A deep orange overhung the quiet room, a pergola of light to shelter us as our branches twined slowly toward each other. We stretched so slowly and yet too fast, as we knew the subtle metronome of our hearts beneath that silence could only count to the morning’s blue-grey loneliness again. I articulated my fingers so as to increase the distance to contact with that other warmth, to increase the already fathomless joy that would arise when skin and skin combined to yield a chimera planted in the serene garden of this everywhere room.
Even as I conceived this elegant arbor, my hand was still continuing onward, onward to the contact which would form its birth. The space between was narrowing, was becoming an ever more enriched womb to bear our love’s crescendo. Each molecule which separated us now fizzled, now spun merrily away as the grooved and sloped whorls of my pendant fingers pushed forward.
Now my fingertip could feel the coursing warmth of a fingertip that could feel my coursing warmth.
But as catharsis’s curtain was about to fall
And touch, the grandest of our senses made
A trembling vine o’ertook my bravest strides
And froze my movement with its hardened braid.
Twas fear that held me at the door before the dawn
That gave such gravity and yet such craven eyes
To the child of our simple touch
Which pure or farcical would soon arise.
Burning lamp of love’s first caress
Have thee hiding under thy auroral folds
A barb to poison every dream I’ve had
Of being held above the black of solitary cold?
It was as if the universe had nothing left to say to me. The orange glow surrounding us was Beatrice, was also succubus. Did it wish to bring about divine conjugation of these branches, hands in hands, and eyes in eyes? Or did it merely wish to grant me hollow freedom from a world I thought was formless night, but that held me closer to its pith than love in this arboretum could?
My thoughts were an inkblot soaking upward through the pages of this very story. How long had the blackness, planted, been creeping up the capillaries of its naïve leaves?
And in the midst of my mind’s writhing, an undulating heat penetrated my finger tips and turned the fiber of my being into one steady vinculum of fire. The gap had relegated its strength to the birth of our connection. Was it my unsteady traverse, or that of my companion, a flash of contemplation now visible as well above that birchen brow, that bridged the Arcadia and yet the Hell of that last moment?
A tender infant sapling sprouts somewhere in the pale orange of an artificial wood, with a shadow something like the disgust rooted now in our nervous soul.
Tuesday, July 23, 2013
Dido's Lament
As the words of Dido float so gracefully from her, so too does life flee. She laments to be remembered for herself and not her fate. Sadly, humankind cannot afford her this, for the effects of our being and our being itself cannot often be separated. I am these words because they are the only remnants of my being which remain when I am laid in Earth. Sadness prevails in my case and in that of Dido, you see. We cannot be ourselves. No one can. Perception dictates that we are what we do, how we look, and where we go. What bitter agony… of course, the actions of one can be as true or as inspiring as the person who one is, but this type of positivity is still a mask, a visage. It is still false. Where is truth? Perhaps it is found in death, or perhaps in forgetfulness. I cannot say. It seems that Dido cannot either.
The end.
Dido and Aeneas. Act III. 10:13-16:00.
The end.
Dido and Aeneas. Act III. 10:13-16:00.
A Fictional Tale of Decidedly Epic Proportions Parts 1-6
A story sequence written starring some of my college friends.
19 March 2010
Lukasz,
Your friends in office have with much grievance seen your absence. To mind, I also found it odd that you must depart so suddenly for the crags of the High Tatras. Though your homeland, must Poland entertain you amongst its harshest of foehn winds? This absence, this schism, in the roster of the Senate, makes my news more painful to convey. I fear the darkness of my words may incite your flighty return, but can only hope so much. The vehicle of my exordium, dear President, is one of murder. The act, one which I’m sure will enter into a lineage of many tragedies, took place today in our very office. The particulars still escape the authorities, for the deed was concerted with the violence of a mysterious magnetic storm, which withdrew power from the security cameras. No doubt that, as death spilled itself across our floor, the villain escaped with the darkling maelstrom as his background. Our knowledge is therefore minimal at this time.
Before my trembling hand quits the keyboard, I must express another… peculiarity. In a remote subclause of our constitution, it is written that in the case of a senator’s murder, the acting President shall subsume all investigatory and executorial duties for the case. This means, Lukasz, that I have been granted the powers of illumination… and of death. It falls to me to locate this murderer, and to administer revenge. How much I long that it were you to take this mantle! For your mastery of the assassin’s art is far greater, and your will more steeled to the vices of man. The unnatural gifts bestowed on Senators upon induction are great. But will mine be great enough?
Let this letter be progenitor to light, and not dusk,
Vice President Waddell
PART 2
Lukasz,
Though my last letter may have yet to even cross the seas, I write now with more news, of a nature most grim. The police investigation of the murder scene has just now settled, and after many days of careful combing, they believe that they’ve collected all the pieces of the unfortunate victim. Their growing confidence in this matter, however, is checked completely by their lack of insight and the opacity of their words. From the few vagaries that they’ve delivered to me, it seems that the victim was somehow… and, logic escapes this… somehow unitized, as it were… dissected into small pieces and (my meal won’t agree with my saying) reorganized into what looked like an outline of wings along the floor… Is this some abstruse trick played at the freedom of graduation? The freedom which Sean will now never see? His struggles were vast, and his toils deep… is this the recompense afforded to one of our most skilled senators? My mind races in emblazoned fury when I consider the loss of such a soul, and the concomitant increase in paperwork for us all…
One thing is for certain, Lukasz. The elegance of this murder could not have been achieved by one outside our group. My suspicions are high, and my guard set, for those people we once considered friends now mar all pacts among us. The mode of the murder, in specific, would be condemning if I could pinpoint one amongst us with such a quartering skill… But, as the secrecy of our endowed ability is proportional to its absolute strength… I must need force the senators to expose themselves in some way or another. Kinesis, rapture, wrath, or alchemy… all senators hold some principle trait which guides their hand… my journey now begins in full.
In vengeance striving,
Vice President Waddell
PART 3
Journal Entry
What have I done? Even in my darkest imaginings, I never thought I could bring such harm to another… Was it really my own hand which traced out Sean’s various itinerary? Was it I who awoke, smiling, in the pool of his blood, a red angel aloft in a crimson sky? I could see it all; I could see it happening: flesh and sinew parting before my eyes, with naught but an effortless stroke of my will. Then, in a blur of legs and arms, I escaped the abattoir, and I fell silently upon the night. My eyes glazed against the cold as my body continued to roam, and I felt my consciousness slipping long before my body could quit. I awoke this morning in my own bed, painted with those feathers of gore… I was the angel in my clear remembrance. I was the force which shook someone from this plane… but how could I be?
= = =
How could it, indeed? Sounded a heavy voice from somewhere deep inside my body… deep inside my soul.
