Yeah.

Stumble... falling...

...I disapprove of those movies, you know, the ones that leave you aching in all the ways nothing can fix because life really IS that scummy, that horrible. Talk of experiments - I remember a short story I read once where these kids found a way to go between sort-of parallel universes, these little devices, and no matter where they went it was worse than here. 'Here' is horrible. Aweful. Dingy, dusty, stinking hot and smelling of sweat and beer and cement and tar. And this is as good as it gets, folks.

This shit is it. Right here. No matter how hard you look, life won't really get any better... but you'd better believe it can - and will - get worse.

Gray, brown, dusty gold and blood red, the thick darkening pool forming at the edge of a body, leaping out into the unpaved road without hesitation, staining gravel and dirt alike. Smell of sweat, still, and the acrid burn of exhaust fumes, the sounds of diesel engines and white men in once-white shirts, spitting. Fingers crossed. We all need a bit of good luck, when the nights are this hot.

There's a fear that has got itself all tangled up with the heat, for me. Prickling on the back of my neck, aching deep in my bones where nothing is supposed to reach, the parched landscape my mouth becomes, all of it leads up to this fear that hunts me down. Hot nights are the worst for it. One window. One door. One fan, and the fan isn't doing anything but moving what's already there. Hot air going fast is still hot air. It feels like someone half-heartedly cursed us here, heat we can't bear, heat we aren't used to, and the knowledge that it's nowhere near how dry and dusty it gets otherwhere, so we can't complain either.

Mouthfull of that otherwhere dust, dreamdust...

...can you follow the road I'm walking down tonight?

Concave, convex, one is in and one is out and for the life of me I can never remember which. All I know is that right now I'm sitting inside a tiny white-hot room, the electric spark that causes such brightness, such pain, muted by cloth and lace. Lampshades, sunglasses, curtains, it's amazing how much trouble we humans will go to, hiding from the sun. We know, somewhere inside, that it's a curse, it is THE curse. The moon was harmless - trapped in the same maddening cycle we are - but it's been there for so long it's become loony. Loony, lunatic, Luna... yes, we know the old progression, familiar nursery-rhyme chant in a day when no one grows up in a nursery.

It's so easy for everything to seem to spin, we see all these priceless perfect naturally-designed patterns that seem unending. What else are we supposed to think, but that we too are part of these endless micro- macro- maddening-patterns.

This is me, here. My corner of the universe. And it's not even a corner, not even a dust speck... not as much, to the universe, as the dust that spirals up between sweat-slick feet padding along the road.

You know there's music. There's always music. That much is so true that we are most terrified when everything goes quiet, it is the dead silences in between that we fear... but for now there is music and I am treading the beat, the path, it lays for me.

Half my head gone, and the horrible prickle of something stalking me... taste of rosebushes and grasshoppers, dead prarie and living, heaving earth... you see why I flee this country? It is always beautiful, but at times...

At times this land is terrifying.

Oblivion. Did I ask for it? Did I choose this, back when 'choice' was something left for me? Right now the disconnection that keeps me from breathing, from speaking, from anything but the slow movement of eyes as words appear here - yes, fingers type, but disconnected there too, I don't feel the keys, not as I used to, not as I will again.

So strange, all of this. Demented little waltz, me and the universe and my shadow behind. It's a pleasure indeed to have company as I wander this road. He follows, I lead, and he is my anchor... something to draw me back to reality, when the things I see bite too deeply.

Bite they do; I've the scars to prove it, but we won't speak of that. Fighting and battling for attention, since as you know if you read Pratchett, acknowledging a thing, accepting it, Naming it... gives it power. Gives it strength. Believe in a god and the god is real. Believe in a devil and the devil is real. Believe in yourself... ahh, but how many people actually believe in themselves these days? We are a planet of shadow-souls, believing nothing, accepting nothing, rushing faster and faster into death, longing to walk this unending sunbaked road.

The heat makes the air tremble, distorting vision, our own little acid trip provided by the universe itself, if you would believe the scientists. Heat waves, slick wriggling serpents of fire and breath rising up off the pavement to disappear into the air we inhale. Anger is so many things... a too-hot day, a long cold evening, a night when sounds become magnified, terrifying. Everything is wrong, you see. Everything is wrong, off-kilter, off-filter, we live in the lurch and we die as we slide, downward...

...except for those of us who fly.

Hell.

Heaven.

They're both the same ship, when all is said and done. An endless party and an endless paradise, endless regret too, because memory never really dies there. So much of it. So much... that's what hell is, too much of everything. Drowning in pleasure, drowning in pain, either way you're still dead, right? So what's the point in protesting? Where's the red flag, white flag, any flag in this fucked-up struggle to conquer even this frontier?

The only real battle cries we have these days are the screams of the dying as their final breaths are given up to the god of useless sacrifice. Innocent blood, innocent spirits, one by one they leave the face of the earth and all that's left is this...

...death... war... famine... disease... the Four Horsemen ride, they've been riding for years and no one sees, no one sees. Only here, only walking along the road they once travelled, leaving prints of bare feet beside the ghosts of long-past horses, only here can one truly see just what damage is being done. We are all dying by inches.

It's horrifying.

Disgusting.

Terrifying.

Awe inspiring.

Amazing.

Beautiful.

When life ends, it will be Man who snatches it away from every other creature... no other animal is so foolish, so desperate, and so terrible.

I am repulsed by the Human Race.

...

...

...

...and yes. THIS is why Jax on Cold Medication should not be overheated, then given alcohol.