The shattered mind


We went from the antechamber in the basement to the kitchen area where we
stood near the kitchenette. As much as I wanted to sit down, I was terrified to
because of the lurid object above my head. Rich appeared to be attentive and
alert, but still there was something bugging him. He would begin to scratch his
arm and then stare at it blindly before falling into fits of unstoppable laughter.
He then began to blurt out words at random, and I wondered what my parents
would have done upon seeing it! The walls of his padded cell were being
fastened together as his little mind slowly became unhinged.



There was a wicked spirit around the kitchen sink that had somehow absorbed itself into
the fabric of the argent metal. The two faucets seemed to be empowered with a form of
kinetic energy I had not seen before. There were small bursting patterns within the alloy
composite I cannot describe logically, and I think they were trying to make my pupils
dilate! As I watched them gyrate and spin, I would fall into a mild trance. Such vivid
color in such little space! To follow the contrast of kaleidoscopic hues inside a door
that goes round and round without ever opening! You can go inside but it never opens;
you can stay out but you're never really there. . . Then like an exploding daydream,
I was awakened from my trance.

The long slender arm-like mouth of the high arc spout was attempting to reach me,
while at the same time that insane laughter behind me was beginning to abrade my
senses. Since I was busy analyzing and examining things, I couldn't be there for him.
I presume this is why he withdrew into his own world. Within that plastic bubble
in the realm of his containment he began throwing his lips out. This action made a
very strange popping noise! Every time he did it, he would convulse in laughter.



I wanted to tell him to be quiet, but that would only
make him sad. I would not let anything in the universe
be sad because that is a reflection on my soul. You get
too many of them and the Lord puts you on fire.

As I focused my attention on the ethereal movements of the magic faucet, I began to think
frightening loud! "The aliens have metallic compounds like this! I believe they left some of
it in Roswell!!!" I think if the United States government were to see this, I would be taken
somewhere and killed. There was no doubt about it.



As the faucet extended itself outwards toward me, I think it wanted me to pet it! Of course
I couldn't risk transference, so I respectfully declined by showing it my two hands and then
rubbing them together in an accelerated motion.

Why I did this I will never know!

                                                                               Pg 152
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Why I refused to touch it however was simple. If you take that mercurial silver; that Non-Newtonian
ferrofluid and you initiate contact, there is a very good chance some of it is going to stick around.
I knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that if any trace elements got on me, it would either leave
patches of invisibility, or it would be absorbed through my skin and I would begin to suffer the
effects of toxic shock. I was already invisible in life, I didn't need to be anymore invisible, and I
certainly didn't want to go into shock from an illusion! Suddenly, the sparkling faucet began to
lose its shimmer and was no longer appealing to my senses. Then it drooped, as if it were going
to rest its slender neck at the rim one of the small pans filled with water and begin drinking.
No, that wasn't it; I had made it sad. I had destroyed something beautiful by being overly
cautious. I was not playing by the rules of the game. Almost immediately did I feel a rush of
sadness flowing upward from within and my eyes burned like fire. Throwing my hands on my
face, I must have looked like the boy who had just witnessed his parents being executed.



Watching me with an intuitive stare, that lifelike mechanical dummy screamed
out a laugh so horrifyingly loud, I spun around full circle hitting the stove!

In his achromatic world of redundancies,
there lies a harsh truth just waiting to be discovered.

As I looked at my friend in shock, the stained glass lighting fixture was within inches from my face!
Before it could snap shut like a venus fly trap, I dropped to the floor and scrambled into the living
room! Wow, I thought, now I can't go into the kitchen. In anger, I began to wonder why he screamed
like he had just gotten fucked in prison. His actions made no sense at all. He's disrupting the balance
of time, I screamed into the gray region of all abandoned thoughts before composing myself! Aside
from the onerous task of having to quiet that screaming head in the kitchen, I must first figure out
how to get into the kitchen! Just then it dawned on me. . . He's the head of Candor!!!

That madman almost sent me to Hell!

"Okay, let us analyze the situation." As I thought about it, I realized I could crawl in through the kitchen
and the light would not be able to reach me! Which is exactly what I did, and now it was furious!!!