PART 4
Lukasz,
I write you today with some aggravation… you see, I’ve located the murderer. However, things, as always, are not so straightforward. Perhaps a full discourse of my adventure will help to clarify things…
Last Friday, I arrived at school just before 8:00, traversed the stairs, and removed my key in order to unlatch the senate door. I was much surprised, however, to see that the door was slightly ajar, and the light on. As it will be of little gravity to now reveal to you the nature of my power, I will say in short that I have a peculiar reaction to certain pieces of music. Perhaps this will explain why I carry that accursed Walkman with me in all my travels. So, with the potential danger of the situation, I fastened an earphone on my left lobe, and neared the open part of the door.
I could hear a female’s voice within, quite obviously in some degree of tremor. Fragments came to my free ear as I drew yet closer… “That blood… painted across my back… couldn’t be me… but the blood…” And, softer, and subtler, in the background, a man’s voice : “How could it, indeed… your fault…grievous error… chemical equilibrium…”
It was apparently this last suggestive statement from the male source which drove the quaking female over her (mental) limit… she let loose a piercing howl, and screaming, “Nooooo!!” rushed from her position toward the door. I could hear her footfalls growing louder and with the last reserve of my own wit, jumped from her path as she bolted out of the office.
Even out of the way, I was forced to stagger back as the force of her egress met me… apparently it was sourced by a senator’s energy… sure enough, as I raised my head from my position of wincing pain, and it met with those tennis shoes, the light blue jacket, and those atmospheric-gone-(not)-civil eyes, I could not mistake the personage of my pursuit – Rika, mad with psychosis, standing in front of me, noticing me, rearranging her posture for battle… Rika had destroyed Sean’s dear life.
With a flick of my hand, I ejected my mix tape and remorselessly flipped it from the paralyzing beats of Rick Astley’s Never Gonna Give You Up… to my final power… the decimating strength of Fugue and Toccata. As I hit play and its darkling incipient notes rose to my ears, its heavy bleakness fashioned about my arm a sword of such music as could never be heard twice. Rika, in her stead, had produced a drafting surface from the fabric of the cosmos, had with her own blood constructed with pain the lines of an alchemic mesh… The tempo rose and as my body filled with noise, black waves began to emanate about me… and strengthened… and resonated… until, with all of my bravery behind me, I charged toward her… However, her fierce line-work had not gone unrewarded, and just as I started forward, so too did she finish that mesh… and my arm was raised with staccato weapon in arc… and her lines formed in to a wall of blades about me… and as our powers collided, my darkness waves and her razors of light became an imbroglio, bending with their might the time and space between us…
And in those few seconds of our titanic clash, a deep crack was heard between, and we were thrown asunder… I recovered first, and was deeply surprised to see not one body but two lying before me… that of Rika, still somewhat trembling from what was surely a hint at her terrific judgment… and that (you must know!) of you, Lukasz, somehow transported across space by the force of our skirmish.
I will end with even yet the worst and most unrealistic of news, Lukasz. As you lay recovering in the hospital from your trip, so too did Rika lay in chains across the floor of the school’s Asylum (the Cashier’s Office), never moving, never speaking… never responding to my prodding and threats of alfalfa… Until just this morning, when, with new torturous vegetables in mind, I returned to that room, to find Rika in ague’s clutches, asleep for eternity with eyes reflecting infinity… That’s right… Rika has died… But the most aggravating thing of all is the short note I found scribbled across the flesh of her left shoulder. Seemingly, it only appeared after her last breath, and simply stated…“Control.”
This is a cataclysmic revolt to me, Lukasz, for with my power weakened by use and the death of yet another innocent-well-not-really-but-in-this-context-innocent senator, I must once more summon my wits to find the nature of our group’s real evil.
Be it written,
Vice President Waddell
PART 5
Nurse’s Report…April 2010…Floor 3 West Wing
Wing activity has been slow since the incident. It seems like the other patients in the ward have become introverted to the point of placidity. Even now the police aren’t sure what to make of the incident tapes, in part because their images are grainy, blurred; in part because they seem to defile reality.
As staff nurse for the evening of the incident, I have been directed to report what I witnessed. I only wish that my memories could be as vague as those videos… instead they revive nightly, they sear into my mind… no matter what treatment, what chloral hydrate I manage to smuggle, I cannot put myself at rest. Maybe writing this will return to me something of my distant past.
That night I was in high spirits. Margaret in room 302 had painted a picture of her daughter for me. Like the other patients, we encourage them to pursue art and music in the hopes they could improve, so I was ecstatic that she would share her daughter with me even if she never had one. You might think that working in the mental ward would provide little emotional nourishment for me. But, I disagree… being immersed in the shades of so many perspectives, and the thrills of imaginings that aren’t tainted by the pessimism of hard reality, is always something I’ve been fond of.
My happiness grew more as I visited with Bart, who had recently taken an interest in large machinery and could hardly stop talking! And yet more happily did I receive the little rendition of Amazing Grace that George played on a rose petal he found (don’t tell Agatha!). I was so elated that I almost approached room 314 without fear. However, that foolishness was soon lifted, because as I lifted the latch and…
[Here the letter is separated briefly by wet blot marks and what look like brave attempts to restart sentences.]
I’ll restart by describing room 314. The room had been empty as long as I can remember. Even when the wing was fringing on capacity, 314 remained clear. There is a rumor that the Board of Gents bought that room for their own purposes, and that during the cold war, night shrieks could be heard emanating within those walls. The records even show that a nurse and doctor, employed privately by the university system, were assigned specifically to that room (oddly, the doctor was a doctor of physics, not medicine). But, this is all just a wives tale that the nurses throw back and forth. No one has seen any activity from that room for the past twenty years. That’s why I was so surprised to see, just last week, that a young man (scarcely old enough to participate in our Saturday swig-off, bless him!) had been relocated there.
The patient, Lukasz, was an odd fellow, talking little and laughing much, who had suffered some sort of massive trauma. His symptoms reminded me of a sort of advanced and constant stress disorder that I had only before seen manifested in war prisoners or Tech students during finals week. As luck would have it, he was both… or so he would mumble, between pudding cups. I really saw no need for the excessive belts and chains lashing him to his bed, but the order came from high up, and I didn’t think to question it. He just seemed so gentle!
My shift only put me in the wing at night twice before the incident, but those nights were enough to shake my hopes for the good nature of the boy. On the first night, I heard a scratching noise emanating from within the room, intermittently punctuated by a groan or cry. Upon entering, I found that Lukasz had writhed free of part of his bindings, and was (by my stars!) slowly scratching away the flesh from his left arm… of course the pain must have been unbearable; Lukasz was not prescribed any regular opiate or tranquilizer by mandate… the blood from his foul work blotted his bed sheets in whorls and peaks organized into something like an impressionist landscape. The pain in his eyes told me that his was not the journey of a mad man, though… his look was sincere. He was truly concentrating on his arm, de-fleshed, like he was looking for something. Every few seconds his right arm would jerk away from his work in noncompliance, like he was at times overridden by some other prerogative. He began to pick away the pieces of fascia and muscle stretched taught along the bone, still searching, still with such an agonizing concentration… He was still searching as I sounded the alarm and the night men came to re-secure him.
