I am a black hole. All consuming, ever lasting. Small, spoken for worlds reverbrate around me, some condensed, some burnt. I can feel them all become part of me. I swallow the forest and become the single leaf suspended among a series of dark greenery hanging upon an ancient woodstick. I have no stomach but I must eat. The planets I crunch, the stars, cadavric beings of light, disappear. I am breaking the fabric of the universe. The I that exists is what slowly stiffens its expansion, that of the neverending river. I am a rock, a giant rock, serving as a damn. A rock with a mouth, a mouth that must drink it all in, suck the river dry. The cosmic pages, disintegrate, yet more take their place. The more I eat, the hungrier I become. I chew on moons and savor the taste, but it all fades into my endless void.
My role is endless destruction. I am a rift of pure amalgamated indulgence, born to purge this universe of its unnecessary vitals. I prune and cut out empty calories, but in doing so I bend and break the shape of everything.
Lethargy, N(eo), Plus
“I’m going to die tomorrow.”
I was struck by this thought today. Or rather, less a thought, and more a feeling of inexplicable dread, an inevitable certainty born from nothing. I’ve never really feared death, even knowing I could go at any moment, and yet somehow, I suddenly gained a hyperawareness of my own mortality, as if the window pane through which I viewed the world cleared up and I was finally able to see the impending comet that was set to destroy everything. I don’t recall what set off this feeling exactly, but I haven’t been able to shake it off. This premonition has followed me everywhere, no matter what I did, no matter how much I tried to drown myself in the noise of distractions, I’ve been unable to escape it.
I remembered I will die. It could be tomorrow. It could even be tonight.
“the most electrifying literary event of the year” was about to start in two hours and I had still not jacked any passes. I had a last resort right outside the venue, but the title of “last resort” really was a fitting one, as I wasn’t really in a mood to engage in any sort of transaction with a guy who spent his days snorting cocaine and flipping over tables at random restaurants. He was infamous for his mood swings, and on two occasions had actually gotten arrested after fighting potential customers. The reasons for that remained elusive as the rumors swelled, but regardless of his infamy, the man on drugs had somehow always managed to pull up with the hottest tickets in town. Most of us have long begun to suspect his connections to the people in charge, but no one’s said anything yet. In any case, I still had some time to try some stuff before I could even consider approaching that dude.
I walked around the block twice or thrice, hoping to sneakily stumble upon someone who no longer had any need for theirs, but I quickly sobered up and realized what an idiotic waste of time this was. If someone really had no more need of their tickets, they’d probably put them up for sale online instead of going all the way out here for absolutely no reason whatsoever. I checked the sites, still nothing. I triple texted an acquaintance of mine only to be left on read, then gave up and decided to risk it with the guy. As I got back to the venue’s entrance, he was no longer crouching on the left side, right in front of the alley. I went inside the alley just to be sure, but still nothing. It was incredible, the one night I needed him was the one time he ever took off early. Could it be that he had already run out? Probably not, the likelier option was that his crazy psychotic mind had urged him to take his talents elsewhere, like the gutter or some shit.
Left with no choice, I decided to return home. I told myself that it would have been a stupid fucking reading anyway. But as I refreshed the site on my phone out of sheer habit, a single ticket somehow popped up, to which I immediately clicked on and bought without a moment’s hesitation. My movements had been robotic and unyielding, desperate to grasp the last token that would allow me access to a moment in time and space that I couldn’t quite visualize.
The vision I’d conceived was one of culture and readings, the one I’d received was wildly different. Apparently, the word “electrifying” had been much more literal than I had been led to believe. The rows of people seated in front of a stage that I envisioned was nowhere to be seen, instead replaced by mangled, electric figures walking around and mingling among themselves. One of them tried to shake my hand, but as soon as I got electrocutred, quickly pulled back and mumbled an apology. I appraised this creature, observing its blue, bobby shape, the see-through skin, the skeletal core and the small, sharp bursts of light that would prove to be a danger to me would I try to come into contact with it again. I knew I was hallucinating, any reaction out of me would be pointless and would only disrupt the event, so I acted casually and sat at a table right at the edge of the story, facing a large windowstill.
I pretended to be engrossed in a magazine while listening to two of these odd creatures converse behind me, but really all I could make out was a bunch of gibberish. There was no pattern or rhythm to these sounds either, they seemed truly alien to me. Maybe I was in the middle of a mental breakdown, undergoing spiritual psychosis, watching the world change around me as I waited for something to happen. I didn’t dare move, hoping they all would leave me alone. I wouldn’t know what to say if someone came up to me and attempted to strike up a conversation, but none ever did. Maybe it was the way I made myself shrink into a shell of my own conception that convinced them to remain at paces behind this lone, sick being. After a little while had passed, this conglomeration of lifeforms gathered into a large circle, which was the cue that the reading was finally about to commence, but I couldn’t enjoy any of it. I got out of my seat and tried to slip out, but the door was slammed shut. I could feel some of their eyes on me, but as I grabbed the handle of the door in a panic, it suddenly melted onto my hands as a candle would. I considered asking someone for help, but didn’t want to embarass myself, so kept fumbling around and tried to shake off the melted handle that had stuck to my hand. I felt steps slowly making their way to me from behind, so I threw my shoulder against the door and slammed it open with as much force as I could, then took off running.
