I found my name on a grain of sand, while I fell and slipped in these lands. “I just want to know what you see,” he asked. “Who?” I confusionally muttered outwards. “You.” he said. “Me?” I uttered, still confused as to who.
“Many people fall into grain elevators before the time they turn 20,” he said matter of factly, pulling out a sheared edge piece of paper along with a ballpoint pen, he struck downward a notch on the sheet, “They account for the top cause of official undocumented deaths in North America and Europe.”
“Oh, that seems to make sense to me given the conditions of stacked barley.” I said grasping at my knowledge of farming, “That seems quite frightening to sink- with nothing to grasp”
“Well yes,” he rattled. “From survivors' reports, they vary in terms of experience, some report immense understanding of the mechanisms that have led them here, while others report a quenching nothingness and denomination of themselves, alongside a plethora of other thoughts.”
“That doesn’t seem awful, to become aware during their insufflation seems proactive to maintaining a semblance of continuation.” I said, while thinking of the absurdity of this seemingly common death. Thinking forward I asked “ How is it that this is so commonly uncommonly known about?”
“I’ve often wondered the same thing, its not known how many people have actually survived these situations, and we entrust the reports of mass casualties to the survivors of these events.” He responded quite quickly. “Though, as time goes on the reports have been seemingly continuous.”
“...”
“Alas, I must go now. I have further places to reach.”He said while standing up. “Please take care when sharing in the collective nutrition of a populus, substantiation is exactly what can create a stagnation in civilizations. It is better to cough out what has crushed you than to keep it sinking you. Even the rat scurries away with its rations.”
And just like that, I was gone. I was sitting at the park bench. I set my pipe down, quite confused as to what happened. Looking outwards around me, I was back surrounded by the concrete towers and glass panes that overlapped the outskirts of this greenspace. The crystals I scored from my contact have been especially animated lately. Laughable but taunt with some intelligence behind them. It feels like placing a loaded revolver into my mouth and pulling back the trigger everytime I go to take my first hit. I'm always reminded of how immense the world is beyound the typical filters projected around us.
Nestled under a bridge down by this concrete channel, the civic patrol seems to not notice me here. There's two doors barred on each side of the bridge. They are usually filled with some decent tags, and posters. I've always wondered where those doors lead to, I'm not even sure who I could ask. Some peoplel have asked me if I knew, I would tell them it was acess to an underground military base. I had one aquaintance believe this was the truth, little did I know in my future I would have a manager sit dowwn and open up to me about a very similar truth he had discovered over a decade ago.
"The goverment has patented invisibility cloaks, that are currently being traded on the ghost market. As we speak, there are currently thousands of tanks sitting in the desert completly cloaked, waiting on the presidental order to mobilize on Allepo." He then spent the next 20 minutes, looking for this one video that showed the technology in action. We never found the video, because the goverment did a mass sweep of the internet around this time.
"Currently, the major sites of alien research facilitites are red-herons. It's meant to keep the public distracted from the real truth; that the mountains of Utah have been hallowed out and turned into a huge metropolis. They have moved the richest of the rich into them, and they currently have a fully functioning society away from us. Members of the military and their families are allowed to enter, but it's the type of place that once they go in, they are never allowed to leave."
I was pretty intrigued about this information, the thought had never crossed my mind that our species has returned to a subterranean existance. I wasen't exactly confident in his world view, but it was inspiring to see a man so adamantly convinced of an earthy truth. I unfortunaly do not have that spirit; I cannot at this point in my life truly be convinced that I am even alive. Maybe with some conviction, I could belive that their is somebody beyound these thoughts; as it stands, I am breathing and walking in a storm of one thousand swords clashing above me.
I think the name of the city is arbitrary, This place was my escape from the cycles I found myself in out east, which never seemed to mesh well with the locals. Here felt different at least for a little while, but like all things, they must end. I’m very tired of the city, but then again I’m very tired of everywhere I go. The lack of reason haunts me, the inability to make anything happen beyond survival taunts me. I run towards something just for the sake of running, it brings me nowhere, I’m still here.
Repetition, growth and deterioration; Is this what it is going to be every time? The events of the day seemingly pushing me towards a neutrality that is neither getting traction or losing space. How is it that this place seems to get worse though nothing has changed for me? The chasm behind me has seemingly gained sediment, and the prior slope in front of me has been chiseled into a shear water cliff. Seemingly held here, I’ve gained the appreciation of the land of limbo. The apathetic acceptance of my existence here, where the dust of the boulder can no longer be pushed. Sure, I still can still sludge up whatever fragments remains of it behind me, and mix it with what water that trickles in. The quality that the sculpted construct results in, allows its idea to be held, but not to be used.
It’s a true sorrow to have in your hands what could and has been by others crafted into immaculation, to turn from mud to dirt under your touch. A constant sigh where even its weight has lost the meaning that it reached towards. My conditions, are they solely shaped by me, are they the result of my interior composition, am I to blame for what lives inside of me? If I’m not, the perversion of a world to claim my own as is, is as it placed me atop its throne to reap its harvest and rejoice in its perpetual cycle of contentment. Strung along in a visceral puppet show, as a figurehead of our times of universal success and bounty; the result of the causality of either source. Something tells me it's the latter, between these two forces at play.
Day in and day out. It's unnerving how much I've forgotten in my waking life, places I’ve spent an eternity in, spaces I’ve called home while running away from this joke. Hidden nooks that are found in between certain words, it kills me that I’ve forgotten the map and the secret passages around. Where can I go from here, what else can I say that isn’t already implied? It's obvious that what I see in my waking life is nothing short of a dream of the sea. How can I even describe this ship I sail, I’m as tied to its confines as much its knots are to its beams. Everywhere I harbour, I’m greeted with the presence of those who've never rode the depths. Those who claim the neighborhood's pond is a feat to row from shore to shore, they are still there.
The dead never rest for long, as we can never forget our end. We are cursed to remain alert, we refuse to be recycled by the ether of our mother state, to be reinfected by its malady contained on shore. May we starve before we eat man, may we kill before we are appraised, may we not die by the plight of stab wounds in our sides. May our success be mirrored by the horrors held in our shattered minds, may we never be caught resting in shallow tides. Where we’re from, the waves are stained red, the water a tonic so toxic it cannot quench.
Glory does not leave these waters, I cannot keep what I’ve captured, it only leads to death. Every quest, only leads me closer to one of my ends. I’m not the first, and I won’t be the last, sooner or later they will replace me with you. As the last man went missing from in his chambers, we had been aimlessly drifting in the cradle of the horizon for some time in the inland sea. Sleepily rocking back and forth in the swell of inconsistent currants. This ghastly crew is anything but lazy, even as the captain slept, we tied our knots and tended to our posts.
With the end of this day, we set speed apart from the continent, on the tail stream that leads from the lake to the mouth of the dark salt sea, into the abyss of unconquered domain.