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John Brian Costa

Silent Hill

Pyramid - Head Preface


Pyramid-Head stands tall and proud upon Silent Hill, blade swung to the adjacent side,
blood still spilling down sword. The urge to slay is within and without. He lifts his dominant leg
and steps forward in a motion of demi-urge. Then stopped edge at power's dominance. That
source of a thousand souls extinguished fused within his heart. The bleeding slain lie in streets,
dry grass and in houses around the globe, in fallen death.
Aqueducts flow with the blood to the buildings. Crow land in the distance unseen. Lies of
told persons of tales passed are in his listening mind, listening themselves. The fatale, of ever
committed doom, astray from this Pyramid - Head, for his too should he never allance, his own
fate. Looking down and forward in a gaze of evanescence he sees through his lives. And those
taken are still. And those taken are still. And hose taken are still.
The dark moon's spherical satellite heavenly body sets to the blood end night sky asking
to be bright, asking to be solved. Tremors of the blood moon reflect upon his sword's blade
shaking paralytics unto the sky with the stars, those resting stars trembling upon in fear of the
hooded man in strains, the Pyramid - Head. And those questions run around to the savage
genetics of story itself, beginning with an eon of religious war, lead into a political faction under
terrorism and so on it goes; an epic fail.
Timeline itself, the thought and understanding of thence should lead epithetically to one's
own death, for to understand and comprehend time is to understand the concept of a beginning
and thus also, an end.

John Brian Costa

Silent Hill

The irrational circular form solved in (pi) by division and radius squared. Orbits would
by (pi) multiplied by times (pi) to reach out in space of spherical arradiance. Solving the problem
in circles per radium aeternum.
Irrational , pi, 3.145926... ad infinitum is the resolution of the spherical orbit and all of
existence to go by the means of natural circular development as in moons, satellites, planets,
galaxies, atomic molecular ions, live and dead cells, and too forward and back in time... it should
not fail the cycle life with a new beginning in similar dualistic vision afterward if the destruction
of everything via some technical means and in the natural rebirth which always follows suit at
the other end of that portal.
So, the eyes, the windows to the soul, covered in the dark hood of the knight of the
Pyramid - Head in history's aeon away and thence timeline itself, the thought and understanding
of this thus therefore should lead epithetically to one's own death, for to understand and
comprehend time is to understand the concept of a beginning and thus also, an end, minimally
stasis in the orbiting cycle of clock if not t meet itself in a technical time-bombed duus.
The irrational circular form solved in by division and radius square roots in orbit would
by multiplied by to the reaches out in space-time of this spherical arradiance. Solving the
problem in circles per radium aeternum. Anno mundi, the year of the creation of the world. And
so on and so forth we go to and fro from and withal the too and passing the ebbs tide at coastal
bay. At the ridge of a spawning life.
Pyramid - Head stands in annuit coeptis and predicates the dead to rise:

John Brian Costa

Silent Hill

"It takes heart, and the truth and the heroin heart, and to never forget. There is no
knowledge that is not power... and there is no knowledge... that is not power."
Pyramid - Head stands and lowers his sword still held tight, gazing through the knight's
hood at the blood sky and dark moon whence surrounds times depth. Here is the world as it once
fell upon this place as I'll tell it.

John Brian Costa

Silent Hill

DEIMOS

John Brian Costa

Silent Hill

Bellum Temporum
Tempus cubare creatur igitur nos confusum
Vera ipse clara et non quaretur conversum socratum ita
Ex crepuscule et deltrium novorum venemini etiam
Deus mortem visum de speculo et nunc tamen vocabo
Hoc mundorum quaretis animas flammas exspiras

John Brian Costa

Silent Hill

In The Arms of Aeon


Hissing snakes from the ground sounding through the wind
Sinking the flesh and chilling the spine
Mapping the synchronicity of time
Logos pulling arms through the blind
Light years bending strands of veiled illusions
Peer witness to Aeon
Where she calls to he
Where she is
Eternally holding arms
A cup pouring water
Into the boundless sea
AEON OLD INTO AEON NEW
He took her hand in tranquility
The sound so blaring
As she walked him through the sharpest truths
Her nature spoke All is right.
And so it goes that he fell into her arms tonight, sunken
Bid farewell to the pain released into itself
Flowing pleasure heaven
He closed his eyes and all turned blue
So he walked into it
Vibrancy

John Brian Costa

Silent Hill

Frequency
Perfect wisdom
Sophia unveiled
Blinding so fine
Vision realized too true
Fallen in love

John Brian Costa

Silent Hill

The Furies
The shadow of a dead oak falls on the earth
The dead leaves whistling in a cold breeze
When the time is broken our ties to heaven tear like lies of untold fates
The Furies break through and wreak havoc on lives
The lines of reality to a delusional nightmare
A storm clears in the eye and theres a calm in the air
Wont habits and thinking to be destroyed and unlearned
Through creative method

John Brian Costa

Silent Hill

A RUNE IN THE RUINS


The gaze in the mirror is lost and alone
At first glance is a man in distress
His eyes start sinking and the pupils open deep
The flesh sends off heat and the eyes fade further to black holes in the face
The image transforms slowly melting expressions on a mask of unknown possibility
The face old a thousand years
And the face turns mean and then smiles old and wise
Dark plasm flows from the eyes all around the mask
Shifting little imperfections of being one to another
It shakes itself off only to be pulled back in by the eyes
Again and again the pupils open up and the flesh and the blood turn hot melt the face vaguely
Now theres a dead mans face with brittle hair in his beard
His eyes dissolving the judgment and fears and intentions of living
The eyes turn liquid and the plasm stretches like amoeba, swallowing all of being slowly and
surely
It grows and grows covering the room, the house, and the town
It devours the countries and the oceans
And finally the globe is all swallowed in deep space
Just as I swallow this fruit I throw out the peel
And it lay there for days and dries up
For weeks and it shrivels for months and years and its barely there but still something is left
aimlessly wandering

John Brian Costa

Silent Hill

Like swinging a blade


Creating destruction
I dream alone at night traversing myself
The inner tunnels, the labyrinth of my destiny
Fighting just makes it hurt
Letting go so blissfully
It came time to do what I always knew I would
The journey itself the destination, with the only reason being why
The battlefield for progress in a mind field
In the beginning together as one
I landed my ship and headed for the long journey home
And so it said When you transist the OM it will soothe so sweet.
Reappearing on the triumph of your virtue on the day we meet
I dont know you yet, or so it seems, so long ago, and so soon, we age older and older
And we are traveling the world
Just to see Whats out there?
And It this for me?
Or How about that?!
I settle on the coast between to oceans
I write by the fire in a humble home
I eat modest meals and wander the rainforest
I swim in the rivers where third world children play
I soak in the sun and rest on the beaches

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John Brian Costa

Silent Hill

I never have the time for the life of me


I simply sit cross legged by the waves where the tropic summer stretches so long
The tide ebbs and flows in harmony like the wild fires in your eyes
We drown in beauty so out of time
And with the battle long over laying there to rest I see the joy and the pain all in good jest
Now the wind blows easy in the palm of my hand
And through the shape of the world I find my creation
The driving focus threw the day dream in motion
Just as Archimedes the Greek constructed bronze cogs and founting water in Antikytheara
Measuring the movements of the heavens
It must have broken his heart when it sank to the bed of the Mediterranean
Rusting and waiting to be discovered for centuries
Like all the flames of knowledge from the burning books when Alexandrias library was torched
in antiquity
A fire that settled as the ashes we call the dark ages
And now theres a spark of a dawning a new day
And in a fever my heart begs to be free
It all came down so fast I couldnt believe
She spoke clearly
Her name Athena
And shes guiding the exploding desire
To the twilight where the attraction is real
Before I was foolish, anxiously running from myself

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John Brian Costa

Silent Hill

Scattered and torn like leaves and branches in fall


The gardens adorned like a puzzle so pieced sleep walking itself back into place
My aim was askew downward and inward to nothing
But hers was dead on and she hit the target with no sin no sine just two points in a perfect
straight line
The magic is gone and everything is clear
We both feel no fear
The buildings are towering
And no one knows what to expect
Sitting here waiting for the sun and moon to set
All flawlessly flowing in the sands of time
Just then a lantern was lit
I find myself in a dragons lair
Where he lies sleeping in slumbers dream for Aeon
He barely awoke at my knock on the door
And mumbled Just leave me be Im sleeping 'til dead.
I felt what he meant and looked down to the ground and started to turn around
It is here where the bone yards of men and their horses lie dead in the dust a cold and dark air
blows in the cave and I wrap my arms around myself
The water is a dark and acquiescent with no reflection at all
Suddenly very far off a dim light appears
Blindly making my way through those serpentine tombs following the growing light
I stumble on a golden room bursting open my eyes

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John Brian Costa

Silent Hill

Colorful paintings, and sculptures, and cryptic writings


All scrawled on the walls
In the center rests gold and silver and jewels
With hanging veined fruits for the hand of god
While outside in the desert vultures are preying and the carrion rots in the valley of plagues
But here a laughter flows melodious from the mystic breath of afterlife
And so it goes timelessly turning today as before and ever again
We return and the quest is a white rose
From your mother and father given to you a long time ago
That you thought youd lost
You sought it out and found it here
A rune in the ruins of a broken mirror

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John Brian Costa

Silent Hill

The Frozen Garden


Deeply gaze into the sands of time,
To the frozen garden, your existence;
Watch as it melts to so many puddles,
See as the sun rises from the other side
And tends to unforeseen possibilities,
And synchronicity collapses your perception of self, being, and consciousness,
Transmuting you to the infinite spiral conscience,
Do the waters hit the earth like crystalline memories?
Are you reborn yet again, only to awaken to one?
The resonating ring of your circulated bliss,
In the frozen Garden of the own existence

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John Brian Costa

Silent Hill

ON CUTTING
Your doing it wrong
You break the shaving razor with your hands
Retrieve the blade
Your wrists tremble in reluctance
You slice them into beautiful red waterfalls circling the drain
You realize the pain is real
Emotional pain being meaningless
You get to feel something
High and delusional
You burn the blood unto the internet
DNA satellites
Helicopters circle above
Dry mundane daze
You realize yourself in the mirror
Mediocrity and oppression
Neurotic depression
They all hang like raven wings
Look yourself in the eyes
Tell yourself
Continue to circle the drain
There is no such thing as rock bottom

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John Brian Costa

Silent Hill

Dear Phoenix,
Ive been busy moving into the new place so I havent been able to get back to you. Its
right off the Great Highway; I can essentially roll out of bed with the pacific sands between my
toes. It is a bit pricey for a flat but the location cant be beat.
Ive just been unloading boxes I packed in a rush after graduation to get out of the dorms.
Little treasures were buried deep in the school junk, so I had to go through everything.
Its a nice city. Ive always thought you should come out here for a weekend. Now that
youre all grown up in high school and all, Mom might let you take the Grey hound. If youre
interested, ask her about it and Ill buy the ticket.
I miss you, and I get real home sick. Ill be walking through the city and catch myself
nostalgic. Ill start imagining the freezing Colorado snow crunching under my boots, walking in
layered jackets while rubbing my gloves as I can see my breath.
I know things have been hard for you since I left. Just good be good to mom okay, dont
give her any shit. I know youre too young to tell, but she hasnt been the same since dad passed.
Anyways, she told me Aunt Silva moved Grandpa into an old folks home. The Alzheimers is
taking its toll.
Mom said they went to check on him and he introduced himself, then he said hes
working there. Mom played along, but the way I see it, at least he feels purpose. He was always
such a coy joker, you know? The way he would claim he invented the hook shot. I can just
picture him on his Missouri high school basketball team in the 50s convinced he invented the
hook shot. Anyways, Ill be back during the holidays to visit.

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John Brian Costa

Silent Hill

Im starting a paper pushing job next month. It doesnt make much use of the Film
Degree, but yeah a 9 to 5 grind to get my feet off the ground and pay back my student loans.
Mom thinks I should do grad school, but Im done. I need a break.
Seems like all I see is filthy concrete and towering skyscrapers.buzzing electric lights
and leering billboard and all the frustrated faces of these day dreaming strangers so yeah, I
planted some wildflowers next to the window theyre just waiting to bloom.
I was on a walk this afternoon and I saw Mike at the piers. You remember Mike, he came
out from Boulder with me, all hyped on a basketball scholarship, ready to study Calculus. I
almost didnt recognize him, all wrapped up in a dirty parka with a beanie stretched over the
lines on his forehead.
A dark paleness fell from his eyes, bloodshot in soaking misery. His voice broke as he
told me he was back at the clinic, taking methadone.
Such a sham, the chill fog clearing over the bay, and hes in line for a wretched fix.
Im telling you Phoenix its the same dull and dying story taking the best from dusk to
dusk.
I miss you bro, I dreamt of you the other night.
You were riding a giant black horse through thundercloud over crashing waves and the
Golden Gate. You struck down a lance and everything rained down like shattering obsidian. And
a loan grain was tossed into the mouth of a giant oyster.
Then I awoke and it was storming.
I couldnt fall back asleep.
So I listened to that CD you sent me.

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John Brian Costa

Silent Hill

Thanks by the way, the package came as a total surprise. It was sitting on the dorm floor
during finals. I unwrapped the boxes smiling. I knew it was you. I listened to it for the first time
on a cable car. I totally fell in love with it. Ive been singing along in the apartment with no clue
who the bands are or what songs are called.
Thanks again.
Ill see you soon.
Follow your dreams,
Immanuel*

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John Brian Costa

Silent Hill

Gypsy
May I help you?
The Friday night crowd fills the caf, conversation and laughter flowing with the jazz
bands music and a clattering soft roar of espresso machines. Taking my cup from the barista, I
nod and give her a Thank you. I tap light roast because it has the most caffeine.
Sipping my coffee as I walk out the double doors onto the sidewalk patio, the moon
stands cool waning among scattered stars sprinkled in the indigo sky. Cars pass to my left, a
small crowd mingles at benches smoking. I kick back with a cigarette, enjoying my coffee. A
peculiar old man in a black coat and a golfers cap paces the sidewalk before me, mumbling to
himself. Hes going off; all I can make out are the words hydrogen oxygen and a whole lot
of mumbling to himself. Scratching his gray goatee and speaking in scattered technical terms, he
pokes his fingers into thin air counting under his breath. I shake my head in disbelief; this town
is full of crazies.
My friend, M. walks up, she gestures with her cup and sits next to me. She sips her coffee
and sets it deliberately onto the table. She lights a smoke then flashes a smirk, noticing the old
man.
Anyway, howre you doing? I ask.
Oh, good man, yourself?
Same old, same old.
Are you going to school? M. asks.
I dropped out. Ive always wanted to do school though.
The man pacing stops and points at me with a curiously lazy finger, and asks me if I am
going to school.

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John Brian Costa

Silent Hill

Caught off guard for a second I look at him, and hesitantly answer.
Yea, I might.
What are you going to study? He asks.
Well, I have to finish math and science.
Well... hey take your time, understand. His hands flow in circles.
M. and I look the guy up and down. He has and aura of eloquence about him; I often
enjoy conversations with strangers here at the coffee shop. I once met a guy who had been
backpacking across the country for a number of years. He had a lot of interesting things to say.
Maybe this guy is not just so insane after.
Definitely, it is important to understand material. I agree with him.
Understanding brings about positive awareness, you see, and positive awareness is
spirituality. Dogma is a form of tunnel vision. My understanding is in terms you understand
God is a word that has been around for millennia. Well, God, as they say; is a fulcrum, and that is
to bring about positive awareness. God is turning a negative to a positive chemicals in a liquid
state there are countless variables involved and in all probability the future has limitless
possibilities. The mind is made of many different elements existing in a liquid state. Positive
awareness.
M. sets her coffee cup down conclusively.
The man starts pacing, stroking his goatee again.
Whats a fulcrum? M. asks me.
It is a leverage point. I say matter-of-factly.
My friend nods her head in understanding and sips her coffee.

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John Brian Costa

Silent Hill

The guy seems to know what he is talking about. He speaks through a modest raspy
voice, and I get the feeling hes been through a lot. I am not quite sure what he means by his
definition of God, I understand the concept but it seems vague.
Chemicals? I stop him to expand.
Yes, neurotransmitters, it all happens in a liquid state. God created us in his spiritual
image.
Like creation hmmm I never thought of it like that. When I think of god I usually
think of an old man with a beard or some vaguely eternal river. Perhaps, theres something to this
thought of God as a measure for positive awareness.
Anyone want to buy some rings? A grey haired woman wearing blue jeans and a denim
jacket with a purple scarf wrapped around walks up with a set of rings on a large key ring in her
hands.
They are five dollars. She adds as she holds them toward us.
They look nice, the old man tells her.
M. looks idly and casually shrugs, the woman moves on to show some other people in the
crowd.
I smile, the old man is strange, I thought he was just a rambling mad man.
Why are certain stones considered precious? I ask.
Rarity He concludes.
What is quartz, or obsidian? Some say it absorbs negative energies?
A talismanlike a crucifix, a focus, a meditation, you see. You and me and her, we can
only know what we know through our own experience. The man says.

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John Brian Costa

Silent Hill

I slowly lose interest as he fades out and I can no longer follow what he is saying
conceptually or audibly. He is pacing back and forth, I am a little irritated because I was enjoying
the conversation.
I attempt to bring him back down to my level.
What did you do today?
That is when we started getting into politics and straying into areas too abstract for me to
handle.
You know there is a difference between words like truth and table. You cant argue with
the word table. I say finally.
M. looks at me. Our coffee is all gone and I know it is time to go.
Im Saul. I put out my hand.
Gypsy. he responds with a humble smile.

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John Brian Costa

Silent Hill

Magic
Those interested in knowledge of practical use of hermetic magic. The origin of these
spells is unknown, and the personages of the church which founded these rites have been lost for
aeon. Understanding them is necessary for those who wish to use them, though I do not
recommend the reader to unless the guide is taken seriously.
The simplicity of the spells depends upon the mage using them, higher faith is needed for
the desired outcome to reach its occurrence one simply will require a table, a set of instruments
representing the five elements, earth wind fire water and ether.
For earth a bowl of salt should work just fine.
For wind unlit candles.
For fire sedimentary rocks or ground match heads or gun powder.
For the water one might use a bowl with water.
Keep the cards on the east end of the table, and the birth stones on the west.
Handmade ornaments of leather and hemp with bird feathers shall be the ether. The fate
of the spell is up to you, so beware and yield to the order of THE.
Dismantle the muse as a radical politically ripening tragic fruit. I to be the heroine of the
future or the past.
The basics of wondering the bohemia.
Profusely arrayed images mystically breaking the trees smoke in abundance my lung
exhaled in a thousand verses I saw back then in the euphorium of time and essence.
Shy away from this. She said to me, the priestess, and my guide, taken from her shuttle
I broke the spell by tracking numbers cast into the chorus of ocean.

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John Brian Costa

Silent Hill

Opioid addiction taken into levels Id never dropped to before, the apomorphine hit so
many as I rose to the top unshunned by few I took a deep breath and settled to the sound of the
music.
Circulation of blood through the veins the circuits faculty tearing the electric. Hash devils
beware Hassan I Sabah and the assassins took the mans head.
As the sole woman on the team I was brought to the mountain to profess to the emperor
the miracle which had not even occurred yet. I had no doubt even prima facie of the stone wall to
entrance was appearing at dawn like a yawning jaws of mystery.
Neglecting labor fields in death trine. Signs of the times. A clock falling away into the
bullet through the picturesque.
The nod was on.
Shape shifters on the black strobe light ceiling, ancestral and pure.
Television flickering static, the music way too loud. Starting to feel sick to my stomach, I
fell in the bathroom vomiting.
Shadows clinging to my person in the wilderness of my mind.
Id passed this a million times before, primal and free. Stolen from the details parasitic
side effects.
Coming clean burning three days later with road the night cold and the wind shield
crackling and freezing flesh feeling released and my soul realigned.
Ive never felt so dreamy I opened the door and walked up to the stone house my hands
brittle and broken I needed more pills.
Her face shocked that they were already gone.
I shrugged and she understood.

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John Brian Costa

Silent Hill

She drove and we got more.


She gave me a shot, my first one, and for a moment was the only feeling I ever wanted to
feel ever.
Liquid.
Liquid metal.
Liquid metal.
Local Bohemian natives mingle with their cigarette pulling the cards undone.
One stomps a bug and smiles.
`Amici pro esse meus lodi, nocte est meretricie ad nexus.
Rhythmic flow of the currents flew toward the east into what one would call
methodological sounds and theorem from X1 and X2, the harmony and dissonance being the
creationism of art.
Ive got a present for you.
What? You serious?
I sat up a little straighter and smiled.
Yea, seeing how tonight is Halloween and all.
She started to unlock the desk drawer which was filled with a stash of various pills.
I smiled and grabbed the mix.
You fucker! MINE!
Haha, yeah.
My eyes closed as we sunk into the mattress.THE.

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John Brian Costa

Silent Hill

Ghost Town
The skull and bones of a dead horse lay strewn across the cracked earth. The blistering
heat of the sun reflects off the pale ribs of the skeleton. High above in the clear blue sky a hawk
circles the desolate weeds in the dry heat from the sun. In the distance the lone road of Ghost
Town stretches across the desert, old wooden buildings line the dusty road and a few people
stand in the street.
At the small bar a man leans against the wood of the building on the deck smoking a
cigarette with his hat low over his face. His lazy eyes fall on some crows scavenging in the dust.
Mumbling to himself dragging his cigarette. Inside the doors a crowd of drunks, gamblers and
gunslingers drink their fill. Rogelio, the bartender, is a man with an uncanny knack for
connections; he can make anything happen for anyone at any time; which is a rare gift in a place
like this.
Ghost Town became an attraction for sin, people pick up and leave for a while, but
crowds mingle from time to time passing through. The town is on and off with drifters of all
walks of life with no real permanent residents. Indefinite kicks and a roll of the dice and people
would just vanish and reappear.
Outside a man pulls up barely running and wearing expressions of expectation and hope
from the stranger out front. He tosses the cigarette into his direction.
Hi.
How you doing?
Mateo?
The stranger lifts his eye in dull blank stare, fully ready for the deal, or to explain it to
him.

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John Brian Costa

Silent Hill

No one wants your contact here, film is no good.


The strangers face pulled tough against his jawbone his eyes lacking all intention. Again
his gaze falls to the crows walking in the dust. He spits on the wood of the deck.
Mateo, looks through the doors, drunken conversation flows.
What did they say?
No good.
Are you serious?
Yep.
The strangers eyes flash red and Mateo is gripped, lifting him off the deck he throws him
through the air with the birds.
Its no good, they wont take it. Rogelio and I dont need you around here and we dont
work for free, so well see your money by sun down. He puts his hands into his pockets. Mateo
falls away.
The stranger lights another smoke.
Birds hang on the rooftop as the sun travels through sky.
The stranger lowers his hat and exhales grey haze through his teeth. Rogelio wipes down
the bar.
Mateo drives home in mumbling disbelief. His film written noir, not accepted. Kris, an
actor in the film is at his home on the couch prepping a shot.
The phone starts to ring.
Hello? No good, really? Yeah, fuck, alright, Ill be there. He slams the receiver.

27

John Brian Costa

Silent Hill

Mateo, in the basement, cleans the 9mm over the projection screen of the dark concrete
wall, low tones and sounds of conversation two men have over the clicking reel. His face is lit up
by the steel; he kisses the gun in the reflection of the grey light.
Rogelio serves the last drunk, a whisky on the rocks.
Do you think he will show?
Stranger drags a cigarette, the birds with their heads hanging silent on the rooftop of the
building across the street. The sun goes down over the rusty metal signs of the old station across
the street as the darkness creeps in. He blows thick smoke into the desert night, Yes.
Mateo with the steel in his pants and Kris with his tight, pull up.
They figured theyd roll in slipping through the doors, he knew the stranger never
watched the film, so he wouldnt recognize Kris. They could retrieve the film after, he figured in
arrogance to kill.
They sneak in past the stranger just as he walks in.
Their bodies pile up easily and effortlessly theyre gone from existence.
Rogelio will have to get someone to clean this fuckin blood up.
The stranger grunts at the stains.
He walks back out and looks at the birds in the moonlight, a street lamp flickers on at the
station and he drags another smoke.
A tumble weed blows toward the dead horse where two more ravens fly in the night.

28

John Brian Costa

Silent Hill

The Big Bang


Basically put it was the end of the big bang. Things in the universe were turning in on
themselves. Time was speeding up and slowing down at indeterminable rates, the machines
people used to measure such things were no longer relevant. If they tried, they would just tell
you irrational numbers, or numbers that didnt exist at all. The religious said God was angry and
punishing man, the apocalypse.
There were a number of dimensional shifts and people disappearing into thin air. There
was a radical growth in the number of UFO sightings. There were galactian alignments of
unimaginable proportions causing a sort of rewinding of the whole history of certain Galaxies.
Stars were shrinking and growing sucking up whole solar systems they provided. Ravenous
black holes were eating each other and these pits of the universe were just like landmines of
universal trash. Dark matter was inverted into matter and was taking over the entire system, but
most likely it was popular belief anyway, is that it was in charge the entire time the universe has
existed.
I am going to tell you about how it all changed humanity and maybe some other
existences in other realms and planets. See, humans have always been the most interesting
creatures, most life in the universe is below the level of having any sort of consciousness at all.
Some do, of course but simply on an instinctual level. And then there is the super evolved beings
that have become so technologically and biologically advanced that there is just no diversity at
all, and they are doomed to fail. The humans have had a unique balance on this scale which had
resulted in a great diversity of cultures and ideas within the species that the humans at this time
were very confused and cultures were going through erratic changes after the huge technology
booms and the great number of natural disasters. People were frightened and acting as if they
still had control over things. When in fact the truth was quite different.
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John Brian Costa

Silent Hill

People were sinking back into another dark ages, machines no longer useful, they had to
rely upon ancient methods of doing things. For example the computers were going hay wire and
the old pc had to be revived, the handhelds were spontaneously combusting. Some even resorted
to using books for information, which had long been outdated and were only kept in libraries and
a few museums. But more importantly is the war that was started, roughly between the western
and eastern hemispheres. It was all about uniting the planet in a desperate time in order preserve
humanity itself. The western countries wanted a monarchical kingdom way of governing. While
the easterners wanted a democratic way. The problem with that is there was so many people on
earth at this time it was really unrealistic to have elections. Either way, that is where my story
begins.
Captain: Were going in boys. Hesitation is death. Over
All pilots repeat: Hesitation is death
Captain: 1-7, left, 8-14 stay right, 15-20 stay with me. Over and out.
The captain flew straight into his destiny, knowing that this would be the end he
unhitched his face mask and took a swig from the old flask.
Ugh, strong shit.
He put the cap on the bottle refitted his face mask and sped toward the enemy plans.
In an underground government control center somewhere in the western empire the
highest ranking military leaders sat around a circular table discussing options to be taken for
order to win the war. The best idea they could come up with was then sent to the monarch who in
turn approved of the plan. Operation east it was an idea brought up by general Moraugh, it
outlined aerial border of the east and drop enough fire power to destroy the east 10 times over.

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Silent Hill

The men got in their planes, which were lined up on the concrete. Ship decks in perfect
grids. Held their weapon all alike. The bomb titled Resolve. They began to hover over the
decks of the ships. Which lay just outside the eastern oceans border. The planet, few expecting
to live, feeling hopeless. Though they were able to fly high. Enough to escape the damage. The
risk was still great.
Each team of pilots came flying in swarms. The used even older technologies and their
weak radars couldnt detect a thing. It was too late for them.
The earth in the east was a dry cracked desert from end to end. The bombs left such
elephantine cracks that it was melting to the core. All that was left was sands and no biological
life was ascertainable to the pilots above. Just that brownish powder. And sand storms over their
graves.
The news in the west spread quickly, everyone celebrated. No one was concerned with
the people of the east because no one valued them. Most people several stories underground or
couldnt even see the ground at all because they were piled so high up in sky scrapers. Some
never even saw the ground and they didnt even know about it. They just lived in oblivion to the
ground. Some wouldnt believe it unless they saw it for themselves.
The west won. But at what cost? Half of the planet obliterated? This lead to natural
disasters and enough radiation to kill or mutate the humans left.
The radiological mass spreading in the desert east lead to a number of mutations from the
biological material left in the powder on the ground. The earth began to take form. Dirt clumps
took life. They evolved and grew quickly. But they never escaped the form of sand clumps. Dirt
clump men even took form fighting each other in the rain. And finally they were primitive giants.
They clumped around there fighting one another. They just wanted to end their lives at first.

