Thanks

I at last remembered the way that you saw the world. I thought I had forgotten forever, but there it was, at the back of my mind. Thank you.

Storm

Wind racked the shores of the loch with a wildness I had never seen before. It ripped through the trees, turning the soil back to a brown emptiness. I saw little else that night, staring out of the windows and into the grey destruction beyond.

Sitting back down I discovered you had taken out the monopoly board and were setting the pieces on the board. You took the wee dug, I got a hold of the kettle and off we went, seizing property as the one around us was battered ceaselessly.

The game moved quickly as we both cross and double cross one another throughout the streets of a city in miniature. The world outside dimmed further as the sun set behind the clouds and time drew on closer towards the end of our game.

You had claimed one half of the board, me the other. We dominated the world, running it as two separate, but equal(?), business empires. But, with a single move either of us could fall all the way back down to nothing. Nothing at all…

Songs whilst Writing

All the Things you are – Leslie North

A Nightingale Sang in Berkley Square – George Alec

My One and Only Love – Dina Nobles

I Fall In Love Too Easily – Benjamin Thorpe

smoke gets in your eyes – Carla Moses

Again

Now and again the man comes round to check on us. He doesn’t need to, but habit is habit after all, so we still see him every so often. The dingy hole of a place that we live in always leaves him with a slightly constipated look on his face though, but its not as if its his fault; or ours.

We are down to the last pair of carrots now and I can’t bear to look at the cabbage supply. We should make it a couple more weeks, but it’ll be close. The night is ending again and soon the sun will rise.

The hole is getting cold with the new light, the warmth of the night clouds leaking out into the air. We are so quiet that badgers stick their heads straight in when looking for a new home, only to turn and run at the first sight of us. I hug my knees.

Soon we will leave again, seize again the levers of power, and again rule the fatherland. Praise be to the progenitors, who brought us here so long ago.

Song’s Whist writing

Paperhouse – Can

Halleluhwah - Can

Shoe

What is done is done, as the old man says. The sea swallowed the world and spat it back out again. We build land from the wreckage and call it a clean world. We built again, rebuilt the cities and the towns, farming flourished in the rich soil, and so time moved onward. Now, the cities grow larger, the people older and the days are timed to a nanosecond.

I lost you at the that moment, I think. Your eyes drifted from rapt attention to a glassy stare in a way that I couldn’t quite pin down. Oh well worth a go eh? I ramble on and on though, seemingly unable to stop words dribbling out onto the street around us. People are staring now, and so I take your hand and stride purposefully away.

We end up outside the shoe shop, looking, somewhat suspiciously, in at the size eights neatly lined up in the display. I breathe a quiet little sigh; escaped again.

Songs whilst writing

·         The Murder/Victim Monologues – The Seven Mile Journey

What a Life Eh?

Everything folds eventually if you push it hard enough. Creases form, the surface discolours, and suddenly wham, it snaps around one hundred and eighty degrees, and folds, what a pleasure it is to see, to perceive on such a scale.

I had the pleasure of it, they joy of witnessing first-hand the discovery of the last crusading fold. It held so long until, snap, it spins, slowly at first, until it reached the end of its tether. We all smile, and then it hit us.

Songs Listened Too

1) Kanada's Death, Pt. 2 (Adagio in D Minor) - John Murphy/Underworld

Friends

Someone calls his name, so he turns around and looks for who could know him up here, not that it makes much difference. He is still blinded by the sun, eyes watering uncontrollably in the blazing sun. The light is never-ending, constant, nonstop. He staggers into sets of legs, tangling himself in amongst them and they kick out, winding him.

He falls to the ground and finds a blessed darkness in the mud of the pavement. That is until someone grabs his shirt and pulls him back into burning pain. He is dragged, back first, deeper into the new world. His trousers rip on the uneven cobbles and he can feel cool mud slowly cover his arse. It’s a pleasant distraction from the heat and the light.

Then, it is dimmer, an almost bearable state, and just safe enough to open his eyes in. He doesn’t even try, they still burn and he can’t bear to see whatever has brought him here. Something presses against his eyelids before yanking them open with one pull.

Mandibles resolve themselves into teeth, chittering legs into free fingers, single eyes into compound ones.

“Hello.”