My second night in the wing brought with it more strangeness. I visited 314 to ensure Lukasz was sleeping, and instead found him stark upright, unsecured, staring at his television screen. His eyes were so blank, like glass…. Like by looking into them I could see the beyond… Is that what he was seeing as he stared at the white noise playing across the television? He was mumbling something, too… so incoherently that I couldn’t tell if it was even in English… And, the strangest thing is, that as I pressed inward to hear more clearly, I thought I could faintly hear the static talking back to him…
I’ve reached that night once again. I have nothing else to waste time or to draw away your attention. So I must… I lifted the latch to once again find Lukasz blankly staring at his television screen, flashing white with noise. As I approached him to lay him back down, my foot hit something large on the floor. In… in the broken light from the static, I could make out another person, a man in a crooked and broken manner… like a store mannequin, or the thing that appears in a dark room just out of the corner of your eye… He felt so hollow, and heavy; in my shock I felt deprived of the ability to scream, conscious of my actions but completely unable to control them. I bent down and turned the man over, with the grim realization that this was the same and only person who so often visited Lukasz during the day… his business partner and friend, Evan… my hands quickly found the cause of the victim’s petrified stance… a number of long steel bars protruded from the torso, flecked with red at their tips like some sort of macabre flower garden. And, around the wounds flowed not blood, but a thick mixture of what looked like Portland cement, sand, and gravel… could this have been real? What evil could bring one to replace a person’s blood with builder’s concrete? The body still lays on the floor of my memory in that horrid and twisted form…
Still in shock, perhaps even now not fully worn off, was my next discovery… that, as I went to lay Lukasz to sleep before alerting the guards, he too was stiff, unresponsive. I quickly discovered that, strangely, Lukasz’s hands were pinned to the bed by shattered pieces of CDs… his throat engorged by the presence of hundreds of feet of cassette tape (coroner measurement at 281.25’ – a C60); and his temples broken and bleeding from what looked to me like a massive pseudoaneurism. Independent research on the cassette tape suggests that it was from the 1987 Rick Astley album, Whenever You Need Somebody. This cruelty is yet unexplainable… was this a struggle for power in the student senate that both of these young people held so dear? Is this connected with the Hayes murder? Was it merely a deranged author’s idea of a joke? Most ironic of all, though, is that upon analysis of Lukasz’s body, a black marking was found embedded in his right arm in approximately the same location as the torn flesh on his left… Whatever the word, “control” meant to Lukasz, he had struggled to remove it until his last (and agonizingly irksome) moments…
Respectfully,
Maria Goebbel
Former Nurse
Raging City Hospital
PART 6
Date: April 20, 2010
To: The Council
From: DM
Re: Victory
Esteemed members of The Council, I write today to inform you that our quarter three plans for domination have succeeded. Though the initial investment in Kryslev’s research at the hospital came under question twenty five years ago, there can be no misconstrued notions of deficit now. The infants that he inoculated with our nanomachines in room 314 grew up under the gaze of parents across the country that were blind enough not to notice their real children had been replaced. The machines, it seemed, had the uncanny ability to repress the higher creative capacity of the children, making them predisposed to enter into studies in engineering and the sciences. Even this was but a small pretense to their greater power, though… as they grew, the children developed a condensed form of life energy, that through the machines, they could exert according to their interests. The young one, Rika, and her ability to perform the temporal blade drafting technique, should illustrate this.
Our witless senators’ histories began to twine together as their parents and minds were warped into believing that first Mines, and then the Senate, were safe places. They all collected in the senate body, just as planned, the deplorable infants now turned deplorable students. From my seat as trusted advisor, I watched as they attempted to help their cohorts. I watched with a false smile painted across my face.
After I fell from my position in the council, I sought some small shaft of light that would bring me back to your graces… so, fifteen years ago, I slit Kryslev’s throat and injected myself with the nanomachines. Because my immune system was stronger than those of the infant subjects, my body began to rebel against them… it began to eat itself away in a vain attempt to protect me… I didn’t want to be protected. The nanomachines fought back, too, reducing me to a bloody pool, softly festering on my hand-knit divan for near-on three weeks. Then, slowly, a miracle happened… the machines gathered bits of textile and circuitry from my home… began rebuilding me… and making me better. They interfaced with my mind, and lent me the memory of the superceded machines… of those in the subjects. As my frame transitioned from sinew to steel, I knew deep within my being that I had become the central controller.
Yes, it was me. It was my sole doing that rankled their minds with visions of Mines, that brought them to their seats in Senate, that cut them down in battle. Rika yielded to my power when she dissected Hayes… and Lukasz when he petrified Waddell. That sealed the scheme, because up until that point it was only Waddell that was evading my influence… something in his material frequency negated my signal… likely it was his cursed music ability. With he and Dubaj gone, the Senate leadership slowly crumbled. Nordby and Weyer stood defiantly for a time before I had them both immolated with a flick of the wrist - it seems that Ziegler had quite a knack for chemo-pyrotechnics. But, he too soon fell after I had Reed shatter him in her zero-point potential field. It was beautiful, watching as he fell apart like so many of God’s legos at her very gaze. I was almost tempted to ask her to join us… but that was a passing whim. I pitted her against Rodriguez’s entropy subspace and they devolved each other’s matter into so many marbles of shadow and light… the burns still paint the Surbeck lobby like impressionist death… beautiful.
After a while I became bored, and instructed the others to begin attacking the student body. The pleasure lurking under my worried-looking façade was immense. A grand rebellion pit student against senate in an attempt to bring peace back to their lives. Now, as the war subsides and with the Senate annihilated, they will all look to you, to us, for their guidance. Our plans shall now proceed unimpeded… a new age is dawning! Fourth quarter earnings are projected high… let us hope that our little Hell will have enough desks for our eager pupils.
THE END
19 March 2010
Lukasz,
Your friends in office have with much grievance seen your absence. To mind, I also found it odd that you must depart so suddenly for the crags of the High Tatras. Though your homeland, must Poland entertain you amongst its harshest of foehn winds? This absence, this schism, in the roster of the Senate, makes my news more painful to convey. I fear the darkness of my words may incite your flighty return, but can only hope so much. The vehicle of my exordium, dear President, is one of murder. The act, one which I’m sure will enter into a lineage of many tragedies, took place today in our very office. The particulars still escape the authorities, for the deed was concerted with the violence of a mysterious magnetic storm, which withdrew power from the security cameras. No doubt that, as death spilled itself across our floor, the villain escaped with the darkling maelstrom as his background. Our knowledge is therefore minimal at this time.