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Silent Hill

Then they evolved further and further to nomadic tribes. They fought another and actually found
one another. Upon the western border and in the cities they formed they found peace. They had
never seen such warriors and governments began to revive the western democracy.
The helicopters began to land back at base with the planes after the occupation. It was
really just a big inconvenience. Mad men roamed the world looking for the unocean of thought
they never found. The myth of the conscious oasis in the east that the people discovered just a
rumor after all. Just selling dreams to the elite, strata of sky.

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Silent Hill

The Wharf
Joey, Sal, and Danny stood at the wharf, the cool bay breeze blowing through the crowd
of people. The guys hung out there most of the time, it was sort of like a meeting place where
anyone could meet up with others and get some business going when times got tough. Joey, who
had been trying hard to get some money together to raise his kid, who was just in middle school,
needed some dough.
I got a deal for you. Sal said.
Yeah? Whats the deal? Joey asked skeptical. He never really liked Sal, he was always
bringing around trouble.
Its simple, you just get me some of the stuff from Jack, and I got some guys whod
really be interested.
How much we talking? Joey asked.
Yeah, how much? Danny was Joeys partner, he sort of just hung around him like he
was his younger brother or something, but Joey, didnt mind, he loved the kid, hed treat him like
his own brother too.
Well, seeing as youve got to cut me in too, Id imagine you could get a good couple of
Gs for yourself in the end. Theyre looking for a key. Sal calculated.
A key was a lot of stuff, but Joey knew Jack had his connections, so he figured all would
be fine, as long as Jack was cool.
Newspapers strewn everywhere, there were a few books about mechanics and gun
catalogues scattered on the tables and floors. Old coffee mugs half filled with cigarette butts and
dirty articles of clothing hung from various lights and coat hooks. He sat on the couch in a wife
beater hanging loose over his sick yellow flesh dimly lit by the sun through the kitchen window.

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Silent Hill

Jacky was a hell of a fighter with a mean face, you couldnt tell by looking at the guy,
real thin and weak looking, but he could punch your lights out and you wouldnt even see it
coming. He was the sort of guy who lived real cheap but made good money. A miser of sorts.
Hed buy the cheapest box meals and use 1 ply TP and didnt have a TV or nothing like
that. His furniture smelt of sour ass and was made of old wood liable to break any moment. He
lead life behind the scenes, didnt like being seen, always looking over his shoulder in public. He
sat eating his twenty cent soup from the pot with a plastic fork which he probably picked up at a
cafeteria he had eaten at a month or two earlier.
The door slammed open.
Fucking Christ man, why you got to bust in like that?!
Shit, were fucked Jack!
What the fuck? He stood up. You fuck this up?
Man, they busted the Diamond.
Dan Dakota, a.k.a. Danny the Diamond, a street kid with nowhere else to go was now
sitting downtown in a holding cell. Started hanging out with the boys at the wharf late last year,
he didnt name any names, hes no rat.
So I take it you didnt get the dough? Jacky turned and looked down at the newspaper
and carpet.
No man, Danny got popped. I barely got away, had to break out the back, I ran all the
way here. Sal, that bastard must have smelt trouble
Should have never fucking taken the risk, should have known thered be pigs, the Shark
pool is fucking hot. Fucking swine! Jacky kicked the table leg, it broke and the soup went
flying.

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Silent Hill

He flashed red and poked Joe real hard in the chest and said You mother fucker, you did
a real slop job here, didnt you? You go back there and find out exactly what went wrong and if
somebody squealed you find him and you break his fucking legs before you bring him to me!
His face went bright red. You dig?!
Joe lifted his hands and nodded.
Now get the fuck out of my house.
Joe walked out the door and Jacky swung it shut behind him and shook his head. He put
his hand to his forehead and paused before grabbing a button up shirt, tucking his revolver into
his pants, and headed out the door.
Frank was the big boss, he lived in a two story mansion on the west end. There were
gardeners out front and a maid answered the door.
This is very unsettling, Jack.
Yeah boss, I know.
Frank changed his tone.
Now you get me that money Jack, or I get your balls on my mantle you got me?
Joey was walking down the avenue towards the Shark Pool, where the deal had gone
wrong. Inside the bartender pulled his shot gun.
You got a lot of nerve showing back up here, Joe.
Look, I need to talk to Sal, he here? Joe asked the bartender.
Sal aint here, aint seen him neither.
He waived the gun motioning toward the door.
Alright. Im gone.
Joey went to the wharf.

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Silent Hill

Sal was a fuck up. And he did a real bang up job at it too.
According to Sammy the rat, who was the only one at the wharf, the cops had showed up
looking for Sal because his girlfriends Ma had called the cops after hed robbed her place again.
When Sal found out the heat was onto him, he booked town. So said Sammy the Rat.
Joe left the wharf and never came back, he didnt want any more of this business, and
hed had enough.
It was no way to raise his kid.
He felt bad for Danny sitting behind bars for this whole mess, poor kid. Diamond
wouldnt do much time though, the pigs would eventually give him a program and probation and
thatd be that.
After about a week Joe left town with his kid.
Jacky was pissed because he hadnt heard news and knew it would mean his balls. He
was in back at home in the middle of the night when three goons busted in and duct taped his
mouth shut, hog tying his hands and feet like an animal.
They threw him in a body bag and carried him to the trunk.
He struggled like a fish out of water but sunk like a rock to the bottom of the bay when
they threw him off the wharf.

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Silent Hill

PROJECT PROMETHEUS
Part one: The Deep Blue
Holes in the floor
Puddles of mercury
Shafts of light
Floating upward
Filling the soul
Those empty holes
Once stuffed with self - deceit
Made born again from such little faith
Grown from providence
Once slept in the night as do others
Now it is known
Sober and Serious
Child of light
The thief on the cross
In expectation of understanding
To be blessed
The brethren hand in hand
Carrying the armor of God
Into a battle of spirits
Breaking the deceit
To meet at the edge of fate

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Silent Hill

Becoming a part of you


Through love and faith prevail
Pulled this design
Into the deep blue
There he was, walking through a party in his own home, full of people he did not know.
Or at least did not recognize in all the detachment of night. Holes in the floor, shafts of blue light
shooting upward. He watched with sullen eyes as the music faded and stumbling drunk girls all
the meager and last lingering fallen of a dying party. He walked through the set of strangers out
the back door.
The sun was on the rise over the autumn wood. A bird fountain stood dry with a gray
statue of a cherub in fleeting stone hope. He walked off the property further into the fallen leaves
and dry dirt. He looked down and saw his body lying dead under some leaves. A dead tree rest
over a creek leading him back to the house.
Everyone is gone now.
He walked toward the room and its dark with some light coming from under the door.
He opened it and shafts of light open up from the floor like mercury to close and reopen
again. The body is past out on the bed, wide eyed in the doorway. The body dreaming of an army
of red armored horses flying through the sky and being left on earth with walls crumbling
upward in magma scorching grounds where we left the heart in the night.
All from the lived so long ago and now thats gone. Reality stays true. I am my art he
says and what we are creating is me, watch as the muse pulls me through. A dead body.
They marched down the path toward the shore. One could hear the oceans roar and the
night sky was clear and the stars and moon lay gently scattered in an indigo back drop.

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Silent Hill

Xy and Gen came out on a whim, they had their back packs and a duffle bag with wood
and some newspapers for a fire. They stood at the cliff side before walking down the wooden
steps. Gen looked at him and lifted his eyes and Xy smiled back at her.
The ocean waves flowing with all their glory. They stared at the scene as they walked
down, conversing how happy they were to decide to come out to the coast. They got to the shore
and put their things by a log facing the waters.
They each lit a cigarette and started to build the fire. The wood came from a pile in the
back yard and they placed a few small twigs with the newspaper to start in the shape of a
pyramid, Gen lit it with her lighter.
They held their hands together and blew on it, rearranging the little sticks to get it started.
The yellow flame started up and the kindling was lit. It cracked and popped as it became fully
enflamed. They added a few larger logs and set it up to burn.
Xy lay down face first in the sand and Gen did the same. The fire felt warm against the
cold ocean air. The sand flowed through their fingers as they dug their hands into it and watched
the fire heat up. The flames went from yellow to orange then red.
He sat up on the log facing the shore and watched the fire burn. Smoke was carried up
wind and the fire cracked and all the logs were burning.
He lit another cigarette.
Gen, still lying on her stomach, sat up a little with her arms in the sand.
They noticed the bright red and the deep orange and blue in the pit of the flames. It was
transforming into different levels of brightness as the heat grew with the wind.

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John Brian Costa

Silent Hill

Xy took a drag off his cigarette and when he was done threw it into the flames and
watched it burn and coil into ash. Gen sat up on the log with him and smoked one as well. They
held each other in their arms.
They didnt say much but agreed it was nice to get away for a while.
As time went on the fire started to die down a little as the logs went brittle and started to
crumble into one another.
They decided to head back and go.
They threw some sand on the fire and flipped the logs over.
The burning embers appeared purple and green when the flames disappeared
They grabbed their bags, smoked a last cigarette and watched the embers die and then
walked back up the wooden steps. They took one last look at the blue embers from the cliff side
with the oceans roaring in the wind and walked to the car with deep sighs and drove home.
Chase held the flame real close to the beaker. It glowed and lit his face up bright in the
dark room. He smiled with a look of expectation over at Xy.
Check it out man.
That shits going to pop.
Xy lay back in the recliner with his hand on his head. Dude.
Dont be so interested man, its only the one things thats going to make tonight worth
any while.
Xy got out of the chair and walked over to the desk with the light.
What is it? He asked with esteemed curiosity.
Oh just stuff that is going to get you higher than the moon. Chase laughed and smiled.
Xy looked down and shrugged and said Alright.

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John Brian Costa

Silent Hill

They stood outside in a clearing the trailer parked off a ways. The light of the stars and
moon shone down. Chase spread his arms and looked up then sipped his beaker. He wiped his
chin and passed it to Xychron who did the same. They finished it and went back inside.
Chases feet felt weightless as the gravel passed under him. The green and the dull light
from the flowers around him shone in a lack of vibrancy.
His eyes went heavy as they walked back to the trailer. A smile broke across their faces
as the road passed in a treadmill. The wind flowing through their hair.
The suns rays started to pick up in a bright orange blind as they went into the light.
That morning they started to have a really intense conversation.
She was talking about how she was mother Mary and we were looking at this painting of
Jesus. His eyes were a beautiful green, just like when I gave birth to him, she said. She also said
she was Cleopatra in a past life and talked about Alexander and all that. Very interesting woman.
But very insane at the same time.
Xy looked at his friend in great interest. He hadnt known that his friend had spent time
in a mental institution.
You know that Nietzsche philosophy, the eternal return, well there is another way of
looking at it also. Its not that we are necessarily living the same life over and over again but that
each moment contains the possibility to grasp something new, like every time. Every moment of
pain and happiness over and over. Every moment is essentially the same moment.
Carpe diem. Chase said as he sipped a beer.
Cheers. Xy lifted his glass.
Its like that saying live til you die.
I think that when I buy hot sauce at the store.

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Silent Hill

They both laughed.


I made that soup last week, the one we made the recipe for.
Was it good?
Yea it was, Chase seemed satisfied that he had accomplished something. The cool sun
was rising out the windows of the trailer. Lentils, potatoes, green beans, kidney beans, corn,
broccoli, carrots, garlic, all that stuff, it was really good.
Sounds good.
I like doing good things. Its like that one time we left that restaurant and we helped that
old couple who were out of gas. Its like that man.
Yea for sure, there are so many billions of people around, but if you can just lend a hand
to a couple people you know you have done a good thing, a good job. Socrates once said the only
thing I know is that I know nothing at all, and then someone went to the oracle a Delphi and
asked who is the wisest man, and she said that no one is wiser than Socrates, so the wisest man
really knows nothing at all. Its all about what you do for people.
Xy sat up a little in his chair.
It is like a dream man.
Its like a dream, but its like a lucid dream, when we get to choose whats next and we
know we are dreaming. And we have to know what the next right thing to do is.
And that can be the hardest thing sometimes.
Xy sat in the backseat of the station wagon as a child, his mother was in the drivers seat.
They were heading north on an ocean side hwy.
Are we almost there?
Almost honey.

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John Brian Costa

Silent Hill

Xy sat back and looked at the red cliffs pass by through the window. The sky was clear
and the sun shone high.
Do you see that cliff?
Uh-huh.
It is called squaw rock, legend has it that a long time ago when only native people lived
here a woman found her husband had died and jumped off of the rock down into the river to
commit suicide.
Young Xychron stared up at the cliff side and down into the blue water through the glass
frowning. They continued the drive.
Xy had a fairly normal childhood for a boy growing up in the times. Camping trips,
picnics, schools.
He met the woman of his dreams the year he graduated, Gen. They would go on dates to
restaurants and flirt over tasty food. They would go to the river and float downstream in a little
canoe, see movies, and were generally happy healthy young people in love.

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Silent Hill

Part Two: Project Prometheus


Xy took the transit to the town center at seven am. People didnt seem any different; it
was quite a normal day. The world went on hustling and bustling as it always has in and out of
traffic lights, stopping and going. But there was a heavy weight resting at the bottom of his
stomach, he felt slightly ill. None of it seemed to have any meaning any more. It all felt so
empty. Passed the main avenue he got off and walked to the caf. There was a man sitting on a
laptop. He seemed cool. Xy went in and got a cup of coffee. He walked up to the guy on the
computer.
Mind if I sit here?
No man, feel free.
Right.
He sipped his cup for a while and looked at the guy typing away with his sunglasses on.
You read the paper?
Nope.
Doesnt surprise me, people lack information in this age because they are so submerged
in it. I highly recommend you check it out my man.
Okay? Xy shrugged.
Not interested in politics? The man asked.
Not especially.
Xy sat at the table on the outdoor patio of the caf. It was a beautiful day. People rode by
on bikes and cars cruised by slowly.
I am Daniel Aiden. he sat across from him smiling and closed the laptop.
Man, these people really have got it out for the world. Daniel spoke with slight offense.

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What do you mean? Xy asked curious, sitting up in his chair.


Well, look at it, theyve got computers super crunching peoples lives into minute
logarithms determining who is fit to succeed and who is expendable. Theyve got everyone
pinned to a super system of numbers. Data bases on everybody down to the last purchase youve
made. All of your medical records, all your life stuck on a binary equation. And when it comes
down to it, they have the say on whether or not you live and thrive or if your numbers arent
satisfactory, it goes to the next.
Something had gone wrong with the world. So much technology finally had dissolved
into Project Prometheus.
People knew it was coming for a long time, back even to the New Testament and
Revelation. People simply go through the motions like any other citizen. Behind the cars and
jobs they are all blind.
Corporate interested in shared data bases of all your information collected down to the
dot. They take those numbers and punch them in through the computer based on a statistical log
and determine what is next for you.
Who gets the new organ they need, how much you pay for the same crap, what job you
are eligible for and how much money you are going to make and essentially what you are going
to spend it on.
Daniel made himself to be a rogue of sorts. Relentlessly and secretly ever waiting for his
in, for the right moment to pounce.
I guess I missed that class in high school. Xy spoke after the long pause.

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John Brian Costa

Silent Hill

Well, theyve got you pinned. You know that little card you carry everywhere you go. It
is no joke. You need it on the bus, you need it at building entrances, for purchases, for a kidney,
for ice cream.
Aiden spoke and took off his sunglasses. He face was white like ivory like he rarely came
outside.
Xy considered the possibility that he might be a systems hacker of some kind, probably
nothing to serious he assumed.
With globalization and everything this is a serious problem. A system needs diversity in
order to thrive, Project Prometheus lacks creativity and room for any sort of catalyst for change
and has brought mankind to a stalemate. He shook his head.
You know this war is only for population control right.
Daniel stood up, stuffed his laptop into a back pack, through it on and lit a cigarette.
Well, nice chatting with you man, but Ive got to go.
And he left.
Xy sipped his coffee and looked down on the ground.
Xychron woke up at a quarter to six. He took a hot shower, smiled while he brushed his
teeth and got dressed, made some coffee and ate breakfast on the couch. He went outside and
grabbed the paper in the rising sun. He read an article in the paper and quickly set it down and
grabbed a hat and walked out the door.
He caught the seven o clock transit and rode into the inner metropolis. He slid his card at
the gate and it opened and he walked through the domed edifice. He took the elevator to floor
seventy-six.
He looked at his watch.

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John Brian Costa

Silent Hill

There was a strange man in the elevator giving him odd looks, it made the hairs on the
back of his neck warm and he started to cringe in annoyance.
He walked onto the flat and looked around the fountain; a few people were setting up
shops. He walked in a straight line with quick dashing movements.
He arrived at a door in a hall and again put the card in. He walked through. The war had
been going on for some time he stared at his watch ticking down. The draft.
Later that evening Xy walked down the lamp lit streets with the cold air blowing on the
ground he stared at the grime.
Advertisements peeling on the walls of the downtown sector, he held his hands in his
pockets with the newspaper article crumpled within.
A man dressed in rags with a filthy blanket asked him for change.
No, Im broke. He lied.
A man in a uniform walked by in the crowd and the face grew sour staring through him.
Walking faster to the restaurant to meet Gen, this meant him and he knew it.
When he had gone in this morning to her office where she worked, they all stared at him.
He was so upset and Gen didnt even know yet. She almost started to cry but couldnt because it
would appear unprofessional. Theyd made arrangements for dinner.
Xychron sat on the couch and his face fell into his hands and tears filled them.
Gen walked into the room.
She looked at him and her face grew soft and she put her hands together before her and
started to open her mouth but stopped herself and kept it quiet and paced back and forth behind
him, she didnt know what to say.
Xy sighed deep and wiped his wet hands onto his pants.

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John Brian Costa

Silent Hill

He turned around and saw her standing there.


He stood up and she walked up to him.
She rubbed his tears into hers and they kissed.
I feel helpless.
In the old days the world seemed so benign and the spring times were magical, and
carefree. Gen was the new girl in town and Xy was in love with hopes and ambitions.
When they werent in love together they were in love apart.
Everyone seemed to carry smiles with them.
The rain would fall on houses at night and lamp lights in the night and his mother would
read by the fire and his father was still around.
There was a small cozy circle of friends and everything was free and easy.
So long.
The wind came up and blew all that away with the tide of war.
Fading memories as he left for the front lines.
The real life only tears held back in his cold eyes.
Xychron stood in line, the general screaming discipline at their young faces. Telling them
of what is to come. They stood like a row of vineyards for the crop. Theyre faces strong and
hard from camp.
The man stopped and slowed his speech and told them of honor and the glory staring
through them all. He made a signal and they screamed together. Xy stood silent amongst the
ranks. The sound reached its peak and they marched through the portal into the next level of the
dome and into battle.

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John Brian Costa

Silent Hill

People cant change the way they feel miles apart. So hopeless. To drown in this over kill,
the pain of being so far away takes hold, will be bliss.
Whats the use?
Fight and it makes no difference. Crawling. He knows he is right and the wrongs are so
apparent. He sees his reflection in the cool blood and tears in the dead mans eyes.
A ripple of pain across the blue uniform and alone across time he thinks of her forever. So
he asks aloud What is love?
The explosions and screaming continued and he opened his eyes to the roaring thunder of
bullets around him. He stared with his cold blue eyes at the deep reflection of night as the man
lay there stiff. Napalm behind him he runs away in his deep blue uniform out through the dome
and into his destiny.
Later lying in the cold. Not wanting to die alone. A night wind blowing through the cold.
A street lamp in the dome calls to him and theres dark water in the gutter. Trees lit on fire in the
distance. An old newspaper in the grass. He thought about it but it was too risky. They could still
be firing. Suicide whispers its fantasy and of summers to come. He knew it was a death camp of
some sort by now, war games for numbers, for population control, he figured no one made it out
alive.
Intuition tells him to know better and try to win the game, and the instinct to survive
kicks in. To live on.
Back at home Daniel Aiden was simply going through the daily motions, nice car, nice
job, waiting for the moment to pounce. Project Prometheus was in full effect with the draft.
There was no saying what was next. Hes becoming more and more frustrated every day, all he

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Silent Hill

needed was an in and to find the right person. Sure, a lot of people were pissed off, but no one
with an in.

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John Brian Costa

Silent Hill

Part Three: Nova Deltree


Gaia Summon: In an age of corrupt politics and chaotic metropolis, the masses march
like ants in a bureaucratic mess blind or indifferent to the sheer destruction of it all from
deforestization to mass extinctions, climate crises powered by control calendars enslaving people
to perpetuate their own wealth hiding the truth revealing their lies peeling we must rise up
through the cracks in the concrete and the spirit of terra because she will live on whether or not
we choose to.
Chase stood at the waters edge staring into the setting sun. A million blinding pinholes
poked through as he shut his eye lids in frustration. His head pulled back to the fading light as if
by gravity, he couldnt look away. He was in a trance and high. Some people were laughing
throwing a disk back and forth behind him. For a moment he thought he might know them, but
no smiling as the sun fell to twilight. They were strangers again.
He couldnt trust anyone. He was avoiding the draft and would have to turn himself in for
insanity before his number was up. An institution is better he thought. He turned to look and the
people were gone and the sun was on its way out.
Chase felt still as he put his hands together on his bare chest. He walked back to the car
and threw on a hoodie.
Is this it?
He put on some music for the ride home.
As he was driving he got the call. One last fix before hed go in.
He picked up the ringing phone.
Yea?
35? Alright Ill be there in a half hour.

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He sped up the car and went to score.


He tossed and turned in an itchy wretched fix that night, wondering if theyd have
anything for withdraw in the hospital.
Frost white cold and alone, shooting away the truth. Painlessly she floated away on a
dried red melted wax lily deeper into an ocean of milky white lies. As night falls the sun sinks
down the horizon and sherbet twilight rays of dawn reflect on the surface of the vast sea, and
then darkness consumes us and the constellations break apart into fragments collapsing on the
placid waters.
The stars sink one by one racing toward the bed of the ocean, where the sands of time are
born. Flash back to an age when things were simpler, sitting in the meadow under the oak that
spring waiting for the summer to spread its wings, and he knew everythings going to be okay.
Like a dove flying face forward into the sun. He tossed and turned in his bed.
Its medication time
Medication time
The soft soothing noise over the P.A. Chase hopped out of the bed in his pajamas and
walked over to the desk with the woman behind the window. She passed him a pill in a cup. He
let the pill melt under his tongue then sipped some water and let it dissolve. He got back into
bed.
Xy ducked behind a blown over craft. Bullets flew by and explosions sounded all around
him. He peaked his head out but smoke filled his eyes. He crouched back behind the rolled over
tank and reloaded his weapon. Taking a deep breath he poked his head out, all seemed clear. He
ran out and ducked behind a burning building. He looked around. Travis was waving him on. He
met Travis in boot camp and theyd been partners since. Xy caught up to him.

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Silent Hill

Alright Xy, its go time, were busting into this spot right here, weve got some hiding
out shooting at us. Just be careful and use your head manyou ready? Travis held his weapon
tightly against him, his life line.
Xychron nodded his head.
Travis kicked the door in and held his machine gun tight into the building as they went in.
He waved Xy into another room and went up the stairs.
Xy poked around the corner and walked down a hall. A couple doors were at the end. He
stepped lightly across the filthy floor with his weapon in front of his self, he could hear people
whispering in some language in one of the doors. Gun shots from upstairs, Xy turned his head
and two men came running out of the room at the end of the hall. He shot them both and watched
them die for a second. That was all it took. His face started to turn.
You alright man. Travis yelled coming back down the stairs.
Yea Lets Go.
They moved on.
Gen worked as a secretary for one of the top dogs. She had no opinions about the ethics
of her job. Not until her boyfriend got drafted that is. At first she was just solemnly depressed.
Then she was scared when he left. After he was gone is when the anger took hold. The frustration
got so bad she decided to do something about it.
After work one day she went to a local caf. She saw a man with a laptop sitting there
with sunglasses on. He seemed of no interest at first so she went in and ordered a coffee.
As she went to sit down she got a closer look, she noticed the screen on his laptop. He
looked over his shoulder at her and started to pack his things and go. She waited for him to leave
before getting in her car and following him.

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Silent Hill

As he pulled into his gate she took the address down.


At home she looked it up.
Daniel Aiden.
A computer programmer.
She nodded her head and smiled a sinister grin.
The logo on the monitor was something shed seen before.
It was a symbol for underground revolutionaries.
It looked like a red stamp of a circle with a plus sign in it.
The astrological symbol for Earth, or Terra, or Gaia.
She first ran into it after Xy left and she found herself walking around downtown. Near a
pawn shop she bummed some change to a street kid who had the patch on his backpack. She had
asked about it and that is what the kid had said.
She couldnt stop thinking about it.
Shed gone into the pawn shop and bought firearm. A nice and clean chrome magnum.
She knew it would come in handy at some point. She just didnt know when.
But now shed found her man, Daniel Aiden.
Her smile was lit up by the screen.
She searched further for the website of revolutionaries but couldnt find anything.
He must have some encryption on it.
She knew this meant they were a team.
She drove back to his address and left a note in his mail box before the gate.
Daniel was looking out the window at the time.
Who was she? He thought. Hadnt I seen her earlier, he wondered.

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Silent Hill

He knew this was something good, what hed been looking for.
Hed have to wait until the next day to check, it was too suspicious otherwise.
Xychron stared at the puddle forming under him.
Travis stood over him for a second yelling something, then he ran off into the distance. It
was a bullet. He could feel it in his side as he clenched his teeth.
He tried to fight it, but the pain sunk in and he fell silently into shock. The battle
continued around him and he could hear to fury of war as he huddled into a ball. He thought of
his mother and then thought of Gen His face fell peaceful in the blood. A smile left marked cold
on his face as the blood grew deeper and the war began to fade away all into the deep blue eyes.
Daniel Aiden got up that morning and walked outside and lit a cigarette, he grabbed his
mail as usual. He put out the cigarette on the porch and walked back inside. He read the note
with great satisfaction. This woman worked for them, she definitely had access to the Project
Prometheus database. He smiled and tore it up and threw the note away after memorizing the
address and time written on it.
Travis stood alone in a field after the death of his friend. There in the night the flying
crosses strewn across his life and dreams. Well meet again someday. Aero planes and admiring
the beauty of the horses fenced in. The wild desire and drive behind their eyes, fiercely beautiful.
Such strong grace and Gods elegant patience and guides that are life. The light within us all is in
you too, friend. Just remember the way we were, when in battle, we were as one. A team. The
unified spirit will burn triumphant and to your glory. There is this fear in the heart. The fear of
not making it. Just know that you can watch above, learn to love that life. You were so young,
had only begun. Gods light was in those eyes, signs are clear, nothing to fear.

55

John Brian Costa

Silent Hill

Daniel showed up at the lobby just after dark, like the note said. He went into the bar and
waited on a stool and ordered a drink.
It only took a few minutes for her to walk up, she tapped him on the shoulder and he
waited a second before getting up to follow.
In the elevator he said Oh, now what?
I can get you into the computer with the access codes for the central database. But the
system is secure so youre going to have a hell of a time getting into it, you are going to need to
give it everything youve got. I dont know how much time you will have, so youll have to be
quick.
No problem, Ive prepared for this with years of experience hacking systems. Plus Ive
devised quite the virus, I know its penetrable to even this system.
Good, well need it.
They walked into the office where Gen has her desk. She opened the door in the main
office where a leading general held his desk.
A view of the vast night city, Daniel hesitated checking out the beauty of the scattered
city lights out the huge window.
Hurry. Ill stand guard at my desk. The access code should be written on a note on the
desk.
Daniel shuffled with his jacket where he had the disk with the hack. He found the note
Gen was talking about and accessed the system. Then he uploaded the virus. That was it. That
simple.
He pulled out the disk and walked back out the door.
Gen was standing there with the general standing right before them.

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John Brian Costa

Silent Hill

Call security. the general spoke seriously and began to approach Daniel.
Who the hell are you?
Hands up. Gen held out the magnum aimed directly toward her boss.
Get on the fucking ground. She yelled and clenched her jaw and tilted her head in
seriousness and kept the gun toward his head as the general knelt and lay on the ground.
Lets go.
She put the gun away as they ran out the door and back into the elevator.
Hell call security Gen spoke in fear.
What do we do?
Dont worry.
Lets get off here. The lobby will surely have security waiting.
They stopped the elevator on the 5th floor and they got out.
First thing he did was check the walls.
He ran through the hall and pulled the first fire alarm.
Best to hide in mass hysteria he figured.
They got out through the crowd of people running out the building and down the street.
He waved down a taxi and they got in.
Motel on 32nd.
Daniel let out a sigh of great satisfaction.
Finally.
That night Gen and Daniel shared life stories. Aiden realized he had met her boyfriend
and Gen was shocked and demanded to know all about it. She spoke of hope of seeing him again,
little did she know he had already passed.