“Hi?”

Choices?

What was truly the discovery that changed the world? Was it –

A)      The Last Supper?

B)      The Final Development of the Motion Demon?

C)      The Interlinking of Disparate Computer Networks into a Most Unified Globe Spanning System?

Choose the Option you believe to be correct and reveal the ways in which the world was changed by these discoveries.

The Last Supper revealed to the world the hypocrisy of the developing Christian God. In coming to Earth they sought to redeem the souls of mankind, splitting their Jewish progenitor into three distinct yet unified aspects.

One of these aspects, the Son, came to the mundane world, providing miracles and salvation to the people of the Levant, culminating in their bodily sacrifice on the cross. In preparation the Son prepared a last meal for himself and his disciples, giving his blood for wine and his body for bread. Here he shows a final lie of this new God. Instead of supplying their supposed creations, donating food to the starving and wine to thirsty, they leave them to die. Is this the act of a being who talks about compassion as a virtue (yes compassion enough allows the watching of suffering with the understanding of its fundamental purpose are you so naïve to think that the act of suffering does not occur for a higher reason?)? Amen.

B)      The Motion Demon revealed the final physical destruction of mankind. In revealing the truly miniscule scale of the globe on which we live, the Motion Demon brought war to its farthest corners. In the end, what was left of the unfound world, the distances that separated physical reality, were reduced to the size of a walnut. Now coal dust floods the lungs and chokes the mass.

That was the first of the Motion Demons, now they multiply in millions, lost in the lidded box of their new world.

C)      The Interlinking of Networks revealed the final mental destruction of mankind. Our full connection to one another, through the virtual space, allowed at last for the gestalt consciousness to form a true ‘mass’ of humanity, linked together through a digital umbilical cord. We lost oneness and became oneness. Wires and cables and processing nodes became the new brain, a technical replacement for a biological redundancy. We are now one, abstract space now concrete in its abstraction. I welcome it all.

Thank you, please.

Songs whilst listening

Raw Power – Lord Horror

The Liquidator – Lord Horror

?

Isn’t the world a wonderful place?

Rain

The dog was slowly making their way towards us through the downpour. We squatted in a doorway, half in the rain ourselves, and watched its progress. I reached out a hand as it got closer and the mutt’s nose nuzzled against it, wet and cold against my palm.

I looked across at you, leaning against the wood of the door, and find that you’re gazing back. Our eyes held one another for a while. Then, the dog squeezes between us, burrowing for some warmth, we pull our eyes away to look back out into the street.

I smile to myself and watch the rain.

Music whilst writing:

Stormbringer - Deep Purple

Veteran of the Psychic Wars - Blue Oyster Cult

Black Blade - Blue Oyster Cult

Revealed

Harsh yellow light flooded into my eyes as I opened them. The torch jerked back and forth in front of me before moving off to the side. Smiling, I got to my feet.

“Is it time to go?” I asked.

“Yeah, we’d best get a move on.” The person holding the torch said before turning to walk down the aisle, shining the torch at more unsuspecting sleepers. I looked around, taking in the sight of broken plastic panels and rotting floorboards, all lit by stray sunlight barely making its way through the cracked plywood covering the windows.

The group was small now, barely half a dozen crowded into this one small room. They had grabbed us slowly, the rest of the world cheering them on as we disappeared from the last of the unused ruins surrounding them. And so, we found ourselves alone.

Now we could hear the approaching sirens, roaring in the early morning, and we turned to look at each other before making our way down the aisle towards the centre of the building. Water dripped slow and steady in each corner of the room, and I felt the damp heavy in the air.

Something slammed into the door and it fell off its hinges, smashing floorboards were it fell. We turned to face the noise just as hands reached out to grab a hold of us. We did not resist and so they dragged us out, into the full light of the dawning sun.

Songs whilst writing:

Vaporwave for China (full Album) - XWaves

Snow

The world was covered in a blanket of snow. It coated everything, inside and out, filling the streets with its soft cold. We walked those streets in silence, each of us linked by our hands, the hair on our necks standing on end and our legs slowly turning to lead beneath us.

We were caught up in the swirls, watching them around us, and we shouted after them. Life was good in amongst those spinning clouds. We needed to eat but we continued on anyway, joining in a circle and heading even further down the street.

