Liquid sunlight

Golden hour

Glowing floodlight

Molten power

Glowing through an amber shaft of light

The world looks beautiful under the right veil

With the right filter, you can almost hide the horrors

That make the reality we live in

Clenching her jaw to hold back tears, Gillian gently swept a stray hair from her mother's forehead. She forced herself not to recoil at the clammy skin, so frail she worried her fingers might leave a bruise. Her mother was rapidly losing color and breathing shallowly. She didn't have much time.

"I won't fail you, Mom," Gillian promised, forcing herself to turn to the door. She walked out, head bowed.

Outside, her brother Jonathan prepared the horses. "Ready," he asked, his dark eyes determined and focused.

Gillian nodded. "Let's go, Jack."

They always knew this day would come, when they would summit Mt. Prile. Legend told of a mythical pool, filled only by the mountain top clouds, that had the power to heal.

When they were younger, they dreamed of adventuring up the jagged cliffside, but few travelers survived. Those that did, didn't return the same as when they had left. Shattered men, they were, heads clouded delusions and hysteria.

But the siblings knew there was no other option. They needed water from the pool for their ailing mother.

Gillian threw a leg over the saddle of her chestnut quarter horse, and Jonathan did the same to his dappled gray. The mares were getting on in years and not very fast. But, the old girls were reliable and would get the siblings started on their journey. Time passed slowly and all too rapidly. The siblings rode quietly, their minds consumed by thoughts of Mother. Gently trotting on horseback, they were safe. But Mother needed the water, and a challenge faced them ahead.

The black sand underhoof turned to pebbles, then rocks, then eventually boulders. When the horses had gone as far as they could, the siblings dismounted.

"Together?" Jonathan asked, dipping hands into a chalk bag.

"Together." Gillian agreed, also coating her palms. She tied a rope around her waist as her brother did the same. They knotted the ends together then each started to rock climb up the mountainside.

The terrain was treacherous and each slipped more than a few times. Gillian attempted to anchor into the cliffside when she could, but that slowed them down considerably. They didn't have the luxury of time. Or safety.

Trusting each other, they pinched, stretched, and leapt their way up the mountain's face until they emerged at a small meadow covered in Indian paintbrush and other wildflowers.

Jonathan sighed, tears brimming his eyes. "Mother would love these," he breathed. Gillian nodded in agreement, but they didn't have time for flower picking. She urged her brother onward, but the grief of weeks of watching his mother waste away bore into Jonathan. His limbs felt leaden. He knew she wasn't gone yet, but the realization that she may never get to see beauty like this again weighed heavily on him.

"Jack!" Gillian stressed, trying to get her brother's attention. She grabbed his shoulder. Jonathan yelped and jerked away. Gillian noticed Jonathan's tunic cling under his arm to his ribs, where a dark stain was forming. He had cut himself on the ascent. Jonathan turned away, looking more morose and defeated than ever.

Gillian examined the wound. It was small and mostly superficial, rugburn most likely from scraping past some particularly sharp basalt. Jonathan would be fine. His mental health on the other hand, she wasn't so sure about.

"Why don't you stay here for a bit, bud" she soothed. "Pick some Indian paintbrush for mom?"

Jonathan sniffed and shrugged agreeably with his good arm. He wouldn't be much help climbing farther. Jonathan set to gathering flowers while Gillian chalked her hands. Past the field, the cliffside jutted up at an acute angle. It wasn't much farther, and atop the overhang would be an ideal place for nature to form a pool.

Gillian focused on her breaths as she swung hand over hand, creeping up the side of the overhang. Footholds were few, and for most of her ascent, her feet dangled. Finally, at the lip of the cliff, she squeezed her feet into small gaps in the rockface, creating toe holds.

She strained with her legs then pulled herself onto the overhang. There, surrounded in mist, was the pool! She pulled a sun-aged, ceramic canteen from her belt and submerged it in the still waters.

As soon as her fingers brushed the water's surface, all the scrapes and burns from rock climbing disappeared. She splashed some water on her throbbing legs, blistered feet, aching shoulders, and biceps. She immediately felt as refreshed as she'd ever been.

Gillian quickly stoppered the canteen, returned it to her belt, and made the descent back to her brother.

Jonathan was amiably sitting in the field, having woven his freshly picked flowers into a crown. Gillian smiled at her brother. "Mom will love that," she said motioning to the arrangement.

Jonathan beamed. With their mother's vision going, he wanted to ensure the flowers would be near enough to her that she couldn't miss them. He was quite proud of the crown himself, and it smelled divine. He popped it on his own head.

Gillian opened the canteen and dabbed a few drops of water onto Jonathan's wound and palms. He stretched his fingers nimbly, abrasions gone, and leaned to the side. His ribs no longer hurt. "Ready, Jill?" Jonathan asked for the second time today, this time with a gleeful glint in his eye.

"Ready." Gillian responded, equally excited. They had done it! They had the cure and were returning to Mother.

The pair descended the cliffside like mountain goats, no ropes, no cares. They scampered over the boulders at the cliff face, realizing how fortunate they were. The rest of the way was easy. The horses had wandered, but that wasn't unusual. Gillian and Jonathan whistled for their mares. They were feeling so good the pair decided to run until the animals could catch up. They didn't want to lose a moment of time.