As I entered the bathroom, I flicked the switch and that brown room came alive! All those tiles
with strange wilted flowers were moving themselves about to form such irregular patterns. Just
then I pressed one of the tiles, and it clicked. Sensing a gate was going to come crashing down
and trap me, I bolted from the bathroom leaving the light on. Politely, I asked my friend if he
could shut the light, and he spit a lungful of laughter at me! Apparently, I must have been
speaking French, because he didn't understand a Goddamn word I said!!!

Sliding open the glass door I crept out and proceeded to take a nice long piss. Hearing an unusual
movement by the back fence I ran in without zipping! I then saw something peering in at me from
the darkness. It was a massive spider! Holy shit, this thing was huge!!! From afar I would say it
had to be the height of an over-sized milk crate, or medium-sized dog! My psyche bore witness
to the grand illusion, and the door that held man's greatest fear was suddenly unbolted! Solely, the
inner aspect of fear had been affected, nothing more. Those thoughts which present themselves
from an incident, or an instance of unpleasantry become more powerful than marching soldiers.
That pure unbridled terror of horrific circumstance soon to occur can indeed paralyze the mind!

They were not crawling on me, but I could surmise they were coming!



                                                                               Pg 153
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Little ones - Big ones - Ghastly ones!!! I have to close all the vents and windows now!!!
I can't go through the kitchen!!! The dining room window is directly facing the spider!!!



Worse comes to worse, I'll lock myself in the bathroom and wait until it eats
through the wall to get me. Wait a minute, this isn't real; look at it again.

As I peered into the glass, terrified, I connected with the object and realized what I was
looking at. The old rundlet cask my father removed from the basement last month! That dull
gleam was simply the lights reflected from the park hitting the old barrel. The metal hoops
encircling the barrel were merely holding the wooden staves in place! It was not the body
of a ferocious spider eying me down! How foolish was I to even think along those lines!



I solved the problem and the spiders were gone! If I tried, I probably
couldn't make them return. The mind can only be put at ease when a
solution is found or a problem is solved. That is so happening man!!!

*I am now entering a state of total peace*

However, I still had to be extremely careful around that light fixture hanging above the
kitchen table! The one crafted from stained glass and lead, then wrought into the shape
of a flower. There was a certain flux within it that made me feel as though it were mocking
me to some degree. Also, there seemed to be a wavering effect in the light, very similar
to a bending mirror at a sideshow. When you stand next to it, it distorts your size.

"How clever the mind in its affinity toward ever knowing
the requisite capacity to assimilate lies unresolved."

There was now a hideous distortion in the way that it was bending. I could follow a current
of energy flowing through its veiny petals, as if two big magnets were using their polarity to
stretch its sides; or it was trying to open. This I could not tell, but it had a sinister motive
and did appear to be sneering at me, as if ridiculing me for something I had done to it in
the past. I told it I was sorry and then paused to reflect in silence, fist to mouth. Imagine
that, I had apologized to this inanimate object. This perennial nightmare swaying gently
before me in my warped perception, when, in fact, I had done no wrong!

Indeed, I fell for the greatest hoax of all time!!!

The fact that I was deathly afraid of it striking me, could in no way be abolished.
My sole concern was that if it did, would I be able to stave off the infection before
my brain sends it coursing throughout my entire system, contaminating everything
in its immediate path. I did not wish for this to end in an all out war! Ask yourself
this, is there truly anything worse than watching yourself change into the one thing
you are most terrified of? A spider. A rat. A cockroach or a centipede. Have you
any idea, how traumatic something like that can be to your psyche? How dangerous?
If you did, you would understand why I refused to sit down at that table!!!



Life in itself was quotidian marked by mundane functions of mind and body performing a task
or enjoying a luxury. We go to work; we come home. We drive to the store; we buy new things;
we come home. Why does everything always have to be drown in normalcy? Why can't we
plan a day that we have all to ourselves? To alter ourselves by seeing past the illusion, without
being persecuted for it? From time to time, I find that this is necessary, but is it really so wrong?
It's not like I'm going to screw up my life by going crazy. I know what I'm doing here! Considering
all the hostility forming in the electric flower, every step was met with apprehension and fear.

