Banana Phone

It wouldn't shut up.
I told it that I couldn't talk to it anymore, they were watching me, and if they saw me they would take me away. It wouldn't listen, it kept talking to me, telling me what I should do. I didn't want to listen, but I knew I had no choice, the more I tried to block it out the louder it would get. It was telling me I should run away, get away from the men in white who were watching. I tried to explain that they were watching, and they would stop me if I tried to run. They were staring at me now, I could see them turn towards me. I wanted to hide, be anywhere but in their sight.
It started to ring. I didn't want to pick it up, if I picked it up they would come over, they would take me away from it. I didn't like it in the room, in the room it was quiet, no one talked to me. They didn't let me out, and when I was alone I would think that maybe they were right, maybe it was all just in my head and it didn't really talk to me. It got angry when it found out that I was siding with them. It yelled when it was angry, made my ears ring.
I picked it up, answered it. They started moving towards me.
"The guard left to get a drink, you can make it out the door if you run fast enough."
There was no time to talk myself out of it this time. When it told me what to do, I had to listen. I jumped up from my seat, and they started moving faster. I was quicker than them, I was smarter, I was sane, they were crazy. I ran for the door, I could hear them behind me. I pushed my way through the door, I could see the exit. I ran as fast as I could. Out of the corner of my eye I saw the guard coming towards me, he had his stick out. It spoke to me.
"Gonna get you, gonna make you hurt, better run faster."
I was out the door, I could smell the fresh air. I ran into the street, I needed to get to the other side, they wouldn't run into the street to follow me. They would go around, they thought I was crazy.
I never even knew the truck hit me. I woke up in the room, and everything was silent.

In the Rain

I slip in the mud, trying to stand up. I need to get out of here, the smell of the bodies is overwhelming and I can feel my stomach doing flips. I try not to look at their faces as I run to get away, try to ignore that everyone around me is dead. I focus on moving, running, getting away, being anywhere but in this place. The cold is getting to me, the rain falling from the skies like all the angels in heaven were weeping for the dead around me. I couldn't tell if anyone else was still alive, I didn't want to take the time to find out. I hadn't heard a shot in what seemed like forever, yet the last shot seemed to have only happened seconds ago. Time had no meaning to me anymore, all I could hear was the screams of the dead, painfully loud in their silence.
I could see water, I was close to being away. Something grabbed my leg, and I shook it off without looking back, I didn't want to think about it. Didn't want to see what had happened to him. I was at the water, and I shrugged off the jacket and extra layers of clothing we'd all been wearing. The rain pelted my skin like bullets, but I didn't even notice anymore. I jumped in, and let the water cover me. Instead of swimming away, I went down. Down into the blackness where I belonged, I couldn't run away from this - I knew that already. It would be with me forever, and I would do anything to be away from it. I opened my mouth, and screamed to let out the agony. When I took a breath, the water joined me in death, and everything went away.

The Flesh of Fallen Angels

Sometimes at night, if I clear my mind, and make my intentions clear... I can see past the veil of reality that's wrapped around us like a smothering blanket. I see past the interwoven fibers of time and space, past the emotions and feelings. I try to touch it, but it swirls and turns to steam just before blowing away completely. Like everything else in my life, I can always look, but I can never get close enough to touch. Sometimes I think if I had just waited a second longer, I could have reached my fingers into those fibers, and ripped them apart. I could unwrite the past to destroy the present, and in essence go back in time, and hope that maybe - maybe a second time would change it all. Maybe the frayed ends would rejoin into something beautiful instead of this hideous mess that has come of my life. I could wrap myself up in the flesh of fallen angels, and in the guise of a beautiful angel I could rip apart all that is without it disappearing. I have tasted the end of the world, and I have seen the coming of the end. Like cannibals at a massacre it stops mattering which meat belong to which side, and we eat the flesh of our own. We tear apart all that is our world, and take everything we can to hold off the tide of demons that will invade our plane. Only those who can empower themselves with the very essence of those demons will be able to make a stand. Only by eating of the flesh of fallen angels have I been able to keep from being consumed by the hounds of hell.