They ran over the small rocks and pebbles. They ran on the black sand. All was well until Jonathan, whose soles had not been splashed with the healing water, caught his toe under a ripple in the sand. He careened forward, flapping wildly, but wasn't able to catch himself. Jonathan fell face first into the black mountain sand, his flower crown scattering to pieces.

Attempting to catch her brother, Gillian also toppled, landing hard on her hip. The canteen shattered, every last drop of water quickly absorbed into the thirsty sands.

"NO!" both siblings cried. But it was too late. Alerted by the noise, the mares cantered up, tossing their manes and whinnying. The horses stomped at the ground. Gillian and Jonathan had failed. And by the looks of the horses, this was it. Mother was dying.

With Gillian's help, Jonathan grabbed fistfuls of his decimated flower crown. He choked back a sob. They say smell is the last sense to go. If they hurried, at least he could give Mother something.

The siblings mounted their horses, clutched their flowers, and rode home.

Mother never looked so gaunt. Jonathan and Gillian approached her bedside. "For you, Mother," Gillian said, laying the soft Indian paintbrush on the dying woman's forehead.

"We picked them special," Jonathan said. "On Mt. Prile, just for you." He held a flower lightly under her nose. Gillian squeezed her mother's hand. With her other hand, she gently stroked her mother's forehead.

The skin was warm to her touch. Not hot. Just warm. Like skin should be.

Mother inhaled deeply. Her nose was gaining color again. And her head.

"Mother?" Gillian asked.

Jonathan gasped. "That's it!" he snapped. He pulled the yellow tip from the Indian paintbrush, and there, in its petal, was a single drop of nectar. He squeezed it into Mother's mouth.

"Jack, what are you--" started Gillian. "That's not water."

"What do you think grows the wildflowers, Jill? How do they get their moisture?"

Gillian gasped. Of course! The mist. Evaporation from the pool would sustain the meadow. Mother squeezed her hand.

"My smart children," Mother said, pulling them both into an embrace. The siblings suddenly no longer cared how the pool or the flowers worked. They were just happy to have their mother healthy again.

They also didn't care about how the story of their adventures became distorted by the town after numerous retellings. Perhaps you've heard it:

Jack and Jill

went up the hill

to fetch a pail of water.

Jack fell down

and broke his crown

and Jill came tumbling after.

---------------------------------------------------------

An incandescent bulb hangs from a void and sways gently with the rhythm of a year. It’s suspended as bait with its cord vanishing up towards the sea of utter black. Fingerprints and grime cake its exterior, traces apparent in its light, as if the ghosts of both man and nature had sunk their teeth into it, before being whisked away from up above. Either that or they had grown so livid of it for disturbing their dark, that they had tried to snuff it out. But inevitably, the tungsten filament overwhelmed them, and now offers an amber glow for the boxed room. At its peak swing, it splays the shadows of a man, a chair, and a table onto the wooden walls and floor, noting some semblance of time.

In this light, unreadable phrases of bootprints scrawl the dusty floorboards. Some are overshadowed, but they twist and turn all the same - following, punctuating, and bleeding all over one another. There is no use to track where they came from or where they lead to, for there is no door here. And determining whether a dance or a brawl occured reflects the same futility as no punctuations space them out. No thoughts, no intentions, no hidden codes are encrusted on the letterings, and one could never tell whether the soles belonged to a dockworker’s or a civilian’s.

For all it’s worth, tracing the origin could be a Sisyphean task from a bored God. Where the punished are condemed to follow prints eternally, eventually adding their own to the schizoid mass of scribbles. And at the very least, they can keep the man glued to the chair company.

The splintered legs groan underneath his weight, the stocky frame barely able to relax as the chair threatens to buckle at any second. He shifts his weight constantly from one foot to the other as he hunches over a typewriter squared on the table. Some unwieldy antique that echoes both where he is and what he looks like - worn down and old. The whiskey bottle, glass ashtray, and radio beside it stands out though, shimmering against the chipped wooden surface, still hot off from the factory lines, plastic wraps and all.

With every shift, the topographical map on his office shirt reflects different time periods. Valleys and wrinkled river routes that run through the fabric is a mere timelapse of geological processes - ever changing, ever molding from a valley to a plain to back again. And what was once a pristine white is damped into gray by sweat, replicating elevation.

Hiking the mountain range running down his back, cowboy jeans choke his waist into a tight fit, with its seams kissing bare feet. The matching boots to hide underneath are either lost or forgotten. This whole display is further furnished by the faint scent of puke that orbits around a core oozing corpse smell.

A miasma lingers here, sourced from somewhere primordial.

He rolls up his sleeves and types.

“You pick your poison.” Red says, his hands over Sarah’s.

“I know,” she seems to speak from a distance, “but what if I don’t want to choose?”

Red shrugs, he leans over and--

The man stops. The jigsaws of letters he clamped onto the paper doesn’t look right. They belong to another scene, further down the road, he thinks. He cranes up towards the void only inhabited by an artificial sun, closing his eyes. Nouns and verbs become a fragile filigree against his eyelids, coiling and intertwining into different patterns. Every node of connection pulses with intent, but they suddenly dissipate into the blistered dark like eye-floaters.

He slumps.

A correction tape idles in the ashtray, handle-side up, drowning with the bloated bodies of six other cigarettes. His shaky fingers rip off a few words on the old paper and ages it even further.