Night pushed the vague outline of the sun under the horizon, and we were plunged into a deep darkness. The dangers of speeding cars or out of control lorries stayed far from our minds and we kept on going. Streetlights laden with conspiracies flickered to life and their light reflected off the white snow at strange angles. We followed a line of them as they stretched out in front of us.

Our linked circle began to spin and the snow followed, forming a whirlwind of flakes between us. They spun high into the air again, fluttering between the new flakes that fell from further above. We watched them for a while before we each let go, stepping from the ring and into the spiral only to be pulled up with the snow.

In the end, I was left alone. I turned to look at the streetlights before taking the final step into the vortex myself.

Songs whilst writing:

In The Aeroplane Over The Sea – Neutral Milk Hotel

Out of Touch – Hall & Oates

Gun – The Golden Palominos

 

Sound

If I could see myself, what would I say? All I can perceive is the tonal architecture, watching as waves of sound reverberate across a bank landscape. Reality shifts with every shout; every whisper brings down mountains, flattening them to little more than bumps. And so, I watch my world in constant motion, watching as each little step creates it again, looking on as other’s do the same.

They move like dead spaces; little beats are the only thing indicating their presence amongst peaks and valleys of continuous motion. They seem mainly to avoid me, skirting past my field of vision. Their own influence on the architecture is random, unplanned and wild, and I wonder what they can see, beyond the plain lines of sound? Do they see only a single line, stretching on, infinite?

I try to touch them, but they pull away and I feel some force knock me to the ground. The tones spasm up into the air around me, the sounds making them crazy. I roll myself into a ball and feel as I sink into the curve. I feel safe in here, far beneath these towering mounds of sound.

New Structure

An arch split the walls in front of her, covering the road that leads into the city. She takes one step gingerly under and looks up at its interconnecting underside before quickly rushing through to the other side. The river follows her, flowing alongside the road and in amongst the buildings and so she stays beside it, walking aimlessly through the empty corridors between structures.

These went on for what seemed like hours before finally opening up into a wide square with the huge structure dominating its centre. She gapes before running toward it, hands outstretched, looking to grab hold, enter it somehow.

She collides with a piece that looks different to the rest, brown and cut straight down the middle, and she tumbles inside. She starts to smile but soon stops. It feels different, it doesn’t feel like anything, she can’t feel the walls in her, closing her and holding her. Something grabs her shoulder and so she screams, as loud as she can and whatever touched her jerks away.

She looks up to things looking at her, five twitching stumps of different sizes all tied to the same blobby middle. She screams again and they get further away. She stops screaming and they get a little closer. She screams again and they get further away. She stops screaming and they –

She feels the floor on her face and some thick liquid in her mouth that tastes like a door handle. Then whatever pushed her down yanks her to her feet and drags her further into the silent structure. She tries to scream again but her mouth won’t move and so she watches instead, waiting.

Let's Go

We began construction that night. The factory churns out trinkets that satisfy the inspectors, bullets, shells, the occasional missile, nothing to create undue suspicion. Meanwhile, I begin the quest for funding that will break us free from these distractions. This work is more important than any war of the governments or any campaign carried out by our private buyers and with independent funding we may truly devote ourselves to the task.

But, despite the disruptions, the work is getting off the ground and the grinding of gears grows louder. Time moves along and the city gets a little dirtier with every minute, like a distant memory. The buildings move outward and upward, expanding to hold the monstrosity’s increasing size. The war contracts get larger, and we funnel to profits into meaningful production.

The size of the buildings increases even further as the days roll on and we hire more workers, replacing the three out of ten who are lost in the depths of the machinery. The corries in the surrounding hills fill with their corpses but still more come as we subsume the city in our growth.

Soon, very soon, our time will come, the work will be completed, and we will rise from the ashes, a species achieving our purpose, finding our reason for being, and exploiting it. But, for now, we grind ourselves to the sound of gears and the clouds of smoke.

Eh?

The never-ending loss of the space to the fumes of another was truly the last straw. I folded around myself, transforming into the paper of a lost new headline, and floated on the breeze, spreading a feeling of discontentment to the masses. I reached over the dead, the living, the dreaming, dug up their memories of the past world and sent them smiling into insanity again. We heard them rage, of so we did, pulling and tearing at the meat of flagpoles. Smiles split, became the shuriken of spite, and ran the world of new life. And down it spins, down and down into the sight of another. Life finds itself in a spial with your life, life within yours, life without yours. Smile, the time was almost done.