Times Like These

I hadn't known I was in a battle until I had gotten myself stabbed.
I could feel my heart pumping my blood out onto the dirt, mixing with the blood and bodies of a thousand other soldiers. My wound was weeping like the wives and children of these men, they would never come home. The stains on the ground were the screams of the undead, memories that couldn't be washed away by the outcome of fighting. I fall to my knees, and I wonder if this is worth the pain. Is it worth the outcome to suffer the fighting? Would it justify little kids growing up without a father to guide them? Wives trying to keep families together and bring in money, only to go to an empty bed at night?
I didn't think it could be, but then again I wasn't here to think. Like a mouse to a cheese-baited trap, I was only here to die. Sucked in by the glory of the old-time war movies, back before it was hollywood guts and gore, and disallusioned as to the point of it all. There was no good in this, no glory in this act. I take my hand off the wound, and let all the bad flow out of my body, washed clean of all its impurities. I fall to my back, and look into the sky. The weather seemed to compliment the anger of the fighters in the field, lightning streaking across the sky mixing with the flashes of muzzles firing off, and glinting off the swords attached to them.
There was a flash, and then it was over. Nothing gained, everything lost, I let the storm carry me away.

Evolutionary Narcosis

After it all, I wound up more human than most, but without a soul. It's a hard realisation that to become more human you have to sacrifice the only thing that ever made you human. It's that bend in the road no one sees until after they're over the cliff, you've barely even had time to register the realisation before you've started screaming. Once, that screaming would have been a distress signal, but in this age of animatronic responses it only gets a curious glance. Sometimes I wonder if things would be better if I'd followed the rest, and hadn't thrown it all away for a chance at something more. Getting something more, of course, is completely relative. I should have been more specific in what I wanted more of, because instead of getting more humanity, I only got more than I wanted - and everything else taken away. Now my emotions are only higher-process thoughts, calculation what I should be feeling. True emotions were detached, leaving only a sample of my soul to rot inside this shell, watching the world go by through eyes that seem more like video screens than windows. My only regret, is that there is no turning back.

The Story

This is a story I wrote over several LiveJournal/FunnyJunk entries. It's based on what was actually going on in my life, but it excluded the flat out bitching.

You Can't Take It
Standing on the edge of nowhere, I stare into the abyss of all that remains here. The machines are taking it apart, systematically destroying my home. The only sound that makes it here anymore is the sound of gears in need of oiling, but the screeching isn't so bad.. You get used to it after all this time. The entire world seems to blacken as they work their ways towards me. I haven't second guessed my choice since I came here, but now I couldn't help but look behind me. A gleeming city, full of metal spires and mechanical people, bustling on without a worry. What sun still reached the ground reflected off the polished steel of the city, creating the illusion of a jeweled city, but I knew what it really was. Fake. I turn back to the machines, and they're almost on top of me now. I can see the gears turning underneath their reinforced exoskeletons, watch the chains and cable work to bring about the end. Looking away, I take out the last picture I ever took. The eyes in the photo glitter like the city, and for a moment I'm nowhere near this blackened end, but I'm back with her. Back there, she had let me share one last day with her. I hear the machine above me now, but I can't turn away from the picture. Even as I feel it grip my limbs with its cold metal claps, I can only think about her. Then it tears me apart, and I join the blackness that had enveloped everything I'd ever known.

(you all stare but you'll never see there's something inside me..)
Waking up, my mind felt like it had been covered in tiny lightbulbs, and they had all been smashed. Memory failed me, all I knew was that there was pain. My entire world was pain, pain and bright light. I tried to focus on a different sense, but there was nothing but the pain. I felt something cold touch my arm. Flashes of the machine standing over me, the indescribeable pain when it removed my arms. The flashes were replaced with cold, my mind numbing. The pain ran from the cold, and the cold filled me. I tried to move, but I couldn't tell wether or not I succeded. The numbing covered me completely. So I laid, or sat, or even stood, where I was and shifted through the flashes that had once been my memories. I saw the machine, my home, the city of light. Opening new passages in my mind that seemed to have been locked away, or maybe blocked by shards of pain. Then the picture, those eyes. The pain was back. I could feel my body convulsing now. I knew I was laying on something cold before the pain took over completely. Then, the feeling on my arm again. I felt the cold rush through my body, chasing away the pain. It felt colder, this time. Understanding came just before it chased away conciousness...