Before my trembling hand quits the keyboard, I must express another… peculiarity. In a remote subclause of our constitution, it is written that in the case of a senator’s murder, the acting President shall subsume all investigatory and executorial duties for the case. This means, Lukasz, that I have been granted the powers of illumination… and of death. It falls to me to locate this murderer, and to administer revenge. How much I long that it were you to take this mantle! For your mastery of the assassin’s art is far greater, and your will more steeled to the vices of man. The unnatural gifts bestowed on Senators upon induction are great. But will mine be great enough?
Let this letter be progenitor to light, and not dusk,
Vice President Waddell
PART 2
Lukasz,
Though my last letter may have yet to even cross the seas, I write now with more news, of a nature most grim. The police investigation of the murder scene has just now settled, and after many days of careful combing, they believe that they’ve collected all the pieces of the unfortunate victim. Their growing confidence in this matter, however, is checked completely by their lack of insight and the opacity of their words. From the few vagaries that they’ve delivered to me, it seems that the victim was somehow… and, logic escapes this… somehow unitized, as it were… dissected into small pieces and (my meal won’t agree with my saying) reorganized into what looked like an outline of wings along the floor… Is this some abstruse trick played at the freedom of graduation? The freedom which Sean will now never see? His struggles were vast, and his toils deep… is this the recompense afforded to one of our most skilled senators? My mind races in emblazoned fury when I consider the loss of such a soul, and the concomitant increase in paperwork for us all…
One thing is for certain, Lukasz. The elegance of this murder could not have been achieved by one outside our group. My suspicions are high, and my guard set, for those people we once considered friends now mar all pacts among us. The mode of the murder, in specific, would be condemning if I could pinpoint one amongst us with such a quartering skill… But, as the secrecy of our endowed ability is proportional to its absolute strength… I must need force the senators to expose themselves in some way or another. Kinesis, rapture, wrath, or alchemy… all senators hold some principle trait which guides their hand… my journey now begins in full.
In vengeance striving,
Vice President Waddell
PART 3
Journal Entry
What have I done? Even in my darkest imaginings, I never thought I could bring such harm to another… Was it really my own hand which traced out Sean’s various itinerary? Was it I who awoke, smiling, in the pool of his blood, a red angel aloft in a crimson sky? I could see it all; I could see it happening: flesh and sinew parting before my eyes, with naught but an effortless stroke of my will. Then, in a blur of legs and arms, I escaped the abattoir, and I fell silently upon the night. My eyes glazed against the cold as my body continued to roam, and I felt my consciousness slipping long before my body could quit. I awoke this morning in my own bed, painted with those feathers of gore… I was the angel in my clear remembrance. I was the force which shook someone from this plane… but how could I be?
= = =
How could it, indeed? Sounded a heavy voice from somewhere deep inside my body… deep inside my soul.
PART 4
Lukasz,
I write you today with some aggravation… you see, I’ve located the murderer. However, things, as always, are not so straightforward. Perhaps a full discourse of my adventure will help to clarify things…
Last Friday, I arrived at school just before 8:00, traversed the stairs, and removed my key in order to unlatch the senate door. I was much surprised, however, to see that the door was slightly ajar, and the light on. As it will be of little gravity to now reveal to you the nature of my power, I will say in short that I have a peculiar reaction to certain pieces of music. Perhaps this will explain why I carry that accursed Walkman with me in all my travels. So, with the potential danger of the situation, I fastened an earphone on my left lobe, and neared the open part of the door.
I could hear a female’s voice within, quite obviously in some degree of tremor. Fragments came to my free ear as I drew yet closer… “That blood… painted across my back… couldn’t be me… but the blood…” And, softer, and subtler, in the background, a man’s voice : “How could it, indeed… your fault…grievous error… chemical equilibrium…”
It was apparently this last suggestive statement from the male source which drove the quaking female over her (mental) limit… she let loose a piercing howl, and screaming, “Nooooo!!” rushed from her position toward the door. I could hear her footfalls growing louder and with the last reserve of my own wit, jumped from her path as she bolted out of the office.
Even out of the way, I was forced to stagger back as the force of her egress met me… apparently it was sourced by a senator’s energy… sure enough, as I raised my head from my position of wincing pain, and it met with those tennis shoes, the light blue jacket, and those atmospheric-gone-(not)-civil eyes, I could not mistake the personage of my pursuit – Rika, mad with psychosis, standing in front of me, noticing me, rearranging her posture for battle… Rika had destroyed Sean’s dear life.
With a flick of my hand, I ejected my mix tape and remorselessly flipped it from the paralyzing beats of Rick Astley’s Never Gonna Give You Up… to my final power… the decimating strength of Fugue and Toccata. As I hit play and its darkling incipient notes rose to my ears, its heavy bleakness fashioned about my arm a sword of such music as could never be heard twice. Rika, in her stead, had produced a drafting surface from the fabric of the cosmos, had with her own blood constructed with pain the lines of an alchemic mesh… The tempo rose and as my body filled with noise, black waves began to emanate about me… and strengthened… and resonated… until, with all of my bravery behind me, I charged toward her… However, her fierce line-work had not gone unrewarded, and just as I started forward, so too did she finish that mesh… and my arm was raised with staccato weapon in arc… and her lines formed in to a wall of blades about me… and as our powers collided, my darkness waves and her razors of light became an imbroglio, bending with their might the time and space between us…
And in those few seconds of our titanic clash, a deep crack was heard between, and we were thrown asunder… I recovered first, and was deeply surprised to see not one body but two lying before me… that of Rika, still somewhat trembling from what was surely a hint at her terrific judgment… and that (you must know!) of you, Lukasz, somehow transported across space by the force of our skirmish.
I will end with even yet the worst and most unrealistic of news, Lukasz. As you lay recovering in the hospital from your trip, so too did Rika lay in chains across the floor of the school’s Asylum (the Cashier’s Office), never moving, never speaking… never responding to my prodding and threats of alfalfa… Until just this morning, when, with new torturous vegetables in mind, I returned to that room, to find Rika in ague’s clutches, asleep for eternity with eyes reflecting infinity… That’s right… Rika has died… But the most aggravating thing of all is the short note I found scribbled across the flesh of her left shoulder. Seemingly, it only appeared after her last breath, and simply stated…“Control.”
This is a cataclysmic revolt to me, Lukasz, for with my power weakened by use and the death of yet another innocent-well-not-really-but-in-this-context-innocent senator, I must once more summon my wits to find the nature of our group’s real evil.
Be it written,
Vice President Waddell
PART 5
Nurse’s Report…April 2010…Floor 3 West Wing
Wing activity has been slow since the incident. It seems like the other patients in the ward have become introverted to the point of placidity. Even now the police aren’t sure what to make of the incident tapes, in part because their images are grainy, blurred; in part because they seem to defile reality.
As staff nurse for the evening of the incident, I have been directed to report what I witnessed. I only wish that my memories could be as vague as those videos… instead they revive nightly, they sear into my mind… no matter what treatment, what chloral hydrate I manage to smuggle, I cannot put myself at rest. Maybe writing this will return to me something of my distant past.