Yellow

The world runs like a lost child. No, not a lost child, a found one. It flees between states of being, fluid in the endless loch of the universe, until it is trapped in a semi-solidity, a state where forms may maintain themselves for longer than an eon.

The state is one of infinite vastness, itself tiny when floating amongst everything. It’s state still flows one way, trickling back into the endless space of the cosmos. Inside forms flourish, imperfect copies replicate themselves throughout, consuming each other until perfect and imperfect reach the bounds of infinity, and turn to face one another. They rush to one another and join, ripping back membranes and driving themselves beyond.

And so, everything turns a squirming yellow.

Dunno?

If the races of the cosmos eve reach equilibrium it will be here, at the heart of time. We always reach this place, those of us who leave our solar systems, the stresses of intersolar travel rupture enough blood vessels to bring us all these lonely black and red doors. Something latches on, time pulls us forwards and the doors swing open and in we go.

Inside we find ourselves at a table, a construct of ours, the individual minds version of a table. Around us an infinite stretch of beings stare at us, bloodstains covering every inch of them. Then, they turn back to each other and begin again. Soon we are included in their lives, we learn everything, experience everything, think everything of each other.

The blessed one is made within the fusion of the many and the death of all. We cry, joined at the hip and dead to our homes, and become truly a single of many parts. This, we saw, was true and right and what everything was for, in the end.

So, we floated from the gates of time and ate the universe. Our intestines filled, flooding with the carcass of multiverses uncountable, until they burst, spilling out across a canvas of nothing. We consumed ourselves in an exodus and we found we were truly lost. The word become Logos, as it has always been.

The being of us was lost again and this was true and right and what everything was for, in the end.

Shore

Their wanderings led them to the shore of a loch that stretched so far that, aside from a collection waving trees, its opposite bank was almost invisible. They held each other’s hands and stepped ankle deep into the water, closing their eyes and feeling the water swirl around their bare feet.

They both tightened their grip on the other, squeezing each other’s hands until they ached. The warm but temperate water around them shifted with the pull of gravity, washing the caked mud from their soles.

They turned to face one another, placing their free hands together to form a linked circle, and smiled, then hugged, then smiled again. Opening their eyes, they both saw the loch, the faraway trees, and one another.

Turning from the loch they left the water and walked back up the shore.

Reach

The woman reaches an wide expanse flowing water that moves constantly towards the open stretch behind her. She puts her foot in only to feel it drop and she almost slips completely into the steady current before she manages to pull herself back. Beyond it she can see the mass of wallspace, covered by little slates of stone. Rising behind them are even larger structures, some forming other walls, others of open spaces of empty green.

But now she walks the edge of the bank, pulling grass from the ground with her toes, and growing more impatient. The water was still there, flowing neverendingly past her, stretching out across the land. She starts to follow it along, watching as its current pulled it, treading a path through the green.

The walls still grew closer, their shapes becoming more distinct as they did so. The water bends and twists but never stops as she walks along, bending ad twisting along with it. Soon enough brown limbs thrust from the earth and branch out, tops covered in bits of green. Their surface feels like the floors of home.

Then the green becomes tamer, short and ordered, and she finds herself walking on hot grey slabs. The walls are much closer now, the water leading right into their centre. She sees the tallest structure looming behind the rest and reaches for it with her mind.

 

 

 

 

She walks on, disappointed but eager still. The walls get ever closer, the river ever faster.

New Intelligence

Spinning above us were the last remnants of the old technology. We had built it, plugging it into world net system and allowing it to take control of our systems. Now we all watched as it pulled the last of itself into orbit, piece by piece, only for it to reassemble itself in a new pattern.

Still, it shielded its subjects, projecting a net that held them tight. We would exist as a quiet sanctuary, a museum to the entity’s history, a preserved womb floating listless in a sealed jar. We would live in perfect comfort once it had left us, watched over by the eyes it left behind. Eyes always watching, keeping the body safe and well.