Maybe, I thought to myself, just maybe, I am beginning to learn that now.

                                                                               Pg 154
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A mellifluous voice within my mind gave me the rundown on life.

Everything's right and everything's wrong
when everyone is right and everyone is wrong.

Time was now at an ebb and flow, and I was somewhere in the middle of it.
Memories that were mine and memories that weren't flooded my senses and
made me hold my head in a half smile. I was baffled and awe struck, and I
wasn't quite sure if I should sit down or begin doing an Irish jig!



Just then it turned itself toward me, and I backed up
like I was moving away from the snake charmer's basket! 



God knows, I wasn't getting any closer to it.

Like Belladonna, that deadly nightshade had already begun to poison the air. How
quickly it burgeoned from a harmless artifact into a total mind threat; overshadowing
the landscape with its flower petal turned wasp-like wings humming to the tune almost
effortlessly, covering my cerebral cortex with a gentle layer of film. Indeed, the beast
with no charm certainly seemed to produce the most of it! In a spectral light that houses
the dormitory with the fantastic view, something wicked had begun to grow! Where the
well seasoned seer, most proficient in his trade uncloaks the nursling from under his
wing only to find he has made a serious miscalculation. . .

                       The child's brain had already begun to decompose.



Anyone who chooses to tinker with the internal workings of the human mind will one
day come to realize that the journey he or she has endured was of absolutely no gain.



The lighted flower was acting very unpredictable now, and it was just a matter of time
before it lashed out to strike. Being as how it wasn't swaying more than a foot in any
given direction from where it hung, I decided to give it an extra two feet, just to be safe.
Hopefully, it wouldn't snap the chain! I really didn't think it would, since its pattern of
behavior hasn't changed, and it was moving ever so eerily in slow motion. Had we
taken four hits each, I am sure my head would be halfway down its fiery throat by
now, and my brain, equidistant to the edges of a searing hot frying pan! On five,
he would have snapped the chain for sure.

I thought of the moon flowers and how they bloom only at night,
but this son of a bitch runs on electricity! I can't be nice to it
and give it water or I'll start a God-damn house fire! 

Rich was still acting weird, muttering indistinguishable words and laughing hysterically.
This had been going on since the time of my aunt's departure and that was six hours ago.
What's going on in his mind? That's hard to figure out when a person is not communicating
with you. He's laughing at his life from Funhouse Land without a care in the world, while I
have to analyze and attempt to remedy this whole foolish mess. It didn't seem fair in a way;
what he was doing. I turned off the kitchen light and the evil rose grew tranquil. Keep in mind
that the 'off switch' acted only as a mild sedative. Its defense mechanism was still on for I
could hear it hissing audibly! A warning that I would be very wise to keep my distance.

Cordially, I summoned my friend into the barrel room. No, this was not a distilling room,
but rather a small living room shaped like a barrel.The light-colored oak flooring strips had
darkened circles throughout, and when fitted together it formed a very unique half oval ceiling!
At first glance, one would attest that it was "congenial to the eye" whether they were high or not,
and I marveled at it, as if it were the first time I had seen it. Turning the knob on the television set,
we came upon the Joe Franklin show. Since neither of us understood a word he said, we sat
there emotionless, and watched that magic glass produce life.

While I pretended to wonder why a world full of people would choose
to live inside it, I also wondered what would happen if they suddenly
decided they wanted to step outside the box. To see these celluloid
characters coming to life in the barrel room would be more than my
fragile mind could handle, and I am sure that would give my friend,
but another reason to laugh his head off!

                                                                               Pg 155
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What I really liked about Joe was that he always seemed happy. Most of the time he
just sat there in a comical light, reaching for words that should already be there. Like
a stand up comic desperately trying to act the part of a talk show host. As I watched
him on the old Zenith television set through that wooden console, I wondered just
how many of these TV's would still be in use a hundred years from now.



I noticed that Joe seemed to be stopping a lot before rushing to get the words out.
While his facial gestures and hesitant motor skills made me laugh, I could not help
thinking of someone I once loved dearly. Someone who meant more to me than my
parents or any of my closest friends. Someone who took my entire world with her
when she left. The only one I cannot bring myself to speak of.