That night I was in high spirits. Margaret in room 302 had painted a picture of her daughter for me. Like the other patients, we encourage them to pursue art and music in the hopes they could improve, so I was ecstatic that she would share her daughter with me even if she never had one. You might think that working in the mental ward would provide little emotional nourishment for me. But, I disagree… being immersed in the shades of so many perspectives, and the thrills of imaginings that aren’t tainted by the pessimism of hard reality, is always something I’ve been fond of.
My happiness grew more as I visited with Bart, who had recently taken an interest in large machinery and could hardly stop talking! And yet more happily did I receive the little rendition of Amazing Grace that George played on a rose petal he found (don’t tell Agatha!). I was so elated that I almost approached room 314 without fear. However, that foolishness was soon lifted, because as I lifted the latch and…
[Here the letter is separated briefly by wet blot marks and what look like brave attempts to restart sentences.]
I’ll restart by describing room 314. The room had been empty as long as I can remember. Even when the wing was fringing on capacity, 314 remained clear. There is a rumor that the Board of Gents bought that room for their own purposes, and that during the cold war, night shrieks could be heard emanating within those walls. The records even show that a nurse and doctor, employed privately by the university system, were assigned specifically to that room (oddly, the doctor was a doctor of physics, not medicine). But, this is all just a wives tale that the nurses throw back and forth. No one has seen any activity from that room for the past twenty years. That’s why I was so surprised to see, just last week, that a young man (scarcely old enough to participate in our Saturday swig-off, bless him!) had been relocated there.
The patient, Lukasz, was an odd fellow, talking little and laughing much, who had suffered some sort of massive trauma. His symptoms reminded me of a sort of advanced and constant stress disorder that I had only before seen manifested in war prisoners or Tech students during finals week. As luck would have it, he was both… or so he would mumble, between pudding cups. I really saw no need for the excessive belts and chains lashing him to his bed, but the order came from high up, and I didn’t think to question it. He just seemed so gentle!
My shift only put me in the wing at night twice before the incident, but those nights were enough to shake my hopes for the good nature of the boy. On the first night, I heard a scratching noise emanating from within the room, intermittently punctuated by a groan or cry. Upon entering, I found that Lukasz had writhed free of part of his bindings, and was (by my stars!) slowly scratching away the flesh from his left arm… of course the pain must have been unbearable; Lukasz was not prescribed any regular opiate or tranquilizer by mandate… the blood from his foul work blotted his bed sheets in whorls and peaks organized into something like an impressionist landscape. The pain in his eyes told me that his was not the journey of a mad man, though… his look was sincere. He was truly concentrating on his arm, de-fleshed, like he was looking for something. Every few seconds his right arm would jerk away from his work in noncompliance, like he was at times overridden by some other prerogative. He began to pick away the pieces of fascia and muscle stretched taught along the bone, still searching, still with such an agonizing concentration… He was still searching as I sounded the alarm and the night men came to re-secure him.
My second night in the wing brought with it more strangeness. I visited 314 to ensure Lukasz was sleeping, and instead found him stark upright, unsecured, staring at his television screen. His eyes were so blank, like glass…. Like by looking into them I could see the beyond… Is that what he was seeing as he stared at the white noise playing across the television? He was mumbling something, too… so incoherently that I couldn’t tell if it was even in English… And, the strangest thing is, that as I pressed inward to hear more clearly, I thought I could faintly hear the static talking back to him…
I’ve reached that night once again. I have nothing else to waste time or to draw away your attention. So I must… I lifted the latch to once again find Lukasz blankly staring at his television screen, flashing white with noise. As I approached him to lay him back down, my foot hit something large on the floor. In… in the broken light from the static, I could make out another person, a man in a crooked and broken manner… like a store mannequin, or the thing that appears in a dark room just out of the corner of your eye… He felt so hollow, and heavy; in my shock I felt deprived of the ability to scream, conscious of my actions but completely unable to control them. I bent down and turned the man over, with the grim realization that this was the same and only person who so often visited Lukasz during the day… his business partner and friend, Evan… my hands quickly found the cause of the victim’s petrified stance… a number of long steel bars protruded from the torso, flecked with red at their tips like some sort of macabre flower garden. And, around the wounds flowed not blood, but a thick mixture of what looked like Portland cement, sand, and gravel… could this have been real? What evil could bring one to replace a person’s blood with builder’s concrete? The body still lays on the floor of my memory in that horrid and twisted form…
Still in shock, perhaps even now not fully worn off, was my next discovery… that, as I went to lay Lukasz to sleep before alerting the guards, he too was stiff, unresponsive. I quickly discovered that, strangely, Lukasz’s hands were pinned to the bed by shattered pieces of CDs… his throat engorged by the presence of hundreds of feet of cassette tape (coroner measurement at 281.25’ – a C60); and his temples broken and bleeding from what looked to me like a massive pseudoaneurism. Independent research on the cassette tape suggests that it was from the 1987 Rick Astley album, Whenever You Need Somebody. This cruelty is yet unexplainable… was this a struggle for power in the student senate that both of these young people held so dear? Is this connected with the Hayes murder? Was it merely a deranged author’s idea of a joke? Most ironic of all, though, is that upon analysis of Lukasz’s body, a black marking was found embedded in his right arm in approximately the same location as the torn flesh on his left… Whatever the word, “control” meant to Lukasz, he had struggled to remove it until his last (and agonizingly irksome) moments…
Respectfully,
Maria Goebbel
Former Nurse
Raging City Hospital
PART 6
Date: April 20, 2010
To: The Council
From: DM
Re: Victory
Esteemed members of The Council, I write today to inform you that our quarter three plans for domination have succeeded. Though the initial investment in Kryslev’s research at the hospital came under question twenty five years ago, there can be no misconstrued notions of deficit now. The infants that he inoculated with our nanomachines in room 314 grew up under the gaze of parents across the country that were blind enough not to notice their real children had been replaced. The machines, it seemed, had the uncanny ability to repress the higher creative capacity of the children, making them predisposed to enter into studies in engineering and the sciences. Even this was but a small pretense to their greater power, though… as they grew, the children developed a condensed form of life energy, that through the machines, they could exert according to their interests. The young one, Rika, and her ability to perform the temporal blade drafting technique, should illustrate this.
Our witless senators’ histories began to twine together as their parents and minds were warped into believing that first Mines, and then the Senate, were safe places. They all collected in the senate body, just as planned, the deplorable infants now turned deplorable students. From my seat as trusted advisor, I watched as they attempted to help their cohorts. I watched with a false smile painted across my face.