While he waits for the white ink to dry, the half-full bottle gawks at him. Brandless and beaten down by amber light, the only evidence for the liquor is a distinct line separating air and thick syrupy liquid.

”Fuck you looking at? Huh?” His tongue drawls whiskey, urging his teeth closer to it, ”You nobody, you fuckin’ deadbeat, you...” As his nose nears the glass bottle, it reflects a face that could suck concrete through a straw, all morphed and warped, wintering his veins. Whatever word that was being conjured up is now lost, erased by an afterimage of the circus reflection burnt into his eye. It leaves fleeting trails as he steers his head to the typewriter.

He shuts his eyes tight again. The reflection vanishes within minutes. What replaces it are blitzing neurons hard at work, rippling encrypted codes to one another, and pinging it back like pingpong balls. In a micron of a second, the codes are then translated into a colorful carousel of verbs, phrases, and swirling metaphors. All the lights and all the horses flicker into choppy images as it accelerates, sucking up the surrounding eyefloaters in the vicinity. As it reaches terminal velocity, the singularity spinning pieces of who he is shoots down freight trains of senses from his cortex, chugging past along his shoulders down to his arms, and then stopping at a rinky-dink motel lodged in his palm, right before reaching the tips of his fingers. His digits hustle as they offload the delivery.

-- Red shrugs. There’s a still, quiet moment - the cars by the highway replace the lonely barflies and drunk nobodies that used to buzz around here, now empty except for the two secret lovers. It seems more alive like this, he thinks. Instead of drunk mouths moving - empty thoughts bouncing off the dartboard and the pool table and the jukebox - the truck tires and car engines --

Fingers tap on the table, the remaining delivery delayed by road work.

He turns on a vintage yet pristine radio beside the typewriter, an angular and pragmatic machinery born during the Cold War. The bulky mini-heater has a high chance of survivability against a nuclear strike, with its metal covering and slitted grills promising songs of static as dead stations litter the soundwaves of post-apocalyptia.

Stubby fingers turn the dials, feeling at home with its vintage aesthetic, and surfs the calm waves of hissing ghosts. His board ebbs and flows in between different stations: one plays a recording of a mass in an empty church; the second, a man humming by the highway; third is a shovel digging a trench; and the last purrs wings flapping in a distillery.

For a moment, he drowns in the static sea, this lonely crowded road which spaces watering holes and sun-tanned motels; the distance in between just enough that poems by drifters teeter between forlorn and hopeful, and doesn’t lean too heavily on one side or the other. Just right in the middle - melancholic nostalgia.

He dials it to the man humming by the highway, and closes his eyes. Diesel and asphalt coat his tongue, sick gasoline pumps through his nose, the truck tires and car engines--

--rattle the wood alive, like whiskey soaking through casks, breathing air into it. Better this way, a sound that carries meaning; tire wheels skidding off of the asphalt says there’s a job to do, a destination to head to, a package to deliver. And Red is proud the wooden stools and dartboards get to bounce off sounds revving with such a purpose. Unlike the sounds of puking or muddled conversations about some past that don’t matter no more; each lens of their compound eyes blinded by some false dawn, flooding pilot lights into it.

“We always have a choice love.” he squeezes her hands gently, “Always. If we don’t, then what are we but empty meat f r a m--

The typewriter jams with each clack. Goddamnit, nothing works around here anymore. He slams it against the side, the empty whiskey bottle almost tips over but maintains balance. After another hit, the typewriter rings the way a register’s tongue opens up for a dental checkup. Specks of ash dots the already dusty table and dances in the air from the two impacts, like the huffs and puffs of a frightened hedgehog, spikes replaced by dead cigarette stubs.

Keystrokes swell with a carpenter’s fingers, each one hammered in as nails.

f r a m e s.”

He rereads and scans for prey with a pair of hawk eyes. A hawk whose main diet is deer and elk - hobo deers and hobo elks. Their bloodcells religiously honk at each other, or at long stretches of gravel, or at the wind. Highways, byways, dirt roads, and side roads project a symphony of a biological rush hour - unending lines of iron coffins belching smoke and barely muffling the primal growls of match headed men baking inside of them.

The hell’s going on? One of them gets out as the traffic stops. Around his collar is a loose tie.

Just another accident again, up further ahead - a truck full of whiskey, bottles all over the road. A man laying on the hood of his car pipes up - a cigarrete hangs from his lips.

Godfuckin- how long d’you think till they fix this shit? He tightens the noose.

Beats me, bet the roadworkers are guzzling it all up anyway, broken glass and all. Embered tip bounces with each syllable, like a diver’s plank.

HEY DO YOUR FUCKING JOBS, WE HAVE PLACES TO GO TO... The hanged man underlines his yell with a streaming horn, as if someone flatlined, only stopping when the car infront budges an inch. I’m gonna be goddamn late again.

The sunbather flicks his cigarette away, Yep... And it’s going to get later...

Hawk eyes spot a hobo deer swaying to and fro underneath the sprawling canopies. Trees play volleyball with its body, scattering unemployed leaves at the ends of branches with each weighty collision. They tap its shoulders as they fall, warning it of the looming shadow. But it doesn’t listen.

He cleaves off a sentence.

As red ink dries, his fingers absentmindedly switches the radio from AM to FM. The dial swirls, and again he finds himself driving on the road. This time he’s in Vegas - the Strip. Each landmark’s glazed over in aftertrails of halogen and breathing neons that blind the ghosts forever haunting the gaps in between.