57

John Brian Costa

Silent Hill

They were on the run. Fugitives.


Travis read the article in the paper, still frustrated at his partners death, and instantly
recognized her name. It said that they could reboot Project Prometheus, but it could take up to
three weeks.
Just enough time, he thought.
Hed risen in rank.
He now had a pilots license.
He gathered up a group of disgruntled soldiers.
It would be mutiny, but with the collapse of Project Prometheus. A revolution might just
work.
They hijacked over two dozen aircraft.
When word got out other pilots started joining in.
They flew directly toward the all the major cities with all the major Projects databases.
There wasnt much the government could do with the system hacked, especially with
morale so low. They were their own enemies. The war was a global effort at war games, killing
for the sake of killing, people knew and were sick of it.
They attacked in full force and watched them burn before the system could be restarted.
They had succeeded in destroying Project Prometheus.
Travis stood gazing out over the city that lay in destruction of war in deep thought. His
eyes were cast deep into the burning horizon. The sun born high in the sky, the heat glistening on
his skin. His uniform was heavy and he wore a disgusted look as he scanned the wreckage. He
thought of the sun set to come and figured hed wait on the hill. He pulled out some rations and
started to eat. Hed felt like an older brother to Xy, he had made him proud today. His girlfriend

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would be fine, he thought. He had been a true friend through this pointless war. Theyd both been
drafted and both had the same attitude about it. Most the men were like them at this point. Death
and futility, yet men still marched in duty.
It was finally coming to an end.
The revolution had happened.
Now it was just a matter of rebuilding.
People had learned.
Society would know better, he thought.
At sunset, Travis walked down the hill towards the burning city.
He thought it beautiful, all of the worlds numbers burning up into flames.
The towers
Heat and ember
Settling rubble
A cold wind blows
The flag left hanging from poles
Stood for something else today
Babylon burning
Confusion self evident
The unexpected crash, sedition
To birth a new world
A rebel soldier watching the blaze put out his cigarette into the dirt and watched the
smoldering ash take form.

59

John Brian Costa

Silent Hill

The Mousetrap
On the summit of a grassy mount surrounded by vast woodlands the erupting spires and
primeval architecture of the castle lay hidden by the trees.
Great and horrid gargoyles mount the turrets, rain dripping down their demon faces
swelling in the dark.
Inside of a dimly lit study.
I am an apothecary, just a young denizen yet of powerful family, mixing a potion of an
opium tincture and sitting by an open fire in a grand arm chair.
I take a sip.
I set my drink on the side table picking up a book as the light of the fire flickers shadows
on the wall.
Looking out the window at a flash of lighting, thunder strikes and I put my head in my
hand, distressed.
I got the idea to poison my uncle while reading Hamlet by the fire light in the study.
The part with the play within the play where the player king is poisoned by his nephew.
Its called the Mousetrap.
My father was assassinated nearly a year ago during a speech he gave on the reshaping of
the worlds order and social construct, which many found to be too socialist and extremely
radical.
I am sure it was a set up.
I watched on television as a bullet flashed through the skull, he fell from the podium like
a limp fish.

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John Brian Costa

Silent Hill

My first thought was a flash back to the discussion wed had over policy only a week
prior.
My uncle, the new monarch, has views in direct opposition to his fathers, his brothers,
as well as my own.
In his year as sole monarch he has managed to reverse all of the work and progress made
for the people of the world by my father.
In the late Age of Aquarius, our family rose to absolute power over earth and the planet
became under the rule of a single monarch.
Centuries of war had come to an end.
Countries had already been replaced by greater unions after the globalization of the
twenty second century.
But still for so long wars were waged and poverty and hunger remained unsolved in
many places.
My father worked on reversing these social problems and creating a freer world.
The family has essentially solely dictated the worlds policy for over two centuries.
We are literally untouchable by anyone else who may be seeking real power.
It has just simply systematically been made impossible.
But like a black hole or a nasty computer virus or rotting fruit from the tree every once in
a while something or someone is introduced into a system in attempt to sabotage and in turn
devour all the functions and facets that make it work.
The new monarch, the eldest great grandson of the great patriarch that first took charge
was expected to take the throne upon the former monarchs death.

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Silent Hill

But then it was left to his youngest more liberal son to reign in hopes for greater change
in the worlds assembly.
It was unexpected and went against historical traditions, but this was a new world.
The eldest brother, my uncle, was left devastated in disbelief with a sworn secret grudge,
I know it.
And that is why it must be him whod planned my fathers assassination.
It is the only logical conclusion I could come up with.
Sure others had motives but they lack the initiative and power and more importantly
anything substantial to gain.
As monarch he has increased imprisonment worldwide, making money off of what is
practically slavery and reverted to an almost KGB like police state in this postmodern world.
More money is going into researching new techniques on brainwashing than solving
poverty and hunger.
Civil war is inevitable.
The family has worked very hard to make this an unlikely future for man, but here is one
man from within making it happen.
He has to be taken down.
I sip my opium tincture contemplating the mousetrap, poisoning my uncle in the study.
Revenge tickles the hairs on my neck as I close my eyes in pleasure.
I will poison himat which point I will claim the throne.

62

John Brian Costa

Silent Hill

9/11
And at this point years down the line, there are actually a hell of a lot of people that agree
with that statement he made as a sixteen year old kid. But not necessarily a conspiracy, more of a
collusion of powers to fuck us all, many are offended by the question, but arent there no stupid
questions? If one were to look at human history and its tendency to repeat itself it only makes
perfect sense.
The web-site, inspired by a random occurrence at a shindig, was the Mecca of their
youth. After school and weekends they all spent submitting writing and artwork to their little
click. Narcissism and mellow drama, insanity and freedom of expression.
Looking back youth fades away sweeter and sweeter with age. Do the shores of death
beseech shall this light shine on through the ages in creative influence and love, will they
satisfy ever the longing for immortality? Is this journey too towering, is fate peeling by the hour,
this ticking grandfather clock of mortal entropy from birth and downward? Is it fate that
intimidates by the hour or is just the releasing of the past as pure illusion that is sending us down
this serpentine? Is the eternal return to be ephemeral ignorance on the part of ones own neglect
or should people just embrace gratitude and go buy the books?
It was another weekend in town. They were kicking it at a shindig at Peters, his folks had
left town. It was probably about 10 or 12 students. They all had the peculiar habit of smoking
copious amounts of marijuana on a daily basis, and this night was no exception, along with
musical instruments and a four track recorder.
Peter was in the bedroom shooting an Air Bazooka at everyone, in survival mode,
Dont ask, dont tell

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John Brian Costa

Silent Hill

A couple sat flirting in the den, and there was a jam session. A few stragglers had the
Attack of the Munchies. The sound of low crunchy guitars and grunge post rock from the stereo
throughout the kitchen. A tray of marijuana cookies lay on the counter top, later to be eaten by
the dogs and home boy Peters mom upon return the next day. Some horror sci-fi film was on the
TV; Saul was passed out at the kitchen table having a nightmare.
Saul cant seem to finish school as he selfishly educates his self through his own
inexperience and insanity. His own narcissism and self-absorption is spreading its behavior to
those around him and it is somewhat alluding and effecting him. He cant tell if its just his over
active sublime imagination or reality.
Idols twilight into the reality of strangers daydreams walking by on the concrete. He
wants them to see, it isnt fair if they dont right? To know it is all going wrong, though he
holds no moral dilemma with it, he truly finds it funny.
This self chosen plague he has released. He doesnt know how hes done it, or if it is truly
his own making at allperhaps it is simply a 3rd party working through him. Wouldnt say it is
fair to rule out either possibility.
How do you exorcise an atheist: Ummmm, here your evil possessions, which will be
$9.99.? Not Christ, and not necessarily the anti-Christ, rather trying to explain that one
shouldnt have to die to see truth with it all so apparent. Material death is over rated, who says
one cant die when you are technically alive. Realizing the return of Saturn to the birth stage
is at 28.6 years Earth time, the orbit of Saturn around the sun, falls almost exactly on this date
12/21/2012. Laughing at the twenty twelve paranoids is a regular leisure activity of their circle of
friends. They attempt mystery sci-fi theatre 3000, making jokes, to the scariest movie ever, The
Exorcist, Saul gets sick to his stomach and nearly vomits.

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John Brian Costa

Silent Hill

He gets pulled over and the cop arrests him, calls him an idiot right?
In court the cop says I pulled him over at approximately 2:04 a.m.
Then Saul asks Did you call me an idiot when you pulled me over?
Under oath.
Did you call me an idiot?
I dont recall, with his beady little eyes and skinned head.
Judge rules in Sauls favor.
Damn right.
That cop was a punk, a real prick, and his buddy that pulled up after him was a creep.
Short blonde gelled hair and glasses, with a white arm band on his wrist, looked like he was a
little too into world of war craft on his time off or like he thought he was a real void mage. Could
see it in his face, they were both pretty young cops, power hungry pricks, thats all.
They tortured him in booking with an electrocuting magnetic conditioning rod.
But the cop sitting at the desk at the lower level of the station downtown where they do
booking was freaky. Saul stared at him as he just sits there just staring aimless into void stroking
his fat mustache and twitching his face. Looked like Nietzsche on a really bad day.
Once working security a homeless buddy under a bridge was being gripped by a skin
headed piggy and Saul was pissed because there wasnt anything he could do, so he just went up
to him and told him that this was his security site and asked him if he should put this in the
report, subtly hinting at the abuse of the homeless friend in his fists.
All he said was No I have it taken care of, but he looked shocked that hed even ask
and he settled a little on the dude.
Fucking cops.

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John Brian Costa

Silent Hill

Not to say that they are all bad. But the bad ones tend to be really bad.
Like this one dude literally must have thought he was one of those robot cops from the
movies, wants to enforce the third degree for driving home late after a long day and dealing with
a flat tire. Insisting on questions of alleged lack of sobriety, complete bullshit, he just needed
some sleep at the house two blocks away.
Muttering under his breath Fucking cops, as he insisted he follow his prick finger with
his eyes. Do you have a problem with me ensuring your safety?
Twenty plus city cops drive down Main Street on a Thursday night in about five minutes,
there was about five or six vehicles that werent police. Enough is enough, he thinks, cant use a
cell phone without a headset without going to jail but cops can have a shot gun and be focused
on their laptop while driving trying to fuck people because they went to the police academy for a
few months?

66

John Brian Costa

Silent Hill

Exorcism of an Atheist
Have you taken your anti-hyperdiskinetics today?
They were in one of the offices in the hospital.
Peter looked at the Dr. through wide bewildered eyes.
What the fuck did he just say?
In Movias eyes the Cyclopean visions began to form in his dilated vision, the deep abyss,
an isle of nothing in an ocean of empty space ebony blue and green. The Dr. stood with his arms
cross in stilted and desperate expectation.
Saul!
Saul was lost in the thought again, peoples urgency with time, and the atomic
uniformification of time. It was day light savings last week, and all this unnatural
metamorphoses of people lives, based on some theory. Science knows better, look at the basics of
quantum; to observe is to alter.
His voice spired to an echo in Sauls ear drums.
The Cyclops eye spoke to Ulysses, high and mighty on his ivy throne of stained marble.
Icy cold blues and reds, like frozen lakes. Ulysses thought that he might get away without so
much as this, but yet again, his fate got the better of him.
Who are you?
Saul
Later in the cafeteria of the sanitarium.
People used to worship electricity, you know.
He poured his bowl of lime Jell-O down his throat.
You know, at least we get Jell-O.

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Silent Hill

I dont get your point, bro who cares about the Jell-O?
Then I can have yours right?
Cmon, play one game of cards with me.
Saul ate the second bowl of Jell-O, watermelon, bomb.
The Doctor jotted a few notes onto his clipboard with his gold pen. He always kept it in
his white coat pocket. He carried it like an award or trophy.
Well, Saul if this is how you are going to behave, we will just have to see to it that
you lose your reading privileges.
I dont read. The patient replied.
Look, youve been here three weeks now and youve barely said a word, now have you
or havent you been taking your meds? And we have to monitor you here, and no, yes, in fact
you do read quite a bit the doctor looked down at the patient in condescending pleasure in
a matter of fact tone said to the contrary besides the time spend sleeping you continually have a
book on your person. And in those blue pajamas, it is very apparent. See, you have a book on
you now, it is just closed at your side.
Dr. Movias leaned in a little, Saul tucked away.
Movias eyes stared deep into the glasses or the bearded bipedal hominid before him, and
smiled.
Of course not.
What do you mean by that?
Who wants to know, Movias? Ill be real with you, this is not really where I belong, all
those heavy tranq meds make people crazy, not the other way around, and you have to
understand that, okay. You cant go around forcing people to take things they dont want or need

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Silent Hill

to take. In my opinion your degree to do that means nothing to me. I choose not to take them.
He shrugged.
Ha. Well, Umm, thats the thing, here, where you are you, wellyou dont have that
choice. The fact is you were brought here.
Fuck you man!
Saul stood up and slugged the Dr. in his crooked face two times.
Movias recovered quite quickly, as if this had happened before or hed seen it coming,
almost instantly he pulled a transmitter from his coat and called:
Security.
Sometime down the line, Movias is in his superiors office reviewing Sauls report
subject for review for moving onto phase two of his treatment, reintegration into society.
Besides his stubborn attitude about cooperating with our requirements about the
medications, he has actually been very polite and civil. I personally am not even sure hes
actually crazy. Frank Bellingham spoke with a calm collectedness and had an aura of peace in
this sanctity of his office.
With all due respect Frank, he punched me in the face. Movias held his bruised mug
with his left hand as if adjusting it into place.
Well, thats true, and I have taken that into consideration.
Crazy is a broad term Frank.
Frank, the head of the department stroked his chin, Dr. Movias, stiff in the wooden chair
sat before the desk. His face twitched a little as he watched Frank considering Saul, the fucking
prick punk kid whod punched him in the face, and his possible early release. His lip rose a little
in cynicism and spite.

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John Brian Costa

Silent Hill

Months later, reintegrated into the world Saul is with a buddy, Peter, who also did some
time in the sanitarium:
Movias is the crazy one, I know theres something wrong with this dude, you could see
it in his face, and hed do this thing with his eye like he was tweaking out.
Hahaha oh yeah, I remember that shit, itd be all moving around on its own when hed
be asking all those absurd questions and junk. I bet he was all jacked on Meds he prescribed
himself or something, he was too creepy and weird not to be all fucked up on something. Dude,
the only good thing about that place was they had Jell-O and you could play cards.
Hahaha, the Jell-O.
They walked on for a minute in silence.
Peter hit the joint and exhaled the smoke into the dawn air, walking down the rails of the
track while the first meager rays of the morning sun peaked through the ebbing overcast, the
metal of the train tracks with puddles of dew on the rust from the winter cold overnight.
Theyd been spending time together again.
Good, I thought I was the only one who noticed that. Pass that yonder.
They reached out their hands as they walked and Saul hit the herb, a look of hope in his
eyes as the sun reflected off their hooded sweatshirts yawning in the dissolving winters twilight.

70

John Brian Costa

Silent Hill

The Mark of Cain


The smell of the fall harvest blew through the Indian summer air. The sun, orange and
fiery red stood high in the sky, burning and churning heat down to the dry fields below that
stretched for miles, rows of crop to be stored for winter. The lines of wheat, vegetables and vines
were drawn from the ground before the house of Cain.
The wood dark and aged, stood high over the earth. A dry breeze was picking up and
Cain was out back sharpening his scythe on a stone wheel he spun with his foot. Sparks of
yellow and red shot from the metal as the sweat dripped down his back, he wiped his brow and
pulled the scythe from the stone running his finger along the curve of the blade; he sucked the
blood with his tongue.
Abel, across the fields, lived in a grove with his sheep; he herded them toward Cains
house. He wished to speak to him; thinking they might have some words to exchange after Gods
judgment of their sacrifices.
Hello brother, how are we doing today? Abel smiled to his brother as he approached
him with his flock.
Im fine. Cain bit into an apple from one of his trees and looked coldly into his brothers
eyes.
Did you have something you wanted to speak with me about? Abel ran his fingers
through his hair, his sheep huddling around him.
A dead leaf fell to the ground from the tree beside them, as the wind grew stagnant. Cain
lifted his eyes to his brother
Yeah, why do you think God favors you over me? Honestly, youd just let the world go
to waste, wouldnt you prefer to wield its resource and store for winter to gain more power to
create a better life for the future?
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John Brian Costa

Silent Hill

Cain stood tall, holding the fruit in his fist toward his brother staring into his eyes, his
eyebrows lifted.
Well, in my opinion, I feel we can just live in peace. We dont need to work fields,
toiling day in day out for nothing. All we need we have, and as far as the future goes, have you
not all you need here now?
The breeze blew and Abel stood smiling complacent with his flock huddled with him.
The wind started to pick up again as Cain walked to and fro in the field before his
brother, considering a counter to his brothers response.
Well, to be real, today is just fine, but to work the land is something I prefer, to work a
hard days labor is a good thing. And for God to prefer your offering of living with and like
animals is pathetic to me. You sacrificed nothing, I feel like all the hard work Ive done in my
fields will reap the greater reward. And that is why I am going to kill you, for the greater good of
Man.
He pulled out his scythe and held it before him, the sun shining on the blade as the light
hit from the orange horizon in the distance.
So, you plan to kill me then?
Abel stood indifferent,
Well, I am at peace with my life, Cain. But first let me tell you, my people will fall away
by your hands; man will no longer live with and for the earth, but for themselves. And the planet
and Gods world will mean nothing. Your opinion of right and wrong is insufferable in your eyes,
you insist on being right, and with the world in your hand people will remain at constant war
with one another, and those who live this way will die this way. God will mark you, and your
people will inherit the earth with this mark. The mark of Cain.

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Silent Hill

Abel held his shepherds rod, his white robe flowing in the dying breeze, his admonishing
gaze sullen to the eyes of his brother.
Cain froze a moment considering the words Abel had just spoke, he tossed the apple core
to the ground and said:
So be it, but recognize God favors me if I kill you, and thereby I will change the
definition of God, because you will be dead and God will, with his gracious hand, mark my
posterity to work the Earth. And my vision for agriculture and the future of the world will come
to fruition by the hand of man, not by the hand of God. Abel, you will die, and your ideas will
perish, because my people will exterminate your following. It is the way it is, I am going to shed
your blood on these fields and man will reap what is sown. Father, Mother, Adam and Eve, from
the Garden of Eden lived in your manner, in peace under the hand of God, and what came of it?
God expelled them in the end for eating the serpents truth, and you who choose to please God,
will die, will be murdered and I, Cain shall rise up and those who descend from me will carry the
power of the knowledge of Good and Evil to work for humanity as God. The mark of Cain.
Cains black hooded robe stood still in the twilight of the setting sun as their argument
reached its peak, the stars beginning to appear in the heavens, his face cold and dark, the scythe
at his side, yielding for the right moment for bloodshed.
And why is that? Because you believe you know right from wrong? Abel asked him.
That is absolutely right. The sun sank to darkness, the clear night sky towered above
them.
And what will happen in the end? Will you not kill yourself too with this mentality of
everything is for me to wield and control? Abel questioned. What of the Earth itself, will you
not work it to death until humanity itself is forced to nothing? Do you suppose God will tolerate

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your revolution to its final course? If you kill my peoples ideas of living with and for God,
wont your people with this conquering mentality of consuming the earth, in the end kill
themselves off in recourse to killing the earth?
You use words as if they meant something, they mean nothing. The only meaning is in
action, you are through.
Cain lifted the scythe, cutting his brothers head off leaving it dead in the fields. His body
fell to the fields flowing warm blood into the cold ground.
Cain stood wearing his dark hooded robe, scythe in hand. The harvest moon in the night
sky laid rest over the fields, death bowed its head and walked away, the body deteriorated, first
the flesh, then the bone, until nothing was left but dirt. The mark of Cain.

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Silent Hill

Xtullu Deathtrap
The lullaby arose with the tentacle monster from the sea. Aeon dreaming to the prayers of
his enslaved followers. Bodies rotting in catacombs in vast underwater cities arrayed in
labyrinths of human coral, the lost sunken continent of Lumeria.
People had a gut feeling long before it actually happened, no one talked about it but we
all kind of knew. The army of beings from the sky came later, like a swarm of armed locust.
Those not enslaved were left scattered and slaughtered.
Me, and my crew of men are some of the only survivors with an ounce of humanity left
in us. We are a team of scientists, survivalists and the wealthy. What I have seen is our numbers
fall and those like us follow the same pattern. I am being sent on the sole mission of finding
Ktullu for possible destruction and if not to bring back my findings.
Humanities will soon be a faded memory on the scar of our history that too shall
disappear into insignificance that is space times infinitely threading reality. The Death Drones
were the machines created by tax dollars in military arms research. A sound structure and tonal
logistics created for mind control and thus absolute power. A sound theory by MX. KABEL
proved that if a distinct sound chart construed (a440) and image color table to use these tables
crossed with brainwashing techniques recognized in the past, such as Orwellian newspeak
(black-white).
One could theoretically with mass media technologies such as television and computer
control the masses like Pavlovian dogs drooling for whatever effect desired. Death drones came
when the science was mastered emitting constant control frequencies in barely audible tones,
some terribly low and others awkwardly high and off pitch, almost visible too. People saw colors
differently, and time began to spin faster and faster as it moved forward infinitely linear in the

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end as the seasons grew closer together due to the carbon emissions of well, us. The colors of
the heavens changing is what is actually said to be possible to awake the beast.
Ktullu is said to lay dreaming at the depths of the pacific. He is said to be like a giant
octopus but made not having standard squid like qualities. Rather being made of a substance
similar to bone marrow. We figured if anything a form of cancer might be able to kill the thing
before he arises and destroys us all.
We stare outside our lab up at the desolate heavens as the constellations stand bright in
my eyes the greater bear and as satellites blink slowly. The heavenly bodies spinning in the
shadows of darkness which is the empty space.
People get older and ages pass, civilizations evolve and empires fall, but how did we
stray so far as for this, the summoning of an evil greater than ourselves to enslave us and destroy
us. People worked for centuries all day every day for peanuts to perpetuate the wealth of
miniscule percentage of humanity. For too long and their greed finally caught up with them. But
they had to try to ruin it for everybody, and all of posterity. The End they ranted in churched
and states The end in groups and all alone in rooms or cells or down the street, laughing out of
fear, existential regret and that all it adds up to is entropy. And devolution.
The death drones sped up the process of the summoning of the ancient ones, Ktullus
Minions. The slumber once rocked became violent until one day it finally woke. Rising to the
surface monstrous and seeking vengeance.
A machine for decay slowly digesting pain. On the other side I see my scars still burn the
same the light at the end of the tunnel has me caught like a deer in headlights behind to flee the
machines of GOD to decapitate with platinum swords onto the next with my head in the flames. I
joined my body and fell into the dream.

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Silent Hill

So many nights I fell asleep cursing so many nights I woke up screaming so many
mornings I crawled helpless and hopeless out of bed only to spend my days pacing in scheming
circles to find my oblivion and do it again. How long did I circle the drain? Did I finally get
sucked through or is this all a dream? Searching for meaning and afraid what Id find ether way.
I walk into this cold desert necropolis with my hood on, havent eaten for weeks. The
King of Ghosts waiting through the portal at the bottom of the unocean. All these shadows of
despair flicker on the coven walls as I pass through the gates. A wasteland of desolate spires and
sand. I reach the final lair where the picture lies to stare into it and reach the other side. I hear the
sound of the death drone running from outside the cave. I am pulled through the portal.
I am in a vast coral city in full gear.
I know where to swim.
Colors flash to black and white and I reach the gore of the beast at the bottom of the sea,
before it was only his spawn Id seen, but now here is the giant monster wed been waiting for.
I wade toward it in the blood-ink filled waters.
An eye opens and I recognize the beauty.
He pulls me into the dream and I am gone forever.
Enslaved.

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John Brian Costa

Silent Hill

The Serpentine Machine


A machine for decay slowly digesting pain. On the other side I see my scars still burn the same.
The light at the end of the tunnel.
The two young men sat on the couch in their two bedroom rental. Mixing magic and
machinery is not recommended to anyone, but the two nave amateurs knew no better.
It started with small things, black outs and flickering electricity and bad television
signals, it would change to channels automatically and with a seeming reason and intelligence as
they smoked their concoctions of various drugs. Street drugs, herbs from the herb store, medical
marijuana, etc.
And then there was the goo in the fridge which for some reason attracted an array of
various almost exotic tones.
Melted candles gave off a little heat in the dim light of the apartment.
Titus spoke quietly and in scattered religious terms as he hardwired the computer.
He spoke of Lord Adonai and Tetragrammaton as if they were a part of everyday laymen
vocabulary.
He spoke of an angel with bloody scabbed wings like that of a dying insect.
Simon Pulled out a gas mask from a cardboard box and put it on and wore it for a while.
He spoke in response but Titus had a hard time hearing him at points and would just give him
cold stares for minutes at a time.
He took off the mask and went outside for a smoke.
Hey this compost heap has got to go buddy its stinking up the place. Simon tossed a
cigarette into the fruit peels and soil and walked back inside.
It pissed Titus off.

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Cigarette butts would ruin the compost.


Theyd been getting into strange things as of late.
Besides the drugs, black magic rituals and other odd behaviors.
Definitely strange things, satanic kabala symbols strewn in red across the walls smeared
in blood and condiments.
The constant mixed smell of the drugs with the smell of Titus cooking raw beans and
incense burning out from a skull on the table filled the whole apartment.
They both wore all black and their faces were pale beside the black goatees.
Titus wore make up thick and ugly.
Simon had his wrists slit silly with dried blood from no effort to clean afterward, sloppy
mother fucker.
They lit the charcoal for the hookah and smoked some shish.
The magic began brainwashing the populations of people around them, at least they were
sure it was so. It is never recommended to use magic against your neighbors, though they didnt
care much for love thy neighbor. Theyd scream at the top of their lung in heated arguments on
Nietzsches Anti-Christ or Greek myth in the middle of the night. Often neighbors would have to
knock and ask them to be quiet. They didnt care. They hosted strangers often who would stay
briefly then get freaked out and leave.
They honed in to one frequency without diversity or discernment oblivious to the world
around them.
Neighbors would stare at the apartment in a trance. And when they stepped outside
everything always stood still in frozen and awkward silence, people stared as they walked by in
cold moments of contempt.

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Senselessness and crimes occurring of unimaginable horror from their online following.
Cults popping up as mindless sheep.
New age religious extremists had a desire to escape the nihilism and revise the meaning
of life to anyone.
Some of the spells uploaded brought things out of control. Titus got into hacking. New
viruses that could destroy your hard drive and put up permanent images on your monitor every
time you start up that would bother and be disturbing to anyone.
Portals of consciousness were being opened with no way of being closed, spirits
primarily benign or malicious could come through and go and invade anyones consciousness for
dreams fading for miles. Drones of frequencies transmitted for canny levels brainwashing of any
ones making. The spells were working, automated from the machine itself.
It only really required a couple of computer programs and a few supplies you could pick
up from a tech store and a little handy knowledge and the ability to follow simple directions.
The machine was flickering and wires began popping black and white electricity against
the noise of the boiling water.
Titus, sick of it all, grabbed the boiling water from the beans and poured it directly onto
the machine.
It sparked and started an electrical fire.
The flames started small and Titus just watched, he didnt care much to put it out. He
wanted the machine dead.
Simon was sleeping off a hangover in the next room.
When the smoke became unbearable Titus ran out the door, he made an indifferent
mumble that the house was on fire that Simon could not hear at all.

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Simon awoke in a dark cloud of smoke about ten minutes later. Where is that fucking gas
mask when you need it?
He fumbled around for a minute grabbed his snake from its cage and ran through the
smokey hall like a tunnel, the light of the fire burning at the end.
The door appeared as a bright red square at the end of the hall.
A light at the end of a dark serpentine.
He coughed his way through and burnt his hand on the door handle.
The machine was dead.
He got outside and Titus was downstairs just watching the smoke pummel from the door
and windows.
The fire visible in the window.
Simon walked down the grimy concrete steps and joined him for a smoke.
He kissed his snake and set it free knowing hed never be able to take care of it now.
They watched as months of futility went up into flames and smoked their cigarettes.
Man, what a great waste of time this place has been.
I know, right.
Well Simon faded off into silence then thought of something.
We better get the fuck out of here before the cops show up. He said.
They walked away slowly looking over their shoulders, disconcerned as the fire spread to
the neighbors apartments.