After I fell from my position in the council, I sought some small shaft of light that would bring me back to your graces… so, fifteen years ago, I slit Kryslev’s throat and injected myself with the nanomachines. Because my immune system was stronger than those of the infant subjects, my body began to rebel against them… it began to eat itself away in a vain attempt to protect me… I didn’t want to be protected. The nanomachines fought back, too, reducing me to a bloody pool, softly festering on my hand-knit divan for near-on three weeks. Then, slowly, a miracle happened… the machines gathered bits of textile and circuitry from my home… began rebuilding me… and making me better. They interfaced with my mind, and lent me the memory of the superceded machines… of those in the subjects. As my frame transitioned from sinew to steel, I knew deep within my being that I had become the central controller.
Yes, it was me. It was my sole doing that rankled their minds with visions of Mines, that brought them to their seats in Senate, that cut them down in battle. Rika yielded to my power when she dissected Hayes… and Lukasz when he petrified Waddell. That sealed the scheme, because up until that point it was only Waddell that was evading my influence… something in his material frequency negated my signal… likely it was his cursed music ability. With he and Dubaj gone, the Senate leadership slowly crumbled. Nordby and Weyer stood defiantly for a time before I had them both immolated with a flick of the wrist - it seems that Ziegler had quite a knack for chemo-pyrotechnics. But, he too soon fell after I had Reed shatter him in her zero-point potential field. It was beautiful, watching as he fell apart like so many of God’s legos at her very gaze. I was almost tempted to ask her to join us… but that was a passing whim. I pitted her against Rodriguez’s entropy subspace and they devolved each other’s matter into so many marbles of shadow and light… the burns still paint the Surbeck lobby like impressionist death… beautiful.
After a while I became bored, and instructed the others to begin attacking the student body. The pleasure lurking under my worried-looking façade was immense. A grand rebellion pit student against senate in an attempt to bring peace back to their lives. Now, as the war subsides and with the Senate annihilated, they will all look to you, to us, for their guidance. Our plans shall now proceed unimpeded… a new age is dawning! Fourth quarter earnings are projected high… let us hope that our little Hell will have enough desks for our eager pupils.
THE END
Stuffed Animals of Terror - A 'For Fun' Horror Story
In an old room in south Rapid City, the dust had settled. Spiders and flies swam playfully through its dull benthos, leaving small whorls and piles as on a snow-angel holiday, to adorn the woodwork with some naïve remedy for its age.
The insect fete was interrupted by a ragged clap on the far door, facing opposite the tattered valances, letting in just enough morning light to draw dim lines along the floor. The aisle of light trailed faithfully along the jagged floorboards until it met the rattled door, which shook a second time with enough violence that it collapsed inward.
A large figure, dressed hurriedly in a suit of the same grey pallor as the dust, clambered in, and with a baritone expostulation thus: “Yes! This shall be my greatest scheme… the most worthy scheme, that the Council has ever seen. I sat by willingly as they killed off the slop in the Student Senate, and now they’re so enamored with the accomplishment that they’re blind to the factions. The factions, Edward!”
A man, scarcely visible behind the first, appeared nonplussed by the boast and warning. Perhaps a bit over half the size of the larger one, he wore a t-shirt and jeans, torn and stained. In fact, he also seemed nonplussed by the fact that until a few minutes ago, this room hadn’t existed per his two-year memory of the house. And, as la crème for the nonplus sundae, he didn’t flinch as his foot slammed heavily crosswise into an upturned board in the floor, which cleanly broke off his remaining big toe. It rattled away like a stone. “Yes, the factions,” Edward morosely said.
“I see that my conditioning hasn’t worked completely,” the other man said, digging in his pockets and pulling out a smooth black box, which was engraved with a crescent moon, (since crossed out thickly with a red marker). “Yet,” he finished, and pressed a small button at the top of the box. Behind him, the small man convulsed in an awkward, nonplussed way, then broke his strange involuntary dance momentarily to glower at the large man in a strained way. The rebuttal was short-lived, the convulsions started again, and didn’t end until smoke started to pour heavily from Edward’s ears and collar.
Now staring at the floor, Edward said, slowly, “Yes, the factions, sir.”
“That’s better, Cullen,” the large man said. The sun peaked a little more confidently through the shades and met his stark black hair, slightly squared metal glasses, and excited grin. “Now, why do these factions start?” The man continued explaining out loud. “Because some upstart students get the idea that they can exist happily outside the sphere of the Council, that’s why. And so, the only answer is to remove any inkling of happiness from their lives! And,” his voice had slowly risen into a boom, “what makes people more happy than cute, fuzzy, innocent little kittens, Edward? WHAT? I’ll tell you… nothing!”
With that, the man slammed his fist into a dusty sideboard, and the floor of the room began to slowly creak open. Muffled mews could be heard from below as the gap widened, and revealed a reeling mass of feline fluff.
“When the world wakes from their petty dreams tomorrow morning, Edward, their precious putty-tats will all be substituted by my Crazy (stuffed) Animals of Terror!! Let this be a lesson to all who build offense against the Council. No more cats! Only… CATS!!! Hahahaha,” he belted maniacally, as he whirled around and strode from the room.
Edward glowered from behind him, in a nonplussed manner.
The insect fete was interrupted by a ragged clap on the far door, facing opposite the tattered valances, letting in just enough morning light to draw dim lines along the floor. The aisle of light trailed faithfully along the jagged floorboards until it met the rattled door, which shook a second time with enough violence that it collapsed inward.
A large figure, dressed hurriedly in a suit of the same grey pallor as the dust, clambered in, and with a baritone expostulation thus: “Yes! This shall be my greatest scheme… the most worthy scheme, that the Council has ever seen. I sat by willingly as they killed off the slop in the Student Senate, and now they’re so enamored with the accomplishment that they’re blind to the factions. The factions, Edward!”
A man, scarcely visible behind the first, appeared nonplussed by the boast and warning. Perhaps a bit over half the size of the larger one, he wore a t-shirt and jeans, torn and stained. In fact, he also seemed nonplussed by the fact that until a few minutes ago, this room hadn’t existed per his two-year memory of the house. And, as la crème for the nonplus sundae, he didn’t flinch as his foot slammed heavily crosswise into an upturned board in the floor, which cleanly broke off his remaining big toe. It rattled away like a stone. “Yes, the factions,” Edward morosely said.
“I see that my conditioning hasn’t worked completely,” the other man said, digging in his pockets and pulling out a smooth black box, which was engraved with a crescent moon, (since crossed out thickly with a red marker). “Yet,” he finished, and pressed a small button at the top of the box. Behind him, the small man convulsed in an awkward, nonplussed way, then broke his strange involuntary dance momentarily to glower at the large man in a strained way. The rebuttal was short-lived, the convulsions started again, and didn’t end until smoke started to pour heavily from Edward’s ears and collar.
Now staring at the floor, Edward said, slowly, “Yes, the factions, sir.”
“That’s better, Cullen,” the large man said. The sun peaked a little more confidently through the shades and met his stark black hair, slightly squared metal glasses, and excited grin. “Now, why do these factions start?” The man continued explaining out loud. “Because some upstart students get the idea that they can exist happily outside the sphere of the Council, that’s why. And so, the only answer is to remove any inkling of happiness from their lives! And,” his voice had slowly risen into a boom, “what makes people more happy than cute, fuzzy, innocent little kittens, Edward? WHAT? I’ll tell you… nothing!”