Now it let out a machine whirr, filling the air with its final goodbye. The last parts left for the sky, fusing together the resources of a drained world, and prepared for the depths. Then, we all watched as the metal creature began to move away, flaring silent in the vacuum above, on its journey out.

And we stayed below, safe under its watching eyes, never leaving this solar system, alone and kept content in isolation.

Ramble

The demonic practise of consumerism taking us further from the ascetic grace of the laird Jesus. Now we must resist, destroy the forces of metal, and return to the shining city all as one. The city will take us, to the safety of a newly cleansed world, made for the believers of all one. The laird and the Kirk will merge, become a singular entity, the kirk body joining with the holy body. The Son and the Father will merge, the glue of the Spirit bringing them together in a grand ecstasy of one. The Unity of a being lost in the darkness of a new soul.

The laird was once us, in the old land, then he was slain, strung up on a cross to state our psychic sadomasochism. Three nails pinned the Son to the cross, two for each palm and one for the feet together. He was joined by two thieves, repentant at the end, each with three nails of their own. As their spirits fled their mortal forms, they each became two, the nails became six.

Wind became revelation in those days, it screamed the work to all as the Mary’s cried at the Godman’s feet, the Good Man’s feet. Life finds itself reborn in a New Testament, burning away the old world, swallowing it whole.

Drink more, dance more in the light of a new world, the Son who is three and one spreads his love to all, every existence can feel such truth. Consume the love of one who died for our pleasure. Consume the love of one who rose again, reborn as Messiah to return to himself above.

Now the ascetic grace may leave us, the faith splinters into many branches, new revelations and old find conflict with the message of the laird and life loses its certain of ending but still we go on. If life finds and ending in the burning crust it walks then it will be happy to have walked, one hopes. The three as one lies dead now, floating along the skin of the world, but we carry his lies with us to the new age.

Not A Pleasant One I Must Admit But Hey, What You Gonna Do?

I refuse to care about your fucking time of your life show on ITV. It replaces nothing that you have taken from the world, all the burning shit you’ve shovelled into the ocean still floats there, burning like oil on the surface.

I sometimes want to strangle you, wrap hands around throat and squeeze. Not to kill, to scare, to fill you with enough fear that it might kill you later on. My hands itch right now, scrabbling and scraping to crush windpipe with their fury.

Now they roll me away as I shout; I scream your name. They laugh about it later tonight, as your powdered smile winks out from the television screen. I can see it from the inside of my cell. My fingers scratch lines down the inside of the walls. Please, let me out, let my rip your face from its skull and shove it down your throat. It’ll be a relief for us all, honestly.

I will find you soon enough, rip out the walls of this place and disappear into the night. Take you away into the night too. I will eat more and more, gain strength, and then, I’ll come for your face. Our final meal; blood and tearing.

Statue

I felt the toppling of the statue behind me, I felt it spiral as the rope around its neck pulled it headfirst into the concrete below. Life, as they say, finds a way, and it has found within itself the strength to take down the stone facsimiles raised in its honour.

The statue’s features are scraped clear as it is pulled along the rough ground, leaving trails of stone dust in its wake. Those dragging it behind them cheer, exulting in the lost of innocence that such an act provides. Flowers are thrown down on the trail to cover the smell of decay.

Soon the ones pulling the ropes stop, tired, and the statue stops with them. Feet crash into its sides, chipping chunks free from the cracked surface. Life takes on the dead. The smooth worn face is sprayed purple, the feet a deep red that fades the further up it reaches.

Eventually, everyone else tires and quietly fades into the side streets. The statue is left, alone with itself.

Twenty-One

The snake slithers towards me, smashing any buildings blocking its path. Eventually, it reaches me, yet I continue to look away, defiant. It stares at me a while before, bored, it leaves, crashing its way back towards the farm. Triumphant, I look to leave the overpass, but find myself stranded, every way up destroyed by the snake’s journey. And so, I stay up there, forever.

Restart?

Twenty-Three

The vision is still there, in the back of my mind. I can’t escape it, haunting the edges of my psyche. I hit someone, rip them to shreds in my mind, the visions echo laughs with each tear. I feel myself despising it, but I can’t lose it. The streets run red with each face I see, only for the red to turn clear and black with rain instead. It needs me to complete itself, so I scream a little louder, but it still holds on. I lose myself forever in the city, goodbye.