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Silent Hill

Aqualung
He drinks every day.
A 40oz and a pint on workdays and the bars on the weekend.
He smokes a pack a day.
Hacks up a lung every morning.
He works as a sales rep. during the week. Behind the shirt, smile and nametag is a cold hatred for
his job.
Hello, welcome to _______, how are you today? Fuck you.
You go on too many smoke breaks. His coworker comments.
Yeah, Im trying to quit. Die fucker and go to hell.
His girlfriend broke up with him because he drinks too much
You drink like a fish.
Youre a fish.
He gets back from his smoke break and the same coworker motions to him that he reeks of
smoke.
He shrugs and thinks of possibly buying a fifth instead of a pint tonight.
The rest of the work day drags on slowly.
No more smoke breaks, has to prove he can do it, plus it will shut the little fucker up.
He stocks some shelves with items and smiles as people walk by.
Fuck you, have a nice day. He stops and wonders if hed said that aloud. Hes not sure, he
shrugs and keeps stocking the shelf.
He clocks out and goes to his car and drives to the liquor store on his way home.
Two tall cans on sale and a pint of cheap whiskey.

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He opens and chugs one of the tall cans in his car on the drive home.
He gets there and brings up the booze.
He proceeds to drink himself numb as he watches the bad news on TV.
He lights a cigar while doing so and considers that things could be worse.
I dont have a trillion dollars in debt.
One thousand of my closest relatives and friends didnt die at war this month.
Im not addicted to crack going on an intervention over public broadcasting.
The suns gone now and the dim light in the apartment is stagnant and its cold.
He staggers out of his seat and turns on the heater.
He walks to the bathroom and turns on the radio and undresses.
Some pop song about love and sex is playing mixed with static from the signal.
He turns on the bathwater and looks at himself in the mirror.
You suck. He says to himself and smiles then brushes his teeth with too much paste.
Too much foam.
He hops in the bath and mindlessly yet intentionally knocks the radio into the bathwater with
him.
Aqualung.

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John Brian Costa

Silent Hill

The Mansion and the Architect


They first toured the house in late autumn, a woman of middle age gave the tour. She
dressed elegantly and had a powerful demeanor.
This is the main hall. Notice the cascading stairs and balcony of the second floor. She
held her hands against the thick violet curtains hanging from the second floor.
The mansion itself was designed by the brilliant architect named Drakel, a native to the
Holy Roman Empire. As you can very well tell he put much time and energy into it.
She said looking up at the painted dome ceiling as they walked up the main staircase.
They started down the hall, the couple smiled.

The art work, all chosen by the

architect himself tells a lot about the man, most of it is very dark." The man put his hand down
on an ebony sphere on the upstairs column as they reached the top of the stairs.
This one is my favorite She spoke quietly and reserved.
They looked at it together with a blank expression not knowing what to think or believe,
an oil painting of a muddy brown canyon with contrasting gold and blue flames burning heat, a
gruesome beast with tentacles, reptilian scales and insect wings stared directly into them with a
finger pointing directly into flames.
The man faked an awkward smile to the realtor as the wife passed indifferently.
He gazed down the balcony as the chandelier flickered. He was taken aback by a statue of
a knight in the fashion of Arthurian legend standing on the first floor he hadnt noticed as they
came through.
He shook his head in disbelief, quite shocking. He started to think of his father passing, a
great man.
The realtor passed placing a hand on the man's shoulder.

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Lets move on.


The realtor walked them out. They stood under a waning twilight in the autumn breeze.
It is really quite an offer, fortunately for you the interests are down and this is truly the
best time to buy. She held out her hand and they left.
It was a cold windy afternoon not two weeks later when they pulled up with their things.
The gable peaked high, towering over the huge double doors, they stood on the lawn
scattered with untended gardens and fallen leaves.
The mansion, with its stone faade loomed down at the earth, the windows staring, lined
with hanging plants and ivy.
Well, we are here. he said.
The wife looked around at some sculptures and a fountain.
Her gaze fell beyond the property at a high elm tree in the distance poking branches over
jagged rolling mountain tops in the distance past the hills.
The first few weeks they spent getting settled in and becoming familiar with the house.
They discovered a garden bower out back, where on the days when the sun came out,
they enjoyed spending their days. It started to feel like home.
They kissed arms around each other under the hanging ivy and wildflowers.
I feel so at peace, we have entered a new world.
They laughed.
Gabriel.
One day before the winter solstice the man was walking through the wrapping halls on
the second floor for no particular reason and he noticed a door, it was locked. He went for the
handle and tried again. Not given the key he grew somewhat frustrated.

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He called the realtor later that day. She assured him she had no idea.
Three mornings later a package laid rest on the front doorstep. It had no postage, just a
small brown box with a ribbon tied around.
He opened it on the stairs, a skeleton key wrapped in cotton and silk with a note and in
calligraphy saying only two words: "Thank you.
He put it with the other keys in his pocket and threw out the box.
He walked up the hall and reached for the key and grabbed the handle, it slid open
unexpectedly and he stood still looking around in silence, the door was somehow already
unlocked.
He crept into the pitch black.
He reached for a light, wondering- what is this room?
A library with a great wide window staring out distant at the mountains, he walked passed
the piano touching the keys, he browsed the shelves various titles then sat at the desk.
He looked in the drawers, the top had a few pencils and pens and a notebook. He sat at
the desk and read a while, it turned out to be journals of the architect, Drakel.
Not thinking much of it he put them away and turned out the light, and started to feel
groggy as he walked back down the hall toward his bed.
They laid awake a while, talking about nothing.
When the rain started to pick up and a storm began hitting the roof like galloping horses.
The lights blacked out and a quick chill ran up their spines.
What was that?
It sounded like footsteps

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Silent Hill

He went to check out the sound telling her to hold tight, he walked out the hall and the
darkness swelled in silence and despair. Creaking noises on the wood from the mansion a melody
began to flow to his ears. As he passed, shine of the moon outdoors landed on the knight and the
painting lit up, it was all he could see for a frozen moment in time.
A soft elegant Aeonian mode, flowing from the library, and he knew it.
He stared at the ebony sphere on the column.
In the dark in the dungeon, he awoke, the background of the flames lit wildly.
He knew.
His arms and feet in chains in the form on an X his body felt weak.
Insane sounds of insect wings and flashing movements of shadow flickered on the stone
wall.
Adramelech has fed.

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Silent Hill

Unholy Grail
Lets play a card game. Simon Suggested
Sounds good. Titus agreed.
I was hesitant.
What game are we going to play? I asked.
Were going to play Egyptian rat screw. Simon insisted.
The small upstairs apartment was cluttered with books and videogames. A TV lay
sideways on the carpet amongst the empty food wrappers. The lighting being unusually bright
gave off a stagnant heat and there I was in a chair at the small round table with two people I
hardly knew.
So we started playing this game Id never heard of. I was too distracted to care much and
just stared at the deck and the back of the bicycle cards with distant eyes. All the intricate colored
lines and the two opposing cherub with the thin white border. I swallowed my phlegm; wed
been smoking hashish all night. The cards had that perfect texture for gripping and sliding across
the table. Simon shuffled them with ease. The faces of their royal family and the unaffected eyes
as they stood on the face of the cards in bland primary colors were swiped into a deck a divided
amongst three of us.
The rules said to involve piling cards in a set to a particular method and slapping the set
upon triggered patterns that just werent there. I was stoned and didnt really care plus I was
getting antsy and tired and felt claustrophobic.
Alright, Im taking off.
I stood up and gave an obligatory peace out then walked out the door closing it behind
me. The sky was dark and full of omniscient clouds of doom with a cold fog and crisp breeze

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blowing electricity through the air, I stepped out onto the concrete and let out a deep sigh to the
winter night.
I went to my car dimly lit under the car port and got in. Crumpled cigarette packs, term
papers, books, and tapes scattered the brown leather interior, old car smell and stale smoke. I
pulled out of the lot and headed home. I turned on the heater and pushed in the cigarette lighter
after pressing play on the tape deck.
A local band, I got the demo tape from a show. Smoking my cigarette listening deeply to
melancholic trumpet sighing over the downed tempo piano melodies, all complimented by drums
and crescendos of sound clips from rare independent films.
There was no one else lost on the grey freeway, it was late and a weeknight in my
hometown. I turned into suburbia and parked across from the house. The white cherub statuette
sat there on the picket fence with its baby angel wings and its chipped smile towards me.
I turned off the car and just sat there for a second breathing the cold air down my throat
and into my lungs, listening to the tape. It faded out to silence and reeled to a click.
I didnt want to go inside. I didnt want to get out of the car.
So, looking for another tape in the center console I found a blank cassette I wasnt
familiar with, it had just one label with chicken scratches of a Happy Birthday, a gift?
What started out as poorly recorded guitar chords cut halfway through a chorus abruptly
broken by deep laughter then to sounds of a meager party.
I sat in the car for a while, listening to the tape. Then all of the sudden a huge shadow
mantis appeared outside of the car swaying back and forth at me with its bug eyes.
The tape clicked to a reel and then started to talk to me in two conversing high Elvin
voices.

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John Brian Costa

Silent Hill

The bug is not real.


Yes it is.
HAHAHAHAHAHA
I tossed and turned in my bed, my body stiff and ancient, crumbling like a statue or a
fallen idol, stuck in insomnia. I just lay there, eyeballs staring into the ceiling and beyond
I got up and took the tape out and decided to figure it out.
I copied it to my computer, slowed it down I heard a conversation about foreign language
policy during world war two and slowed further it drew out to a buzzing sound yet clearly the
chant of Six, six, six. The mark of the beast
What had just happened?
Demonic possession?
Suddenly it was freezing cold and I could see my breath. I shut the computer down as my
nerves did the same, closing the window I flipped the blinds and fell asleep.
I dreamt I was waiting at the transit; no one was there but me.
And everything was grey.
A dying wind blew trash down the street. The thought of a girl crossed my mind but only
briefly then the thought disappeared like the dust in the gutters.
I got up and started to walk; I turned a corner and stumbled up some stairs. I followed the
steps into the dark, it got darker and darker as I went up. Then it was all black except in the
cement there, a luminescent shining lamp emitting grey clouds of smoke through an enigma of
thick radiating shadow of light.
Instinctively I reached for the lamp.

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Silent Hill

As I touched it I awoke with my eyes open with a dark mattered translucent demon
coming out of my chest flashing a sinister sneer violently choking me against the mattress.
Two more poked their translucent horned heads out and grabbed my arms from either
side of me with hellish grins.
He slammed my chest harder and harder and choked me and I tried to scream but no
sound came out.
I shut my eyes in horror and for a moment I died inside.
Frantically I prayed it stop.
Just then a blinding light shaped like a bell came spiraling through the window floating
down gracefully sucking the demons like a vacuum spinning back out from whence it came.
Then I was alone.
Thats when the nausea settled.
A thick dwelling pit turned in my stomach to what felt like rocks.
Vomiting I ran to the toilet.
I fell.
Sprawled to my knees burning in my throat on my hands and knees in shock.
A pair of tentacle insectoid parasites swam deathly in a pool of vomit and black blood.
My eyes through the ceiling I helplessly shouted out save me again and again. My father
broke the door down screaming.
What the hell is going on?
Vaguely aware of my sister Angela in the next room running water as she banged on the
wall.
NO! She shrieked like a banshee in horror.

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Stop, thats how demons manifest! She cried then wept.


Save me! Again and again and again.
I took a breath in shock agony and despair and flushed the toilet knowing those things,
whatever they were would haunt me for years leaving me suffering in existential despair
wondering what had really happened.
That summer the heat burnt off slowly in an Indian summer.
A scarecrow in the distance with a purple coat and a pumpkin head hung lifeless above
the dry field, wooden bones above the hay.
Flies buzzed all mechanical circling it flying through ectoplasms, trails of tetragrammatic
lines. Landing on your face and skull, through your ears, digging into the pours and boring into
your flesh, squirming maggots devouring.
The field and dead tree and sky and everything fell into red, then faded to a hearty purple.
All swelling like a purple vein then dyed to apocalyptic grey when pitch black silence
arose for all eternity.

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Silent Hill

Hand of God
In the center of town there rest a marble stone statue of a hand, stained with age, the
monument as old as anyone alive could remember. Day after day people lingered around this
cultural symbol.
Downtown was reminiscent of a broken glass once half empty that Friday the 13th.
I walked up and there was some broken glass on the cement, it seemed to stand out
shining for eternity and everything seemed translucent and blood red.
I waited at the hand meeting an Rx apothecary to get some pain meds. I use the term
apothecary loosely, drug dealer just sounds so passe.
I only use to numb the pain I try not to overdo it usually.
But I was getting a lot because they were smaller milligrams, but at the same time
because of that they were cheaper, so I ended up getting a lot more.
And Paracelsus said that All things are poisons, for there is nothing without poisonous
qualities.
It is only the dose which makes a thing a poison.
So, maybe I would make a poison of the thing, no real plan, just picking some up.
Usual daydreams faded in hesitation as I walked.
We met up and had a brief mumbo jumbo conversation about nothing in particular, I think
something or other to do with new technologies.
He slid the pills into my hand promising bliss and hours of euphoria.
I felt as if it were to be and I walked away.
A cagey friend of mine, my ride, was in his car waiting for me.
I got in the car.

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Silent Hill

Got it?
Yea.
Not much for conversation.
Everything in my sight had a seeming glow.
I felt trapped in freedom, desire, and ironically powerless to a violent justice, as all the
unappreciated spiders webs. Theyd construct in corners of the relative world unseen by man.
Their home, (a tangent) theirs*.
I held onto the pills tightly in my pocket; my saving grace in this war based economy. If
monism, the philosophy that everything is a single entity were only more believable, if only I had
the faith.
Is it my fate to be doomed into this hedonists struggle, must I forever be lost dreaming
up others nightmares as if lying on the shore of infinity ocean, like 99*?
My friend drops me off. Id used him for the ride. Hes a sucker for something to do.
Facts seem to fall hard upon ages of understanding, stress falls from the metaphysique as
I put the Rx up my nose at home and unto my face. Too many binders 10 x 10 mgs, an
overwhelming feeling of greed and bliss takes hold as the opioids melt my psychic pain. Numb.
I do not condone killing emotions with pills to anyone, yet every day I watch as so many
bite off more than they can chew. For the challenge. For something to feel, and to overcome.
Reality is a vacuum, think, what we know of deep space, vacancy; and we just know our
true insignificance in the bigger picture, jpeg, pain, death, doom, science nationals, gross, gif,
and death to nihilism, minimalism, and repetition.
Insane, ignorant, eccentric, pretentious, closed minded, superficial, entitled, stuck up,
right, manipulative, brainwashed, angry, controlling, self-destructive, fearful, megalomaniacal.*

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Silent Hill

(*this metaphor makes no sense.)


To revert this as a metaphor for your luck. Mushroom clouds of poisonous
neurochemistry and raw visceral pain consuming through your ambivalence.
Living through suicide. That man that endures himself in the ultimate pain of life and
death, and is essentially living through suicide in his own existence every day, just waiting and
watching the hand on the clock as the minutes tick away.
Sit and act confused. Youre so spiritually harmful. So eat.
I pop a few pills in my mouth and chew the bitter chalky powder and swallow with my
dry mouth.
I lay down on the floor limbs stretch out like an X in blissful nothingness.
I once constructed a table way too high.
It was made of a schedule of doses all in clear lines and too digitally torn all black and
white.
Tonight poisons providing the warmth and comfort of God.
All this in an over wired world, high on pain killers.
Death by my own hand.
Suicide.

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John Brian Costa

Silent Hill

DEIMOS
The thieves came in through the day dream door, numeric order known to no one. The
Paranoiac said to the Suicide King, to himself.
Deimos is that place you go. You dont remember how you got there, but once youve
been and turned back, something has indefinitely changed and will never be quite be the same.
The second moon of Mars, a crooked little satellite, the Greek word for dread and panic.
Deimos, similar to a black hole of sorts, an unknown of loose wires and orbital
decadence, open valleys of emotionless and mind numbing fear.
Deimos; a pen name, a tag, a handle, something never should have been taken. Little did
he know at the time the power of the word itself
Deimos always wore the same thing; black pants and a black and yellow shirt of the
schematics of a broken machine with a diagram of the Babylonian triangle of captivity, skate
shoes.
He lived in California.
When he went out hed throw on a hoodie and ride a green BMX. Hed painted it with
spray paint one summer.
There were winds of darkness, stars cut across lines of the night sky through which
navigation would be literally absurd to attempt any sort of calculation, so minute and precise in
there randomly entropic detail.
Orbiting; a graph of such a chart would simply be called unsolvable or void.
He rambled on Epiphany, a holiday in early January; he knew what it meant. The times
were slowing down for him, a simple reminder of how life can be full of wonder and mystery.

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Silent Hill

Epiphany was a great day in winter, the sun came out over a cool fog and shone down hard on
the pavement.
Deimos rode the green BMX around town.
Speeding like a missile with the wind flowing, he felt like king.
Deimos woke up one morning, blinded by the smell of coffee brewing. He looked out the
window of the flat; it was dark out.
Lines cut across his wrists like a cross hatches or a jagged ladder climbing nowhere.
Scar.
He didnt know why.
Something about a machine being broken.
The blade shining in the light of his eyes had contrasted the darkness of the blood.
Scar.
He scratched his head and grappled with the spoon and coffee, sugar.
He stood upon the universal unabridged dictionary hed tossed on the floor some time
earlier like the book was a podium and gave a slurred speech to no one in particular ending in the
word Deimos.
Then bowed a thank you and sipped his coffee.
There was a general haziness about him this time around.
One thing was that the music always blared twenty four hours a day.
The structure he lived in was very old, it must have been used for a bomb shelter when it
was originally built. There was an odd ventilation system and there also seemed to be a lot of the
signs on the walls which led him to believe it may have been a bar or hotel previously. It was a
decent place, but hed hope to move up.

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The windows were harsh and difficult to open, you couldnt see through them very well,
they were covered with stream lines and caked with dust. The floor was covered in books and
loose papers, he was working on putting together a project of sorts.
He sat at the desk and pulled out a cell phone and started to tovel, a term from Japan
meaning text messaging a novel. He hadnt gotten very far but he liked the idea so he rolled with
it.
He sipped his coffee and pulled out an 80mg OxyContin from a box and put it in his
mouth. He let the blue film coating the outside melt on his tongue. He pulled it out and wiped it
with a paper towel.
Then he took out cigarette cellophane and crushed the pill under it with a lighter with the
suicide king of hearts on it.
The powder lay on the desk and he cut it up into a line with an over balanced credit card.
He rolled up a fifty dollar bill and put the powder up his nose through the dead face of
Grant.
In awe he leaned back in his chair then got up and lay on the floor.
Which is where he lay for over an hour with his limbs stretched out like a cross or an X.
Light flickered and night crept out through the window.
Time seemed irrelevant; he never knew whether it was night or day any more.
Its all just eternal moments when youre high.
He got up.
He had his cake and ate it too.

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A psychedelic breakfast with a banana, cake, and coffee in the early dawn, he knew there
were others like him all around; nocturnal night crawlers who would roll out of bed in the middle
of the night for breakfast and do their routine then, he knew that he was not the only one.
The music was an autonomic rock-out machine and had a life of its own.
He tried to turn it down but the wires went hay wire and just go up and the volume
remained neutral. It liked to play itself loud.
Right then it was blaring a thirty minute piece of symphonic post rock, at times the song
would crescendo so loud the walls would shake and at others there were minute gaps of silence
of feedback.
The equalizer was acting up.
Leave electronics on long enough they take on a life of their own.
He opened the door.
The wind felt cool but there was emptiness in space.
The stars just werent there, just a flat cool black sky strewn across nothingness.
Street lamps and the cross from the church across the street.
It felt like a black hole or that time right before an earthquake when everything stands
still.
Time, the ever escaping ever paradoxicizing conundrum of spell.
How it clings to the war within, the war without, and far between chaos to chaos with the
entropic falling back into it ad aeternum.
Forever from chaos to chaos with the mass between.
Mass.

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The church across the street with the rising sun light beginning to hit its subtle rays upon
its four corners.
He smoked a cigarette.
The sun started to show its rays.
A little after dawn K. stopped by.
K. lives right down the street.
Friends for daze.
Like thieves in the night they went for a drive in his black Beemer.
They spoke of a new publishing project in the works.
Electronica music blared out the windows as the dawn air flowed into the car, K. was
wearing shades.
Want to get coffee D.?
Yea lets go.
I will buy you a cup.
K. took off his sunglasses and parked the car.
The January weather was cool before the dawn of a promising year.
A man sat at a table was speaking in prophetic Nostrodamean language in the dawn
eating a croissant, his hair wild with energy he had papers sprawled in front of him, probably
working on a piece.
There was a silent moment of quiet electric disconnect in the weather as they walked
through the cold plaza early morning.
K. wore a blood red shirt with dripping black lines with a spiral from the ribs.

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They parted ways after coffee. K. had business to attend to; Deimos unlocked the door to
his flat and went inside.
He looked out the window; the sun was high in the sky by this point, the chimneys
blowing warm vapors into the cool winter air from roof tops.
He stood upon a broken laptop like a podium and went over the etymology of the word
Deimos, mentioning Ares, the word for Art or War, sound of both in Greek pronounced ours,
spelled MARS in Roman, otherwise noted to be the astronomical body in our heavens, or sky, or
celestial ceiling.
Then he went into the two sons of Ares; Phobos and Deimos, Phobos being fear and
Deimos being dread
Fear, trembling, dread, panic, the personification of sheer terror and then despair.
His hung bowing down in defeat:
The suicide king of hearts in the cards he sipped his coffee and stepped off a
broken machine.
FIN

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REQUIEM

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Trucidatio
Cum sanguini aquaeducti fluent
Ab viae sibi mortis consciscentis in aedificium eius
Oculi Romani Imperetoris firgidoris ad umbraculam videns,
Cornices umbrae contra luna in aedificii statae
Scelerae voces invidiis clamans
In Sanguini demiergemus
Massacre
The aqueducts are flowing with blood
From the suicide streets into their building
Their Roman Empire eyes stare at cold screens
Ravens mounted on the structures
silhouette against the moon
Their wicked voices scream of hate
We drown in the blood

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Junkies
Junkies put the hype from the spoon
with melted bliss
To the vein pulling blood
then pushing rushing euphoria to pass
In dark rooms behind locked doors
and on the concrete streets
The sun shining through clouds to
open fields that stretch for miles
Across flatlands and up and down hillsides
Pulling the needle from the vein
Wiping the drop of blood with cotton
Constricted pupils under half shut lids
Where eyelashes reach for the skies
Alone.

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Clarity
Eat the glass
That lies
Between your eyes
And the truth
Shining through
The oath is clear
Eat the glass

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Pumpkin Head
Its Christmas, Im starting to mold.

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The Pawn
The laws of the game dictate his every move
Piece by piece
Square by square
Limitations got the best
As he stands in a crosshair
Awaiting doom in a dimly lit room
The servile pain
The audible rain
The flickering light in the middle of the night
As he waits for the dawn
He feels like King
The Pawn

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Social Prisoner
A revolving door of programs,
Institutions, medications, doctors, and lawyers.
Their rights are peeled and slowly rot to nothing.
They cant escape.
They live and die here,
In a social prison.

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De Ja
We were in front of the grocery store, shed bought hair dye and held it in a plastic bag.
In her other hand was a cup of coffee. I was eating bite sized candy. We were unlocking our bikes
then just standing there.
I love you. She said.
I instantly felt a breeze of de-ja-vu like this had all happened sometime before.
It always feels like de-ja-vu is when the universe shows you that you have lived this same
life over and over and it is an opportunity to make an actual choice, to change it.
I dont love you. I confessed.
As soon as I said it I could see Id hurt her. I had been honest, but would it have been
better to have lied or not have said anything at all? But I didnt want to lie, even though it would
have made things so much simpler.
Im sorry.
Okay.
I had never told a lover that Id loved them. I never said it, but perhaps I did feel it. It was
so confusing. There I was with a beautiful woman telling me she loved me, and I couldnt
reciprocate. She had only known me a few months. I felt like telling her she didnt really love me
either but I thought about it and didnt want to cause any more harm. Im no one to tell her how
she feels, I figured.
I thought about how the woman I felt in love with probably didnt love me. So for a
second I thought I knew how she might have felt. Though Id never told that woman I loved her
either. So it wasnt the same.
Why couldnt I have been in love with the woman who loved me? Or why couldnt the
woman I loved be in love with me? Thats what went through my mind as we rode off in
different directions, the space between us growing. What was going through her mind?

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Electricity
I sit strapped in the electric chair, sweat dripping from my temples as the helmet and wet
sponge are put on my head.
The executioner tells me to open my mouth, to bite down.
I follow his orders, knowing if I dont there will only be more suffering, choking on my
own tongue or worse.
I stare blankly, emotionless except the instinctual hint of fear, into the seats in the few
rows set before me; those witnesses of my capital punishment for my crimes.
Murder.
A woman is crying in the second row, I look at her. I try to understand, to empathize.
Then the executioner hits the switch.
All the deadly volts go from a stasis of passive judgment and resistance into a murderous
charge of electric fatalism.
The wires begin to flow with this current.
I blink, and for that moment in time the room stands still.
A security guard sipping coffee in the back looking at a cctv surveillance monitor.
The woman crying in the second row.
The electricity reaches the helmet and I begin to feel the shaking electric paroxysms of
the death penalty through my burning flesh. Trails of smoke rise from my body.
My mind is still racing and I know my life is over. It seems to flash in memories
automatically, almost in a dream like lucidity
I remember when as a child I lied to my mother about my piggy bank and the missing
money. I think of my ex-wife and the good times wed had. The bitter ones were gone now. Just
the love is there. I think of the martial arts instructor from whom I had learned self-esteem,
confidence, and respect. I remember my crime. I remember the smell of honey suckles in the
summers of my youth. I remember my first love breaking my bleeding heart.
The last memory passes through, of a Sunday school class. The teacher. I dont recall the
lesson. But I can see her face as the tears welled up in her eyes.
Ill never believe in God. Id said.
Why did I make that woman cry?

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Nihil ex Nihil
A fly was buzzing in the form of a pentagram over the dead grass in the summer.
The two of them, Titus and Simon, were sitting on a dry hilltop in the blistering heat
beyond private property, trespassing in the summer to hike and smoke herb.
Titus stared at the fly as he rolled the joint.
Titus looked like a sort of fallen scarecrow with rigid limbs sitting cross. Arms stiff as his
hands rolled the weed into the paper.
Simon sitting next to him was fiddling with his key chains and his back pack. He was
ridiculously dressed with two sweat shirts on in the absurd heat. He was starting to sweat. He
looked at the fly and it started to bother him, he hated bugs, especially flies. Titus on the other
hand appreciated them, he was all into entomology, the study of insects. Simon didnt really trust
him because of this. Simon tried to wave off the fly but it just went back to the circular
pentagram pattern every time he did, with Titus staring at it.
Titus finished rolling the joint and there was something sinister in his eyes as he passed it
to Simon to spark up, he may have cast a spell on the herb or something, Simon thought as he
looked at Titus, who was deep in over his head in black magic.
Simon sparked the doobie and instantly: fly through fucking skull! Swiftly in one ear out
the other, in a straight line, extremely fast and painful, through Simons empty flesh covered
skull, within it there was left residual black insectoid pain.
Titus did it, and Simon knew it, hes a bastard black magician, Simon thought, as he
passed the joint to Titus in a coughing fit then not saying anything but sitting in a sort of shock.
Titus put the joint to his lips in satisfaction. I did it he thought. I sacked his ass... fly
through fucking skull! The spell worked sweet evil he thought.
He took another puff, exhaled, and passed the herb back to Simon, who held his head
down in his hands in anguish.
They finished the weed and then stood up.
The silver suns harsh rays turned a malevolent bright orange red tint, shining down in
both their eyes.
They could hear the loud sound of an unseen helicopter droning above.
They both started pacing back and forth, paranoid.
Then Titus started walking instinctively, into the nothingness of a dried up brook towards
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a giant dying oak.


