"There's a dream I have where I sail away, and I'm looking back at you, and I wave goodbye..."
Caroline, Concrete Blonde.
"You could tell he was fighting his own personal demons, because you could see them."Anonymous.
Aia's old apartment was in one of those surreal medieval paintings where angels and demons battle across the Book of Revelations. It was not the kind of place where he would have preferred to live, but his circumstances, which were decidedly unusual, and the amazingly low rent, made it the only place (that he knew of) where he could actually survive and still maintain some degree of comfort. And it should be said that, as the place where he spent most of his early years, it was no doubt a great influence on him turning out quite the way he did.
Aia himself was neither particularly angelic or diabolical; as noted before, it is simply that this was the only environment where he knew he could support himself. Over the course of a few years he had a series of tedious jobs and a few pointless relationships, all of which ended with a sort of frustration and regret. In other words, his life was not decidedly different from the lives of young creatures anywhere, in any world.
Aia had an inherent sense of dissatisfaction with life -- again, like so many others out there -- which deprived him of any small happinesses that he might have felt, in his mildly eventful life. And like so many others in like situations, Aia hadn't the slightest idea how to change his life without throwing away what little he did find valuable, although this was the only thing he really thought about much.
But Aia was, at heart, a creature of action. He reached a point at which he had to do something, or else his own thoughts would drive him insane. And so, one day that was no different from the norm, he paid his last month's rent, quit his current meaningless job, ended his meaningless relationship of the moment, and walked off. And though it left him with a disturbing uncertainty as to what he was going to do next, he realized for the first time in a very long time that he felt some sense of satisfaction.
Mary walks the streets of Hell. From the way she tunes out the world around her and giggles sickly to herself, it might seem as though she's on drugs. But Mary hasn't been under the influence of anything for quite some time. She is one of those lonely souls who wander through that part of Hell laid out like a hopeless small town, where it is always that darkest moment before the dawn (which, of course, never comes), not feeling much of anything. Nowadays, this is the place where many of the souls who wander into the underworld end up, not all of whom do so by the more conventional means of dying. It seems that our collective unconscious has drifted away from the idea of Hell being made up of exquisite and elaborate tortures, and towards the simpler (but no less horrifying) idea that it is simply continuation of the disillusionment, dissatisfaction and frustration that seem to define life on earth.
More to come soon...
Last Updated March 24, 1998