A Gothic Dream
She opened her mouth and smoke billowed like morning fog, pouring out of every limb, like blood soaked sludge, the floor wet with her disgrace, crimson proof that she was human, filling the air with a sparkling, ebony, star-soaked stream.
She did not move, tears showing that she lived while she was wishing she was dead, the spit-upon half-dead, dwelling between the lines of existence, a blurry footnote on the world that despite all her efforts, all her reaches into the darkness on her left and the brightness on her right, never bothered to acknowledge her existence with anything but scorn or neglect, offering not even the joy of both, worthy of only one emotion at a time.
It was all in her head.
A nightmare that showed her so frail that their pebbles, cast like stones though they weighed so little, broke the crisp husk that she wore, crackling like airy wood hissing in the fire.
She could scream at the top of her lungs in a bellow to shake the sky, a thunderous exclamation, an edict of all that she was boiled down to a point of noise, of sound, not unintelligible but rather universal, and yet at the sound of her voice, the god of lightning and the heavens would merely rub his ear to dispel the sudden onset of a burning sensation.
Perhaps it was not as she had long feared it to be, that she went consistently unheard, but an alternate problem instead, that despite her precise vocalizations, she was traveling ignored, that all she thought she had to say was merely irrelevant to the rest of the population.
Hands grew into arms that pulled wide and grinned with dark gleaming eyes, claws that dug at her skin but could not break it, laughing at her pain as they scratched her eyes but did not pluck them out, a mere distortion to linger on everything she saw, scarring it all with faded white lines and flaring red streams of freshly remembered injuries.
A snow-covered path, tinted in blue, was laid out in the distance, a warm offering of peace and serenity, a place where no one knew her, because no one existed in the sacred, overhangs of sleeping, frozen ice trees that welcomed her with the joyous noise that only trees can make, the soundless shakes of glee untranslatable, unrecognizable, unacknowledgeable, and to all but each other unexisting, though she knew about them anyway, dreaming about them in the fantasy of her mind where all real things were transformed into the world she wanted to exist but knew never would. It beckoned her with copper light and the threat of comfort, of unmarked snow, free from the marches of the humanities stalking her in consistent, thunderous tones that demanded conformation, required acquiescence to this North Korean march of belief in mediocrity and separation of life and purpose, the necessity of a life spent unremarkably, building day after day like uniformed blocks of equal size and shape, until you were left with nothing behind but the sliming trail of a human snail.
She did her best to push off from the ground, to leave the shallow dirt behind, but the lullaby call was too much to break away from, a warm bed on a cold day and she’d never had much luck getting up in the morning, and she saw she had no way to answer the marshal cry of heroics screaming for blood in the distance, too burdened to rise, too broken to fly, with wings barely strong enough to hold her thoughts and talons too weak to grip her heart, even though it became lighter by the minute, shedding unwanted blood like clothing under the hot, hot sun, as she sent her mind bolting for freedom, having no idea what lay beyond the horizon, only knowing that here was not what she was meant for, thinking that death could be a purpose as well, if God had it all planned out that who was she to interrupt it, because if she was meant for something else, it would never work, and she would wake when she meant to sleep forever and she would know she’d been told to move along, to ignore everything she felt and burn all the thoughts she’d written down, because clearly they were wrong, since, after all, humanity was flawed.
She was the king of self-destruction, a master saboteur, and possessing unparalleled skill in taking her own thoughts and flighty emotions and transforming them into a ruling doctrine by which to run her life, measure the rest of humankind, and build the scalding glare that she used to call all things “existence without purpose,” a slightly mocking laugh sure to follow, one born of fear to cover her own insecurities but grown into a disbelief of the vast stupidity of those around her, their small obsessions, all built around the core understanding that while she was horrible, at least she was capable of recognizing her own wickedness.