A dazzling welcome is a tourist diner that offers pancakes and overpriced milkshakes; their bestseller is a poppy strawberry shake for $20, but tastes the same as their $10 one. Further down the road stands a pawnshop that hoards antiques, its open sign jazzed in blue neon - empty except for the dreaming cashier and two old folks playing checkers. A few blocks away, a gunstore flashes Eastwood on the barrels of their Colts as gunmetal gleams punk rock and hiphop; mohawked youth litter by the door while turning their lungs into ashtrays and livers into distilleries. And towering over all at the road’s end is a burning effigy of a casino, crackling the fires of techno dub, mindless bass deafening the beating hearts of gamblers and degenerates.

The pawnshop door swings open. What greets him first is the scent of a forgotten attic, where dust and musk and mold had been left festering for generations. The dense odor rushes out of its burial and washes over him like ocean waves. Each swash and oscillation echo the words “antique” as the fumes flare signals in his limbic system.

Not like he needed help with that conclusion - scattered all around the interior is a colorful cornucopia of antiques all randomly stacked over one another. More of a dense evergreen thicket than a pawnshop interior, he thinks. A rainbow of sport jerseys, yarns, and cloth for vines hang from the damp ceiling, and cover the fluorescent fixtures that can barely curtain anything. Paint-flecked mannequin legs, wooden and metal baseball bats, and other random junk sprawl across the linoleum like overgrown roots, growing more pronounced further in. Pendulum clocks and lime-green refridgerators stand tall, and sometimes crooked resembling ancient trees - their branches the paddlesticks and canoes balancing on their heads against all physical odds, with old, scribbled parchments for leaves.

From the entrance, the fluorescent lights filtering through tiny gaps of the parchment canopies can’t help distinguish one object from another. Right before the treeline of unwanted junk, a rotary dial could be the face a clock, the handle of a fridge is probably one for a toolbox placed vertically, the brass horn of a phonograph may as well be an experimental art piece of a flower. Kaleidoscopic in its colors yet random in its patterns, the insides is a mere time capsule of unwanted memories coated in a thin patina of nostalgia and regret. The belly of a beast that shadows the inner workings of the mind, biting without barking as a reminder pops up of someone or something - whether it be a scent or a wedding song - and simulates a budding stroke where everything looks hauntingly familiar but strange at the same time.

The two old men to his right are unfazed from his entrance, too fixed in their own game of checkers, as is the young cashier behind the counter with legs raised on the desk, too deep in his dreams.

He rummages through.

--squeezes her hands gently, “And we’re built that way, to choose, to want things, to need things,” Red leans over, eyes lust--

He stops for a moment, kills a calf, and continues over its blood.

--eyes heavy, “to love.” He leans over, she leans over and--

Something catches him at the very back of the pawnshop. It doesn’t stand out against the branches of hockey sticks and guitars, yet whenever he looks over at that direction, the beginning of an emotion whirls inside his belly. As he gets closer, now by the edge of the treeline, he discerns that underneath the tangled banners, its rounded contours are covered over by a foggy membrane. Not a tarp or a sheet of cloth, but a thick layer of cobwebs giving him just enough detail that whatever’s underneath sands the tongue. And his stomach aches at its sight - the longer he stares at it, the more he wants to tear the cobwebs off, as if nails scratch by the craters of an unreachable itch.

With a slippery eel controlling his motor functions, he shambles into the forest, swaying pass random junk perched on top of other random junk in some random careless fashion.

He trips over an overgrown table leg and topples a box of cassette tapes before saving it at the last second. While he plants it on top of a mini-fridge, he scans beyond the treeline to check if anyone had caught the near-fumble. They seem unaware - the cashier still dreams with legs crossed on a table, and the two old men are still enveloped in their own little bubble where uncrowned men kill uncrowned men.

Legs wade further deep into the jungle, hands out front acting as sentries for the occasional vacuum cleaner or taxidermied fish clock. The closer he is, the more his stomach rumbles. Emotions are more defined now, still as abstract, but more physical - like a pit or a cavity, or a throat. Each step stretches it in increments, and what was once a slight ache is now a deep, earthy moan. What is this?, he thinks. Melancholy? Regret?

Before another label can appear, he suddenly realizes his legs move without his own accord anymore. As if he crossed an innocuous threshold that separated the idea of him from his flesh, yet still left him with the conscious physicality of each weight and each tired breath of each lumber; paralyzed in the interstice inbetween dreams and wakefulness.

The camera of his mind bobs with every step. Every inch swells up a blooming pattern of emotions - bouquets of flowers blossom and wilt in a second, and is then thorned by shattered glass and shrapnel, before cycling back and repeating itself, stuck inside a battered washing machine. Thoughts and synapses fire down orders to his muscles: turn away from it, walk back, run, exit out the goddamn door, turn the fucking radio off.

But he can’t. He wants to flail but he has no arms, he wants to run away but he has no legs, he wants to scream but he has no mouth. What he is now is a singular mote, an idea reduced to the most barest concept of consciousness yet still tethered to his sputtering vessel. The hulking frame of flesh lumbers closer and closer towards the cobwebbed object, uncaring of the artillery shells cased in full metal thoughts being barraged on calf muscle walls.

