=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= = F.U.C.K. - Fucked Up College Kids - Born Jan. 24th, 1993 - F.U.C.K. = =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= Solstice -------- Darkness encircled his eyes in a betrayal of fatigue, not so much induced by insomnia as by the unrest of his waking hours. No amount of sleep that he could persevere to achieve seemed at all capable of counterbalancing the impotent adrenal rush of feeling like a rat in a submerged cage - like a lab rat in the process of sadistic testing; yes, that was it. That was almost the feeling, depending on which numbers the hands lay upon. But that was one of them, for sure. How did it start again? Re-collection was simply too much picking up of articles better forgotten. Instead, he simply wandered about in that desolate hole and ruminated about whatever he came upon in his desultory travels. How long had he remained in this fetid room? Too long. No, in truth, not that long he corrected. Not that long, he affirmed, as he struggled to remember the starting point of the Not That Long. Hell, yesterday and its contents were mostly an inscrutable amalgam that took more energy to comprehend than to forget. Why go to the beginning of the end, when the end seemed much more a beginning? He reflected upon why. Why he was here. Simply put, the solstice simply didn't play savior to him this year. He continued through living his life, but as he did, the days continued to shorten and shorten. He assumed that such was a normal occurrence, or a fluke phenomenon that would soon dissipate. The days continued, inexorably and seemingly ineptly, as though time had actually lost tempo and continually accelerated and decelerated in an attempt to rectify its error; and as each day continued, so did the darkness creep upon and overtake the light, until finally the light capitulated his world to the sable blanket that now perpetually enshrouded it. It was his world that was so devoid of light, as the others continued their play. He still remembered the awestruck horror with which he beheld that the others did not even notice the siege of the pall upon the world, until it finally occurred to him, amidst the truculent battle cries and cheerful giggling of one of their many revels, that they were unaffected by this sinister eternal night. They seemed not to feel the biting cold of forever's winter, nor did their eyes seem to speak to them of the blindness that accompanies no sunlight. Days were spent in incessant obsession: were they truly immune, or merely naive?...that is, was it cognizance or common ground that was lacking? The knife-turn of events left him sequestered in his room, lighting provided by candles with bright, ardent flames so powerful that they burned him when he got too close, but too weak to warm him if he strayed away. Another peculiarity of these essential flames was their latency; unless you felt them, or saw their effects on the other components of the room as they filtered through the waving, dancing heat, they were fully undetectable. Odorless, colorless - truly did they fit in with the emotional inanition and listlessness of his room. The walls had a color, to be sure, as all things do, but the light never found its way to them; thus, he was forced to explore them, when he managed to confront the dread it evinced, in stark darkness. The walls, in fact, were quite peculiar. Albeit they were impossible to see through the murk that surrounded them, he would get a natural feel of their presence when it came time for them to do their job. They appeared to be ever-shifting, vacillating between the vague regions of Near and Far with an almost undetectable stealth and speed. They even seemed more of dense, impregnable fluid contrivances than of inflexible material most often used for confinement. He would often wander in some odd direction, either by his intention or by a mysterious external pull, and when he slammed headlong into the wall, he would instantly recall its purpose there and sudden waves of an alienating terror overtook him. In this state, he knew that he was incapable of survival outside of this dank prison that held him... Over time, whereupon his wounds simply healed into grotesque internal scars, the discomfort and hideousness of which only he could observe, he began to wonder why it was that he was so confined. Why it was that these macabre partisans withheld his view of the outside world? Even the windows had blackened over with grime from lack of maintenance. Occasionally, he would hear voices faintly speaking his name, seeming to talk to him, but he knew they were not for him. They never were before; how could they be now? And why? No -- they were not for him. Not before, not ever. He said this to himself and a shudder virulently made its way down his spine. Perhaps he was afraid. Afraid because he didn't know how to answer back. Afraid because if he dared to even hope for a reply to no avail, then the walls of his prison might just crush him under their enormous weight. Afraid because it burned and ached and gnawed to be in this feeble form of pseudo-existence, but he remembered the darkness and the extreme, bitter cold outside and a deluge of memories taunted his flickering sense of being and he said, "No." As days increased, the candles grew ever hotter and more fierce, but their flames boasted but little strength and but the slightest draught would extinguish them -- curiously, though, he need never relight them, as simply picking up a photograph or even a glance at the walls would strike them up again with a new dead life. Through eon after eon of the tense terseness and isolated immolation, he remained within the dread walls that he knew not how long he had been inside; more than a single day, to be sure, but of months? years? It was simply beyond him to surmise. He was not altogether sure that it even met his concern. He wondered if it could meet another's concern? Then he would scoff outwardly at his gullibility to that impish Eros, Hope, while his inner recesses would, quite secretly to all other regions of himself, pray with the desperation of the condemned minutes before judgment. Judgment, that is, in the form of internal apocalypses. Every prior action, every move, every thought was subject to analysis and cross-examination, every mistake was etched in a memorial wall and every victory was debated as a mistake. Nothing escaped the prosecution, and the defense was too wrapped up in comprehending the barrage to even begin a response, much less a repudiation. Eventually he learned to tune out the droning of the self-loathing-automatons when it was critical to do so so that he could still function, from time to time, if functioning was even still possible while within this gulag of listlessness. Not all was lost, but it all suffocated under the dense cloak enveloping the contents of the room. This asphyxiation was too inefficient to actually kill, but enough to maim, or at least substantially sap, its unwiliing underlings. Though it was too strong for him to destroy, it was not so powerful that it could destroy him either; in fact it needed him, in the parasitic fashion that a strangler fig needs its host tree to remain alive before it finally destroys it and takes its place. The difference was that this was actually manifesting itself within him; changing him to a numb, cold austerity, and yet the rest became nothing more than a bitter reflection of what those fragments once were. Slowly, gradually, he began to lose himself. And in that was the true horror, because the further along it got, the more it felt like there was no way out, but the less time there was to check, and finally, it concluded, with his old self far dissipated, and in its place was a stoic physical replica whose innards consisted solely of an hourglass and an inscrutable, viscous dark liquid. - agrajag http://www.geocities.com/SunsetStrip/Club/1610/ =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= = Questions, Comments, Bitches, Ideas, Rants, Death Threats, Submissions = = Mail: jericho@dimensional.com (Mail is welcomed) = =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= = To receive new issues through mail, mail majordomo@attrition.org with = = "subscribe fuck". 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