They were cows, they were fodder underneath her feet, but if only she could understand them, if she could follow them like a ghost, with only her thoughts chasing them, capable even of drifting into their mind for their point of view, to comprehend things the way only one person did, to visit the world from their eyes and see things only they did or hear the thoughts only they heard, to turn the world into a movie she could see in any light she wanted simply through an exchange of eyes, oh that is what she’d want, desiring it only second to one thing, the wish she kept closest to her heart and nearest the surface, but in a cove where no one would see, the whisper she will not even whisper here because the stronger the thought exists, the more she despairs that she does not have it…
And she ends with silence before she begins speaking, unwilling to risk the faint conclusion she has drawn, giving into selfishness and wrapping her body tight in a blanket, giving into sleep and the grand notion that she is a horrible, horrible person, so why have they expected anything else, for she has given all she can, and for the rest…
She doesn’t want it anymore.
Her soul is bound by flesh and hair, too much, and it nauseates her, the person in the mirror unfamiliar though she can’t remember how she should appear, where she is from, or what she has done to be banished to this place, and yet, there is this nagging thought that a prison, a true prison, should not be so easy to escape, but we don’t yet know if it will work, maybe they just never thought she’d remember what was wrong, so she is left with the piercing, pleading hope that the next time her eyes open, it is into a far better world.
The hardest lesson that she had to learn was that once she was gone, no matter where she went, all the things she’d missed, all the things she’d done, and any regrets she might have had, would no longer matter, because Hell would keep her too busy, Heaven would give her everything she wanted, and darkness or any spin of the wheel would be beyond even the concept of memories, and selfishness flared again, as she knew she wouldn’t truly care about the ruin left behind, though the realization that she didn’t really care now struck her hard, but the pain of existence struck her harder.
She knew it was time to go, that perhaps she had even stayed too long, so lazy that it took years to build up the motivation for this act, but emotion was dead inside her, no hate nor anger, no love, that she could look upon a child she should care about without question or reserve and barely even bring interest in his wellbeing was a sign of the monster she’d become.
Who could call the Failure brave?
They made her this way.
They broke her.
And it took all she had to force herself to cry.
To care enough to force herself to die.
She did not move, tears showing that she lived while she was wishing she was dead, the spit-upon half-dead, dwelling between the lines of existence, a blurry footnote on the world that despite all her efforts, all her reaches into the darkness on her left and the brightness on her right, never bothered to acknowledge her existence with anything but scorn or neglect, offering not even the joy of both, worthy of only one emotion at a time.
It was all in her head.
A nightmare that showed her so frail that their pebbles, cast like stones though they weighed so little, broke the crisp husk that she wore, crackling like airy wood hissing in the fire.
She could scream at the top of her lungs in a bellow to shake the sky, a thunderous exclamation, an edict of all that she was boiled down to a point of noise, of sound, not unintelligible but rather universal, and yet at the sound of her voice, the god of lightning and the heavens would merely rub his ear to dispel the sudden onset of a burning sensation.
Perhaps it was not as she had long feared it to be, that she went consistently unheard, but an alternate problem instead, that despite her precise vocalizations, she was traveling ignored, that all she thought she had to say was merely irrelevant to the rest of the population.
Hands grew into arms that pulled wide and grinned with dark gleaming eyes, claws that dug at her skin but could not break it, laughing at her pain as they scratched her eyes but did not pluck them out, a mere distortion to linger on everything she saw, scarring it all with faded white lines and flaring red streams of freshly remembered injuries.
A snow-covered path, tinted in blue, was laid out in the distance, a warm offering of peace and serenity, a place where no one knew her, because no one existed in the sacred, overhangs of sleeping, frozen ice trees that welcomed her with the joyous noise that only trees can make, the soundless shakes of glee untranslatable, unrecognizable, unacknowledgeable, and to all but each other unexisting, though she knew about them anyway, dreaming about them in the fantasy of her mind where all real things were transformed into the world she wanted to exist but knew never would. It beckoned her with copper light and the threat of comfort, of unmarked snow, free from the marches of the humanities stalking her in consistent, thunderous tones that demanded conformation, required acquiescence to this North Korean march of belief in mediocrity and separation of life and purpose, the necessity of a life spent unremarkably, building day after day like uniformed blocks of equal size and shape, until you were left with nothing behind but the sliming trail of a human snail.