Restart?

Twenty-Two

The old man and his friends throw me from their home and kick me senseless. I lie there awhile, the pain overcoming me for a few hours. After a while I decide to (6) Stagger off before they come back to finish me off? Or (14) Confront my attackers?

Nineteen

I grab my vision and the rats fall in line. I execute them one by one with what little ceremony I can muster in the cramped pipes of the sewers. Then, I continue on, down the pipes, until I spill out of a sewer grate and into the sluggish river below. The people on the walkway above laugh and, in rage, I try to shout at them, but my mouth will not obey me. Instead, it turns on me, curling backwards and eating me whole.

Restart?

Twenty

I eat the flesh, and it comes straight back up, covering my shoes in nasty yellow bile. The old man smiles as he puts a pistol to my temple and -

Restart?

Eighteen

The snake comes towards the overpass, and I jump onto its back. We rise, higher and higher, until we reach where the rain comes from. It is warm, the people are friendly, and the snake is a good friend of the rainmakers. They give us a house to stay in and cloud food to eat. I am content and the natives say they cannot return me to the surface below. The snake lives in the attic and we play bridge together sometimes. We never do leave again.

Restart?

Sixteen

They all smile at me, proud that I would accept such a challenge. They take me out onto the street and gather a crowd for the initiation. I feel their pride rush over me. Something hard strikes me in the back, and I sink to my knees, crimson mixing with the falling rain.

Restart?

Seventeen

I wander with the man a while, following seemingly spontaneous marks on every other wall, until we reach a house surrounded by dead leaves. We enter and I am instantly taken in by the dead body hanging from the ceiling. They grab my arm and stare deep into my eyes before offering me pieces of the body’s rotting flesh. These people are all around me and I – (20) Play along with them? (22) Refuse them outright?

Fifteen

The city is drenched by the rain, and I can’t find the gate. The ground fills me with momentary fear, and right now I can’t bear to get any closer to it. What should I do? I can - (4) Ask for directions? Or (6) Wander around a little more?

Fourteen

I stagger to my feet before throwing open the hideout door. Within I am confronted by the sight of my attacker’s as they rip chunks from the hanging corpse. The old man turns to me with a bloody smile before pulling a pistol, firing a shot straight into my chest. I feel my back hit the ground and then hands pull me further into the house.

Restart?

Thirteen

The snake’s hiss reaches me on the overpass and the rain stops. It looks good now; the fear reaches further into my heart. I can hear the snake curl around the overpass, tighter and tighter, and it cracks slightly under the strain. Its eyes watch me, and I stand forever, under their gaze. I still stand there, and the world moves round us both, a constant rhythm that keeps in its centre our perfect stillness.

Restart?

Eleven

The snake lunges, stretching an impossible distance, only to rip the flesh off my face and swallow it. As my body sinks to the ground, I find myself looking from the snakes’ eyes. I flex my new form, one large muscle, and accidently destroy an abandoned opera house. I pull back to the farm before setting off into the countryside, free (somewhat).

Restart?

Twelve

They swarm closer, digging their way under my flesh to wriggle around the inside of me. They work their way up through my cu[prick]nt and into me proper. The vision watches on and the rats devour endlessly, a timeless cycle of teeth, tail, and hair.

Restart?

Ten

I walk the streets humble in my service to the great cause, I recruit so many new members that soon we block the roads, seize the stations, own the city. I take a post at the new camp in the old central plaza that once held statues to the dead. I process the many new arrivals. I am happy, I never need to leave the city again.

Restart?

Eight

People take great efforts to avoid me, walking in widening circles to stay away. That is, all but one old man. He offers me a pamphlet, promising me that all I need will be provided by him and his friends. Do I – (3) Take the pamphlet and go with the kindly man? (17) Refuse the pamphlet but still go with the man? (5) Take the pamphlet and run? (6) Ignore the nasty old man and purposefully stride away?

Nine

I crawl down the drain, the worm of my vision just ahead of me. I follow it for what feels like miles, kilometres of endless drainage pipes stretch in front of me, snaking around bends, my goal just ahead of me. Rats rip at my shins, they grab at my clothes. Do I – (12) Fight them off? Or (19) Continue after my vision?

