Tuesday, March 18, 2008


I don't use drugs; my dreams are frightening enough. - M.C. Escher.




Walking down the path, he couldn't feel his legs - they seemed to be walking their own path. Like those times when you've walked so long, but you're walking further, and you seem to be moving on your own accord. Floating, with no sensation; lost, in thoughts and considerations and fantasies that distract. He found there to be no destination that he had in mind, nothing to look forward to. There was only the walk; and a strange restlessness that pervaded his being, marking his thoughts with an urgent need to be elsewhere, doing something of true import and meaning, stretching beyond the confines of his narrow life.

He was in a featureless place, and there was nothing but the path, and nothing to occupy his senses. No breathtaking sights; not even sights that might cause him to continue watching. All there was a dark sky, starless and cloudless; flat ground.

And the path - paved in gold, and with yellow milestones that passed, with no indication that there was any destination that they were heralding. No numbers. No guidance, and no points of reference.

He dreamed within the dream. He dreamed of lives of meaning. Of companions of learning, of whispered conversations in the moonlight with glasses of wine with friends and lovers of things that had come and gone, of the structure of the universe, and the structure of the human mind. Of whether there was only what one perceived, and not what truly existed. The reduction of reality to electrochemical impulses in the brain. Of the nature of a reality where there was no pain.

Pain, acting as a guide. Basic instincts which keep you from harm. What would happen without them, he said aloud to his companions. How would you know where you were going? One of them laughed, swigged the blood coloured spirit in his hand, and said - you could measure the distance travelled with the blood you leave behind. The lack of pain would deaden you to the monotony of existence. Pain makes you strive. The hallmark of a tedium that owns you is one that causes you no pain, not until you're caught. And there is realisation, and a thought that salvation lies only on the other side. And you just keep on walking. In the hope that you are still whole when you get there. For even if you are on your knees, and you're submitting, you might just escape.

Suddenly, his little fantasy faded. He was back on the path. After some minutes of walking, his gaze shifted downwards. He noted without much surprise the sharp ground that he was walking on without footwear. The world exists, he thought, without the brain realising a lot of it. Without pain, it would realise less. The only way to truly know existence was to see the blood you leave behind. He turned his head to see miles of red behind him. His bleeding feet, torn; with chunks of flesh being cut by sharp rocks. Yet, there was no sensation, and no escape.

There was only the walk.

He began to whistle jauntily, as his big toe fell away. Life would only be on the other side. Perhaps it was fatalist, but he might as well try and make it there.

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He awoke - slowly, as if he was coming out of a warm bath. A slow emergence, a heavy brain trying to emerge through the clinging fog.

Another day. He had to face the nightmares.

Thursday, March 13, 2008

Reflections.



As he raised his clenched fist, he recalled his observation - that reflections aren't ever accurate; they cannot be.

His fist came crashing down upon the glass, and blood flew, as he tried to make it as accurate as it could be.

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Slow thoughts trickled down his mind, teasing slowly, like the sensation of sweat moving over skin. The prickling feeling that moved to the forefront of his consciousness and made all other thoughts unviable and difficult. Obscuring, irritating, and yet alluring in a strange fashion.

He moved, shifting his weight, as he considered the nature of human character and the many conflicting impulses it engenders within. How every course of action, every choice is an amalgamation of all the different facets of you that drag you off in different directions. About how the many desires that one has can cause such a dilemna that is not easily explained or sorted out, for the many different perspectives which cause a rational mind to come to different conclusions, simply because of the different weights you give to different considerations.

He looked down upon her trussed up form, wondering what to do with her. He traced the curve of her jaw with his knife, and smiled as she strained to move away from the weapon. He smiled at this, and yet inside he felt disgust at his own actions. Remarkable. He loved eliciting reactions to stimuli within himself.

He hated using himself and other people like lab rats. Manipulating them, controlling conditions, opening some doors to make them run into mazes, chasing something elusive, while you watch from above. He loved the sense of power, the way he could determine their actions, decide who gets to live or die. He loved the look of abject terror in his victim's face. He hated the way they screamed. He loved the way he could cut it off. He hated the smell of death. He loved the sight of blood on his hands.

He paused once more, and marvelled once more upon the inherent strangeness of a fragmented brain. About the convoluted nature of man. Of how misleading it was to state that someone was single-minded. How stupid the concept of 'second thoughts' as a specific instance.

We all doubt. We all second guess ourselves. We always hate what we do, and love what we do, all at the same time. There are no absolutes. No images. No identities, just a cacophony of connected images separated bizzarely from each other yet fitting in perfectly to form a visage that truly represented the fractured reflection of a tortured and torn human being. He realised that mirrors were false, for they showed one image and one person; but a person was many, and existed in many places and thoughts at the same time. The real person was a fractured reflection of his broken physical self.

He turned to see himself. He saw it wasn't true. He decided to fix things.

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Three years later, law enforcement finally caught up with him, he was found in a room with a broken mirror, writing apologies on the wall. The victim's face had been cut in a disjointed spider-web pattern, and he was caught laughing and crying alternatingly. He begged forgiveness from the world one second, and tried to kill all of it, or at least the parts of it near him trying to keep him in custody during the other.

The papers found on him were a long psychological treatise upon the variegated nature of human thought, reflected in the many fissures in society.

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He was found dead in his cell three days later, killed by a shard of mirror that had somehow come into his possession. Investigation revealed his left hand had been found attempting to stop the right.