I'm Lost Where It's Beautiful
A white corridor, infinite in both directions. Ambient light without a source, it casts no shadows. I don't know how I got here. I can't remember anything. There is no curve to this corridor, it's much like looking down a perspective painting. I know this is impossible, and yet I stand here. I can feel the surface of the wall, but I know only that it is there, its surface has no texture. There is nothing here, no sound, no smell. I can not even tell you that there is air here, but I am breathing. A straight corridor filled with a maze of questions. I don't know what to do. I should walk. There is no left or right, so I start moving. There is no texture to the floor, but I do not slip. Realizing I can feel the floor, I look down. Hospital scrubs. Green, tied in the back, I have no idea where they came from. Normally I would stop to think, but there are no answers in this place, only questions. I try to focus on walking so that I do not run my mind in spirals, I know where that leads all too well. A thought, I don't know how I know where that leads, there is no memory, but I know that I know where it leads. Confusion envelopes and I can no longer distract myself. I break into a run, I have to stay ahead of the questions. I should be tired, by now, but my muscles feel as if I've been sitting down. Why? I can not tell you now how long I have been running, there is no time here. I still can not see the end.

Prying Open My Third Eye
There were pictures on the walls. Although I'm not tired, walking seems so much nicer now that I have things to look at. Some of the pictures I stop to look at because they are very pretty. At first they were all pretty abstract, just colours and swirls. Some of the new images, though, I believe to be memories, or dreams.. I can't really tell which. A few have all been from the same perspective, from in a hospital, and it seems the camera is layin in a bed. I would swear it was like seeing through someones eyes, but there's only one perspective, not two. In a few of these I can see a girl that I can almost remember leaning over what I think is the bed. She is very pretty, whoever is in that bed must be lucky. She's in a few of the other pictures, as well, but never as close up. The only physical thing that's changed besides the pictures is the dull ache in the middle of my forehead. If only I could find something to get rid of my headache..

Nothing to Kill or Die For
The perfectly formed square that I had been trapped in has become flawed. The farther I go the more I notice it. At first it was just that the strange lighting didn't completely envelope me, but now I've noticed cracks in the walls. I can not see out of these cracks, but they seem to bleed darkness. It seems that the lighting isn't actually light, but in this place "light" is dominate over darkness. Without darkness, everything is lightened, and outside this corridor something is making darkness. The blackness that comes from these cracks scares me. This entire place scares me. It can't possibly exist, and yet I know I am here. I can feel this wall next to me, and I can touch the fibers in the paintings that have become more and more focused images from the hospital bed. It only gets worse. The entire world has started to shake.

To the Rythm of the War Drums
They came and went everyday. Touching his face, touching his hands, waiting for a sign. Waiting for the machines to make a different noise. The rythm of the machines was like a horror show epitath for him. She came every day, hoping her diligent watch would pay off and the past they shared laid to rest. Every day she wished that it had been her, and not him who had been consumed - even though it had been her who had consumed him. She didn't even realise that the regret was consuming her the same way. It ate away at her insides like a thousand tiny machines taking apart her mind. By the time his body started to shake, she had joined him.

The Last Day on Earth
All that's left is blackness. A lonely figure, the only source of light, floats in nothing. Completely motionless, he is trapped within his own mind, unable to get out to his body. There is no way out from this place, not for him. An inescapable void of his own creation, the pit his conciousness had crawled into to escape the feelings, only to find that the walls were muddy slopes. Forever falling, slipping deeper into himself, and all those feelings he was trying to escape awaited him at the bottom. With his nervous system down, all he can feel are residual memories of feelings, emotions that had dug this pit. He had thought the only crack was in his heart, but in truth it was hiding inside of his mind. Always trying to fix something that was never broken to begin with, his passionate ignorance had cost him everything, even himself.

..and I Was Hoping for a Happy Ending
She was waiting for me at the bottom, just like I had expected. She came towards me, and I wanted to go to her, but I couldn't feel myself, couldn't control my muscles. Up until this moment I had been hoping that maybe we could stay here forever, together. When I saw the knife, I knew why she was here. I saw my reflection clearly, my skin was cracked and broken, like dried up mud, and my eyes were black holes. She opened her eyes, and the entire world turned green. All the blackness was chased away, and when she smiled I knew it would be ok. She stood before me, and I couldn't see or feel what she was doing, but I could guess. I wasn't surprised when she held up my heart, and in her hand it turned to ash. The reality I had known for what seemed like an eternity shattered. The pieces fell away and behind them was the black canvas of death, welcoming me into it's folds, and I knew no more.

-K