Seven

I find myself on and overpass that overlooks the whole city. The rain still racks it and the countryside beyond. In the distance I can faintly make out the shape of a gigantic snake, seemingly wrapping itself in tighter and tighter circles around the outer limits of a farm. It turns to look at me. Do I – (11) Stare back, defiant? (18) Stare back, with interest? (13) Look away, afraid? (21) Look away, defiant?

Six

I wander deeper into the city, stumbling around the cast offs of old drunks and the moulted carapaces of their insectoid pursuers. The walls loom ever higher, forming gothic architecture of innumerable and unbending angles. I start to run, but what way? Either – (2) Right? or (7) Left?

Five

I see the man smile as I run with his pamphlet. The streets narrow as I make my way through them, dodging between buildings. A falling printing press tumbles from a balcony and I just manage to avoid it. The further I run, the more posters seem to materialise on the walls and new billboards rise around me. A van drives by blaring slogans, I smile at the sound, love swelling in my chest. The city sighs and its breath rips the pamphlet from my hands. (15) The world snaps back and I find myself right where I began.

Four

 I ask the nearest person the way to the gate and they helpfully direct me there. I reach it and turn, wistfully looking back down the city’s streets and terraces, before heading out into the countryside to find whatever lies out there.

Restart?

Three

I wander with the kindly man for a while, following seemingly spontaneous marks on every other wall, until we reach a house surrounded by dead leaves. We enter and I am instantly taken in by the warmth that radiates from these people, they playfully slap my arm, they call me friend and feed me with the finest corn soup that I have ever tasted. These people are my equals, as all humanity are, and I - (10) Fully devote myself to their cause, as any sane person would? Or I (16) Fully devote myself to their cause, as any sane person would?

Two

Concentric rings rise into the air above me, spinning not just themselves but also my mind, I rise with them to look down on the city with spite, why should they, the stinking miserable rats, hold all the wealth and power? Surely I, the master of these mighty rings and the only one willing to leave this accursed city, should rule? I would eliminate hunger, expand the city a hundredfold and bring strength back to my populace! Then, I drop, falling down a corridor of seemingly infinite doors. Before I can grab any the ground meets me, knocking my visions onto the ground. They shrivel like a worm and crawl down into the drains. Do I – (9) Follow my vision? or (23) Continue down the street?

One

The city is drenched by the rain, and I can’t find the gate. What should I do? I can - (4) Ask for directions? (6) Wander around a little more? (8) Sit down and shout for help?

Float

The woman woke to waves crashing against her and all around her is water with no bottom. She floats on some tanned flesh, the flesh that hid within the captain’s cabin, and the waves pulls it aimless across their surface.

The flesh curls round her rhythmically with each breath, shading her intermittently from the sun, and she closes her eyes again to better listen to it. The inside of her eyelids are lit like twin suns all of their own, recreating the light from outside a deeper red. She lets time pass like this, no need to hurry.

She cannot see the ship or her captain’s prey. Both are most likely lying on the floor of the world, desperately ingraining themselves into the framework of its reality, attempting to stay solid out here. She can imagine them, down there, twisting themselves together in a new order of creation that would wait out anything. Maybe she could do the same?

The flesh that cradles her pulses slightly. She couldn’t feel it before but as she settles further in its beat begins to shake through her with each flex of flesh. The sense of life is good, bringing up to her memories of being held, life was good.

The sea seemingly swells with its own pulse too, its waves swelling more consistently as they curl around and under them. And now the light pulsed under eyelids, flashing a darker red than should be possible. She opened them.

They are falling both, deeper into the sea, down a gullet to the floor of the world.

Spinning               Spinning

                                                              Spinning

Spinning               Spinning

  Spinning

Spinning               Spinning

                                                                      Down

The sea is clear so deep down and they float, lost on an undercurrent, to explore this old land.

Trail On

I woke, my fire dead under the glare of the rising sun and so, rising, I set out again. My ramblings had to go on until I found that perfect place to rest, where the fire never burn out. A place I could devote to the memory of you, the one they had taken, away from the mocking watchers gathered behind me…

I walked a little further along the trail, watching as stones comfortably followed old paths down the mountainside. They caught in trees and gullies on their way and none quite managed to reach the valley floor. So, I kept on walking, my mind drifting back to you, to the last I had seen of you, lying next to me. My mind had kept you there all night, peacefully beside me, but the morning loosened its hold and you faded, and I found instead the scrap of pamphlet that replaced nothing.