She did her best to push off from the ground, to leave the shallow dirt behind, but the lullaby call was too much to break away from, a warm bed on a cold day and she’d never had much luck getting up in the morning, and she saw she had no way to answer the marshal cry of heroics screaming for blood in the distance, too burdened to rise, too broken to fly, with wings barely strong enough to hold her thoughts and talons too weak to grip her heart, even though it became lighter by the minute, shedding unwanted blood like clothing under the hot, hot sun, as she sent her mind bolting for freedom, having no idea what lay beyond the horizon, only knowing that here was not what she was meant for, thinking that death could be a purpose as well, if God had it all planned out that who was she to interrupt it, because if she was meant for something else, it would never work, and she would wake when she meant to sleep forever and she would know she’d been told to move along, to ignore everything she felt and burn all the thoughts she’d written down, because clearly they were wrong, since, after all, humanity was flawed.
She was the king of self-destruction, a master saboteur, and possessing unparalleled skill in taking her own thoughts and flighty emotions and transforming them into a ruling doctrine by which to run her life, measure the rest of humankind, and build the scalding glare that she used to call all things “existence without purpose,” a slightly mocking laugh sure to follow, one born of fear to cover her own insecurities but grown into a disbelief of the vast stupidity of those around her, their small obsessions, all built around the core understanding that while she was horrible, at least she was capable of recognizing her own wickedness.
They were cows, they were fodder underneath her feet, but if only she could understand them, if she could follow them like a ghost, with only her thoughts chasing them, capable even of drifting into their mind for their point of view, to comprehend things the way only one person did, to visit the world from their eyes and see things only they did or hear the thoughts only they heard, to turn the world into a movie she could see in any light she wanted simply through an exchange of eyes, oh that is what she’d want, desiring it only second to one thing, the wish she kept closest to her heart and nearest the surface, but in a cove where no one would see, the whisper she will not even whisper here because the stronger the thought exists, the more she despairs that she does not have it…
And she ends with silence before she begins speaking, unwilling to risk the faint conclusion she has drawn, giving into selfishness and wrapping her body tight in a blanket, giving into sleep and the grand notion that she is a horrible, horrible person, so why have they expected anything else, for she has given all she can, and for the rest…
She doesn’t want it anymore.
Her soul is bound by flesh and hair, too much, and it nauseates her, the person in the mirror unfamiliar though she can’t remember how she should appear, where she is from, or what she has done to be banished to this place, and yet, there is this nagging thought that a prison, a true prison, should not be so easy to escape, but we don’t yet know if it will work, maybe they just never thought she’d remember what was wrong, so she is left with the piercing, pleading hope that the next time her eyes open, it is into a far better world.
The hardest lesson that she had to learn was that once she was gone, no matter where she went, all the things she’d missed, all the things she’d done, and any regrets she might have had, would no longer matter, because Hell would keep her too busy, Heaven would give her everything she wanted, and darkness or any spin of the wheel would be beyond even the concept of memories, and selfishness flared again, as she knew she wouldn’t truly care about the ruin left behind, though the realization that she didn’t really care now struck her hard, but the pain of existence struck her harder.
She knew it was time to go, that perhaps she had even stayed too long, so lazy that it took years to build up the motivation for this act, but emotion was dead inside her, no hate nor anger, no love, that she could look upon a child she should care about without question or reserve and barely even bring interest in his wellbeing was a sign of the monster she’d become.
Who could call the Failure brave?
They made her this way.
They broke her.
And it took all she had to force herself to cry.
To care enough to force herself to die.
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