Toys of Desperation
Book 1: Firefly
Healing (renounced)
-one of three stones-
When is a door not a door?
Some say when it's ajar,
but I've come to find that answers blind,
will only get you so far.
This endless corridor?
Where the sun refuses to shine.
For the blind will soon see, eventually,
that a door is not a door within the mind.
“Even the good stars can fall from grace and falter
lose their faith and slide,
But I can't get an ocean that's deep enough for my day
and her last words were
'I was always thinking of you'
In my olden days I was a saint.”
The Frames
Chapter One: The Awakening
The ghost of a man lay still as a stone sleeping, dreaming dreams not of his own. We behold this man without any of his defenses, for he is in a place far beyond that of reason and rationality, invitation and inquiry, past the very bounds of all known mortality. There is a dark dimly lit hallway within each of us trailing off into the forever, where doorways stand sentinel as to the likes of crooked teeth in a con-mans smile. One day your own ship may sail off the ends of the earth, and you will come to find yourself within the small closed cornered.
He lies on his left side on a slow moving conveyor belt as we wait for him to wake. The scene itself is a peculiar one indeed, one unable to be properly appreciated unless we look down upon this stranger studying everything about him with acute scrutiny. Visualize him one detail at a time, the crew cut hair of black and the five o'clock shadow marching across his face. The hazel eyes, a cruel calculating serpentine littered with blue chips of ice, and his tiny threaded lips of disregard. All set in repose of a squarish face that is not at all uninviting, but retains the ability to impress not, unless someone is looking for something hidden within the features.
He is handsome, or once was before age (that subtle thief) stole his youth. His good looks of old only to be invoked by expressions of strong emotion matching the right light and angle. Soft spoken, shy, and timid, this shell of a man rarely smiles, and seems to have always been this way despite his many good intentions. Not that he was a hard man to please, by all means no, but truth be told he was just pleased very seldom in life. There was nothing much left to be pleased about, in such a world in which we all live, it is the way of the wanting and the way things are meant to be.
He wears regular blue jeans and a medium black Sweatshirt that reads “Nothingface” with bold crooked letters. His shoes are a common type of comfortable running shoe, and he wears boxers never briefs because they feel way too constrictive. The only article of clothing really worth mentioning is his jacket. A well worn black motorcycle jacket, one of those that zips up slightly to the right and buckles on the bottom like a belt. Strewn with silver buttons, each of them like little unpolished badges standing for past deeds since forgotten. His father gave him this jacket on his eighth birthday, which was his own childhood jacket before he developed the bald head, beer belly, and drinking habit. He once told him that it was magic and it would protect him from anything, something he actually believed until he was old enough too realize his dad was only good for telling stories and breaking promises and nothing else.
He wears a silver cross around his neck, his mothers, the only other thing to remind him of her ghost, besides the faded picture of her inside his wallet, for she died during his birth, something his father subconsciously blamed him for.
Now that the basics are down we construct this man as if he is some universal product on an assembly line ready to be shipped out. Absurd to think, I know...but in truth aren't we all. It actuality it's more to the truth than we'd all like to admit, isn't it? Being nothing more than phantom children of appearance and impressionability, wanton slaves to and of fashion, finesse, and fuckability.
All of us being nothing more nothing less than apparitions, discarded and broken pieces of flesh and bone dressed up to be pretty for wandering eyes. Yet in the end it amounts to much of the same, a jumble of left over scraps overused and abused. Silhouettes of what we once were being sent to the furnace to be melted down, recycled, and made anew over and over to be born again. . .hallelujah.
Soon he will awake and when he does it will be as if in a dream upon awakening, to the mysteries concerning himself and this endless corridor, a thing he will become all too familiar with and otherwise known as his own personal hell.
In the next few months this place will be his constant amongst all deceiving variable, leading him to countless other places of the in between. A home of sorts, the sort of thing that we have come to know . . . that home is a bastard. Something we can never escape, for it burns within ourselves. Whatever you call a thing it does not matter, a thing is only how you view it.
He stirs ever so slowly and flutters his eyes, moaning as he does.
Thump
...........Thump
......................Thump
Staring forward he narrows his cloudy vision by squinting, concentrating on what's before him, an attempt to make the world stop swimming. His right leg dangles down as the tip of his shoe drags along the foot long threshold of space on either side of the belt, tapping all the while with the conflicting friction. For a moment he just lays there watching the scenery frequently change, cycles in systematic order, a faded green wallpaper peeling at the edges bordered by some moldy yellowing trim encasing a dark charcoal door, followed by the same molding, then the green green wallpaper again. Repetition at its finest.
He realizes two things right away, then a distant third comes creeping out of the depths of himself and sends a chilling revelations down his spine.
The first two are simple complexes attuned to his senses, one is that he's laying on his side, the second is that he's moving and that's why it's hard for him to focus his vision. The third and final revelation . . . he does not remember who or where he is. Remembrance is a gift only those with Alzheimer and those who drink heavily on a constant basis come to appreciate. Other than that it is a gift taken for granted by everyone.
Following the bread crumb trail of his own recollection he's swallowed up by a relentless Maelstrom. Somewhere along the chain links of constant unanswerable questions he gets stuck. He's in one of those moods that hit you at the least appropriate times when one of those questions cause a chain reaction of pointless roundabouts. Either that or it's just a instinctual reaction where thinking is unavoidable and completely useless.
It's at this moment he is completely drenched in darkness, a darkness thick enough to drink and smooth enough to swallow. It's seems alive, with millions of eyes that seek him out, invade him, and finally drive right through him. Time stands still, in the matter of minutes feels like months, and when the light returns he feels aged and empty. As he lifts his head he watches the blackness retreat further and further into these narrow confines, and he understands that as it does, that darkness itself, has carried away with it the last shred of comfort he had left.
He uses his right hand to push himself up and rolls over into a sitting position, leaning back and propping himself up with his arms he comically blinks at the retreating shadows. Then he sees where he's heading, absolutely nowhere, the corridor stretches off endlessly. They say there is always a light at the end of every tunnel, what a lie. One thought, like a knife starts to cut away at the emptiness that is slithering over him, “What was that?”
As he sits here he starts to notice the details of the hallway and acknowledge his surroundings. There are great rows of dangling lights lined up in succession on the ceiling. Matching them are the doors, warped or bowed somehow (as if bent) in the middle toward the direction he is heading in. A tarnished brass knob sits on the bowed peek on their left sides. There are smashed clocks in-between every three doors on each side, a mirror image of adjacent symmetry. Then there is the moving floor below him bordered by about a foot of stationary space in front of the doors. Looking back reveals the same trailing off behind him, seems there is only one direction to go.
He tries to remember something, anything solid to hold on to. . . but nothing comes. A pounding in his head begins to match the pulsing floodlights streaming down from above.
He bends forward and grasps his head between his hands. Slowly he becomes aware that he's screaming out loud, the echo ricochets off the walls exponentially growing in volume. More and more this sensation seems to radiate through him. He looks up through watery eyes, the walls tower over him with a wavy warping affect, making them look as if they are the shaking branches of a tree in a storm. He lurches forward and throws up a pale substance, moments pass and the world rights itself, the migraine stops suddenly.
He leans forward holding and propping himself up with his right hand trying to control his breathing and racing heartbeat. Tiny white flecks implode before his eyes, reaching up with his left hand he dabs at his nose and finds blood when he looks down at it. He caresses the sticky substance within his fingers and speaks one word, “Fuck.”
Edited by Ransom, 10 December 2011 - 05:30 PM.