Automatically at the thought of following a dooming feeling took hold in Simons
stomach.
Hold on, lets go this way. Simon suggested.
Titus paused and gave Simon a look of dread, eyes sunken in his dead face as if he now
were feeling the terror settling that Simon had felt a moment earlier, or perhaps it was malicious
disappointment, that because they wouldnt go his way he would not be able to pursue further
black magic.
Each one figured the other his own personal antichrist of sorts.
There was a lingering brotherly loathing and mild hatred for one another as they started
to head in Simons suggested direction towards a pathway.
While hiking through the wilderness, the dread lingered.
They could still hear the deep and loud droning of a helicopter circling above and
occasionally looked up, but they never actually caught sight of it through the foliage on the path.
There was a thick and uneasy tension in the air.
Simon stopped for a moment and took off his sweat shirts and put them into his back
pack.
Titus started to get ahead quite a ways from Simon and seemed to be intentionally trying
to either ditch him or just run from himself in some urgent and irrational fear.
Simon could see him getting further and further away.
Wait up. he cried out.
Titus kept walking.
They finally met, exhausted, at a park bench along the path.
They sat down and Simon took a deep breath.
Do you have any water man? Simon asked.
Titus just sat there in a nihilistic slouch and shrugged, saying nothing with his eyes
staring into eternal void.
Simon looked through his backpack for water and found none.
After a minute, they got up and continued walking.
Simon could feel the summer on his back and carrying the bag, now visibly awkward
with the two sweatshirts filling it.
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The suns rays shone down in their eyes peeking through the leaves of the trees in flashes
of light.
A woman wearing sunglasses suddenly approached them and as she did so she touched
her sunglasses and a flash of light went off, clearly a camera.
Holy shit!
Is she CIA or something? They both thought in synchronicity.
She just took a picture of us!
She passed and said nothing with a grimace and dutiful mouth full of hatred.
Titus started to speed up again and Simon fell behind.
Wait up. he cried out.
They ended up at the same bench again, doing the same thing, as if caught up in instant
captivity of de-ja-vu.
Do you have any water man?
Titus shrugged nihilistically and stared into an endless void.
A sick pathetic sort of a feeling of helpless and inescapable determinism of dooming hell.
Again.
They walked with Titus in haste ahead of Simon, as the invisible helicopter continued its
deep agonizing drone from above, the sun in the sky, all blistering silver with red orange beams
of light as hot as flames shining through the foliage.
Titus stared intently into nothingness with an indifferent slouch while Simon panicked
through his back pack as they were stuck at the bench again.
Do you have any water man? Simon asked.
Titus shrugged in infinite nihilism.

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BRAINS!
I dig my way out of the grave. The caskets wood is old and rotten but still manages to
break off a finger of two from my brittle undead hands. My funeral attire is covered in dirt and
filth but I can tell my relatives did their best to dress me for death. I am having some trouble
seeing through my dry wormed eyes.
I need brains.
I begin to slog away from my cracked headstone through the graveyard. The trees blow in
the wind, whistling as I give the harvest moon a zombie gaze.
I havent seen my hometown in ages. How long has it actually been? How long have I
been dead? Living in hell was difficult and theres no way of keeping track of time. It literally
feels like eternity. Thank God Satan gave me this second chance. But Ive been warned: Ill need
brains. If Im going to last Ill need brains, and Ill need to avoid being slaughtered.
I turn around slowly like a sick hungry animal as several others behind me crawl out of
their respective graves. I lead the way to the gate. Looking back again, holding the steel, I see
they are following me.
Good.
Im leader of the pack.
I hobble down the asphalt, the mud and dirt crumbling off my shoes, leaving tracks as I
slide along the street.
Brains! I scream.
Brains! We chant.
Then, a three legged dog runs up to me.
At first it looks appetizing, but it only takes me a moment to realize its useless, he too is
undead. I kneel down and give him a pat on the head while looking at the pack of zombies
behind me. The dog gnarls at me growling then barking, jaws drawn.
I give him a good hard kick to the gut, and he whimpers off.
Worthless mutt.
Im getting frustrated as our pack is demanding in droning command. There is an
unsatiated hunger. Then a man comes out of his front door onto the street and I stagger up to him
trying not to be noticed, but with the pack behind me its near impossible. Luckily he just stands
there in shock when he sees us.
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I grab him with superhuman strength and take a huge chunk out of his skull with my teeth
and pull the brains out. The fresh blood and brains drip from my mouth as I feed, with the man
collapsed on the bloody asphalt.
Delicious.
More satiating, satisfying, and quenching than anything Ive ever known.
The pack is furious and fights for the remains, picking pieces off the pavement and one
licks the inside of this dead mans skull which hes broken off the body.
I feel my awareness sharpen as my undead body absorbs the brains.
I start walking down the street again.
Brains! I shout, pointing ahead where in the distance there is bright lights in the sky.
The zombie licking the skull and those picking off the ground stop what they are doing
and begin to follow me.
We break through the auditorium doors and all hell breaks loose. Our pack is one of many
now because all the packs have ended up here under the bright lights.
Its chaos.
Im no longer the only leader. There are a few of us now. Two tall males and a striking
female in a once beautiful red dress. Her eyes are bright red and her flesh is veiny and blue.
We, all of us, hundreds, feed on the scattering humans, tens of thousands of them running
for the exits and trying to fight back.
Some of us are dropping.
Some of us are broken in half, literally crawling on all fours or just hands, sputtering out
of existence, begging for brains. One of the feeding tries to hand a half-bodied zombie brains,
sticking his hands out.
Brains! The female in the red dress points, commanding him to eat them his own self,
not to feed the fallen one.
He listens, frowning at the now limp zombie torn apart on the concrete stadium floor.
Then he chews the rest of the brains and hands some to the female.
She holds the brain out in her hand in a pause, looking into my eyes before devouring the
gray matter.
Im clinging to the living, feeling well fed.
I look up at a new light in the sky. It is moving and pointed at us. Its letting out a loud
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noise and theres a loud voice screaming, directing the living.


Do not panic. Make for the exits. Work together.
Human screams and zombie howls of death as we get mowed down by the helicopters
gun turrets.
A bullet hits me and I go down screaming for more brains. I quickly stand up undying as
a gasp escapes my throat and hate BRAINS! I snap. Another bullet hits my skull and I spin in
the fury of bodies, blood spilling from my cranium. The last thing I see is the giant explosion as
the bombs drop throughout the stadium. Body parts fly every which way.
Flames

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Already Dead
I wanted to write a story based on a dream with the surprise twist of the narrator being
already dead. Then I realized that this has been done, again and again.
What if the twist was that Im actually alive, living, making decisions, exercising my will
power to its outermost potential, hows that for a postmortem, posthumous joke? Hows that for
all lack of humility and all megalomania? Everything done after I am dead, as far as I am
concerned, is already done. I am living in the past again, yet Id have it no other way.
William S. Burroughs suggested that the written Word is a virus. What does that make
writers other than a sick sort of mad scientists with egos spewing contagion? I ponder on this as I
light a refry cigarette, at almost 27 years of age in a tiny bedroom in a rental house.
Crammed against my desk burning incense, nostalgic for the times I once hated living in
with a sort of nausea and melancholy.
Who would have thought the best years of my life would have been lived though as if
they were the worst then regretted and missed?
Not me.
But I never know.
Someday I may look at this day and think one thing or another.
Ive been labeled schizophrenic, and an addict, and an alcoholic, Ive been called
generous, kind, and funny. Ive been stuffed into metaphysical boxes, social constructs and
programs.
Escapism is my true hearts desire.
I told someone recently I just want to move to Colorado and live in the snow where I
dont know anybody so I can finally just shut up and stop talking and be as depressed as I want
to be without anyone telling me its not okay.
She said she wanted to laugh but didnt because it was sad.
I think she meant pathetic.
But I never know.
Tangentially, does anyone really just Experiment with IV heroin use? Lets hope so
because Ive broken through to new bottoms.
Yet this chemical escapism hasnt ever taken me far enough.
Maybe this geographic idea isnt so bad or sad after all.
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It is not unheard of.


Though, They, say Wherever you go, there you are.
A friend of mine who recently moved out of state, tells me it is a trite saying but remains
true.
Yet, how could I know if I never try.
Im over dope anyways.
It has taken me nowhere in this escapists traveling and here I am- nowhere, as no one
At times I straight up desire negativity.
Already dead.

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Jigsaw
Raining in mid-November his boots hit the ground in intent and his eyes too, red from the
marijuana. Hed smoked a joint in an alley behind a pub back in town and had been doing
cocaine all weekend. Now there wasnt a building in sight.
Jigsaw walked up to the cave entrance. It was muddy and dark and the middle of the
night. He lit his lantern and headed in. A wooden sign that said on it: DO NOT ENTER. Hed
trespassed before and this meager attempt to stop him would not impede his curiosity.
The catacombs of this area are noted to be the most intricate and frightening of all. Hed
explored some before with tour groups. But this was different. This one few knew of and was
said to be reserved for members of the elite during the middle ages whod died of the black
plague.
The narrow cave entrance was dripping, haunting with mud and the lantern did little for
light.
Not after walking long he noticed the first skull on the ground.
Jigsaw stopped and held the lantern light toward it.
It was dirty and had no jawbone.
Those hollow eyes once the window to your soul? And where are you now? He
spoke quietly then lit a cigarette and smoked it in front of the skull.
A deathly quiet took hold of the cave as he smoked. A shadow moved by the skull, what
was it some spectral vesper? It ran at his feet.
Just a rat.
He kicked at it and the thing skittered off.
He stomped out his cigarette with his boot and kept walking.
Compared to what hed hoped to see, this was nothing
Jigsaw grew up near here, hed always taken an interest in history and did well during
social science classes up through college, until hed dropped out. He never believed in any god, a
stone cold atheist to the bone. Though he took a strong tendency toward occult studies after
failing, reading books on the Ouija, tarot, I Ching, books of the dead, and Necros. A bright young
man, just lacking motivation to finish any formal education.
Hed picked up the name Jigsaw from a friend in high school while smoking copious
herbs and it stuck.
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The first time hed toured a catacomb was with a bunch of tourists and despite the beauty
of the caves, the mystery and plague behind them there was a level of distance between him and
the dead.
He wanted something more intimate. Something closer to the real thing, such an
experience would require him to be alone.
Hed found a website on catacombs and it had a forum where hed found rumors of
hidden ones that few knew about. And he looked into it. After a few failed attempts he realized
this one was going to be good after he saw the do not enter sign and the first skull not long after
entering.
After a few hundred paces there was a makeshift wood board blocking off the path.
Written on it in graffiti were the words: Do not continue. He broke it easily and continued a
ways.
Then he saw them.
The dead.
Hanging from the cave walls like an arrayed dcor, the tomb of a fossilized wasteland in
incalculable deaths.
One after another. All in a row; rib cages, femurs and fibulae and tibiae, skulls and full
blown skeletons. He continued to walk as the bones became more and more dense lining the
walls.
An immense puzzling guilt filled Jigsaw as his face awed in orange horror against the
light of the lantern reflecting off the bones. So many dead corpses had rotted to these skeletal
remains. He wouldnt dare touch the death, yet marveled at the sight. Some were caked with the
stains of centuries aged blood all dark red and filthy. One skull stared back at him with wide jaws
and grappling hollow black eyes seeming to express to him an indefinable emotion hed never
before seen.
A heavy dread took over his body and he felt sick to his stomach as his own mortality hit
him in his mind, hed be a corpse rotting to bone, and how simple and soon it would be, he
thought.
His stomach felt like an empty pit as he stared at the catacomb wall.
He sat down cross legged on the dry dirt of the ground. He set the lantern beside him and
attempted a meditation. He thought of all the dead surrounding him and wondered how many
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years theyd lived collectively. And how much life force and energy theyd put into humanity,
these elite victims of the plague. He tried to appreciate them.
But his mind strayed. Maybe it was the marijuana and coke making him paranoid but he
began to hear quiet voices conversing with one another in a medieval dialect, the words were
barely decipherable and nearly inaudible but words none the less. Then this faded away.
He looked down and began to consider how much time hed wasted doing pointless
things and all his lack of motivation. He knew someday hed end up like those already dead, just
a skull and bones somewhere one the planet.
His mind began to race
While sitting he smoked a cigarette.
Looking down at the ember of his smoke, he began to regret having come as all the
hollow skulls stared back at him in sepulchral death. Terror took hold of him as he began to have
a panic attack. He stood up and grabbed his heart. It was the cocaine. He collapsed and died right
there on his back. Cardiac arrest.
No one found him for centuries, and when they did, it was a tour with a guide, and all that
was left was the bones. They knew not of his tragic ending. They figured him just another victim
of the plague in the jigsaw of catacombs.

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On Epiphany
Opening my eyes to the cold January fog I see the freezing white condensation which
fills the air. My eyelashes blink slowly as I walk across the grey paved cement. The
inconceivable seems to reach its hand to me in new potentials today. It is Epiphany. My
headphones are bumping a driving electronica beat and Im wearing my favorite winter clothes. I
dont think I could feel more alive this morning.
I consider the information age in which I live in and wonder if knowledge is still power
as the classic proverb supposes. In this flood of information it seems knowledge could easily
leave a person powerless retaining worthless information and factoids about post-modern topics
with little to no relevancy.
I once had an argument about communication, or at least that is how I remember it. And
we talked about the original message a person had and the words one would use to convey that
message. And the understanding the listener would have of those limiting words and what was
left is this convoluted translation of the original message, and does it truly have the same
meaning that was intended after this transmission? What would be lost in the rift? We were using
a metaphor we called binary. I guess because everything is positive or negative in the end, from
yin and yang down to electronics. I still dont know exactly what the point was but I think the
confusion led to more questions than answers.
Times keep changing and people around me too and I am definitely not the same person I
once was. I would love to believe that people are perfect unchanging soulful beings but this is
just not the case. It is not that simple. People are always changing whether for the better or the
worst. Some adapt adeptly while others fight it. Some unwillingly and some unknowingly. Some
metamorphoses are easier than others. Some people are hyper aware of the mutations within
themselves and try to guide their paths. And at times this can be the hardest thing given
circumstance.
I take off my headphones in slow motion as I wait at a cross walk with the cars all
passing by. Running my fingers through my hair I notice the sun has started to clear up the fog,
shining bright in the crisp air. The light turns green and I walk again and consider all the
machinery mankind depends on in order to successfully cooperate with one another and survive.
It seems to be a good and necessary thing, these machines. A fact of life. I land at the transit mall
bus station and wait with all the other people catching busses. I light up a smoke.
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I hop on my bus when it arrives. I am going to visit my friend who is in the hospital, he
was in a coma and just came out of it. He is doing a lot better I hear. I want to show him my
support, he has no family, his parents are deceased and his sister lives across the country.
I open my book from my back pack and start reading. It is about astrology and magic, not
something Id typically read, I normally read fiction but I saw it at the used bookstore and figure
it looked interesting and picked it up.
I get off the bus in front of the hospital.
I walk into the building and go up to the desk and tell them I am here to visit my friend
and ask for his room number. They let me know after looking it up. I take the elevator to the
fourth floor and notice all the doctors and nurses shuffling about. I go up to another desk and ask
about visiting my friend and they give me the go ahead.
As I walk into his unlit room I notice he is sound asleep breathing very heavily through
oxygen catheters.
Hey, _______, Im here to visit you.
I repeat his name a few times.
Yeah. he barely opens his eyes, he sounds very tired and withdrawn.
Hey, how you doing?
Not too good. he says.
Perhaps this was the wrong question.
Youll be okay man, youll pull through.
I can tell it is difficult for him to talk and so I just sit beside him for a while.
He looks like hell, his afro is over grown and his beard is unshaven. Ive never seen him
like this. He is very pale and tired looking. His eyes keep rolling into the back of his head as he
is snoring. Apparently he is doing better though, because before he wasnt breathing on his own,
his blood sugar was through the roof and he barely had a pulse, they had him on every machine
in the book. They said he is lucky to be alive.
A doctor comes in and chats with me about him briefly as he checks his levels.
The doctor tries to get his attention.
He doesnt respond.
Was he talking to you?
Yeah, he said hes not doing too good.
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Okay, well as long as he is talking to you- that is fine.


The doctor asks if he normally uses oxygen at home.
I tell him no and that he is normally very healthy.
I didnt even know he was a diabetic until now, Im not even sure that he knew.
The doctor leaves the room after checking his oxygen levels and then I grab my friends
hand and tell him Ill be back and say Hey.
Yeah
Grip my hand. I say.
He does slightly and I take that as progress.
Ill be back to visit you again soon okay?
He doesnt say anything and as he falls back asleep I leave the hospital.
Life is so unfair sometimes.
I wish he had spoken more, but that is okay well talk soon.
I try to stay optimistic as I let out a deep sigh. At least hes not still in the coma.
The sun shines through the January cold on this epiphany, my eyelashes blink slowly as I
put on my headphones and walk down the grey cement.

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Silent Hill

Providence
I grew up in a town called Providence, in a small suburb with quiet Christian neighbors
amongst the dense surrounding forest. The town was founded around the eighteenth century by
settlers and there are very old churches in town with beautiful architecture showing how much
energy people can put into things.
At a young age I looked up the word providence in the dictionary. It said something along
the lines of the ultimate will of God. I suppose the settlers thought it divine will that they were to
land here. It is a beautiful area but I have my doubts.
Some people think the end of the world is coming, they say that old prophecies are
coming into age or that galactic alignments are surefire doom to our dear earth. But no, I dont
think so. Thats not providence.
My childhood was filled with things like church on Sundays, school days and homework,
the smell of pies and turkeys on holidays and all the things one might expect of a somewhat
privileged middle class upbringing.
It wasnt until I was ten that I first began to question this thing called Providence. We, my
fellow students and I, were in bible study reading the story of Abraham, and I couldnt swallow
the idea of God telling Abraham to kill his son Isaac. Even if it was just a test, it just didnt make
sense to me. Would a truly omnipotent, benevolent spirit wish such suffering upon his creation? I
was told by the instructor that the story of Abraham had been questioned and praised by many a
Christian scholar. And she encouraged me to test my faith just as Abraham had.
What exactly she meant by that I still do not know.
But I couldnt let this go, what was the will of God, and for me? I wondered. Was I meant
to question divine will? Did God intend for this paradox to arise within me at such a young age?
The next few years went along as usual with all the awkwardness that is growing up. My
parents were very supportive but I grew estranged from them and searched for refuge in other
things, books, music, and even drugs and alcohol.
Abraham reappeared in my story when I picked up and read Fear and Trembling at 17, a
book by Czech existentialist named Soren Kierkegaard, who was born in 1813 and died in 1855.
He went on and on about the story of Abraham and Isaac in this book. He analyzed the different
perspectives of characters involved, including God. He questioned on Gods part, whether, in
telling Abraham to sacrifice his son, there was as he called it, A teleological suspension of
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ethics.
The most intriguing part for me was the part he talks about the Butterfly of Change vs.
the Knight of Faith. Which was I? I wondered. Was I to be a character of great faith to march
through Providence or a creature to someday emerge from a mutating cocoon.
I had a mental breakdown the year I read Fear and Trembling. I had started drinking a lot
that year and smoking copious amounts of marijuana with the high school outcasts. I think this
might have induced the mental instability somehow. Either way I was sent away to a local
institution and diagnosed with undifferentiated schizophrenia.
I was in a state of disbelief. Schizophrenia? Me? How is that possible? What had
happened to the normal life I had been raised with? Was I now to be labeled with this stigma of
mental illness to forever be considered an outsider of the norm? Was I to become one of those
eternal street walkers rambling to god or to one or the voices in their minds?
The time I spent in the mental hospital was very difficult. I had a hard time getting used
to the idea that I was any different than anyone else. I would argue with the clinicians and throw
fits when theyd try to give me meds, which lead to further tranquilization with higher doses of
heavier meds with syringes and being held down in corners of rooms and being thrown into
padded cells.
My only relief from the depression was in two things, first a fellow Id met who could
play cards all day and even read them in what he called the Tarot of divination. The cards
didnt include the trumps but he said it could work none the less. When he asked to read my
fortune I only asked When will I get out of here?
My other relief was the bible, which they had numerous copies. I read both the old and
new testaments over and over again in the near three month visit to the sanitarium.
I came to the conclusion that this was not the God of my life. For why would an All
loving father, leave me in a place like this? I was my own Abraham, stuck in a paradox, but I
was no knight of faith.
When I came home I announced I would be leaving Providence. I knew I would be
collecting federal money for my illness and that I couldnt stand living with my parents, the
people that had thrown me into the lions den. It was not to be a lot of money, barely enough to
survive really, but it would do to achieve all I really wanted, which was to leave Providence.

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Epicure
What can I say? I enjoy pleasure. A lot.
I like good food and fine wines.
I love doing things that I enjoy, like reading a great piece of classical literature or
watching an inspiring film.
The one thing is, Im a drug addict. This is highly frowned upon in this oh so modern day.
I bet the English opium eater was admired in his day. Today, one is seen as a junkie.
It is truly sad.
If only the world knew what they were stigmatizing!
If only they knew the pleasures they were missing.
Then I wouldnt be so judged and condemned to this life of secrecy.
Right

now

am

high

on

opium.

And I like it.


I wont go into details about how I procured such a drug, but it was quite the hassle.
There was a lot of waiting involved.
But now, sitting in this chair, I feel at ease.
Opium hits first in the back of the head then slowly rushes down the back and the legs
until finally the whole being is simply enveloped in waves of bliss.
I have a glass of pinot noir at my side and I couldnt feel much better.
There is music playing on my stereo, one of my favorite symphonic pieces, and I have a
book I am ready to open.
And I could not do any of this without the opium.
Without opiates I am a nervous wreck, a time bomb waiting to explode. As soon as I get
that bag I am instantly set free. Like the bomb squad finally saved the day, all the nerves and
wires at last disarmed.
Nothing in the world can stop me now, I think.
It leaves a person with a false confidence that anything can be done. Yet meanwhile
nothing is accomplished because nothing seems worth doing. It is quite the paradox. I have yet to
reach any level of what I would call success in my life, yet when I am high, I dont care. It is like
I know that someday I am going to die and it just really doesnt matter any way, I might as well
enjoy corporal pleasure while I can.
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Epicurus knew this over two thousand years ago. He was a great philosopher in my book.
But then came the uptight neo-platonist Christians came along calling the epicureans hedonists
and pigs. They needed to get out of their cave dwelling closed mindedness and see the light, in
my opinion. If theyd only tried this sin theyd know better.
And it is the same today.
The only major problem with being an opiate addict is the putting into it all of the
funding. It is not at all a habit one could call cheap. If only it were legal, then and only then
would a respectable habit be affordable. And not only in the monetary sense, but also in the
physical sense, it has quite the costs when one does not have it and addicted.
Withdraws are not easy.
Vomiting, cold sweats, insomnia, bone pain, anxiety and thats to start. But if one could
afford to always have it, he or she would have it made. But it takes quite a wallet. Especially
with tolerance. Tolerance is basically the principle that once one does it, and does it more, one
needs more to have the same effect from the drug.
I sip the pinot, and awe, it tastes so good.
That bitterness on the tongue is irreplaceable.
I open my book and begin to read to the soft symphony.
Not after long Im falling asleep in my chair with opium dreams.

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From Exile
In a cyclopean dungeon a stone cold Medusa holds her glare waiting for eyes to fall upon
hers, petrifying the soul in stone. Filth sinks green down the stone walls, moss and dried
seaweed, the stench is wretched. There are innumerable varieties of insectoid creatures crawling
in the dark. All this on an island for exiles, far from home they stagger at dusk and dawn and
during the day to sip frozen wine. The cold is unbearable and savages roam scavenging on the
others for their possessions. Those born here to never know the beauty and luxury of home. They
lack the mark of manners, civilities and sophistication. Political prisoners here for the rest of
their days sit in sorrow and remorse half-drunk recalling their lost paradise. The monsters in the
caves never come out, they act as suicide pits for those too fed up to go on. Sometime a sad fool
will find his self-having hiked to the yawning entrance and walk right in, drowning in
hopelessness. Statuesque and stone by Medusas glance or eaten alive by the Cyclops. Or even
worse still, just waiting in the dark to die covered by potato bugs and cicadae only to meet their
ends by a poisonous centipede, tortured for hours in excruciating suffering.
The small pub keeps its cellar stocked with wine, that is more like a sort of frozen vinegar
than anything else, but it does the trick. The political prisoners often come into exile with money
which is useful to those whove set up shop here. Sending back to the city for goods or services.
On a good day the bartender will have some dried weed to smoke or some decent hashish oil or
tobacco. On a bad day one just sits in their cabin in the snow in the dead of winter in snow
storms trying to stay warm.
I was sent here for politically questionable literature I had written. One could see the
thick lines of hatred and wrath worn into his aged face of the judge as he sentenced me and those
lines became clearer yet.
Poor old man will never know what it means to live.
All he does in his whole of existence is send people up river for years and lifetimes and
death. Im sure hes put many a man on the cross, I should consider myself lucky I did not
receive crucifixion, what a pitiful way to die.
Regardless, here I am sucking down what alcohol is left in this sour frozen wine, stuck in
a hole. My writing left uninspired elegies and letters where Id once thrived. Id been an
acclaimed writer at home at one point but now bitter words sting clear in my intoxicated mind as
another man takes a seat next to me.
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Whatll you have?


Like theres a lot of options, I throw up my hands and grab my forehead for a second,
finish my drink in a large gulp and stumble out of the bar to my dwelling not far from the drink.
I light a candle and read a letter from my love. How forsaken she must be. I feel filthy
and surely am. I grab a wooden pipe and pack into it what is left of the dry weed and melt some
of the hash oil onto it and begin to write. The words flow from my quill with ease from my hand
to the papyrus. I pause and light the pipe with another smaller candle and cough out thick smoke.
I fall asleep to dreams of my love and nightmares of the Cyclops pouring from psyche.
From exile.

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Silent Hill

Gray Orchid
Orchid walked along the over pass looking down at the freeway traffic. Her eyes melted
to the line of crossing cars. She stared down at the pavement and thought of Gray. She made a
cross from her forehead to her chest and across her shoulders. She wasnt really Christian, but
she needed something to console her in her mourning. The cars passed through another
dimension under her and she closed her eyes and held her hands against the bars preventing a
jump. Orchid for some reason wished the bars werent there, maybe she could sit over the edge
and hang out for a while or something. The music on her headphones blared techno music and
she continued to walk as the next song started and sang along.
Orchid, the only child of an alcoholic mother and father grew up strong sober and
serious. She refused to ever be like her parents, despite how easy it would have been. All her
friends drank alcohol and did drugs. She always turned them down when they were offered. But
that was then, now she didnt have many friends. She hadnt even seen Gray for almost a year
before he died. She was too busy with school and work and did not allow herself a social life.
She liked to go on walks around town and drink coffee in her free time and thats where she was
headed.
She looked up into the airy spring time cloud figurations and imagined shapes they
formed. She checked her cell phone to see the time, 3:42 pm. She put it back into her pocket all
the while singing the lyrics to the song on her mp3 player which she held in her other pocket.
She had on her back pack, in it were a number of school books and binders in addition to one she
was reading for pleasure at the time. She always read books.
She landed at the coffee shop which was quite cool with air conditioning compared to the
California spring heat outside. She put her headphones in her back pack, stood in line and looked
at the menu. Something cool perhaps, maybe one of those blended ice drinks she considered.
Hi, how may help you?
Ice coffee please.
Thatll be two dollars.
Orchid pulled the money from her back pack and paid the barista.
She drank her coffee on the patio and opened her book, she was a few chapters in and
was just starting to get into the good parts, she thought.
She sipped the straw of the sweetened ice coffee and it felt good on her tongue.
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Sitting for a while she flipped pages and drank her coffee.
When her coffee was gone and shed finished two chapters she pulled out a math text and
did a few problems. She was almost done with school, just a couple more classes were required
for her degree. Shed always been really excited about graduating but at the same time was not
sure what to do next. Shed have to get a job she imagined.
She walked back to her apartment and by the time she got home it was almost twilight.
She unlocked the door and walked inside, one of those upstairs units close to the university.
A pile of mail lay on the table, bills and junk offers mostly. Ignoring it, she put her
backpack next to the couch and turned on the stereo. There were some pictures hung on a
corkboard in the living room. She looked at one of her and Gray. He was a regular narcissus.
Shed always loved him and theyd dated during high school for a while. They were on and off
after that. They were off for a long time when he died but they were on good terms. She put her
hands on her face for a second and took a breath. Why had he done it? What was so bad that hed
kill himself?
Gray lifted the bottle, sitting in his dorm wondering what to do with himself. Gray was
brought up to be the strong one, to always be serious and sober. His parents were Catholic. But
when he became a teenager he started to drink. And when he went to college it just got worse
with drugs. He developed a cocaine habit and hid it from everyone, even his girlfriend, Orchid,
who would have never approved. He was alone this particular night, drinking whiskey and
watching television. He had no desire to answer the phone when a few of his friends called him
to come to the bars, it was a Thursday night and he had no classes the next day, but no desire to
party. He had started drinking alone a lot this semester and was spending less and less time with
friends. They didnt get it, or him, he thought. Theyd all just graduate someday, get jobs, get
married, have kids, grow old and die. What was the point he figured in a futile way. Hed always
pictured the same for himself. But never really questioned it, just simplemindedly went through
the motions while inside a hole grew larger and larger eating away and deteriorating his drive.
He had failed a class last semester and already dropped two of them less than halfway through
this one.
He hated school.
At first it was good, he was excited to be out of high school away from his parents,
partying and having fun with new associations. But after a few years of partying it turned into
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reclusive binging and barely getting by. Orchid broke up with him when she found him drunk on
a surprise visit. She should not have come by without calling him, he thought. Gray shook his
head and took a swig from the bottle of whiskey.
Hed bought a gun a couple weeks ago at a store that just opened selling firearms. Hed
been contemplating suicide for a while. He argued with his mother about school one night and
made her cry, he felt bad about that.
He put down the bottle and stood up and stretched his limbs.
He went into the closet and grabbed the gun and killed himself right there in his bedroom.
The people in the next dorm heard the noise and called the campus police. They showed up to the
bloody mess.
His parents found out from a phone call from a friend of his named Brent. Brent had been
up to Grays folks house for a couple spring breaks and one summer for a while. He talked to
Grays father on the phone and told him the news. He was shocked and did not say much but
thanked him for letting them know. It was in the school paper and a few people held a memorial.
He was well liked in all of his time at the university and people honored his tragedy. Nobody
knew why he did it, he hadnt left a note or talked to anyone about it.
Orchid turned her head from the picture and closed her eyes. She listened to the techno
music form the stereo and lay down on the couch. She flipped through a magazine on the coffee
table, popped her anti-depressant for the evening and eventually fell asleep.