A few steps away from it, the lush layer of cobwebs coccoons a machine. As large as himself, comically so, and wears a metallic sheen, all dusted over. Squared on its head is a see through glass, and inside is an upright collection of compact disks, neatly packed together from left to right. Etched in its belly beneath are ranks and files of buttons, each one next to faded letterings and words, with a coin slot for its misplaced navel. A cheap bubble tube lines its horseshoe contours, supposedly holding fluorescent light fixtures.

Chest high, the man’s neocortex whirs and brands the word “JUKEBOX” on the walls of his skull. It singes across the cranium dome with Melancholy, Regret, Nostalgia, Guilt, Pain trailing it like a kite against the sky.

Instantly, the cavity kicks alive. It jostles stuff around, pushes and pulls, contorts and spazzes, changing his internals as it bores in. Never was he ever so aware of the junk undulating like tapeworms through stomach linings; the cilias of his scorched lungs resembling blackened trees after a wild fire; and the state of nonchalant despair he crippled his body into as whatever’s inside tampers with the biological hardware he had become so comfortable with. And now, every cell blares a reckoning - a reckoning that was bottled up for 40 years.

They howl banshees in agonizing unison,

“OH GOD?! OH GOD WHY!?!! WHYYY!!?!!!???”

Foghorns cement the mote in a bricked wall of sound, concrete in its texture and furious in its timbre. If the vessel still encased him - his tongue, eyes, and flesh would vibrate violently into pink mist; his teeth, skull, and bones would crack hairline fractures before being pulverized into fine bone meal. And the molecules and atoms that make up each of those grains would disintegrate into nothing. There would have been no ash to urn, no trace for tardigrades to stumble upon, no dust for the stars to take in - a ghost of a ghost.

But there is no frame in this place. Just the physicality of the collective clamor for the despots head - his head. And each wailing cell realizes that to bring down that guillotine, sacrifices must be made. So they eat away at one another as if stuck in a perpetual state of ketosis. An unstable rollout of biological suicide ripples throughout - a cellular revolution after almost a century of tyrannical rule. It was only a matter of time. The powder keg had just forgotten to snuff out the candlelight it slept right next to.

One by one, each part of him dies out. His veins dry out into gaping wounds of canyons as each hanged men kick the chair off with their own feet. Neurons blackout from the lack of blood supply, proclaiming martyrdom as their death throes. Lipids-turned ketones self-immolate to further fuel the revolution, and leaves skin draped over bone like papermache. Necrosis and apostosis share the same definition as does beginning and end - ouroboros made manifest.

The antique forest spins. His vessel careens off into the bushy undergrowth from vertigo, crashing down stacks of trees and vines onto it. Underneath, a handful of twinkling fluorescence puncture through gaps in between the burial made of unwanted memories. Slivers dance in the dark like stars in space.

Then they die. Fathomless black. Heat death of the universe. As quick as he had fallen.

Comes with it is silence - deafening as the foghorn - like ears popping to signal a change in atmosphere. Numbness takes hold soon after. The revolution had died down with a whimper. Now it’s just an anesthetic black as if he took that amber bait. And what remains is a mote left to contemplate in the void. A life sentence where there is no life or death. All alone, except for the self.

Left in a ghost station by time’s bullet train, its looping routine rips holes in his mind. Hours and days become one, years and decades bleed over each other. His thoughts scuttle out of their bunkers, scanning their surroundings, “WHERE AM I” he yelps, and again, “PLEASE! PLEASE WHERE AM I?!!?!” but there is no response. No echo either, which he had half expected, for the eye-gouging vantablack resembled that of a cave’s. But no walls bounce off his fragmented screams, no inanimate symphony to anchor himself in space, no rhythmic breath to keep time. He is a boat, eternally unmoored on a placid ocean at the dead of night without any constellation to guide him, circled by sentient silence that hunts down soundwaves the way tribals spear snakes.

Sleep takes him before long, laying the mote on a mattress weaved from the skin of a dead universe - perpetually dreaming of the waking dark.

Then a single blip. Faint... fragile, but it’s there, like a drip echoing in a cave. And it’s from below. A pebble ripples the stagnant pool of his consciousness, jolting him awake.

A voice echoes as if it came from different sources, both near and far - guttural, reptilian - it hisses, “Tsk... tsk... tsk... You really... did a number... on yourself... did you?” Each sweet syllable relished while being dragged through a bedrock of gravel, “Letting *your* consciousness... fester... in here... Doing nothing... forever... and ever... sleeping... sleeping... SLEEPING.” A horrendous slow cackle erupts, then trails off before turning into a wiry singsong, “You don’t have to do anything anymore... devoid of pain... of struggle... of love unreciprocated... of death... of suffering... So sleeeeep...”

An awareness creeps up on him, by the edges of his perception, “Yes... sleep...” It becomes more defined - a frame of flesh encases him...

curled into a fetal position,

marinated in gallons of flammable liquid and piss.

Another laughter that is not a laugh bellows, as though whatever owns the mouth is not acclimated to being bound by flesh and fiber, “Hmmm... yes... keep flinging around this black hole... keep floating in the hadopelagic zone...”

The awareness stirs, it expands beyond the lurid ball of meat,

latching onto

molecules vibrating:

the walls

the ceiling,

the floor,

the glass bottles surrounding it,

the piss,

the air, a fly in the corner.