With that, the man slammed his fist into a dusty sideboard, and the floor of the room began to slowly creak open. Muffled mews could be heard from below as the gap widened, and revealed a reeling mass of feline fluff.
“When the world wakes from their petty dreams tomorrow morning, Edward, their precious putty-tats will all be substituted by my Crazy (stuffed) Animals of Terror!! Let this be a lesson to all who build offense against the Council. No more cats! Only… CATS!!! Hahahaha,” he belted maniacally, as he whirled around and strode from the room.
Edward glowered from behind him, in a nonplussed manner.
Sentence Genetics
We build a sentence much like the human body builds proteins. From a set of genetic instructions (words and their definitions) stored within the nucleus of a cell (our individual memory), we are able to express a gene (sentence-thought). However, a sentence, like a protein, is much more than its primary structure, which is a simple linear ordering of words. Without more definition, a sentence will not 'make sense.' Genetic disorders may arise because of an insertion, deletion, or mutation of nucleotides in a cell's building instructions, just as confusion may arise if we omit an object, subject, verb, demonstrative, or descriptor from our sentences.
Having all of the words present in a sentence-molecule is still not sufficient to convey ideas both necessarily and sufficiently. Secondary sentence structure, analogous to alpha coils and beta pleated sheets in protein, are a sentence's local sub-group elements. Commonly, these sub-groups are separated (or joined) in meaning by conjunctions and punctuation marks. This level of organization is made manifest by dependent and independent clauses and subjects and predicates. These architectural duals introduce sentence hierarchy, allowing external parties to map the priority and meaning of what they are perceiving.
By ordering words into understandable, stratified segments within a sentence, communication is made possible. However, much like a partially denatured protein, the effectiveness of a sentence is not maximized when it doesn't have some global conformation - some tertiary structure. At this level, the interaction of words must be considered. In biology, interaction may refer to domain affinity - segments of a protein will associate with each other due to covalent or hydrogen bonding, disulfide bridge formation, or degree of hydrophilicity. With sentences, the idea of 'interaction' is somewhat more vague. There is an entire branch of science based on the interaction of words, in fact - it is called poetry. People who wish to construct elegant, convincing, or moving sentences must ultimately pull from the toolboxes of poetry. A sentence's wholeness comes from combining poetic tools with associated emotion. Some examples of tertiary structure include:
1. Alliteration - A succession of similar consonant sounds can establish a sentence rhythm, which could add to the conveyance of an upbeat or optimistic viewpoint. Mathematically, alliteration may also serve as a cumulative product operator, multiplying the effect of common sounds. Alliteration with 's' may project serenity or susurrus. Alliteration with 'r' may impart a raw or earthy taste to the overall sentence. Alliteration with 'z' may suggest a lack of maturity.
2. Synonym selection - The same piece of primary structure may come from multiple words, operating under a range of perception that imparts similar general understanding. These 'ranges of understanding' define synonymic word families, much like a wobble position in genetic codons grants leeway to transcriptional interpretation. Thus, one wishing to convey the concept of e.g. 'cold' has many options, which are identical from the stance of primary and secondary structure, but which fashion the overall (tertiary) feel of the sentence in often less-than-subtle ways. The family consisting of cold, frigid, frozen, gelid, and icy each have more precise meanings that can be used synergistically with other words in a sentence to intensify an effect. 'Cold' is the most general of these words, and in combination with other vague or generalized term, could produce a sentence with a bland or ordinary tertiary structure. 'Frigid' implies exceptional circumstance, and could be used in combination with other hyperbolistic terms to fashion something epic. 'Frozen' implies process, or a change in state, and can be used to shift sentence meaning toward perceptions of dynamicism. 'Gelid' has a strange syllable composition, and may lend to a tertiary structure emoting exclusivity or alternative outlooks. 'Icy' presents both a state and a texture, which supports a tactile tertiary composition.
3. Syllable arrangement - These elements of tertiary structure may be seen as a subset of synonym selection, but are more based more on global arrangement. Using many short-syllabled words together may cause the speaker to viewed as simple or low risk; the sentence to seem more concise, rough, or choppy; and imparts feelings of anxiety, nervousness, and incomplete catharsis. Using many multi-syllabled words projects a flow or constant meter, but may also become monotonous or invoke impatience in the perceiver. A good mix of long and short syllabled words must be selected to balance the tertiary structure of the sentence to desired specification, just as a good balance of sulfur or hydroxyl moieties in amino acids must be put into place for 'the right' protein folding to successfully occur. Syllable arrangement also applies on an inter-word basis, e.g. the liason principle in the French language lending fluidity to tertiary structure.
The quaternary structure of proteins, which applies to interactions between separate folded protein entities, is analogous to the synergy between lines in a stanza or poem, the ordering of instructions in a standard operating procedure, or the three-paragraph motif of academic essays. Just as in biology, these interactions are often the most complex.
In summary, there is a strong parallelism between the construction of biological molecules and the well-thought construction of a sentence. Humans have naturally learned to become effective by the biomimicry of the heart beat below their own heart beat.
If additions, contentions, or discussion is deemed, please include it as a comment to this note - I share my thoughts as an avenue to access yours!
Having all of the words present in a sentence-molecule is still not sufficient to convey ideas both necessarily and sufficiently. Secondary sentence structure, analogous to alpha coils and beta pleated sheets in protein, are a sentence's local sub-group elements. Commonly, these sub-groups are separated (or joined) in meaning by conjunctions and punctuation marks. This level of organization is made manifest by dependent and independent clauses and subjects and predicates. These architectural duals introduce sentence hierarchy, allowing external parties to map the priority and meaning of what they are perceiving.
By ordering words into understandable, stratified segments within a sentence, communication is made possible. However, much like a partially denatured protein, the effectiveness of a sentence is not maximized when it doesn't have some global conformation - some tertiary structure. At this level, the interaction of words must be considered. In biology, interaction may refer to domain affinity - segments of a protein will associate with each other due to covalent or hydrogen bonding, disulfide bridge formation, or degree of hydrophilicity. With sentences, the idea of 'interaction' is somewhat more vague. There is an entire branch of science based on the interaction of words, in fact - it is called poetry. People who wish to construct elegant, convincing, or moving sentences must ultimately pull from the toolboxes of poetry. A sentence's wholeness comes from combining poetic tools with associated emotion. Some examples of tertiary structure include:
1. Alliteration - A succession of similar consonant sounds can establish a sentence rhythm, which could add to the conveyance of an upbeat or optimistic viewpoint. Mathematically, alliteration may also serve as a cumulative product operator, multiplying the effect of common sounds. Alliteration with 's' may project serenity or susurrus. Alliteration with 'r' may impart a raw or earthy taste to the overall sentence. Alliteration with 'z' may suggest a lack of maturity.