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Silent Hill

Circling the Drain


When I was seven I had a dream I was swimming through the bay and a demon took me
away. Then everything went red and white. This memory flashes through me at twenty after just
having snorted a buproprion, welbutrin 150mg xl. Its prescribed for depression but also has
stimulating effects, especially when I take it up the nose. But this shit burns worse than meth! I
had chopped it up in to several lines and did it over a period of time. Its not coke but it would
do.
I am sitting feeling physically wired in my apartment. It is paid for by my father under
the condition I go to school full time. I dropped out, but he doesnt know that, and I dont intend
to let him know. I spark a cigarette and pull the ashtray on the coffee table closer. My long brown
hair is still wet from the shower Ive just taken.
My boyfriend calls and I silence the ringer, the phone sits vibrating on the table.
1 missed call.
I flick my cigarette and the cherry falls onto my favorite dress burning a hole right
through the flower print.
Fuck.
My nose and face are numb from the wellbutrin and my sinuses are dripping cold, I suck
up some of the powder and swallow the drip. Its not as good as coke, Im thinking, as I
petulantly wipe the embers from my dress.
This is horrible.
Its our three month anniversary and this guy wants to marry me, I know it, but he is more
of a rebound guy for me. I still love my ex really, and I really miss him a lot. And hes such a
better lay.
Also, I am missing an appointment at an outpatient drug program. I am not court ordered
or anything but my mom really wants me to go. Shell still have to pay for it because I didnt call
24 hours in advance. But I pick up the phone and dial the number and let them know. The woman
on the other end sounds robotic and stupid to me.
I hang up and listen to my voice mail.
He wants me to call him back
Ill wait until he calls me a couple more times then- Ill act like he wont leave me alone
or something then break up with him. I am not going to marry this man.
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I told him wed do dinner tonight, probably why hes calling. I wonder if I should just do
it

now

so

he

doesnt

make

reservations

at

some

nice

place.

Whatever.

I pull out a note book and start writing about that dream Id had. My ex gave me the pen.
What a weird gift. But its nice, I love to write. But still, it seems almost like an official gift
youd give to someone at work or something. I write about the water and describe the demon that
took me away in great detail. It had smooth shark skin and color changing tentacles like an
octopus but with the body of a man. I talk about the vivid red and white waves. I attempt to write
a brief psycho-analysis and close the journal.
I change out of my dress with the cigarette burn and into blue jeans and a t shirt. I spark a
cigarette and pop some over the counter pain meds and look at myself in the mirror.
Am I getting fat?
I cant tell.
I never eat more than a few nibbles, so probably not. I pull my hair back into a pony tail
with a rubber band I had around my wrist with the cigarette hanging from my lips.
I can hear the phone ringing in the background.
Stop fucking calling.
I see the words coming out of my mouth in the mirror.
I look at myself in the strangely still moment in time and say to myself looking my
reflection right in the eyes: I fucking hate you.
I take a drag then I put the cigarette down on the edge of the counter with the cherry
hanging into thin air.
Then I purse my lips and blow her a kiss.
I open the medicine cabinet and pull out a razor and break the plastic off it.
I proceed to slit my wrists over numerous scars.
I never do it the length of the arm, the right way as some people call it but horizontal.
I pick up the cigarette and take a drag then I look at myself again.
Your doing it wrong. I explain as I exhale the smoke.
I hold up my wrist in the mirror and look at it with the blood dripping down.
I put the cigarette down on the edge of the counter with the cherry hanging into thin air
and run water over my bloody wrist.
I watch the blood, circling the drain, all beautiful red.
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Then I go look at the phone smoking the cigarette.


1 missed call.
My mother.
The drug program must have called her about the bill.
Then it starts to ring.
Its him, good.
Yeah, hey, lets cancel dinner.
Ok cool.
Hes promising to take me out some other night.
I dont really care.
Ive got a better plan.
I look at the blood on my arm and drag my cigarette as he is talking.
Ill have to change into long sleeves.
Yea, sure. But can we get some blow?

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Silent Hill

And in the dreams years down the line


I fell asleep that night as any other, but when I awoke I was aboard their ship wide-eyed
with my limbs strapped onto their operating table. A dank toxic odor filled my nostrils and a
visible thin green vapor veiled the space between the metallic walls, which were lined with every
sort and size of valves and prosthetics, probes and sharp utensils. Some looked like spoons,
others insidious like clamping steel spiders legs. I inhaled a deep breath and coughed horribly
and felt an instant aching in my brain. I could literally hear an intonation of a high pitched
stinging ring through my skull like a tuning fork and contemporaneously a deep rumble took
over the table. An agonizing sound indescribable, and a feeling so wretched I began to wrest and
writhe spasmodically within the tight rubber straps on my flesh under the bright headlamp. The
sound was followed by a hollow spire releasing sound like the breath of a monster, when the
mushroom shaped portal aligning the dark wall elevated and they entered with their beady eyes
and exoskeletal xanthine lizard skin.
There was a half a dozen of them or so, the leader was approximately a foot taller than
the others, but even he wouldnt have reached 5 feet in height. Their yellowish skin inhaled the
green toxin through the air with what seemed like gills as they fed upon it like a parasitic
haustorium or a member of the worm genera hirudo, leeches. The lead being blinked his little
black eyes at me a few times and frowned, an eternity seemed to pass in those ageless eyes.
He turned around to the others and began a lecture in a hollow sounding vowel heavy
language. It was soft spoken and barely audible and most definitely indecipherable. All the while
I was trying to get out. The others gazed at the main one with heavy brows of intellectual
consideration. I clearly remember the wrinkles of ones brow wrizzling on its face as it stared at
me with a heavy form, full of infinite gloom marked with misery in those polluted eyes. Though
I swear it had the semblance of an intangible compassion and foreign curiosity. I could only see
all of this out of the corner of my eyes. All that time I was hacking up a lung and my flesh was
getting rash which would leave scars.
The lecturer finally stopped and approached me with a liquid dropper full of a milky
azure fluid, he expelled the solution into my navel and a moment afterward I felt an
instantaneous release of all that corporeal pain and a deeply pleasurable euphoria took hold. I
closed my eyes and geometric tetragrammatic patterns formed and flagged under my eyelids in
colorful hallucinations.
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When I woke up again I was no longer strapped to the table and I felt surprisingly well
rested. The air was clear and I took a deep pure breath. I had a small pendant necklace on and I
looked at it, it had some strange alien symbol on it. All the tools were removed from the walls.
Then I felt an immense pit in my stomach of the furthest level of homesickness. I walked up to
the metal mushroom shaped portal and banged on it. Then I felt a sensation like of an elevator
starting up and I knew the ship was in motion.
I sat down cross legged and felt that they must be taking me back to Earth. I was returned
to a state park not two miles from my house. I exited the craft down a released stairway which
closed after I stepped off of it and a huge exploding sound followed as they took off and were
nearly instantly invisible, gone like a reverse meteorite.
I stared up at the crescent moon in the obsidian sky. The feeling I had as I hiked down the
hill and through suburbia on my way home was one of epiphany. I held my new pendant
necklace, looking at it I recalled how Id always thought in a sort of tunnel vision and now Id
experienced something huge and no one would ever believe me. I almost felt an insane sort of
superiority of a heightened awareness and new open mindedness about the universe. The stars
stood out, as they never had before with a new clarity swelling with possibility.
When I got home I walked right through the front door. The TV was left on the news and
I thought it somewhat ironic. I picked up the remote and turned it off. I went to the bathroom, my
eyes looked changed in the mirror, almost traumatized. I took a shower and noticed the rashes on
my skin. I got dressed into a grey sweat suit and grabbed a beer from the fridge. I sipped at it as I
stared at the blank black reflection of the television screen and attempted to integrate the
experience into my consciousness.

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Chimera
The being I describe in these hurriedly jotted notes is an enigma I encountered under
extreme circumstances. It was not simply that I am a man of superstition, though I am, that I
came to experience such a horror.
But that I had become a member of cult ritual, then again perhaps this too was only by
chance and that it was only to be the consequential means which would undoubtedly lead me to
my fate, this spiritually harmful monster that eats at ones soul with fire breathing jaws and scales
of tremendous wrath.
The church was located in the basement of the house of a minister, and it was led by his
son. We all gathered there in this New England abode and would read from ancient letters, many
of which were lost at the early Christian burning of the Ionian sorcery scrolls at Ephesus. They
told of mystery, magic, aerial spirits the nature of demonology, and of great beauty and wretched
terrors, spells and charms and instruments of power.
We came across the text describing the summoning of ancient monsters one afternoon
while scouring the grand library of the headmans chambers.
We took a great interest right away, though many were hesitant when we decided to
invoke the monster, which came with much warning in the text. Some even left the rituals never
to return.
We pronounced them to be snivelers.
I do not know yet what has happened to my colleagues but I expect only the worst with
what has come thus far.
Arguments over whether we were doing it correctly or not and a general mutiny towards
our leader was only the beginning. But surely this was only the monsters early manifestation of
what would surely become the spiritual rot of all our beings.
First we assumed that the monster would come in the flesh, ignorant of such matters.
But after a few nights we had already assumed the spell was a hoax and we began our
nightly ritual of reading from the main text we were adhering to as the storm outside began to
pick up, listening to the wind slamming against the windows and the rain crashing on the walls
above. It was only a few of us this night, because many who were accustomed to walking to our
meetings surely couldnt make it, or perhaps they sensed something would go wrong this
particular night, with all the arguments that had been ensuing as of recent gatherings.
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Lighting struck and a flash of brightness was followed quickly by thunder when the
electricity went out and we were left in darkness.
The presence that took hold of us in this utter black space could only be described as
capturing and horrific to the extreme.
I began shaking in my skin, all with panic and fear.
The sound of the thunder crashed harder and closer as I got up to leave this place.
I walked outside and saw flashes of lighting not but five yards from my body, a raving
mad man was nearly struck as he walked through the pouring rain rambling at the top of his
lungs before me shaking his head in all his madness. No one answered my rapping at the door
when I decided to return to the hall, then certain they were all left in the basement to their own
destruction, I decided to run through the pouring rain in sopping wet dread toward my home.
Two vehicles almost hit me on my way, sliding out of control, my belief this was an attempt of
the chimera to pull me to my end.
I arrived at my upstairs flat in the large tenement building and grabbed for my key. I
gratefully opened the door and took a sigh of relief.
I sit here now in soaked clothes shivering as I write these notes.
Because surely any ounce of sanity I have left will soon leave me, as these words spill
from my pen I am seeing terrible vespers through the dripping wet window.
It is closed and is begging to be opened, yet if I do open it surely they will be let in. And
if I let them in, what could happen?
I can only imagine.
I must do something.
I am going to find the text with the protection spells in it and cast it.
Perhaps the moon is not right but in all my desperation I must try something.
The phone has just began ringing
I must answer it
It was the leader of our mission.
He sounded wretched, raspy fearful and cold. He announced to me the murder of several
members and the attempt at his own with a warning, he said he was on his way out. Who had
done it I wonder. A horrible sound out the window.
I opened it just now and there is the mad man raving holding a flaming molotov in his
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hand in the jagged lighting, mumbling words under his breath and screaming at me, daring me:
Stick around!
Then in an awful apparition I marvel at the chimera making its presence in the clouds
above hovering its jaws as the mad man hurls the Molotov through the window and as the glass
breaks everything I see in my little upstairs apartment is brought up into these flames.
As the fire spreads from the floor to the bed and desk I finish these solemn words and let
you know I am unable to extinguish these flames.
I cannot fight these bitter flames. Im catching ablaze.
Dancing and screaming to be found as scorched bones in this torched estate.
I stare once more baffled at the apparition in the clouds, now with jaws of satisfaction.
The jaws of hell.
Chimera.

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Deathblow
Everything goes still and quiet as he enters the room at a quarter to eight. There are two
other men at the table and a couple, man and woman, in the kitchen sipping beers.
You got the money?
Here you go.
And then he leaves, an eight ball of coke.
They divide lines for the four people remaining and snort the blow unto their faces.
Good shit.
Definitely.
The couple then sits on the couch and starts playing an old school video game on a flat
screen television. The two guys at the table pull out a deck of cards and start playing a game of
5-card poker.
Shit, I died. The girl says.
My turn.
She passes her boyfriend the controller.
The two young men at the table start arguing over a hand.
One of them stands up and says Fuck you, and pushes the other guy.
No fuck you.
The other stands up and punches his friend in the heart.
The young man instantly collapses to the floor.
Oh shit. the other guy says.
What the fuck? The man with the game controller says across the room.
Holy shit. The young woman next to him stares at the friend collapsed on the floor.
They all get up and surround him.
We got to get him to a hospital.
Check his pulse.
Uhhh
Is he breathing?
Neither.
Fuck. I fucked up the killer puts his hand on his face.
Im calling the police. The young woman pulls out a cell phone.
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No dont, please. The killer pleads.


Im not going to be an accessory to murder.
Me neither man.
Theres got to be some other way. What about the drugs, theyll search us.
You bring up an interesting point. The man considers what the killer has just said.
I may be the murderer but well all get felonies.
Alright, what do you propose?
Lets do another line and think about it? he says.
They chop another line out with the dead friend collapsed on the floor.
God damn, I feel so fucked up. This is just wrong. A nightmare. Hes just lying there.
The killer gets up and props the dead friend into an upright sitting position against the
wall.
What the hell are you doing?
His eyes are just staring at me. The young woman puts her hand on her forehead.
The killer closes the dead mans eyes.
There. Better?
We have to do something with the body. the killer says.
He looks down at his set of four kings and the other mans full house. Neither knew
which hand was really the winner but both insisted.
The argument seemed like a lifetime ago.
Alright, well, its not our problem man, its your apartment, you can have the drugs and
at this point its your corpse to deal with. The man explains to the killer. We dont really have
to call the police though do we honey?
The young woman looks at her boyfriend first in semi shock then considers it.
Please I dont want to do a lifetime in jail. I feel horrible.
What if we say it was an over-dose? She suggests.
Theres probably not enough drugs in his system. Her boyfriend says.
Definitely not. The killer agrees.
I dont know, give me another line and Ill think about it. Shes feeling down.
The body sits in the corner for hours while the three of them do lines of coke, drink beers
and tell stories of when the body was alive. They laugh, they cry, all things their dead friend will
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never get to do again.


Eventually late at night they are all so drunk the killer convinces the couple to haul the
body to a peer and toss it off into the water. It lies motionless in the trunk for a while then goes
flying off a peer.
Then gently with the current, the body floats.

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The Experiment
Knock.
Knock.
Knock.
Hey man. Korea answers the door with a sarcastic smile, Blake standing behind him.
They let Mike through the door.
Were just having some coffee. Here, have a cup.
Korea hands Mike a cup of Joe spiced with LSD.
Thanks. Mike says, unaware of the trip he is getting himself into.
He sips the coffee.
Mmmm, its good. He says.
Yeah, for sure man, only the best for you.
Blake and Korea both start laughing.
Whats so funny? Mike asks.
Oh nothing, drink up. Blake says wiping his watering eyes.
Ok. Well lets go smoke.
They head into the garage, their usual smoking area.
Mike packs a bowl of some bomb marijuana into a glass pipe.
He hands it to Korea for the green rip because it is his house.
They sit back on a couch all in a coughing fit.
Blake and Korea decided to slip Mike the LSD because hed always refuse to take it.
So whatre you up to today Mike? Korea asks.
Oh, Ive got a doctor appointment in a little bit. He says.
Just a check-up or what?
No

it

is

an

operation,

dont

really

want

to

talk

about

Damn bro, hope it goes okay.


Korea looks at him with a little concern then smiles.
Youll be alright.
Yeah, Ill be fine. I got to go actually. Ill come back afterward.
Ok, hey if they prescribe you any pain meds let me know, Ill buy some off you.
Alright, not likely, but ok. Later guys.
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Blake is zoning out to the music on the stereo high on acid as Mike goes to give him a
high five.
Oh, you takin off? Later man.
Blake gives him a high five.
Later Mike. Korea says.
Mike walks out the side door and out the side gate to his car.
Korea and Blake start laughing.
Hes got an operation, haha, he is going to be so fried.
Hahaha! Fryin! Now thats funny. Blake laughs.
Mike starts his car and runs his hands through his hair.
He is a little nervous about the operation.
It is a fairly new technique, micro-array DNA gene manipulation with hyperentanglement through teleportation to speed up the process.
He is hoping it solves his problem.
He hates taking medication every day.
He walks into the waiting room at the hospital and checks in with the receptionist at the
desk.
Hello, Michael, here, we need you to fill out these forms before the Doctor can see you.
Okay.
Mike takes the forms and sits down and starts to fill them out.
There are a couple other people sitting in chairs around him.
No one really stands out particularly but there is that general vibe that everyone there is
unhealthy for one reason or another.
He has a hard time focusing on the form, even though the questions are fairly
straightforward.
It is the onset of the acid that is doing it to him.
He finishes and brings the forms up to the desk.
Thanks, well be right with you.
He sits back down and starts staring at his left hand
It seems amazing to him.
He observes all the little lines and hairs on it.
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Michael?
He looks up at an attractive young nurse calling him back.
Yeah.
Hi, we just have a few preliminary questions for you before we start the operation.
She asks him a number of questions while taking his blood pressure and checking his
pulse and a few other basic measurements.
She says something about the possible side effects of the operation which include at
worst amnesia, coma and death.
Okay. He nods his head.
He is starting to trip and is not really hearing what she is saying just kind of zoning into
the thin air of the medical room.
It is so quiet, he is thinking while his jaw hangs open.
The doctor will be right with you.
After a few minutes the doctor walks in.
Hello Michael.
Hi, how are you Doctor?
Im having a good day, thanks.
Are you ready?
I am. he says.
Ok. Well just have you change out of your clothes and step into Pod number one. The
doctor says, pointing at one of the metal doorways in the room.
Michael steps into the pod.
The doctor loads Mikes micro-array into the machine loads the altered version into the
second pod.
Are you ready? he asks.
Michael is looking at his hands.
They are starting to get wavy and leave tracers as he moves them around.
Umm yeah. Go for it.
Try to remain still and stay calm.
Ok.
Everything is blue and red and all wavy with tracers when he steps out of pod number 2.
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He changes into his clothes almost falling over.


How long do the after affects last? He asks the doctor, thinking the effects of the acid
are from the operation.
Oh, you might feel a little strange for a few hours. Nothing to worry about. If anything
persists through tomorrow give us a call. You have a follow up appointment in a week. Well see
you then.
The doctor puts out his hand.
Oh,
Mike extends his hand and gives the doctor a limp hand shake and a very confused look.
Thanks
He walks out of the hospital and gets into his car.
As he is driving he feels like he is floating in a space ship and goes extraordinarily slow.
Hey. Howd it go man?
Korea puts his hands on his head in intangible anxiety and asks Michael the question as
he walks up to the open garage door with music blaring.
What? Mike asks unable to hear him over the music.
Blake stands up and looks at Mike.
Where the hell were you man? We needed you! There was some fucked up shit going
down while you were gone
Blake is referring to a mutual hallucination he and Korea had just broken free from.
What the hell is going on? Mike asks.
It was a little experiment. We slipped you some LSD bro. Its cool. Were all really high
so yeah...
Korea smiles.
Mike looks at Korea who suddenly transforms into a red blue vampire clown laughing at
his face all zooming in on him.
God damn it.

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John Brian Costa

Silent Hill

The Necromancer
Under gray skies of infinite sorrow with the green gibbous moon waning down on the
decaying grave stones standing tall all covered with moss overgrown with shadow in the abysmal
night.
With an interest in necromancy and reading in the paper Man dies after uncovering
ancient grave stone, I had to investigate for myself.
As I child Id become weaned from the comfort of others at an early age and desolate
isolation nourished my innermost longings for scholarly studies in the mansion I was born and
raised in upon old moldy shelves with books with torn and stained pages. The green eerie light of
the moon shown down as I walked along the path in the night. An anxiety took hold of my
physical body as I carried my spade and lantern along.
Dilapidated clouds and another an unknown singular instinct beside the anxiety pulled me
to my destination. The man who had died here was said to have been fooling with the
gravestones.
I did some research, and I figured out what it must have been hed been searching for. A
long dead foreign man of unstated origin, but once a grave robber himself, had died here and
supposedly was buried with his most precious treasure.
The mud under my feet pulled my boots in smacking sounds as I walked with birds of
shadow lingering silently in dead branches of aeon aged trees. The long abandoned cemetery
beyond the fresh graves was now in sight.
A withering old wooden gate stood between a stone wall feebly before me.
I clicked the hatch upon the gate and walked through when a sudden feeling that I may
have been followed occurred to me as the hairs on the back of my neck stood on edge.
I looked over my shoulder yet nothing was to be found.
The ancient text, a book of Arabian origin was handed down to me by an old man who
raised me.
He passed all his library to me when he became deceased along with the great mansion,
he had no other family.
The text told of daemons and ghouls of the night and diabolical methods of conjuring and
overcoming the unknown gods. Succumbing to the forces and powers of the abyss.
The old man with his jaded sensibilities taught me everything about life that I know, from
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the enchiridion and the arbatel of magic to the celestial magic of the anonymous German mystic.
He taught me the lesser key of Solomon the King and we went over the rituals of transcendental
black magic. I learned the magic sigils and seals from Baal and Belial up to the final
Andromalius.
I learned the prayers and exorcisms of high magic.
He taught me everything in our carvel filled with skeletons retrieved from ancient graves
and all of our collected nefarious goods, satanic talisman and amulets of unparalleled powers.
We kept everything down in the deep basement of the mansion so as visitors would never
know of our nightly ventures into the ancient graveyards of the world. We would play the devils
chord from haunted stringed instruments in a mysterious dissonance of intoning chants in
wonder. We had a lot of strange times, Id miss the old man.
I grabbed my spade and walked toward the ancient tombstone.
A marble gargoyle high above leering down at me proved fear in my eyes. My gaze fell
upon the moon flowing with cloud. I began to dig.
The loam, seemingly endless and tough, I struggled with my posture as my boots sank
into the ground.
The rain became to increase to a pour and I began to sweat. The clouds became to whirl
in the sky and a slight rained pick up, falling towards the overgrown grasses covered with
mysterious aged weeds and I looked upon the stone wall covered with lichen and moss and
thought to myself: Why have a come?
Had I not all the treasures in the world?
Would one more thing satisfy my desires?
How long would I remain a grave robber?
This was the first mission since the old man had died, and it wasnt the same without him.
Yet still I did all the necessary calculations of the lunar cycle to make it just right, though it still
wasnt the same.
Finally at last I reached the wooden casket under all the mud and uncovered it. I set my
spade with the lantern beside the grave and looked once more upon the gargoyle now seeming to
call to me, enticing and encouraging me to open the box.
Gnashing my teeth, I knew not what to think of this. Was it simply my mind or had some
daemonic spirit possessed this inanimate object in order to hurl me through the gates of hell?
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I opened the box surprisingly with ease and to my horror found an indescribable deathly
pale monstrous thing.
With infinite dread and sentiments of panic, desperate loathing, and painful loss, I
reached down and grabbed the amulet around the corpses neck and nearly fell into the grave.
I pulled it away and stood up and looked at it under the green lunar light, my lantern by
my side.
It had the emblem of one of the seals, I did not recognize which right away.
But I put it around my own neck and grabbed my tools and left.
Id hoped for more.
I put the horrible thing next to my other amulets and charms and began to do some
research in the library.
What I found was not good.
I mustnt tell of the seal name for fear that one might attempt to summon the actual
foreboding daemon which began to haunt me from the moment I reached this charm.
I had tried to get rid of it after the first few events and tossed it in the garbage only to
frightfully wake up screaming one morning with the wretched thing around my neck again.
From that moment I knew I was to live the rest of my days waiting for bleak oblivion. I
would never reach to pearly gates Id imagined as a child.
By the dried and souring rotten blood of Christ nailed and hanging on his wooden cross I
knew that I would be condemned for all my days.
I began to hear and see things out my window in my study at night.
Even when Id placed the thing in a locked box and had been feeling okay about it for
days, then some haunting event would frightfully put me back into the doom I knew I should
face.
The shadows and voices out the window were quite bad one rainy evening I was feeling
rather jaded and abundantly pissed so I went down to the basement and unlocked the drawer and
found the thing and put it around my neck. I read the seal aloud along with the necessary prayer
and exorcism to summon the beast.
The rain stopped upon a great sounding thunder and the door to the basement opened.
I beheld in the light of the doorway in great horror, the skeleton of the dead man from
whom Id stolen the amulet.
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The corpse walked down and choked me with its bony skeleton hands killing me.
It then collapsed beside as I did the same, both of us unanimated.
Now everything is just pain, there is no escape.
Just a wound that continues to deepen in this scorching red fire and brimstone.
My body slowly rots to just another dead body amongst the ones Ive robbed. After a few
centuries Ill still lie dead amongst this entombed basement with the dead and all of the satanic
library.
Just waiting to be discovered so one might steal the seal so I might be the undead one
over the haunted.

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Silent Hill

The 2nd Opinion


Saul got dosed for the second time that day. He stood up from the steel rack in their all
blue pajamas and walked to the cell door.
The nurse handed over a cup with a pill in it. Saul put the pill in his mouth as the on duty
officer, looking through the cell window locked the door.
Saul drank the water from a fountain as the two uniformed personnel walked away. He
sat at the little steel desk. He pulled the pill out of his mouth and put it on the steel, where he eats
his meals. He opened a little pocket bible he acquired from the library shelf. He tore a page out
of the index and crushed the pull into powder under the book with his fist. He wasnt going to
just throw it away, like he used to. That would be a waste of decent Class-A Drugs, he finally
figured. He rolled the page from the index into a straw and snorted the powder up his nose. He
held it for a second leaning his head back, He threw the page into the steel toilet and flushed it.
He started reading the pocket bible, pacing back and forth in the cell. Revelation, he
recalled someone had told him, was good. So he opened it to that prophetic final book and read it
slowly. He deliberately wanted to absorb the story and truly understand it, what its really about.
He delved into it quite a bit. He found this one to have more vivid imagery and a better plot than
some of the others hed seen in the Holy Bible.
He started to feel tired from the sedative hed just insufflated and lay down on the metal
cot with its thin mattress pad and old worn pink blanket. It was cold.
He stared at the stone wall, just lying there, and noticed an indent in the wall, he stared at
it and he didnt know what it was for and it started to give him a headache staring at it.
He was awakened by an officer bringing him a breakfast tray with a biscuit, gravy, and
potatoes with cornflakes and a small carton of milk.
He ate it gratefully, he was hungry. Hed save the packet of sugar. Hed snort that later for
any possible placebo effects. He found if he told himself it was a psychoactive substance hed
psychosomatically feel good. He liked random powders and crystals up his nose, not salt though,
tasted nasty. And hed tried pepper but he just sneezed a lot. So he sprinkled those on the food.
When the guard came back and took the tray and spoon back Saul thanked the man. He
hopped under the pink blanket and fell back asleep feeling a little better. He woke up to a female
Dr. knocking on his cell door.
Saul
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Yeah, hi.
Howre you?
Good.
Im Doctor Summers.
Okay.
I just wanted to check in with you and see how the meds are working.
Oh they seem to be helping but Im thinking the dose Im at of the anti-depressant is a
little low, because Im still having a lot of sad thoughts. He frowned at the doctor as she began
to take notes through the cell window.
And is there anything I can get for this anxiety?