“Sleep...” Then consciousness dilates further:

the blades of grass sway with the wind,

the trees breath while their canopies rustle,

the flock of birds migrate against the current.

“Wait... that... humming...”

“NO... SLEEP... EMBRACE UNBEING... UNBECOMING... UNFORMED IN THE NON-PLACE.”

The presence swells exponentially, engulfing other frames. They breathe, copulate, and hurt, and laugh - their pain is his pain, their love is his love, their consciousness all one. “I want to get off... please... I want to love and be unloved...”

“AND GO BACK... TO ALL THAT PAIN... ALL THAT HATE...”

The consciousness encompasses everything known and unknown:

a lonely whale sings

a mother sweeps sand in an adobe hut

a baby is born

a funeral is gathered around a shoe-sized coffin

tardigrades crawl

a dog is adopted

a man is raped in an alleyway

a protest

a concert

a father dies in his daughter’s arms

moss breathes on classroom walls

a kiss between highschool sweethearts

a name is changed

“Yes... please...”

gas giants blister

asteroids drift aimlessly

stars die

black holes

blue suns

red suns

galaxies swirl

pirouetting

swinging

an endless dance

choreographed by no one

“But you wanted thisss... longed for *it*... things were too hard to bear...”

The fathomless proportions is made whole,

a psychic vivisection of a clock,

tick

tick

tick

cosmic gears

interconnected & interdependent

with

each other

breathing as one

pulsing as one

converging circumstances

for no reason

other

than

because

it does.

He howls, and it echoes.

“NO. I WANT ALL OF IT. ALL THE LOVE, THE DESPAIR, THE AGONY, PLEASE, ALL THE GODDAMN SHIT. I NEED IT.”

A pregnant pause. An inordinate amount of time passes. Silence swallows every ghostly syllable whole, before it speaks again,“You’ll be back... The shadow is always there... leering... *waiting* for the light...”

The smell of urine hits Ted instantly as he sprawls face first on the cold concrete. A squad of empty whiskey bottles surrounding him refracts the red sun that streams through the basement window. It bathes the basement in blood, one could mistake his pool of piss for blood loss.

He sits up, ears ringing a hangover that beats all hangovers, and eyes the ceiling. A strata of cigarette smoke forms on the low, damp drywall. Its attempts to hide flaking pieces are in vain as foosteps above shave away at it with each lumber, flecks drift like ash.

Hell-Dyed-Heaven... I think you’ll like that one Ida.

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In mid-1811, an earthquake hit New Madrid, about forty miles west, but the effects were felt when a catastrophic flood threatened to wipe Bristol off the face of the earth. For the first time ever, due to the earthquake, or so it was believed, the Mississippi River flowed backward and destroyed several smaller towns down to practically nothing. People in Bristol did their very best to fill burlap bags with dirt to block the rivers onslaught. People worked day and night, and Flower was one of them.

She would sew the burlap together as quickly as she could, doing as many as possible. She felt as if she couldn’t keep up with the demand.

But she did. When the flood finally receded, Bristol’s dirt streets were thickly muddied and covered with a good foot of water, but damage to homes and life especially were spared. No one lost their life.

There was one young man near her own age, He just happened to have the unfortunate luck to be visiting friends when the flood struck, but his looks, the way he carried himself, sent a shiver of joy (or was it apprehension) through her being. Flower had never known love, only pain and fear she lived daily, but this—this was different. Whatever this feeling called love, had drawn her right to him like a moth to flame.

After the flood had dissipated, William actually came to her house.

“I want to personally thank you for the extraordinary work you have done. Were it not for you, this town would have perished.”

“Why, thank you, William.”

“No, it is I who thanks you, Flower. You have done us all a service that I am not sure could be repaid properly. But—I would like to invite you to be my guest at a friend's home tomorrow evening for dinner and perhaps some dancing? You do dance?”

Flower laughed.

“It seems ages ago since I have, but I do remember how.”

“Good. Then it is settled. I shall arrive at five tomorrow afternoon. Dinner is at six.” With that, William gently raised Flower’s right hand and kissed it gently. Then he was gone.

The rest of that day into the night hours before sleep, she couldn’t stop smiling, as she sometimes pirouetted around several rooms humming a bright lovely tune.

“Run, Rosie, run! They are getting closer! I can hear them catching up!”

“Flower! Your hurt! The arrow! Let me help you up! We have to keep moving!”

“OW! It hurts Rosie! It hurts so bad! I can’t, can’t run any longer ….”

Flower woke up drenched in sweat, reliving the truth of what happened.

That man, Hamilton saved their lives and she nearly lost her leg, but she carries a painful reminder. A jagged five-inch scar along her calf, and a permanent limp because of it.

Suddenly, she didn’t feel like dancing.

September 1811

The weather was just beginning to cool, and Chadwick was once again at a crossroads. The survey work had come to an end and his travels has taken him north into Kentucky.

He had taken time to rest in a small town called Logan. The horse given him was part of his severance pay and of course it beat walking. For a dollar, he had his horse, Friendly, taken care of and fed at the local livery, found a small place to grab a meal and a room with a real feather-down bed. Until he laid down, he had almost forgotten what that felt like.

Chadwick was slowly making his way back home. It would be good to see mother and father again after years of being away. He had hopes of seeing his sisters as well, but he wasn’t betting that that would happen. But tonight, a long-awaited good night's rest was in order before he made his way home.