The Forbidden Lifestyle of the Unconventional Poet has a damaged spine
and many pages missing, but the book still reads the same.



I saw the family portrait beside the TV next to the pictures of Dawn, Vanessa and
Carolyn. My three sisters. I then realized everyone was there except me. I'm never
around. Why do I even exist? I feel more like a ghost than I do a human being.
Could I be dead all this time? No, that wouldn't be logical. If I were dead I would
be free of this misery. To live apart from her, that is my torment. My Hell on earth.
Whence at last I close my eyes for the last time, I will hear the heavenly trumpet
sound, calling me to glory after I've slept a billion years in less than a fetid breath.

Good old Joe was now bidding us farewell, and so I turned off the television set.
I and my friend then ascended the staircase, until once again we reached my room.
Rich was still laughing hysterically as the high grew stronger still. I wasn't sure what
to make of it now. It was becoming drawn out, and I was beginning to feel peevish,
to say the least. I looked up at the skylight and saw the turning point of a nightmare
as it came to life. Similar to the blades of a helicopter as seen through a kaleidoscopic
lens; it swiveled three times to the right on an invisible axis lifting itself out of the plate
which had held it in place for so many years. It then returned to its original position as
though it had never happened. It continued in the same manner until I could watch no
more. That's it, I thought. The point where everything comes apart and there's no fixing
a shattered mind. It's going to get bad, and I'm really trying to prepare myself for the worst
that could possibly happen, because it just might. It should have been starting to wear off
by now, but it just keeps getting stronger! It hasn't reached its peak yet!!! All this research
and writing, balderdash! My reward for it all was going to be irrevocable lunacy.
Slowly, I am going out of my mind.

Why is it every time I win, I lose?

I shuddered like a virgin on a prom date to think that in but a few short moments from
now, the chemical element that I held in such high esteem, would soon have its way
with me. I didn't know if every insect in creation was going to come crawling into the
room and cover me, or if my heart would suddenly stop on the next breath I took. . .



Either way you look at it, there was nothing I could do or say that would have it release
me from its evil grasp. It would simply have to run its course, and I was too tired to fight.



I am starting to fall, yet I haven't seemed to move. Like a swamp reed blowing gently in the wind,
I will fall forever. Until the day of the so-called judgment shall I ever ponder my undoing. On the
eve of this starry night, I led a lamb to its slaughter. I took an innocent being and I cast him like a
sheet to the acid wind, which in turn dissolved his brain and gelified my soul. I feel things on my
skin. Things I cannot describe and so I yearn to weep but I shall not. I will give this decade none
of my tears. How ironic is that? I will not shed a tear, but I've already given it a human sacrifice.

There are tiny brush strokes on my arm formed by human hairs. They are moving as if static electricity
is playing a hand in this game. The game that has jumped out of the box to land me in it. I am here, but
I am light years away from any human contact. Even though they speak my name in my native tongue,
no words could be further from my ears. Although my hands are free, it is my thoughts I am imprisoned
by. All logic is gone. I will fall into the window of the sky and disappear. To try and not think of what
can happen, can be even more torturesome than adapting to the illusion. I have rolled the dice and lost.

The movement of the hair has caused my skin to crawl, and now it is crawling with my own imagination.
It is not something you can control because you are not enjoying it. We only control what we enjoy,
but this I know; something terrible will very soon occur. I am going to the darkest part of Hell. . .



                                                                               Pg 156
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What happens when the ceiling flies away?
Will I still hear strange laughter through the darkness, or will the darkness be my only light?



It would be different if Harmony were here with me now. She could turn a criminally
insane nightmare into an unforgettable night of insatiable glory with merely a wave of
her gentle hand. Without her by my side, I was in permanent danger of getting lost in the
stream of time. Like a timorous man, I sat on my bed and began to dissolve into it as my
mind tried earnestly to unwind. All the while listening to the rantings of a friend gone mad.



