, unspoken, imbued with meaning. This was one of those moments. Soon after, we would sensually remove our clothes and fuck with an emotional fervor and connection never before felt. Tears of overflowing feeling stained the bedsheets as our bodies rocked back and forth on each other like a fleshy seesaw. You are so goddamn special to me, I can hardly find a suitable way to contain it...god I miss her right now.

YO WHAT THE FUCK I JUST TELL YOU? GET THE FUCK OUTTA HERE MAN I GOT SHIT TO DO

Aw shit, I never left.....

I DONT GOT TIME FOR THIS SHIT - IM TAKIN THIS INTO MY OWN FUCKIN HANDS

He raised his arm, quite like a tree branch, and held it out towards me. Some sort of energy started collecting in his palm and before I knew it, I was hit in the face with a blinding multicolored light.

SUCK ON THAT IMPOSTOR

My vision refracted into a million facets of existence. But this time it wasn’t so bad. There was a peace watching my skin dissolve into infinitesimal crystals, exploding into colors far beyond understanding. I saw that man’s face, distant and larger than life, floating in a sea of trembling binary. His countenance bore a peaceful image now, a warm smile projecting itself over the cosmos.

One foot on the ground again. Then two. Then three? Then....four...??? I was much closer to the ground than usual. Looking down I notice a paw where I feel my hand should be. I look over and the other one is the same. A furry lil plomp with four toes adorned with sharp anchoring claws. I felt fully in control of this newfound fuzziness somehow. The world set out before me reminded much of the technological landscape from Tron and early video games. There were creatures floating through the sky somewhere between man of war jellyfish and pterodactyls. Their singsongy wails brought a warmth to my small feline heart.

———————————————————

As I pranced across this vapor wave landscape, there was a stilling through the air. The sky was empty and the songs had disappeared. Suddenly the earth shuddered as if waking up from a bad hangover and let forth a vomit more obscene than a frat house’s bathroom. Giant heads (human?????) came tumbling out, mouths stretched in Ludovico esque horror. Luckily animal adrenaline proved itself and I had catapulted away before processing could be complete.

Oh baby, the race was on!!!!!!! Anxiety wasn’t fast enough, this was just pure fuckin survival. This was fuckin Armageddon. The world was a geriatric person falling down a steep hill. Rattling and trampling itself, everything around me was crumbling fast.

There’s no way I make it outta this.

I managed to drum up the nerve to turn around only to be surrounded by the avalanche of heads. Before I could make out what they looked like, one came crashing down over me, mouth first. All went dark.

Again.

Something beautiful and elegiac was forming amidst the darkness. Indigo energy forming plantlike growths that flowed and shimmered. Ghostly, gorgeous, gaping wide, gradually coalesced into a long purple hallway, dimly lit with one door at the end seemingly made of some type of opal. I had to get through that door. Something told me it was key.

Poor poor porous boy....came a wispy voice. Three sirens with lips pursed in concern appeared to address me.

Your plastic sheen won’t forgive....

But there was something there....something lost now.

Split in two, ya sound blue.....

These words pierced my chest with a desperation clawing to the surface. My four feet failed to hold me and I collapsed to the ground in tears. The pain and sadness was a lead blanket, holding me down.

Useless soulless boy...

Truth leads you on a trail so cold....

But all I want is for someone to take my hand. The opalescent door swings open and her slender arm comes out of the mist. I know it’s hers because of the childishly rendered cat at the joint. I need this support now, I feel myself slowly rising to a chorus of singing from the three sirens.

Sometimes it’s clear you’re done...

Maybe so, maybe so. Maybe this is it. Gotta move forward regardless. All I could feel is my spine tingling as I felt myself move into the darkness one last time.

———————————————————-

A single slug. Just one, seething across the concrete. It’s small and unassuming, but driven and resilient. This lil sluggo has been through a lot, but it’s still here, devoid of none of its natural splendor. It’s her. It’s Beth. Her face appears to me in this time of fading as I remember wondering how I ended up here. I’d give anything just to feel the graze of her finger on my thigh or to witness that small smile, only revealing the tops of her front teeth. There’s moments that are too surreal to be lies, moments of convergence too meaningful to be mere coincidence. For once it’s a a beautiful dream that I’m afraid of waking up from. But I never woke up, it proved to be much more than a dream.

It’s simple things, like that lil mouth pop we both made before meeting each other, it’s both growing up with a heavy insectoid fascination. It’s knowing that she’ll always listen to the corrupted voice that takes indefinite residence in my head. As I contemplate the end, I know that in life I never had to contemplate existence without her. I still feel like she’s been here, even in this godforsaken nothingness.

I try to project my thoughts so that she might somehow feel what I’m feeling. Even as I fade, I leave behind a piece of myself.

I’ll never be gone for you.

Please take this piece of me. It is unequivocally given.

I love you.

———————————————————

The haziness. A dead station. The dial turned all the way to the left. The last position. Nowhere else to go. The land stretched before me in a spectral white fuzzy haze. An endless nothing. A palpable tension in the air. How long have I been here?

It’s always been there.....

The sinister sentiment echoed through my mind, long ago. Somewhere between space and desert. I hear echoes that sound similar but they’re missing something....