The following morning, after dressing and having a morning meal of cornbread, beef, and eggs and three cups of coffee, he made his way to the livery where he heard a commotion taking place.

“I said give me that knife or I’ll bash you into the ground, runt!”

“NO! It was a gift from my father for my birthday. He would tan my hide if’n I just up and let you have it!”

“Me and my friends here’ll do more than tan yer hide, whelp! We git done with you, there won’t be much to recognize.”

Still, from Chadwick’s view, the boy, rather thin, held his ground against the three older boys surrounding him. Chadwick had to give the boy credit. He was incredibly brave.

“You want this knife? You’ll have to take it from my dead body!”

That was all it took. The three boys were all over him. Thrashing fists landed over and over again. Still, the one who dared them fought back as best he could, and the odds were well against him.

Chadwick moved swiftly. Grabbing the collars of two boys, he wrenched them backward and the third he spun around and land ed a hard deep blow to the belly.

“I will say this but once—get out of here or you will get a beating like never before.”

They didn’t have to be told twice.

Turning to the boy with a cut lip and what would soon be a black eye, he helped him to his feet.

“Thanks, mister. Thank a lot.”

“Your welcome. I didn’t like the odds. My name is Chadwick Kincade.” He stuck out his hand of which the boy grabbed, and they shook hands heartily.

“I’m James Bowie but my friends call me Jim.”

“You must sure love that knife a great deal to take such a beating for it.”

“Yeah, I know, but it came from my father. He’s a smelter and made this knife for me for my birthday.”

“Then I can see why you fought back so hard. Good for you. May I see the knife.”

“Sure.” James reached down into his boot and pulled out a knife with a four-inch blade and handed it to Chadwick.

“Nice balance. Not heavy, not light and the bone handle has a nice feel in my grip.”

“Yeah, I like it and one day, I’m going to have a knife people will talk about for weeks. I’m thinking when I turn eighteen, father will make me the ultimate knife.”

“Well then—Jim, I wish you success in that, but I have to be going. On my way home to visit family.”

“Well, I do thank you again and if you ever come this way again, stop by to say hello.”

Twenty minutes later, Friendly was saddled and Chadwick started his ride north to Vermont.

Late June 1812

The War of 1812 took its toll in lives on both sides. One person was lucky enough to have a minor wound but was sent back from the front lines by his stepfather. Now, William Farragut had free time for at least ninety days.

One of the very first things he did was return to Flower.

When hearing a knocking at her front door, Flower opened it and a smile as long as the Mississippi River spread across her face.

“The war? Is it over?”

“It is for me, Flower. I rode here fast as I could because I have something important to ask you.”

”My, my, aren’t we in a hurry. Now that you are here, pray tell, kind sir, what is your question?”

“Flower Kincade, would you do me the honor of being my wife?”

October 1812

Chadwick stayed with his mother and helped to run the store for the better part of four months. He understood why she had such a difficult time explaining his father’s passing, considering it would be something she would have to do four times.

Know though, in the last thirty-five days, his mother, Hope, had taken ill, and the night of the thirty-first, she passed on in her sleep. The work, the responsibility, the continued worry over her children had taken their toll on Hope.

Chadwick no longer had a reason to stay and sold the store to a Mr. Alfred Brimford for a tidy profit which would become his stake for a new life.

He would find his sisters somehow and give them the grim news. In the process, he would search out new lands to call home, maybe buy a farm. He was young still, barely twenty and four. Surely, something out there was calling to him.

Grand Old Flag

From this one, you will learn why there are only thirteen stripes on the flag as well as the stars.

When Vermont (March 4, 1791) and Kentucky (June 1, 1792) came into the Union, Congress altered the standard flag of thirteen stars and stripes, to fifteen stars and stripes. In 1818 after Tennessee, Ohio, Louisiana, and Indiana joined the Union, Congress knew that before long, the flag would resemble an oversized quilt if they kept adding stripes for each new state. They reverted back to the original thirteen stripes and simply added a star for each new state.

On A Side Note: Andrew Jackson was the first president to be handed a baby to kiss during his campaign. He refused to kiss the infant and instead, he handed the baby over to the Secretary of War and said, “You kiss the wretched little bastard!”

A mirror standing darkly

reflecting what I see

the best and worst of you

the dark and light in me

An anchor in the chaos

weighing me down with love

holding me against the current

while my bouyancy floats above

A foil, a fence, a partner

pushing against my hold

pulling me across the dance floor

urging me to be more bold

A magnet -polar opposite

yet intimately connected

two sides of one coin flipped

two roads turned intersected

A duelist who embraces

A cad who always cares

A fellow who makes faces

and doesn't care who stares

My friend you may be a soulmate

Should we ever chance to meet

For I fear the reason no one finds them

is they forget to stop and simply greet

you can have more than one soulmate,

a cluster of stars in a dark sky,

you always know when you meet one,

there's something in their eyes

that you're sure reflects in yours

and you change~

into something bright and brilliant.

sometimes they stay for a while,

sometimes they burn and fade

after the promises of forever.

each one is beautiful

and make you

beautiful too.

A soulmate can be a lot of things. Everyone has a slightly different meaning when they say the word.