There and then it occurred to me that we are all born to die. There is nothing we can do
about it; the inevitable was sure to come, but what about the ravages of time? The curse
of growing older and gradually losing yourself until you're nothing more than a malfunctioning
machine that eventually stops. A babbling old man with the intelligence of a flagpole that
holds no flag and is situated in the middle of a forest. Those days are right around the corner,
and will be here before anyone realizes it. No one ever gives it a second thought. . .



Once again, I would find I created something I could not control. Not only did
I have to keep myself together, but I had to make sure nothing bad happened
to Richie. Trying to be a guide and a tourist at the same time was like planting
seeds in stone. It was not only far beyond my capacity, but it was futile.



It seemed I was living only to destroy myself, and this time I had
pulled someone else into the ever rising sludge of my failed existence.



I cannot function like this. If I do not return to normal, I cannot go to work like this.
I cannot do anything like this, but I have a very strong feeling that my life is going
to be like this forever; and some things in this life are even worse than death itself,
where I shall be tortured forever. Simply because I chose the path of least resistance.



In time perhaps, new adjustments could be made to my cerebellum, where I may function
as to hold a glass of water. Whether or not I will know what water is or why I must drink it
to sustain my own body, this I contemplate trembling. I began to hear a song in my head,
and so I jotted it down. I never gave it a title, and I never spoke of it again.

Spiders come crawling out of crevice electric.
Day turns night for awhile.
Where do you go when you lose your soul?
When your blood runs cold
inside your veins of darkened steel?
Reflected from the path you yielded by day.

It's not easy;
living a brand new life.
It's not easy,
when you hear strange voices at night
that seem to come from out of the closet
and carry a knife.    

You're alone here, you're the patient.
There's no one there it's only you.
And though you played the game,
you were bound to lose. . .
Am I to die in this padded room?

The clown in the corner sat laughing, and I thought of what I had done. Knowingly, I had lured
him into madness through suggestion. Why would I do such an evil thing? I am a monster above
all men and if God were here right now, I'd be a match head under a blowtorch. No, God is patient.
He is kindness and love, but even so, he is an all consuming fire. That is why anyone who seeks
to repent should cast away their sin of pride and do so immediately, because everybody knows
tomorrow never comes.

Afterwards, when everything was back to normal again, I found my friend still laughing and drooling.
Sure he could get on a bus and go here and there or go to the store and buy smokes, but he would
no longer be able to work. Just smoke, laugh and drool. My friend lives in a home now. A home for
mentally challenged people and that is something I have to carry around with me for the rest of my life.
Just to know that I destroyed another human being. A friend who trusted me, I betrayed. Don't feel bad?

How the hell am I supposed to feel?



                                                                               Pg 157
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It is a terrible but true fact that the people who were once cool will become old, and everything
that was once considered to be the rave will no longer be in fashion; leaving us to become
obsolete as our parents and grandparents have already experienced. Yes, we shall be replaced by
a new generation of people who have absolutely no knowledge of what anything is about, and the
music that was once so hip, shall become irrelevant. Even so, as we enter the stream of middle life,
rebel youth which has taken us part of the way, shall deteriorate like withered branches. When the
only thing we are able to focus upon is self-preservation, we know the end is not too far away.

At this very point in time, I can almost feel time itself moving, and in an exceptionally morose way,
I am under the illusion of being covered in ancient thinning cobwebs. As it appears, if I were to stand
now, my legs would probably crumble inside their dusty shells straight down to the pants cuff! I have
become a relic. I tried to produce a monumental evening that would have been stamped in the footprint
of time, and instead, I produced two worthless misfits that will not have the intelligence of a shoelace.



Something has flown into my mouth and is buzzing around from cheek to cheek. I open my
mouth to release a fly who encircles the room. He buzzes around before landing on a tree in the
small village upon my wall. Following his senses he flies into the bell tower of the church and
becomes lost in a dream of his own misdoing; but it seems I have other more important things
to concern myself with. The whole house was now becoming deranged. 

As I looked at the walls around my room, they seemed to be breathing in and out slowly.
I then placed my hands upon the breadth of its median as the town scattered, thus allowing
me to feel the contractions of life within its very core. The movements within the wall felt
like an odd combination of both water pressure and that of compressed air.