Wait.....

I’m missing something.....

Could it be out here??

There were too many sounds occurring in the atmosphere to really make much of a deduction, but I wasn’t alone. That much could at least be said of this whole fuckin thing. Never alone. Could that have led to this overblown degradation? Thought just passing through.

This place is fuckin creepy, definitely has the feel of a graveyard. Whispers visit my ear....

Cmon man, just a couple more dollars, can’t miss this month’s rent again....

Don’t fucking touch me again.....

I thought they would back me up, I thought they said they’d be kind to me....

Wait, please, there has to be another way, you don’t have to do this....

I darted away, hoping to escape these mental phantasms. There words made me feel really tense and uncomfortable.
Suddenly
There was a flash and smoke

Trudging.........


Trudging.........


It’s been 39 long days....

Looking down at the worn shoes below that struggle to pull me forward. Long destitute, long journeying, shred of sanity remains. Although not enough to feed a mouse. Parts don’t exist anymore, they’ve long since faded. Not much time left here. Lifts head back unleashing a guffaw that echoes endlessly. Nerve endings firing randomly. A blue storm of metal and electricity lies ahead. Must
Walk
Through

Torrential

Lifts off the ground, finding space in between the cracks of time to toss it. It floats lifelessly away to disintegration.

Musty steam floating somewhere between an explosion and a dust storm. Sun spots blinding all sense of self. Spaceships crash. Somewhere in this my mind is floating, coming clearer into view.

Oh wait, it’s not the whole thing.

It’s just a lil piece.

A brain floating through the cosmos. Hundreds of doors drifting through space, most of them lead nowhere, empty hinges. So many sparkling knobs of nothingness, turned in vain. One door is shaking with electricity, threatening to blow a gasket. A hand reaches out to the knob to turn it. Jolted free something so pure and gushing. Helpless lines turn to golden shrines. Her face flashes in the blue sparks and it instantly transports me to New York, LaGuardia airport sometime past midnight.

There was a caterpillar of people following us as we searched for any operating bus to take us to our apartment for the night. Somehow this was more difficult than it sounds in one of the most heavily populated cities on the continent. As is customary for New York, there was trash everywhere and every sniff we took was the scent of shit. Still running, the bus pulls away, giving the cold shoulder as the fumes snuck past our nostrils.....

I’m barely there. It feels like all that’s holding me together is a few strong memories of Beth, trying to anchor me before I fall apart completely. My mind is full of distortion, even squinting the ears makes it hard to hear what’s really goin on in there. Suddenly a script of hieroglyphic symbols flash through my mind plain as day but vanish immediately. I’m turning, I’m spinning, I’m liquefying......

I ooze out of the tear duct and slowly slink down the face....my face??? The head rests snugly on her shoulder. Mid embrace. It’s warm, the choobie is speaking, the anxiety is subsiding. Her touch is thawing. It’s hitting me now. Her presence keeps those dark voices at bay. The dark voices have proposed that this couldn’t work. It couldn’t be as pure and true as it seems. But their voices are distant and inconsequential now. Fading, a green light is growing, all encompassing and comforting. Those fuckin voices don’t have power here! It’s so powerful, everything around me is erased, eclipsed by the emerald glow. I feel myself becoming weightless, I’m high, exalted by the ecstasy of emotion. She proves this one thing. I never have to say goodbye.








Sinking.











Down a deep chasm submerged in purple water my body, or what’s left of it floats to the bottom. There’s a detachment, breathing has ceased functioning, but eyes slowly and listlessly survey the glowing creatures swirling in the deep. Lugubriously lowered, there’s a silence down here. A suspension. I feel my hand caressed by some type of aquatic bird and fish hybrid, serpentine in length. It seems familiar somehow, this mythical creature, somehow comforting. The joints ache, let out long labored breaths. Weary. Spent. Eye lids moving in slow motion as my body settles into the sediment below.

A rumble and the static slips through. Peace is slowly shattered by a foreboding tone that floats through the air. There’s a cloud forming in the distance, throbbing and convulsing. Something about it is way too personal. Way too fucking personal. It’s rippling towards, sounds of voices strained and anxious emanating from its rippling vapors.

You are completely alone.

You will fade inconsequentially.

There will be no trace of you anywhere.

You can’t run from thoughts. They always catch you, they don’t even have to try, they’re just entrenched in you waiting for the moment to strike. When it does strike it can be completely and devastatingly crippling. My brain was a hornet’s nest that had just been hit with a bat. The cloud was closer. I turned, breaking into a gallop, but it was like I was in that Dali painting Persistence of Memory. Movement just ceased to be a possibility. Behind me, an unfathomable flickering shape. A roar so deep, my fuckin Greek ancestors could feel it. A tusk protruding from the sky to the earth. My time was up. Running was meaningless.

The static filled my ears like an injection of angry cicadas it was on me now sweat appearing and disappearing I felt an obscene shredding but not in my flesh in my being whatever small amount of identity left is getting disintegrateddddddddddddddddddd nowsentences fail to complete dread dread dreaddreadreadreadddddd can’t call for help can’t call to say anything what’s my name who am I who was I fuckkkkkkkkkkkkkk it it ititititit it

Nothingness.