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Silent Hill

The Process
Moloch in the rain water, all brown and daemonic.
The air full of chemical agents giving everything a red tint with the aluminum sulfate
burning every breath.
Saul, a young man, was walking through the bricked urban jungle below their postcommunist towers, eyes wide and with a purposeful step. Everyone he passed seemed to scowl
their faces toward him.
Except one man whose eyes lit up like those of a lemur as he passed, all dilated full of
wonder.
The rain suddenly slowed then cleared with the clouds as the sun shone through, strange
summer weather.
The chemicals in the air were almost intoxicating but not in a good way, but in a sort of
nightmarish neo-sci-fi paranoia.
Two police men on bicycles just stopped him.
They said itd been reported hed been saying strange things.
What happened to the first amendment, he thought.
And in truth hed been silent for quite a long time, he may have been experiencing weird
things but definitely hadnt expressed anything.
Ever since he left his apartment for the walk hed been entirely quiet.
When he said didnt have a license on him and they acted as if it were a crime.

They

took his information and sent him on his way.


Saul was sure they must have stopped him due to his website which had a lot of highly
subversive questions on it.
Information on micro-array DNA, chemical electroshocks and other pharmacological
lobotomizing techniques for the masses, new teleporting research, the rise of biochips, global
camera satellites,

detriangulation with global positioning systems, finger printing, human

cloning, etc
A helicopter droned in a sky full of chem. trails.
Saul sighed aluminum sulfate.
Puddles of brown water on the brick stone path with slight hints of lichen and moss, and
weeds poking through the cracks, Moloch
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As the sun went down Saul walked home.


Later that night physical clones of his parents stopped by his apartment.
They told convinced him they were going to take him out to dinner but ended up
dropping him off at a psychiatric facility.
As he walked up, the cloned parents left in the truck and disappeared into thin air where
no one could witness it half a mile away.
The cloned clinicians appeared out of static electricity into thin air before Sauls eyes,
sitting in chairs and standing in offices with cold cruelty of indifferent faces.
Saul stood outside a while contemplating and talking to himself. Trying to explain to
himself what was actually going on.
Finally they invited him in.
A woman questioned him in a room with leather padded chairs.
She had a condescending manner.
He tried to explain to her all about what he called The Process.
She just laughed aloud at him to his face.
Then an ugly mean faced old man wearing plastic blue gloves said that they required piss
in a cup.
Saul refused and walked out.
Maybe he was high, or had been, but whats it to them? He thought.
Saul stood outside and smoked a cigarette in the dimly lit silence geeking out on a tree
that had roots coming up from the ground and its splintering trunk was all peeling white bark.
Meanwhile the ugly old man was calling the cops.
When the two black and white police cars pulled up in the dark night, he knew it was for
him.
There were three of them walking up in their black uniforms with their official golden
badges. Saul looked at the star as a familiar occult symbol.
He recognized one of the officers with his black hair and younger face as a former high
school teacher of political science and American history and Saul stared into his eyes.
The cop seemed ashamed for a moment.
Then a blonde haired officer said to Saul: Put your hands behind your back, ready to
cuff him.
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The cop began to grab the Sauls hands behind his back without delay and as he did Saul
asked Can I ask a question?
The cop stopped for a brief moment.
And the young man asked: Am I being arrested?
He read somewhere to always ask this question when in doubt.
Luckily the cop said No, but you cant stay here, they dont want you remaining on the
property.
Then why the hell were you trying to cuff me? Saul thought.
He told them he would walk home and they agreed so he left.
He smoked a cigar he had found earlier that was resting on a branch of the tree out front
of the psychiatric facility as he walked. He imagined it laced with opium.
When he got home he worked on his website.
It wasnt but a week later when he was arrested.
The crime hed committed was under the influence of high technologies persuasion. He
was on automation. He was sure of it afterwards.
In jail they fingerprinted him.
The cop held his hand down on a white screen as it appeared all blood red on a monitor, it
looked like a monkey paw to him and was all red and horrifying.
The cop looked depressed but still managed to be a dick.
Nice shirt, he said to Saul nodding his head sarcastically as he threw the young man
back into a holding cell.
After several hours of questioning they put him into a regular cell with a steel bed and
thin foam mattress. He fell asleep.
He spent a lot of time in jail. He read revelation from the bible a few times then read the
whole bible. He figured it the only decent book they had.
He was released to a number of years of probation.
He shut down his website, figuring it for the best to stop fixating on those things, and
stopped fighting.
He lived in meager oppression.
Then one day on a walk he looked up past the sky scrapers into the blue sky where there
were a couple of chem. trails and that didnt bother him anymore.
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He sighed aluminum sulfate and smiled.

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Silent Hill

The Square
He followed his intuition through the square, the townsfolk disinterested in folly of the
night time bar scene.
His girlfriend just broke up with him over the phone, she has been with another man for
some time.
He dragged his hands across his face, dismayed at the thought of her sleeping with
someone else.
A clock tower above struck 11 and he stood below it looking up with nowhere to go and
nothing to do. The whole of his existence had been based around her for years. He knew not
whether to feel free or lost or helpless or anything at all. He just stared as a minute went round
on the clock thinking the time was just ticking past until he would pass away.
And what had he really ever accomplished? He thought. He had gotten by with the fact
that at least hed had a partner but now he couldnt even say that.
He went to nearest bar and lingered on a stool for a while before ordering a drink.
Whiskey and soda, it is what he always got whenever he drank, which was rarely, but tonight
hed made up his mind. The bar had an empty feeling even though it was quite full. Everything
seemed to have a quiet distance about it even though everyone was chatting over the music.
Feeling out of place on his 3rd or 4th drink he started to play one of the games the bar had
at the counter. He lost quickly and said Damn, aloud.
No one heard him.
No one cared.
He looked around at all the drunk faces and sipped his drink.
What was the point of being here? He thought. Then he asked the bartender for another
drink which he served him. It was a bitter ale out of the bottle. He drank it quickly then walked
out of the bar feeling a mild intoxication.
People passed him in the street and he walked for a while. He was parked in the other
direction but he knew it was not a good idea to drive home so he just gave into time and walked
for a while.
He stopped at a store that sold foreign handmade artifacts, it was closed and the lights
were off but he stood in front of the window for a while. Hed always wanted to go into this
store, but he never had.
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The next morning he was hung over. On his way home hed bought a fifth of whiskey and
had drank most of it. His stomach felt ill and he had an immense headache. His mouth was
disgustingly dry and nasty, hed smoked a pack of cigarettes in his studio apartment and he has
never been a smoker. He just wanted something to feel.
He looked at his phone and checked the time. Way past wake up time and way too late to
call in for work.
Then it rang.
Youre fired is all he heard.
He hung up and went to the last remaining shot in the bottle of whiskey and swigged it
until there was nothing left.

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Requiem
Its the middle of the night on a Saturday.
She picks me up on the strip in a sleek silver Benz.
She is a hot young Asian, with eyes like a subtle kill between birds of prey.
Deep eyes, ones that have premeditation written all over them.
Beautiful eyes, laced with mascara and sexuality, flowing with evanescence at every
blink.
Her voice is soothing sweet like tea.
Hey.
We evade all trouble with smooth right and left turns to the cuts.
We blow an oxy on some tin foil, hell yea.
The bitter sweet taste grows on a person like an impulse learned over time.
Upon inspiration the high is incorporeal and ethereal to the mind and body.
Euphoric bliss incurs as I exhale the light smoke like a feather hitting a soft wind.
And once a habit starts, to go without it for more than a couple of days is just maddening,
but this is just pure release.
Shes bumping a hip hop slash electronica mix on the stereo, her sound system is good
and strong, low bass and high highs, there is nothing like it to match its quality. Every note
sticks out in magnified precision.
As a musician I evaluate the sound and trip on the intricacies of the machinery of the
music.
We have no destination on a map or GPS.
The space we aimed to reach has been achieved. A physiological chemical state of mind
created by the state of the art synthetic opioid that we love, Oxy.
It is derived from the chemical thebaine, which is just .2% of the active ingredients in the
opium poppy, papaver somniferous, the best of the best in the family, the elite.
She tells me a story of one of her girlfriends jacking her.
Apparently the chick called her a selfish bitch, which I swear is the diametric opposite of
the truth on a graph of personality traits.
This girl is a sweet hearted lover.
She loves me and I love her.
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A good friendship is hard to find, friends that wont stab you in the heart at the bat of an
eye and call you inflammatory things that are hurtful, meaningless, or untrue. Friends that dont
label you with judgment out of fear and hate. Accepting people that love you regardless of your
flaws, and see character in them and nurture you to grow.
The night air flows through the window and we hop on the freeway, she likes to drive
fast. We decide we are going into the city.
The black sticky icky on my fingertips as I pull some hash from a little green bag. I pack
it into her glass pipe, it is a midnight blue piece with white and silver lines and a bubble at the
carb. THC is a nice addition to the mix, she turns up the music and hits the pipe. She blows out a
dark thick cloud of smoke and coughs a little.
There are only a few other cars on the road. Opiates always make my vision slightly
altered, colors really stand out, and the speeding cars and their taillights contrasting the asphalt
and clear night sky looks cool. There are no cops in sight, just citizens enacting free will to the
fullest. The name says it all, free-way.
We finish the bowl not speaking just rocking out to the music which is really good. I have
never heard it before, but I really like it and am nodding my head along to the beat.
Youre the best dude. She says as we drive south.
No youre the best. This is one of are common arguments, which one of us is the best, I
always insist she is, but she assures me I am still the best.
We hold hands for a moment and embrace, I put my hand on her leg as she drives and all
feels right in the world for a moment in time.
Sometimes life can be so stressful, people, places and things that just tend to get in the
way of our goals and endeavors, and then sometimes there are moments in life when everything
seems right, like this.
We arent the smartest people in the world, but we dont have to be. We can just be
normal people with normal problems and be okay with it for the night. Everything seems so
shallow at times, going through the humdrum of daily living, and just going through the motions.
But I am okay with this passing moment as I light up a smoke.
You want a smoke?
Sure.
I hand her a cigarette. The good kind, not generic. She normally smokes menthol though,
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but shes out.


She turns down the music.
How have you been dude? It has been a while.
I drag my smoke and contemplate what to say in response to this question. What have I
been up to? I didnt return to school this fall, I am collecting unemployment because I was fired
from my job for not showing up. I dont want to tell her my failures and get into it.
Not much, same old you know. I keep it simple and avoid delving into my mundane
problems.
Smoking a bunch, picked up a habit. Kind of sucks because when you dont have any
you just feel like death, your back hurts and all you can do is lay around and wait for the connect
to pull through. Its hell.
I have been addicted to oxy for 6 years, it creeps on you at first. It starts with the
weekend thrill, and then before you know it you are doing it on the weekdays and then the next
thing you know you are doing it every day.
Fuck I know, Ive been doing it every day .
She is in the same boat.
Yeah, its good to be high. Hey, lets do some more.
Should I pull over or what?
No its cool, can you smoke while you drive, I will light it for you, unless you want to
snort some?
She considers the options.
I kind of want to snort it actually. Ill pull over, there is a gas station at the next exit.
We pull into the lit up stop, a few other social deviants are grabbing beer or cigarettes
with grimaceson their inebriated faces.
Let me throw some gas in your tank. You want anything?
Thanks dude, ummm, no Im good.
I grab a pack of cigarettes and two ice creams and throw some gas on her tank.
I got us ice cream.
Oh sweet, thank you.
She pumps the gas and we get back into the car.
I bust out the pill and crush it on a book. I slice out two lines with a credit card and we
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put the powder into our faces.


Lets smoke a little bit too.
Thanks so much, you are the best.
No problem.
I bite one in a half and she busts out the tin foil.
We freebase it, sucking the smoke through a hallowed out pen.
She speaks some more about her girlfriend who called her a bitch as she holds in the
smoke. Its funny, seems like half our conversations are held behind smoke in our lungs leaving
our voices deep and withdrawn.
That is messed up, you should steer clear of this girl for a while. I say then cough out
smoke.
Yeah I am not talking to her anymore, she is so ungrateful. I let her borrow my car and
everything and she has the nerve to call me a bitch. She wants to hold over on me that she put
gas in my tank. Like what the hell?
Yeah, fuck. I try to empathize with her, but I am at a loss for words to console her.
We get back on the free-way and head toward the city.
We get there about 1 am.
We hit up a bar and grab a drink.
She has a long island and I have whiskey on the rocks.
We chat briefly but the music is so loud I can barely hear her.
I ask her if she wants to take off after the drinks are gone and we do.
Not much of a bar person, myself, more into the drugs than booze.
You want to hit up a hookah bar? I know where there is one that is open all night on the
weekends.
Yeah, for sure.
She parks the car out front.
The grime of the asphalt contrasts the flashing neon lights of the city street.
Shes holding her purse and I put out a cigarette and we head into the lounge.
A young Arab woman greets us and hands us a menu. We sit down on a circular couch
with a large hookah in the center of a grand round table.
Mmmm, peach.
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Yeah, that sounds good, lets get that and the sour apple. I suggest.
Do you want to mix them?
Yeah, why not? Lets live dangerously. I joke.
We order our seesh and sit back as they bring us a bowl and charcoal. The smoke is nice,
it is not harsh at all and after about 10 minutes or so it really starts to kick, it is a really mellow
feeling.
We start to talk about the beauty of the lounge, all the Indian artwork and beads designed
along the walks. The couch feels so comfortable and I start to close my eyes as I suck in the cool
smoke.
Yeah for sure.
She drives me home and we smoke one more oxy. I pass out in the car on the way back. I
feel at ease after we had such a great night, it was really a lot of fun. She drops me off and I hop
out and we say I love you and good night.

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Volumus, Et Quid Volumus, Erimus


We must have lived in a past life together.
I could feel it in the essence of my being just peeling my soul inside out.
She never spoke too much. Always simply and just enough to get a point across. And a
great listener with a huge heart. She would say things like always and other things that would
comfort me in hard times. She knew how to love a person. In dreams shed appear in the form of
an angel with wings to heal and transmit knowledge.
Reviewing magical texts, we were in a store searching for a particular book. It was said to
be written in Latin and authored by an ancient magician. She found it amongst the shelves then
pulled it down,
Here it is. She handed it to me.
It was a leather bound.
It fit into my hands like nothing else.
The cover seemed to stare back at me. The intricate inlay left me marvelingI opened
the book and whirling images in black and white adorned with designs of skillful mastery filled
my dilated eyes. Closing the book I went to the register for the purchase.
Reading the book I realized it was not of this world. It was some sort of daemonic force
to destroy us and tear us apart.
I could feel time and space as I read, all vibrating, peeling, pulling and stretching.
It occurred to me that I might lose her forever.
All my love to be lost to a hell bound force greater than any power of man or woman or
both.
Barbed chains for the soul, a pantheistic evil capable of destroying any and all good.
An eerie emptiness lit up on the dreary mount as we walked out in unsolved silence.
Then she was gone and I was alone.
I stood upon a giant plasma TV screen, with the eldritch face of an evil man shouting in
muted silence, drowning in the fervor of his hate, it could be heard only by deaf ears and felt by
broken hearts. Radiating that sore emptiness of dread one sometimes feels in their chest.
Id passed through a portal.
I jumped from the distortion of reality and all the universes gravity pulled me to the deja-vu of another plasma screen.
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The weight of the jump left it static and cracking in popping electricity.
The sky full of lightning and with a subtle rain picking up, I peered off the edge into the
infinite darkness and jumped into sure doom.
I jumped from static plasma screen television to static plasma screened television in dead
space and cracking thunder.
The light so disappearing, and the stasis of black and white getting emptier and emptier.
I arrived in the pits of hell then from the nothingness of black and white and grey to
flashing audible blood red.
My vision all swollen and vibrant like a beating heart.
Then all vaporized into a blood bath in the bricks, with writhing maggots and twitching
dead flies; as far from the heaven Id dreamt with my winged lover as I could ever be.
The strangely familiar faces in hell reverberated their dissonance and distance, shuffling
back and forth as they stared silent into the darkness with catatonic leers of psychoses and
anguish which they seemed to resolutely embrace.
I closed my eyes in slow motion and I prayed down there in the bottomless red pit of this
hell.
The darkness spun out geometrically to white and I passed through limbo.
A portal from the hell opened to an enigmatic pseudo heaven. It was the heaven of my
dreams, sky blue sky, no clouds, just wooden planks supporting me.
But I knew it was not the real.
It was all just an illusion of the nightmare.
There was a dread and a fear in this heaven.
The feeling of overwhelming repressed hatred and negative energy shining through the
beautiful scenery
Behind all the sky blue sky I could still feel the slowing red vibrations of the pits of hell.
Just floating in the thin air the wooden planks were unstable.
I jumped from one to another floating on sky in a desperate search for the woman of my
dreams.
I found her in a grey room, huddled reclusively in a corner.
Then I realized it was not really her.
It was a doppleganger or a physical clone genetically generated from their building.
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The female personage stood up wearing black plants and a white blouse holding the book
out at her side.
In the residue of hesitation, fear, and deliberate melancholy, we stared at one another.
And for a moment nothing made sense in the confusion of humanity.
She reached out an empty hand and sent me back to the pits of hell, praying on my knees
with yellow and black bile melancholy and insectoid tentacle monsters. The illusion had been
broken.
I stood up.
The woman of my dreams was present there too now, all beautiful in her unique pain.
Wearing a blood red t shirt with spilled black ink, words spilt in spelled epic, the
desperation in her face tore me apart, both knowing we could do nothing to change this situation.
Everything all drugged by the demon staring intently at us in the distance, so chained to
this tragic destiny.
My vision fell blood shot as she threw down her hands, her eyes filled with loss.
Feeling there was nothing we could do.
Approaching her slowly through a dying wind in a possessed foreign manner I spoke to
her softly, autonomously, in a possessed dead language: Volumus, et quid volumus erimus.
My skin turned grey and callous and I collapsed before her dead.
She knelt down and mourned over my dead grey corpse.
Blood red.

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#ASURA
1

1 Prima Materia : written in 2011-2015 c.u.t. by John Costa: Asura: Dream's


reflection; small number of friends' metaphoric illusory lives of yesterday's nostalgia
and their addiction plus stress dealing with the bio-wartech under the umbrella
spreading through a prototype government generated clone turned vampire. Late
urban tovel culture incorporating from zombies to graffiti, detriangulation computer
hacking, electronic music, and dope.
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-LEGEND Asura A Non-Human Evil Enigma


Kagami - Mirror (Female Protagonist)
Kyuuketsuki - Vampire (Clone of Kagami)
Yume - Dream (Male Protagonist)
Kasa - Umbrella (Scientist/Government Employee)
Mayaku - Drugs (High Scientist/Doctorate Government Employee)
Ame - Rain (High Scientist/Doctorate Government Employee)
Kino - Yesterday (DJ/Maya's lover/Friend)
Maya - Illusory world (Kino's Lover/Friend)
Suri - Pickpocket (Yumes Dealer)
Opioid - Synthetic Pharmaceutical Opiate Derivative
Black - Street Heroin or the Darkest Color Reflecting No Light
Yola - Cocaine
E - MDMA pill
Xanax - Benzodiazepine; an Anti-anxiety Medication
IV/Rig/Point - Intravenous Needled Syringe
Papaver Somniferous - Poppy Plant
Cell - Mobile Phone, 8x 5 Prison Cell, or Synonymous for a Live Atomic Molecule
Gemina - Female Twin in Dead Romance Language, Latin
Sinistra A Feminine of Sinister; Wicked, Evil, or Dishonest Especially in a Self-Centered and
Mysterious Way, or the Name of One of the Stars in the Night Sky also a Musical Term Implying
Notes Played With the Left Hand
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Dopple - Double
DJ - An Engineer of Sound
FX - A DJs Stutters, Key/Tempo Locks, Syncs, Cues, FX, Loops, Scratches and Cuts
Mass/Rave - A DJ's Event
Electronica - Synthesized Music
Trance - Dreamy Electronica
Dub-Step - Syncopated Bass Driven Electronic Music
BMX - Rough Terrain Bicycle
Yakkyoku - Chemist
Yagakusha - Master in Science
Sigil - Magical Summons Symbol
Anima - Soul
Mogwai - Malevolent Ghost or Evil Spirit
Specter - Quick Moving Yet Somewhat Visible Spirit
Djinn A spiritual entity capable of good and/or evil
Demi-God - Half God
Hanya - Enemy Spirit of Samurai
Keitai shosestsu/Tovel/Wovel- E-Book Texts on Cells and Web
The Digital Flood - Hackers Online Forum
PM - Private Message
A.I. - Artificial Intelligence
I.P. Address - Internet Protocol Numbers for Web Users
LCD - Liquid Crystal Display
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Micro-array DNA Matrices - Patterns of Individual Double Helix, Deoxyribonucleic-Acid


Decoding Application for Machines
En-route - On the Way
Dub A Gram of Cannabis
Detriangulation - A Technical Term Involving GPS Tracking
GPS - Global Positioning System
Drone - Unmanned Remote Aircraft
Stoble/Genya - Cigarette
Shinto - Japanese Native Religion
Aurora Borealis - Natural Phenomena of Involved Northern Lights in the Night Sky
M.I.A.- Missing In Action
E.T. - Extraterrestrial, of another Separate Planet
Blackhole - Bending Hole/Portal in Space-Time with No Escaping its Shrinking Force Once
Entering its Path
Telos - Final Pulling Point of Potentiality of an Entity in Determinism
Ktema es aei - A Possession for All Time

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Rex mortis voluntariae: omnis alba et cordia sanguinea. Argentus gladius per corona ab se
manu. Quis nunc regnet supra illa charta forum area? Sanguinis fulgidi supra ebonica et
alba latrunculi charti qui it extrinsecus aeternus, in sanguini regina calcis lucta imago
affulgidat.
The suicide king: all white and bloody hearts. Silver sword through skull by his own hand. Who
will now reign over the card courtyard? Blood shines over the black and white game board,
outward forever. The queen of cups' reflection shines in the blood.

Aliam capio regis. Asura veniant pharmae cum forte ut trans caveant mundum, infermia
trahent. Carpe noctem et momentes. Da illas amori, da illas ignis, tota mortes tua. Nequius
nervus foris, cruda sanguinea indecis indicium. Ego tuum. Et umbella fini daemonum.
Speculus corvum tenet. Aspectare ordo statum sideris.
The opposing king taken. Asura come forth with powerful chemistry to cave in the earth bringing
forth pestilence. Seize the night and moments. Give that into love, give that into fire, you all
dead. Neither that which is the nervous door, worthless bleeding index to index. I am you. And
the umbrella over the final Hanya. The mirror has a curve. Look to the standing order of the
stars.

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PART I #ASURA: KYUUKETSUKI


SYNC
*

Drop darkness, and blood rain forever.


A hollows so deep, the only thing.
Give it dimension.
The gravity and dripping blood.
A still transient of circular predestination.
An empty mirror reflecting.
Kagami, a 22 year old female gazed into the mirror.
Yume was walking along a suburban sidewalk when he came across a fallen crow, all

smashed into the pavement with its dried black blood and scattering feathers. He wandered on
his way and with a deathly frown wondered if he were truly living.
A black crow smashed into the sidewalk cement.
One of these black coated oxy* pills lay on a small mirror. The mirror, resting on a table
on blue carpet reflected the ceiling, which was painted in the form of a black and white spiral
heading from the center of the giant room out towards the walls.
The couple, Kagami and Yume, in their early twenties sat cross-legged on the carpet
around the mirror, talking.
You want to crush it or should I?
Go ahead.
She sucked the black layer of coating off of the pill, wiped it with a paper towel and
placed the now pure white pill back on the mirror. She pulled out an overpriced pack of
cigarettes and slid the cellophane wrapper from it.
They must have done this a thousand times before.
Lighter."
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He passed her a lighter with the king of hearts on it, the suicide king; always stabbing
himself in the head with his silver sword.
She crushed the pill under the cellophane from the pack of cigarettes with the lighter then
handed the lighter back to him.
Card. She commanded.
He handed her a credit card and she divided the white powder into two lines over the
reflection of the ceilings spiral on the mirror resting on the table with the card, which still had a
few cash advances left on it for future highs.
He then pulled out of his skull and bones wallet from his black pants pocket a fifty dollar
bill.
She rolled it up and put it to her nose as she closed her eyes in the reflection, sniffing the
first line.
Then he sniffed his line, the second.
They both wiped their noses for a second, as the release of euphoria gently began to hit
them.
*Oxycodone is an opioid, or synthetic opiate, derived from the opium poppy, papaver
somniferous, and a .2% active ingredient, thebaine. Papaver somniferous is Latin for sleepinducing poppy. The scientific label given to the naturally occurring plant growing wild in crops
and free fields as well across the globe under ideal geographic conditions. Oxycodone is a
chemical which was first said to be produced by German pharmacists, in the turn of the twentieth
century. It is known for its effectiveness in numbing pain and its keen ability to demand
dependence and over use from its users. When taken it gives the body a feeling similar to
morphine or heroin, but the addict is likely to be left with a most intense craving for more of the
drug sooner than that is the case with other opium derivatives. In the turn of the millennia,
addiction to this chemical skyrocketed across the nations. Though generally only available to
medical patients in severe and or terminal pain, it became widely abused by addicts on the streets
through the black market. Pharmaceutical companies were cashing in, as were the doctors and
street dealers. Junkies were coming out of the wood work.
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The oppressively bright sun shining high loomed over expanded cracked concrete
forever. Broken glass and silvery skyscrapers aspiring up toward the sun, a young sentry in a
blue uniform dragged the wheeled cage over the bumpy concrete.
The prisoner, Yume, inside a daze, awoke rubbing his face in the indefinite summer haze.
He glanced at the broken glass through the steel bars, shining in clear white reflection from the
solar rays beating down to the grey paved earth.
Hacking government databases.
Theyd finally gotten him.
Youre awake. The sentry looked at Yume.
What year is it? Yume asked groggily.
Dont know, not sure anyone does.
The last I remember is-"
Well, all I know about then is Kasa and the event horizon.
Whats that?
The end of the line, we're here." The sentry pulled the steel cage into a door of a
skyscraper which he opened up with a hydraulic remote.
Good luck in there. The sentry walked off and Yume was left in the darkness of the cell.
Yume sat in the cool dark theatre seat, his eyes dully half open yet fixated on the black
and white still life photography on the screen fifty feet ahead.
He always preferred art films.
This was a post-modern piece, a silent film with still life, landscapes and motion sensor
cloud formations racing across grassy hillsides.
Transparency of roses, lilac, and raspberry bushes blooming and rotting in decay.
He was wearing all black winter clothes, with a plain black wide brimmed baseball cap;
he had his black backpack, which was covered in violent looking graffiti tags.
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He was on the nod, nearly out when a Mohawk punk began going through his backpack
in the seat next to him.
He was out with his eyes closed by then but he heard the zipper open and with his arm
that was on the bag quickly yanked it to his self.
The fuck you doing?
Running through red and black corridors.
Yume's instincts kicked in as he ran at full speed toward the red exit sign fifty meters
ahead.
He got to the door only to find his probation officer in a black uniform with cuffs and his
gun in his pants.
Fuck
His rights werent read, because he had none left.
His wrists would scar from the clenching wrenching steel cuffs.
His head hung in defeat.
"Watch your head."
He was thrown in the back seat of the black vehicle in the darkness of the night.
The cage between Yume and the cop held up a shot gun on the driver's side. The officer in
black typed a few keys onto his laptop and started the car.
Fingerprinted then released out on bail after the weekend was through.
In the cell he thought of all sorts of things but mostly he thought of Kagami.
He wondered what she was doing at that particular moment.
He hoped she wasnt dope sick, and hoped she was safe.
He thought she was probably high and fell asleep in the dim light on the steel slab in the
concrete bricked cell within the steel door and bricked walls.