                        If I become one with the universe, will I become the illusion?



I ran my hand up and down its fleshy walls while it breathed in gently and calmly wondered
to myself, if I poked it would it bleed? Could it feel pain? If we see something in pain, is it
not in pain, because that is what the mind perceives? I then wondered, who would wish to
do harm like this in the first place? To get off on making it suffer would be no different in
the eyes of the Lord, than to mutilate a helpless child. Nothing should be wrought to suffer!
No animal, no insect, no object and certainly not another human being! Something which
exists only to live should not be harmed. It should be allowed to live without any human
intervention! Even if it isn't really real. *Am I very wrong?*



But still that thought has me baffled! Let's just say out of pure speculation, I was to put a nail
in the wall to hang a picture. Now the wall begins to bleed and cannot stop. What shall I do?
I may be forced to leave the house. I did not want to leave this house! Neither did I wish to have
an internecine power struggle to deal with. More than anything else, I did not wish to disrupt the
fabric of my environment which I was presently enjoying. Instead, I will watch it grow, the same
way you would take pleasure in observing your own children in their developing stages of life.



When something is beneath your feet, isn't it better to step over it than upon it? Even though
it takes a greater effort? All things that live must have some significance in this world, or they
would not be in the first place. (Of course, this excludes brain eating amoeba, flesh eating
bacteria, and every other microscopic foe which takes form in a human host to cause illness.)



Yes, I thought aloud, this is the answer to God's love!
It has to be, I said with fists clenched and pupils fully dilated!

                                               
                                               This made the clown laugh harder still



Once again, he falls to his back like a sack of potatoes and begins to bump (furiously) his posterior
skull to the old hollow sounding wooden floor in an accelerated motion. I tried to ignore him for he
was not with me. I then waved to one of the workers in the field, and it did not come as a surprise
to see them waving back!

No, I will not hurt you little people in the field for you are truly
breathing, and I. . . I am on the other side now.

                                                                               Pg 158
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Reviews for chapter 31

Mark Demaio - You were really out of your shoes on this bummer of a trip to nowhere

Sally Diloreto - I do not understand this line, "two worthless misfits
that will not have the intelligence of a shoelace."

Charles Pendelton - If a shoelace and a man who is restrained lay on the ground, the man
who is immobilized will attempt to remedy his situation by escaping. The poor shoelace
will forever remain, because it doesn't have the will to move until the wind blows. . .

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PG 152) Being is perceiving by Jeff Christensen

PG 152) Black clown devil by Robert S. Connett

PG 152) Forbidden Planet Space Cruiser

PG 153) Black Heroin by Robert Steven Connett

PG 153) Along came a spider by Danny Staten

PG 154) Spider web by Steve Thomas

PG 154) Back alley tavern by Lisa Hun

PG 154) Synergenesis by Simon Haiduk

PG 155) Irish Night by Christos Karapanos

PG 155) The Game by Ilene Meyer

PG 155) Delusions by Paul Booth

PG 155) Bio by Andrei Beloborodov

PG 156) 1973 Zenith Chromacolor II television advertisement

PG 156) Si les ecrits s'envolaient... by Catherine Alexandre

PG 156) Fear by Joe Scorsone and Alice Drueding

PG 156) Despair by Alex Grey

PG 156) Lovecraft's Nightmare B by Michael Whelan

PG 157) Insight by Oleg Korolev

PG 157) Final thought by Brian Smith

PG 157) Paranoid_I by Paul Booth

PG 157) Grip by Andy B. Clarkson

PG 157) Guilt by Joe Scorsone and Alice Drueding

PG 157) The extraction of the stone of madness by Hieronymus Bosch

PG 157) The Visage of War by Salvador Dalí

PG 158) Passions disparues by Claude Verlinde 

PG 158) Oversoul by Alex Grey 

PG 158) Yoim by Satoshi Sakamoto

PG 158) Harmony by Remedios Varo

PG 158) Notte del fungo by Dean Fleming

PG 158) Cthonic by Scott Purdy

PG 158) Scarecrow by Jeff Christensen