To me, a soulmate is a person who you know somewhere deep down in your soul, that they are meant to be something more to you than other people. Sometimes, that means they will be your best friend. Other times, they will be your lover. Or your spouse. And sometimes, they are more to you because they are sent as a lesson for you to learn.

I had a soulmate. He was beautiful and kind and sweet. When we met, there was this instanteous connection between us. It was unlike any bond I'd had with another person. I understood him and he understood me. But, he was not my friend or my lover or my spouse. He was a lesson for me to learn.

Some people don't get a sweet soulmate that stays by their side forever. Some of us get a soulmate who lives within us forever, but seperately in every other way.

For me, I can still feel echoes of his prescence. I'll hear a stupid joke that would make him laugh and I can feel him beside me in that moment. Or my dad does something horrible, and as the tears slide down my cheeks, I feel his gentle hands on my shoulders, comforting me.

He was an angel. He showed me such kindness in a time where I didn't get it anywhere else. But, he also showed me that I am enough for me.

My lesson to learn: You don't need anyone or anything to be enough.

My soulmate, he taught me that. In all his kindness, he also took my joy. We fought all the time. We'd argue and scream horrible things at each other. And sometimes, he made me feel small.

The thing was, I couldn't walk away from him. I loved him so much. I thought that love meant to never leave. But sometimes, love means loving someone enough to let go.

We were no good for each other. And I knew it, but I thought I was nothing without him. Until I learned that I could stand on my own, we continued to struggle and fight.

And when I finally realized that I was enough, it was over between us.

It's odd. I was so incredibly sad when it happened. I yearned for him, for that bond between us. But, because of that brokenness that I experienced from him, I healed in a way that I didn't realize I needed to.

I'll always be grateful for my soulmate because he taught me how strong I am. He taught me that I am enough.

Beauty is a double edged sword. I grew up thinking that beauty is pain. People find beauty in horror, and drama. I see beauty most clearly in the natural world. My struggle in finding my beauty, namely through anorexia, is in itself beautiful, and horrific. I grew up in a home where thin was beautiful. My mother was a ballerina in childhood and still struggles with her eating disorder. We both need to have control over our beauty, and we find that through limiting our calorie intake to the extreme. This started when I was a young child. My mother has major depressive disorder and had every intention to cook for us, but sometimes in the summer we would go days without a meal. This made me so grateful and appreciative if the food I did get, that every meal my mother made was beautiful. The first time I heard that beauty hurts I felt it in my core. This has been my struggle.

I feel that beauty and pain are interrelated in many ways, but it was clearly layed out in childhood for me. Then there is the struggle to have beautiful skin, hair, and for men, handsome bank accounts and cars. A lot of what we seem to define as beautiful seems superficial. I am learning to find beauty in what shows up in my scope of reality and recognize it as such. The gentle wave of my red hair. The glisten of my leg hair in the sun. The snailshell I found on a walk today. The vibrant yellows of the flowers. The caring nature of my aunt. The music I play with my cousin. I even find it beautiful that my uncle cannot sit still. I am learning to find the innate beauty of each individual who is not me, my surroundings, and myself. What I am getting at, is the journey from worshipping a grotesque idea of beauty to subtly finding it in everything I see and am and do has been beautiful. The beauty is related to the struggle, but the success is seeing that beauty doesn't have to be painful or hard.

Dear God, Gods, Goddess, Great Omnipotent Being (allegedly),

I want to stand on Mars please,

the only occupant.

Look up at the red night sky pregnant with cosmic beauty,

a universe naked in the absence of human-made light,

your great masterpiece of twinkling diamonds.

I want to watch a black hole feast on a star

and

fly too close to the Sun.

See dust swirl and float as I skip across the moon.

I want to view with my own eyes

the magnificence of life on another planet.

Discover the infinite possibilities.

White dwarf, dark matter, red giant,

I want to behold wonders unseen!

To witness a supernova

unleash its awesome power.

Glide through a nebula, yes please.

Gravity,

Mortality,

Hold tight.

Chains of known reality to bind me.

For now,

I shove my feet into comfy slippers to start the morning coffee.

Change to the cold familiarity of my gypsy boots,

brave the snow, ice and mud to free the tiny raptors.

Clucking away in ignorant bliss,

they scratch the earth for sustenance,

content to be free.

Feed and walk the dogs,

muddy boots painting a trail punctuated by pawprints.

Is life just a long series of shoe changes to fit the current terrain?

The secret knowledge of Mr. Rogers revealed.

Maybe I’m suppose to learn something and my reward for leveling up will be a tour of the universe? I'll learn anything you'd like for a prize such as that.

For now I drink my bittersweet coffee,

wiggle my toes back into soft slippers,

and daydream.

Futile musings of a curious mind.

Is science yet another religion?

A desperate need for answers,

to comprehend mysteries never meant to be decoded in this reality.

Too heavily encrypted for mental consumption.

Why did you give me such an inquisitive mind

then shackle me to the paperweights of others?

It is painful to think this much,

a dreadful neverending ache.

I am certain that ignorance really can be bliss,

but fear even the thought of not craving knowledge.

Knowledge is my addiction.

Devouring books and the knowing of others,

like a greedy black hole gobbles innocent stars.

Inciting the poetic chaos of my thoughts to birth their own galaxy of mysteries.

If you really do exist, why would you create an insatiable mind without the ability to process the data?

Perhaps you could simply share the password with me now?

I’ll wait as patiently as possible.

Password required: |