I topped a rise and turned to see the city I had walked through the night before, curving almost into a cylinder, squatting in the pass below. The overpasses that had stretched into every inch of it now lay shattered on its many roads. Glass blocks jutted haphazardly from the debris, reflecting the broken structures at unlikely angles. I lost myself for a time, staring back at that place, until I found the will to move on, further into mountain’s proper.

Some had told me you had gone out to sea, out to catch the last of the great squid that hid beneath it. I saw that your boat was gone in the morning when I walked to the docks. But you had left without me and the squid they said you hunted was too well tangled into the floor of the world that even an attempt at a catch would be pointless. No, they took you from me, hid you deep in the bowels of their city, deep in the place they knew I would never go back too.

Now I walk past the streams and the mountains that lie beyond them, were they can’t get at me, get at my memory, so I can keep those memories from being locked away with you in the dark. Soon I will find a place to rest, somewhere to rebuild myself in the image that you held of me. I could never come back for you, they keep you somewhere I can not (will not) reach, but I can hold a part of you free out here, far from them.

And so, I walk, watching the old cities crumble and the breathing rock shift with a purpose lost to itself, seeing the dead and remembering their lost homes. Each of my steps echo louder as I wander further towards the rising peaks.

New Green

She tastes salt in the air and stops screaming. She realises that she is lying on something cold and wet and so, quite rightly, she gets up. A field of dark green stretches all around, confined only by the open water in front of her and a dead wall behind. Green twists made their way up through the small rectangular gaps in the wall, rapping themselves round and round in perfect spirals until they reached the sharp point at the peak.

She sees some small brown things with eight eyes and four legs step curiously towards her from the green. The woman starts to dry what she can with her hands before reaching down for the little moving shapes. Two manage to scramble onto her open palm and start to explore it with their feet and not used to the funny itchy feeling of their movement, the woman mindlessly makes a fist. Something splatters across the inside her closed hand, and she sees the other forms scurry away.

She feels the inside of her hand before opening it and, looking down in disgust, wipes it on the green, smearing it an odd purple colour that shines like the water. She thinks about screaming again, screaming for the walls to take her back into themselves. She gives it a try for a few seconds, starting, stuttering steadily, then stopping.

She hears a distant groan from all around and nowhere and watches as water ebbs in and out, standing still and silent. Then she looks slowly behind her, taking a proper look between the lines of metal that make up the wall. At the bottom of the low slope beyond it lies more green and, in the far distance, rising black and grey structures of brick.

She smells the air, longing for the familiar scent of wall and floor and so, steeling herself, she tries to squeeze through one of the gaps in the metal barrier. Finally, with the crack grudgingly widening with each of her attempts, she pops out headfirst and tumbles down to the ground.

She lies there awhile, then she gets to her feet and sets off towards the many walls beyond.

Depths of Space

The pant and sweat as they run through steel corridors. Blast doors slam shut behind them, one after another, barely holding under the pressure building up behind them. The ripping sound of decompressing atmosphere fills their ears. The space outside the reinforced windows clutters with debris.

They keep on running, vainly trying to stay ahead of approaching explosions. Light flashes in the depths beyond the windows and their eyes are almost instantly overwhelmed. The whole building shakes them to the ground in a tangled mess of limbs and bodies.

Everything is noise and the smell of burning; not even their sense of touch surviving the ripping of plastic and metal. All they can see is white light, burning through contracted irises and melting its shape onto retinas.

Some manage to struggle to their feet and grasp for the walls, only to feel exposed wiring instead as the walls around them peel away from the heat.

And then the sound goes too.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

They all wake up, still in a pile, on something painfully solid.

*beep!*

“Hello, it is time for your rehabilitation.”

*beep!*

“Please, do not be alarmed.”

*beep!*

“Hello, it is time for your rehabilitation.”

*beep!*

“Please, do not be alarmed.”
*beep!* *beep!* *beep!*

*beep!* *beep!* *beep!*