2. Synonym selection - The same piece of primary structure may come from multiple words, operating under a range of perception that imparts similar general understanding. These 'ranges of understanding' define synonymic word families, much like a wobble position in genetic codons grants leeway to transcriptional interpretation. Thus, one wishing to convey the concept of e.g. 'cold' has many options, which are identical from the stance of primary and secondary structure, but which fashion the overall (tertiary) feel of the sentence in often less-than-subtle ways. The family consisting of cold, frigid, frozen, gelid, and icy each have more precise meanings that can be used synergistically with other words in a sentence to intensify an effect. 'Cold' is the most general of these words, and in combination with other vague or generalized term, could produce a sentence with a bland or ordinary tertiary structure. 'Frigid' implies exceptional circumstance, and could be used in combination with other hyperbolistic terms to fashion something epic. 'Frozen' implies process, or a change in state, and can be used to shift sentence meaning toward perceptions of dynamicism. 'Gelid' has a strange syllable composition, and may lend to a tertiary structure emoting exclusivity or alternative outlooks. 'Icy' presents both a state and a texture, which supports a tactile tertiary composition.
3. Syllable arrangement - These elements of tertiary structure may be seen as a subset of synonym selection, but are more based more on global arrangement. Using many short-syllabled words together may cause the speaker to viewed as simple or low risk; the sentence to seem more concise, rough, or choppy; and imparts feelings of anxiety, nervousness, and incomplete catharsis. Using many multi-syllabled words projects a flow or constant meter, but may also become monotonous or invoke impatience in the perceiver. A good mix of long and short syllabled words must be selected to balance the tertiary structure of the sentence to desired specification, just as a good balance of sulfur or hydroxyl moieties in amino acids must be put into place for 'the right' protein folding to successfully occur. Syllable arrangement also applies on an inter-word basis, e.g. the liason principle in the French language lending fluidity to tertiary structure.
The quaternary structure of proteins, which applies to interactions between separate folded protein entities, is analogous to the synergy between lines in a stanza or poem, the ordering of instructions in a standard operating procedure, or the three-paragraph motif of academic essays. Just as in biology, these interactions are often the most complex.
In summary, there is a strong parallelism between the construction of biological molecules and the well-thought construction of a sentence. Humans have naturally learned to become effective by the biomimicry of the heart beat below their own heart beat.
If additions, contentions, or discussion is deemed, please include it as a comment to this note - I share my thoughts as an avenue to access yours!
Driving to be Lost
From Tuesday, 29 March 2011. 6:30 PM.
I drove as far as propriety would take me on Waldo Road. When it branched and became as broken as my suspended mind, I left it for Baker West. I drove. I found (refound?) Swede as its traverse north recommenced. Driving north, the stripes of light and dark were like a camera shutter over the eye of God. I enter and leave the light but the light is always there again. Swede ended in Estey. Ended with School Road and Bentley Township Hall and Suzie's Salon. Ended with homes for sale, homes that, without human interference, would regress back into the womb of the forest. I left this place of ends, this Estey. Left it for the sun and its light, though fading, still present.
I found myself across water, this lake a surface, an unlying mirror, a mazmorro of my thought tatters. And near it, in small force, the Welcome In restaurant. I stopped for an out-of-place, out-of-time meal. The comfort of being lost in so much of a pool took me as I wrote. The fear that technology and time wouldn't function here was brief but exhilarating. An old man, a veteran of the second World War, sat behind me, and approached by another man, initiated a conversation to grasp the identity of a mutual friend, long lost to the Earth, long lost to their minds. He flew V-17 bombers. He flew 34 missions. His accomplishments, his vehicles, his essence, were still lingering within their brain ashes, but his name was not. His name was with God now, amidst the aether and never ceasing light. They continued to shift their memories like a box of puzzle pieces to find his name, and I continued being lost.
I had driven off the phone grid, and I was still living. I had forgone familiarity, and invitations, and responsibilities, but I was not smitten. I had taken a step outside my artificial home and found it a mere doll house in a larger room. I had, through this simple gesture of recklessness, glanced infinity.
I drove as far as propriety would take me on Waldo Road. When it branched and became as broken as my suspended mind, I left it for Baker West. I drove. I found (refound?) Swede as its traverse north recommenced. Driving north, the stripes of light and dark were like a camera shutter over the eye of God. I enter and leave the light but the light is always there again. Swede ended in Estey. Ended with School Road and Bentley Township Hall and Suzie's Salon. Ended with homes for sale, homes that, without human interference, would regress back into the womb of the forest. I left this place of ends, this Estey. Left it for the sun and its light, though fading, still present.
I found myself across water, this lake a surface, an unlying mirror, a mazmorro of my thought tatters. And near it, in small force, the Welcome In restaurant. I stopped for an out-of-place, out-of-time meal. The comfort of being lost in so much of a pool took me as I wrote. The fear that technology and time wouldn't function here was brief but exhilarating. An old man, a veteran of the second World War, sat behind me, and approached by another man, initiated a conversation to grasp the identity of a mutual friend, long lost to the Earth, long lost to their minds. He flew V-17 bombers. He flew 34 missions. His accomplishments, his vehicles, his essence, were still lingering within their brain ashes, but his name was not. His name was with God now, amidst the aether and never ceasing light. They continued to shift their memories like a box of puzzle pieces to find his name, and I continued being lost.
I had driven off the phone grid, and I was still living. I had forgone familiarity, and invitations, and responsibilities, but I was not smitten. I had taken a step outside my artificial home and found it a mere doll house in a larger room. I had, through this simple gesture of recklessness, glanced infinity.
The Libertine
Your creeping charm invaded me,
Your burning eyes belayed the truth,
Your penny words were cloaked marauders,
Feigning love, pretending ruth.
Pretending ruth.
Stealing through innocent night,
Your dark cape furled about you,
With no intention but blight,
You plunged your dagger into me through and through.
Into me through and through.
I lay here bleeding,
Across so many memories.
I lay here dying,
Across a walk now cold and gray.
Now cold and gray.
You stole my breath and didn’t give it back.
You wrote my effigy before we even met.
You played my heart like it was a card in your deck.
And you smiled as I was broken by your comfort.
You murdered me with my own hope.
Your burning eyes belayed the truth,
Your penny words were cloaked marauders,
Feigning love, pretending ruth.
Pretending ruth.
Stealing through innocent night,
Your dark cape furled about you,
With no intention but blight,
You plunged your dagger into me through and through.
Into me through and through.
I lay here bleeding,
Across so many memories.
I lay here dying,
Across a walk now cold and gray.
Now cold and gray.
You stole my breath and didn’t give it back.
You wrote my effigy before we even met.
You played my heart like it was a card in your deck.
And you smiled as I was broken by your comfort.
You murdered me with my own hope.
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