Experiment #2

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A cold red eye winks at me…

Icy, distant points of white light laugh at my poor state. I see Death's scythe hanging before me, streaked in red like the blood in my veins. Could it sweep a little closer? Closer? Can't it come closer?

I've hated before this. But the hate that I feel now is unfathomable. Whom do I hate? Why, nobody, nobody…just life that's all. Life in its hideous, cruel sense of humor. So distant am I from the joyous and rapturous society of people. Years distant at the speed of a bolt of energy into the void.

I try not to whine. Nobody enjoys being around a local min. But I'm sure that anybody would given my piece. My damned lot. My place in space, if you will. Here, on this rock in the middle of Nothing, this worthless ball of dirt and ice. I don't care about the money, I cared about that when I was Alive.

The eye sheds energy onto this place but makes it no warmer. Black and white, light and absolute darkness…the stiff boundaries that define my world. Only here in the Nothing can it be so.

I wait but the blade only beckons and comes no closer. The mind swims, lurches, lapses into memories of days, weeks, years gone by. Spitting out incoherent particles of life. Screaming, a distant keening sound, a clatter, the sharp tinkle of broken crystal. Dogs barking? White fades to black, light to dark, a pinpoint…a tunnel with a red eye glaring at the end…the world spins on the axis that is driven right through the bloodshot center.

The blade – the stained silver! Better by my own hand than at the discretion of the lungs, but I am helpless. My equipment won't let me pass. The crackling of a radio, anybody, anybody? Transmit, receive, transmit. Desperate need of a soul, a companion.

This way and that, thus and so, gray particles dance in my eyes. Finally it has come.

Is this the meaning? The way? The endless cycles of time have a surreal termination for me…here?

Please, believe me…

I didn't want to face the dark…

To go alone is to die unwanted. To fade away silently into the inky darkness unnoticed and uncared for. A mere statistic.

Peace.
Andrew W. 7/99

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