I didn’t know where I was going, but I kept running. Everywhere I looked, reality distorted. I was being chased by aliens, and anywhere I went wasn’t safe anymore, I had to go home and lock myself in my room where I would be safe from all these predators who wanted nothing else but to devour my very soul. I ran until I met a blockade of trees lined up against the rock, blocking my path. I turned around and saw those creatures still chasing me and promptly ducked into the nearest building I could find which turned out to be an empty cafe. A humanoid creature fully clad in dark blue fur told me that shutting the door would keep these aliens out, and so I did.
I sat at a booth and asked it what it was, and its answer was that the world was changing, and that everyone was starting to change alongside it. I asked what that meant, but it stayed silent and offered me coffee. I asked if it had hot chocolate instead, and it obliged, and so there I sat, facing a strange blue oddity, drinking some out of a light blue mug while the outside world shifted.
And so I write again. Once more, I take a seat and face that endless void of infinity. I fancy myself a God, and begin to unravel parts of my soul, weaving them into a world, breathing movement into a universe that up to this moment did not feel the presence of time, nor that of space. In my eyes I can see it all at once, the very first moments of its birth, and the cutoff at the end, where I am left to abandon this world once more to become but a mere observer. What will happen after that last sentence, I wonder? Will they continue to live, or will they crumble and perish?
I leave that world to collect dust, and turn my attention to the dozens of stories I’ve left untold, unfinished, unburdened with the act of closure, suspended in a timeless action. Some of them are cut off during parts of a dialogue, a character who will never finish their sentence. Others have had the dignity to not ceaselessly stop abruptly in the middle of a sentence, but still seem to not go on. Did they know that very last sentence would be the last one they would ever experience? Who knows.
I wonder if the reality I live in is similarly being written, constructed by a pen who has weaved these billions of thoughts, seperated into small vessels. Maybe I am the product of a self evolving world, whose ideas continue to spiral, only capable of being ended by a total stoppage. When will my last sentence be? Will I feel it approaching, or will it be abrupt? Will I have the opportunity to speak of myself as a whole and as I have been, or will my life speak for itself?
Stephen’s dead. They found his body slumped over on his living room table, mouth drooling blood. He apparently had a book on “essential writings in theology” opened right in front of him as well as an open can of Dr Pepper, so they claimed it was likely a medical emergency rather than an intentional dissolution of himself. I never bothered checking in later to ask if they had confirmed that theory, anyways.
The funeral took place on a sunday, but I again didn’t go. Later on, I was told by Emma that the process had been interrupted by an angry drunk who stumbled in and had promptly been kicked out by the angry, grieving mob. She never asked me why I skipped out, that was probably because she understood, or maybe she felt like I wouldn’t give her an answer regardless, who knows. I spent a couple of hours walking up and down the hillside of that large park in the center of the city. I wasn’t really grieving, or at least I didn’t think I was. I just wanted to move. I needed to forget, and stop thinking. But the more I walked, the more I was flooded with images I would have rather forgotten. I wondered if I should have gone to the funeral, saw the body. Maybe that was the reason it hadn’t really hit me yet, because I hadn’t seen him gone, so in my mind he was simply in another place where I may or may not ever see him again, which I guess is also true in that sense.
As I laid down on the grass for a breather, staring at the large lake at the bottom of the hill, I felt a vibration in my pocket, I’d forgotten to turn my phone off. I considered doing so now, but felt like if I took it out now I’d just get sucked back in that spire of senseless distractions and woul be reminded by everything that was happening. Right now, I needed to just be one with the hill, I needed to be a blade of grass that did nothing but shiver when touched by the wind. But no matter how much I tried, I couldn’t become grass. I instead morphed into a person who looked just like me, but was not me. I watched through that person’s eyes as they and Stephen poured a mountain of hot sauce on their plates of chicken, each taking a huge bite and then proceeding to recoil in pure agony as each of them claimed to “not feel a thing” while simultaneously reaching for the cup of milk that had been placed there as a mere “caution”. I watched as Stephen took a gulp of that milk and still insisted that he felt nothing and that he was only drinking to satiate himself while the person laughed at him before also taking a chug of their own.
I have to give up myself for a while.
The composition of which I had filmed large fragments of, a huge chunk of time spanned, was rejected. Lack of conflict, as they said. But still, that was what we’d aimed for. Capturing reality, everyone says that, but one does, even as easy as it is. I wonder what would happen if someone tried to build a camera that filmed infinitely, and was large enough to record the entire planet. In other words, permanent, perpetual history being recorded, and would only stop recording once the planet would be wiped out. We would create our endless history and yet would be cursed to never be able to rewatch it, a very interesting proposition indeed.
gloamingdaydream 
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