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Then; mini television lay on the carpet casting a static signal to the room.
Their eyes glazed stared blankly as the screen flipped images to a movie scene, robot
hominid cyborg druids stood around a mechanical ruin.
Kagami and Yume without response as the soulless hominids spoke directly to the
watchers.
Come on in. They invited in cold monotony.
You are welcome here. They said in robotic harmony.
Want to go in? Kagami asked Yume.
That is like selling your soul. He replied in a slow, quiet, raspy and intoxicated tone of
voice.
She sniffed half a black oxy and got sucked into the scene.
She stood with them and said to come on in.
He turned his cap adjacent and sniffed the other line on the mirror and then he also got
sucked into the screen.
The room sat quiet for a minute with them standing around the mechanical ruin on the
screen of the TV where the droid druids were all walking away mechanical in the mud as the rain
began to pick up.
No umbrella.
They wrapped their arms around one another in the cold.
The clouds turned dark.
The TV in the room then turned itself off and the room went silent.
The mirror reflected the black and white spiral over head on the ceiling and the scene
switched to just an image of the black and white spiral which began to turn slowly and in the
center outward.
It rippled like a stone had been dropped into a pool of black and white.
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Cue:
Black liquid sucked tight in the IV syringe.
Hed never done heroin.
He found it to be suicidal, though, perhaps an injection could kill the painless.
Nevertheless oxys were off the market and he was sick, so it would have to do.
He pulled the needle from his arm and fell back into the recliner. All the while the subtle
Give a fuck, of dying slid throughout his mind.
It was a dirty high, he thought as he picked up his cell and began to tovel alpha numeric
keys, eyes slowly blinking in and out of a grandeur altered-state.
He did love chemicals.
He hit the keys into the machine dull half asleep: Hanging over your head, looming in
gloom and doom, the umbrella.
He paused and the cell slid out of his hand and he slid out of the recliner onto the floor
where he passed out in the fetal position for about an hour.
He woke up to close the god forsaken window which was letting cold air in.
Its raining
He drearily sat down.
He mumbled something about his dumb phone while his hands grabbed through his
pockets.
Nothing but a black container withholding a magic* sigil, the IV capped, and his keys.
Give a fuck...
He dozed off again then under the covers and passed out for good.
That night Kagami drove all around the city in search of oxy.
She was in so much pain.
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When she finally found a hook it turned out to cost double from the last week because of
the fact they were essentially off the market.
But she went for it and met the girl in a parking lot of a twenty four hour convenience
market and made the exchange tinted window to tinted window.
Thanks
Sure.
She sniffed half instantly on the center console under the dim car lit dash.
Relief.
Though the panic, anxiety and fear as she looked into her window where a cop stood
tapping at it with a flashlight.
Possession.
She'd left their building the next morning at dawn, after her fingerprints and DNA were
taken.
Bail.
She had sat in the cell in pure dread swearing it all off.
She decided shed never do it again.
She'd looked out the cell window and the police reminded her of militants shed once
seen on TV.
They were too mechanically beauracratic.
She'd stared at the red hand print on the blank white monitor and at one correctional
officer who kept hitting buttons on a machine. He'd seemed so emotionless and robotic.
She'd remembered all of this as she left the building and got her car out of the impound
lot.
The experience had left its mark indelibly on her consciousness.

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Shed sworn off everything and with good constitution she decided to stick with that
plan, for the time being.
She wouldnt use.
*Some say true magic is simply the highest of technologies. Synthetic minerals, cut with
the greatest precision and level of symmetry store information, as with computers rather than
natural crystals and symbols. But the magic of technology is capable of going much further than
this simple example. For instance, the ability to genetically clone animals and human beings
which arose at the turn of the twenty-first century. Many people foresaw the possible horrors of
this high science. Genetic engineering of super humans and fear of a racial fascism reoccurring
twilight in the world, becoming serious political concerns. Many countries decided to ban human
cloning, others limited it with other regulations such as allowing only research in certain types of
cloning. Micro-array DNA are the patterns of the human genetic code of individuals put into a
jigsaw matrix comprehensible for machines to decode. Criminals charged with a felonies were
often being forced to have their DNA collected in jails and prisons for the purpose of forensic
science. Most criminals fingerprints were also mechanically printed by machines, calculating
every minute ridge and crevice of the humans hand. It appeared on a white screened monitor as
the image captured in color, typically plain black or blood red. The DNA is physically painlessly
collected by putting the criminals right index finger to a small black tab that reads the DNA and
uploads it to a micro-array matrix onto their database system. Their buildings, large and
oppressive, are filled with several hundred cells of brick with steel doors that only open from one
side. Inmates go to the adjacent sector of their building for trials; the courthouse. Those rooms,
reeking of beauracracy, loom in the minds of the defendants fate. Which are to be determined by
state appointed robed officials. They sit before the nations great seals, engraved in fine metal.
The lighting is harsh and bright while whispers gloom legal terms hissing over the sound of the
typing clerk. Various flags hanged with no regard for individuality, people file in and out of their
buildings, which are scattered across the globe, every year, monthly, weekly, and daily, in and
out, a revolving door.
Yume woke up to his cell signaling a text message.
"Fuck!" He cried.

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No
She was in jail last night he read.
He looked at the rig, spoon, and the rest of the works on his desk.
He turned off his cell.
He didnt know how to respond to that, but he felt sorry for her and he was regretting
having tried heroin.
But soon after that he shot more when he began to feel ill.
Cue:
Triggering the injection to a painless release. He suddenly feels much better. Not
knowing what to think of Kagamis situation he falls out.
Sync:
The clone stepped out of the pod, in anime and evaporating silence and expectation as
this being moved toward them, who stood in awe at the artificially created person.
She was wearing the all red pajamas theyd laid out.

She

looked

exactly

like

Kagami in all features except a hint of curious malice scrawled on her demeanor.
Alive. It worked; we didnt find another inanimate corpse. This mad scientist spoke in
amazement at his own works fruition, this human before him.
Hello, I am Dr. Mayaku. What is your name?"
She looked at his eyes with a malevolent intent and smirking a grin she stated one word:
Kyuuketsuki"
After about a month of experiments and tests they released Kyuuketsuki to the world.
They gave her a job as a nurses assistant in their building within one of the mental health
modules so she would have a means to survive.
Kyuuketsuki spent most of her free time learning from books and watching vampire
dramas on TV.
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She liked the World Wide Web and tried to write an e-book online, a wovel, as it was to
be called, but failed thus far due to lack of inspiration.
All she could come up with was a title.
Umbra. Latin for shadow.
She thought of it one day depressed when it was raining. She lived in a studio apartment
and was lonely most of the time.
She learned being sinistra would get her nowhere fast so she started to be more polite as
she handed out meds and gave test injections to the inmates at the jail.
They responded better to this.
She lived mostly in her dreams, the only thing left that she felt she could understand. She
thought, and actually knew she was different from all the others and felt this inside. She never
really held long conversations but had a great longing for a social life she felt she might never
have.
Stutter:
An open dry field spread out across the land.
The blue sky rested serenely above it with the sun planted high, shining down its noon
time

rays.
A few dragon flies fluttered low, along with some monarch butterflies. Some

grasshoppers and mantis lived their lives here. It all seemed to go on endlessly, this field, like as
if it were its own planet or realm in the universe. It had a peacefulness that lacked any need for
explanation or reason.
Yume appeared here; he felt the magic of this place and respected it greatly.
He felt in love with this. He understood that hed reached a sanctuary that he could not
describe. He felt as if he were floating, with was lightness in the air. The society hed left behind
seemed so crooked and techno-political, as the solar heat spread on him.
He looked down at his red shirt, khaki pants and shoes. The shoes and pants and shirt all
matched the colors of the fields and this was aesthetically pleasing to him.
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Then he saw a violet winged butterfly and it passed him then slowly began to fly away
and as it did it grew and grew
Yume tried to chase after it but his steps and motions were all too slow. He could not
keep up with it in this slow-motion, the butterfly flew and flew away and got larger and larger.
Yume stopped running and truly appreciated this moment of his life. He watched for a
moment as the giant flying butterfly reached the horizon.
Sick flash fast forward butterfly digital muse audio corruption.
FX:
Scratches and Cuts:
Kyuuketsuki stopped going to work when she started feeling ill.
She instinctively knew to do this.
And from what she understood of the other clones she feared a similar fate.
She found out about her match from someone on the streets who had called her Kagami,
with a little research she found out where this person lived.
After hed successfully cloned Kyuuketsuki, as she called herself, Dr. Mayaku began to
clone other samples.
This is when they found that the clones had a telos of degeneration.
They all ended up turning extremely ill.
Their eyes would turn yellow then red and their flesh almost a pale tone of greenish grey.
Theyd pick at their skin leaving scabs, open wounds that dropped blood as they were opened
again and again. Theyd vomit non-stop and sick.
Finally, realizing they had to do something about it they set up a spot for these
degenerating dopples to be quarantined.
They were brought to an old ruined coliseum by helicopter in the night, and left chained
down to the concrete; this was their ultimate destiny, to be left to die.
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But obstinately, Dr. Mayaku would not stop and continued to clone various different
genome samples in attempt to find the cause of the illness in order to possibly prevent it in future
cloning.
He tried genetic research mutations of the various micro-arrays, but they all ended up the
same.
Chained down vomiting, grey and grey, all wounded with scabs with swollen hanging
hair in these red pajamas they were been provided, possessed by some mogwai of unsolved
powers that would not relent.
Stutter:
Yume and Kagami both grew up in suburbia.
Living in a small city, they never spent too much time hustling but they werent always
bored either.
Late...
Both of them spent a lot of their time reading books and writing.
She mostly read science fiction and fantasy novels, while he studied a lot of philosophy,
pharmacology and other sciences.
Although she probably knew more science than he, given that she always excelled in all
subjects.
She knew the periodic table, and did well in languages, chemistry and biology.
She always loved/hated life.
She delved into this and other things.
There were two cats in her household: Mars and Jupiter.
She was always punctual for appointments and social obligations, and began a job as a
clerk at a young age.

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He on the other hand couldnt manage to keep a job after high school. So he mostly went
to class, taking lessons at a local college in the city.
Neither of them could tell when they'd met, it seemed as if theyd known each other
forever, but it was sometime during their adolescence.
The first time they laid eyes on one another; there was a level of connection that only
grew as they inevitably got to know each other.
They were both always seekers, curious about love, life, knowledge and wisdom.
They began experimenting with drugs during high school. It started with an occasional
drink and a few puffs of marijuana with mutual friends.
The dope brought them seemingly closer together. They became inseparable as they
developed a painkiller habit.
She was the first to acquire them from her grandmother's medicine cabinet.
She had about a hundred and fifty hydrocodone left over from an old injury and they used
them all that summer. Theyd just pop them and spend the day with each other.
Going to the beach or the woods was not uncommon.
They could spend an hour not talking at all and be completely comfortable, silent within
their own presence.
Yume was shy and barely made a move on her, thought to, though never inherently
considered really doing anything. But there was so much tension by that point one day while in
the woods that summer, she kissed him.
They made out for a while then she drove home talking about other things as if it hadnt
even happened.
Neither of them thought too much of it, it simply seemed natural.
They talked.
She played the dominant role, for the most part, and they both enjoyed it this way.

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They never had said the words I love you until one day he dropped her off at the
apartment she was living in at that time after spending the day at the beach and she said it and he
said it too.
He thought for a second how he never said that to anyone, but was happy he said it to
Kagami. It felt really good for both of them.
He skateboarded home that day from her house after he smoked some lung bud.
They really did love each other too; theyd meant it, whatever it meant.
Their chemistry.
Cue:

FX:

Kyuuketsuki stood on the neon red and blue bordered platform seeming to float in deep
space around the smoke machines and strobe lights.
Electronica music blared heavily as she felt it.
Kagami felt a cool breeze as she combed her hands through her hair. Several others of
these floating platforms through space with people on them, dancing.
It was a post-modern mass; a rave.
The DJ, Kino, had the largest platform with his turntable and speakers on it facing all
directions, scratching and mixing away the records. Kino, a friend of Yume and Kagami, held his
headphones to his ears as he masterfully navigated through the music in interstellar space
backdrop atmosphere.
Yume stood with Kagami, drink in hand.
Kyuuketsuki, in an absolute subtlety felt with drink in hand, nodding Yume and Kagami
were on a platform together nearby and as it floated by Kyuuketsuki, they noticed her dancing in
her all red attire.
They looked at each other again.
That girl looks exactly like you Kagami. Yume.

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Kyuuketsuki put her hands through her hair, as Kagami looked at the replica mirror
image of herself, her own deoxyribonucleic acid, her twin clone.
Who was she?
Kagami wondered, concerned, feeling sick.
Loop: Re-loop:
House daze.
The massive rave went on and on as Kino dropped the looping bass beats.
They parted from the place soon after dawn and Kagami and Yume went home to their
new pad and just as the sun rose, they pulled up to the onyx mansion.
They unlocked the door and went to the front room.
The shining all black wood floor stood out with the blue rug laid upon it, it was a
beautifully crafted piece.
They were both tired.
Theyd had so much fun.
Neither of them normally did such social events but after their friend, the DJ Kino, had
invited them they felt they couldnt turn him down.
They skipped the after party.
They cleaned up then went to bed in the room with the spiral ceiling.
Dreaming, Yume stood silent in the same ethereal landscape, the dry grass as from the
dream before, lucidity on the hillside when he looked up at puffed white racing cloud shattered in
blue sky.
He felt he could control their sleight movements, those clouds with his own mind in this
slight moment of insanity and irrational thinking.
She cried a sense of sad relief.
Wake up, Yume.
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Yume woke up, sweating in bed.


Are you okay? Kagami asked.
You were nervously murmuring in your sleep just now. She said to him.
Yeah, okay, just a weird nightmare.
It was the middle of the night by the time theyd gotten out of bed.
They decided to go on a walk.
They got dressed in autumn gear and walked out of the spiral ceiling bedroom and went
down the hall and stairs and locked the front door behind them.
There was a full moon in the late night sky.
Wow, look at the moon.
Looking up at it with wide eyes.
Beautiful.
They walked down the street and headed further away from town towards the outskirts
where the woods began.
The trees poked up high in the horizon under the constellations.
Somewhere in space perhaps a supernova remnant's irradiation reaches its final peak to
crunch in reverse to loop again astronomically.
They started to talk en-route.
Trees.
They traveled in a sort of incognito, not that anyone was there to see them; it was just
their style to lay low.
They had an interested conversation about local natives whod run this town before the
settlers had arrived.
It started after briefly discussing talking about nature then natural laws of physics.
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Yume was surprised at how much Kagami knew about native culture, she did most of the
talking.
She spoke with enthusiasm in a gentle yet sure tone.
Yume could tell she really enjoyed talking about this, and he liked listening to what she
had to tell.
They ended up in a moment of silence at the entrance to the park.
Well, want to go on a night hike? He shrugged.
No, Yume, let's not, no water or anything. Some other night though. She decided.
Yume and Kagami moved into the mansion in the fall that year.
It was a huge furnished two story rental.
It had black stone walls and the front room had black wood floors and a giant fireplace.
The second floor was a hall of rooms.
It stood aside the town with some space from the street.
They were pleased.
Loop:
Some other night.
They stood at the entrance to the woods.
They had decided to go in.
This night, this time, the walk had a different feel to it.
It wasnt all romantic conversation and such, and it was really very quiet and chill out as
well.
They walked into the depths of the trees.
Below a bunch of great Japanese maples and some other foliage then after arriving at a
great clearing they stopped.
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In the distance they saw a dim red light so they started to head in that direction out of
curiosity.
They ended up before the giant outdoor auditorium.
A number of possessed beings stood there in chains.
When these clones noticed Yume and Kagami, they began to stick their red tongues out
and spontaneously vomiting thick green slime.
Flies had been attracted instantly from a distance, circling, again... looping in twisting
motions, spirals.
The couple stood horrified.
The possessed screamed in loud raspy incoherent curses.
FX:
All the while an agonizing droning deep sound began to pick up: helicopters.
Stutter:
Kyuuketsuki, Kagamis dopple, arrived home to her studio apartment from the rave the
next morning.
She had danced all night.
It was the first time shed ever really socialized with anyone outside of work. She had
really enjoyed it. She had heard about it while walking downtown, there was a flyer for the event
posted on a telephone pole.
She took it and put it in her pocket after folding it precisely in half twice.
He walked into her small home and sighed a breath of release.
It was as if shed been given the chance to truly live for once. But she had noticed
Kagami there, and to that she took serious concern.
And she understood something about it intuitionally at once.

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She wasnt sure whether or not they were enemies or even friends, but she knew they
were connected.
After seeing so many vampire dramas, she thought how nice it would be to take her life,
to sink teeth.
She felt jealousy but did not know what to call it.

That man that she was with, who

were those people, Kyuuketsuki wondered.


And why did she look exactly like me?
A number of other questions arose in Kyuuketsukis consciousness as she lay down to go
to sleep.
She would need to speak with Dr. Mayaku.
He would have to offer up some kind of information.
She fell asleep.
She wore light clothes in the dream and felt at ease.
Doctorits Kyuuketsuki. But my question is, what am I, or where did I come from?
Youwell, Kyuuketsuki, are the first of a series of scientifically generated duplicates.
You were made from a randomly picked DNA sample in our database and created with human
cloning technologies. Dr. Mayaku told Kyuuketsuki.
Why? She asked.
The doctor paused a moment thinking of a response to this deep question she had asked.
As scientists, we wanted to research this newfound technology and see if that were
actually possible. You, were actually the first survivor of our experiments.
What do you mean? Kyuuketsuki asked.
A number of our attempts prior to your creation using twin cloning, in which the
subjects to be given a chance at existence failed to meet the parameters of such a state of being.
So, Im unique.
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Hmmm The doctor considered what Kyuuketsuki had just said. He smiled, Well,
quite the contrary, you are an identical match to another human being somewhere out there
roaming this planet.
I know. She said.
How did you already know that? Doctor Mayaku asked her,
Ive seen her.
Really..?
The other night at a gathering. She didnt want him to know she had attended a rave.
Did you talk to her? He asked.
No, but she definitely saw me. Kyuuketsuki said.
I felt estranged when I saw her, I wanted more than anything to approach her, but
couldnt muster the guts to come up with anything worth saying. But Im pretty sure we both had
an equivalent feeling, I could tell, like we knew.
This is not good. the doctor stated.
What?
Well, it could be a human rights issue we are dealing with. The doctor expressed his
worry.
Human rights? The clone asked.
Never mind. Said the doctor.
Arisen, she lightened up and received some answers it seemed in this dream, only they
faded away to more questions as she awoke with a lost feeling.
Sync:
Kasa walked into the library. He wanted to do some research. He doubted hed come
across any answers but felt it worth a try.

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He ended up in the science section. He grabbed a few books and sat down at one of the
empty tables. He began to read and quickly became enveloped in a wealth of knowledge
regarding human and animal evolution, and the missing link of mankinds history.
He looked at one book; it had a lot of pictures in it, skulls of various shapes and sizes.
Out of curiosity he picked up one book about the nature of rodents and read that for a while.
Clouds loomed over him as he left the library feeling as though hed learned a lot but had
not found out anything about the clones degeneration.
Why were they all becoming sick?
And why were all scientific efforts to find it in the genetic codes showing no answer?
Was there something beyond the chromosomal level of creation that caused the clones to
fall victim to this plague?
As an atheist, Kasa shrugged off the possibilities of a spiritual solution, which didnt
seem at all logical to him, but these thoughts occurred to him anyways.
Could this manner of creation truly lack anything sacred and leave the clones sick
soulless monsters?
What if they are just like empty hosts with no defense against possession he wondered
what if they were without soul and spirit or actually evil?
He walked into their building just as it began to rain outside.
Dr. Mayaku sat at the monitor in the office observing some matrix of symbols.
You are back.
Yes, Im back. He concurred.
How was your lunch? A little long wasnt it? The doctor asked as Kasas superior.
Sorry. Kasa apologized, pulling up a chair next to him.
What is this..? Kasa asked, looking curiously into the symbols on the monitor.

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Well, I am looking at the micro array DNA matrices, you've heard of them, of the
clones, this is a DNA sample of the first, named her self Kyuuketsuki, and Im comparing it to
the original DNA sample from which she was created.
Well, good, any difference? Kasa asked.
Not yet, though wed fingerprinted her as well.
Whyd you do that? Kasa asked. Would a difference in prints really mean disease?
Well to some perhaps. The Doctor suggested.
You are referring to palmistry? Kasa asked.
A stone cold skeptic are you?
Most definitely. Kasa answered.
Well, I havent observed the prints yet, and I doubt the reason for the occurrence lies
there.
Agreed."
Surely there is something that was altered in the DNA. Something lost or gained or
altogether mutated I assume."
Could it be their immunity..? Kasa asked.
Perhaps they are more susceptible to viruses and disease. Have you considered it could
be something external?
Hmmm, I have definitely not ruled that out.
Doctor Mayaku hadnt thought of that, and was pleased with Kasas suggestion.
Meanwhile, Dr. Ame, of the biological and chemical weaponry research and
developments of arms department stood at her laboratory table.
She had a sample in her white gloved hand.
Dr. Ame was the one who had infected all of the clones, causing them to turn into zombie
like plague ridden monsters.
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Her reasoning for doing so was not an overly ethical standpoint but she wanted to test her
creation, and figured doing so on clones was better and more humane then on citizens.
Dr. Mayaku was finally forced to stop generating clones because they were all coming up
sick.
No one knew it was from the virus.
Dr. Ame, testing her bio-wartech virus illegally, without governmental permission, stood
pleased.
She smiled as she tucked the sample back into the bio-hazard safe box and onto the shelf.
She had to have one more look at it under the microscope, just to appreciate its
uniqueness.
The blood.
The flood.

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PART II #ASURA: DRONOLOGY


Detriangulation.
Stutter tempo/key lock dropped:
As Yume continued on the walk across the lines and cracks in the cement far from that
fallen crow, he came to the realization he was in fact living. But that it was all a dream. A lucid
dream that he needed to control.
Everything that had come before him and would come from within his own
consciousness he decided.
It was the only way he could make sense of things.
Then he thought of Kagami.
He missed her.
What had come of her? He wondered.
Was she also a creation of his own lucid dream?
He did not want to accept this and it was the only thing in the way of a perfectly lucid
dream.
But there was that girl at the rave that looked exactly like her.
Maybe it's all a dream, he thought.
Yume walked along the sidewalk streets surrounded by perennial ever greens, which
stood high, pines in the mild weather.
Trees.
Some leaves, from maple variety also lay in some piles on the curbs from other trees. It
must be autumn, he thought, he didnt know the date.
Kagami had always been the only part of his dream he loved. The only part that was
always there, in spirit.
The only person he ever felt like understanding.
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He looked up to the clouds which werent racing at all, like hed expected but were still
in cumulous puffs of white and light grey.
A bird hopped down in front of Yume.
Kagami...
Once told him that in native mythologies, if you see blue birds, your day is taking a turn
for the best and symbolizes good luck while crows are said to be symbolically ominous.
He thought of this as the little creature briefly pecked at the ground and craned its neck
around for a moment then flew away the closer he got to it.
Yume noticed all the houses lined up, it reminded him of the neighborhood he grew up in,
and he realized all of the suburban areas are similar.
People hide in their houses leading their private lives as citizens stuck indoors.
He then began to wonder what it must have been like in ancient times or in native tribes
around the world.
People werent so afraid of each other, he figured, but they worked a lot harder in order to
survive.
Problems were different.
Problems nonetheless.
He sat down at a stone bench, he lit up a cigarette.
He blew the smoke onto the burning ember and it was aesthetically pleasing to him.
The sun started to shine more through the clouds and some rays hit his eyes.
Flashback to where they were, not on those tracks, not on that asphalt.
Sync:
Above.
Cue:

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Helicopters in the night sky hovered, droning above with their spot lights shining onto the
ground around the auditorium. They were dropping off clones suspect to having the degenerative
disease.
Yume and Kagami had quickly and wisely made the decision to flee the scene. Theyd
seen enough, even though they werent exactly sure what it was that they had actually seen. They
made it back through the woods and down the side streets back to the mansion, which loomed in
the darkness with just a few dim lights left on.
They entered.
What do you think that was all about? Yume asked, still in somewhat of a shock.
Not sure Kagami replied. Definitely something to do with the government
considering the helicopters.
Or the rich Yume suggested.
Yeah, I suppose. What do you think was wrong with all them? They seemed almost
possessed or something. Did you see their skin?
Yeah, I dont know.
There was a moment of silence. Neither of them knew what to say next. They just sat
down in large arm chairs in the front room. Kagami turned on a lamp and it dimly lit the area.
Yume threw some newspaper onto the wood logs in the fireplace. He used his lighter and
lit the kindle. Then he moved his chair in front of the fire as it slowly built into flames. Kagami
got up and Yume moved her chair closer to the fire as well.
They sat down and watched as the flames spread to the logs, burning and crackling
slightly.
Yume stood up and grabbed the poker and poked at the wood a bit until he was satisfied
with the flames.
They just sat in front of this fire a while not saying a word.
Yume stared into flames.
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He started to forget about the horror theyd just seen and as he dreamily gazed into the
wood, he leaned further into the chair.
Kagami crossed her legs, staring into the embers deep in thought.
They began to feel comfortable.
Yume eventually dozed off in front of these flames. Kagami sat for a while just listening
to the sounds. Then she got up and walked in the other room.
She felt on edge. She forgot about the scene in the woods but she couldnt help recalling
for some reason the woman theyd seen at the rave that looked exactly like her.
Thoughts traveled through Kagamis mind, who was she? Could it be that which shed
been worrying about? She tried to consider it all logically. She had heard of cloning, but figured
it limited to animals. Why of all people me? She wondered. Could it truly be? Who was this
shadow gemina?
The images raced through Kagamis mind of her being fingerprinted on a white monitor,
her palm print all blood red upon it, staring back at her. Her DNA which had been sampled from
a tiny machine theyd put her finger upon.
She walked back into the front room where the fire was dying down a bit.
She threw a small log into the flames and sat down.
She ran her fingers through her hair then rests her head in her hands then watched the fire
burn.
While Yume slept he dreamt of a fiery orange sky above miles of dry fields forever
within rolling hills. Off center a bit, a scarecrow stood high over some decaying pumpkins and
rotting corn. A fly landed on the face of the scarecrow then buzzed and bore its way into the
skull, where she laid her countless eggs where maggots were born. Then later birthed a swarm of
winged cicadae, all buzzing in and around the body of the scarecrow.
And it was him Yume, stuck above that rotting scene below that fiery orange sky. His
arms stretched wide in a sick sort of pride with a halo of flies; scarecrow. He bore them

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swarming in his empty and sour carrion. Dead flesh. A raven lands on his shoulder as another
pecks around his hanging feet.
A man walks up with a mean blurred face smoking and watches him dead, a breeze as he
tosses his cigarette onto the dead lands before him.
The ravens fly away as the hanged man sparks into flames to ashes.
Cue:
Yume had been hiding his using from Kagami for a while since she decided to stay clean
from drugs. Though she did steer clear from opiates and other harder drugs she did occasionally
drink a bit of wine or smoke some bud since swearing everything off.
Though Yume had initially dreaded and regretted heroin use. He was slowly forming a
habit. He had had a pill habit. But intravenous heroin abuse was a little different. It wasnt
something he could condone doing.
Ashamed, he wanted to hide track marks from the people who cared about him, so he was
always wearing long sleeves. He also had to go through the trouble of acquiring needles. So he
sometimes went to a local pharmacy though that has a cost, so hed usually go to needle
exchanges and trade in old ones for new ones. It was cheaper that way. Theyd give him the
cottons and cookers to dissolve the drug in and through. He also had to deal with purchasing the
drug. Luckily his former pill connect had a dude to get black heroin from so that worked out.
One warm afternoon, Yume sat at a coffee shop in the downtown historic district of the
city. He was sipping a drink at a caf and was pretty high. Not quite on the nod, but that was
probably a good thing considering he was in public. Then he saw Kagami walking up and he
barely consciously checked himself to make sure he didnt appear too high. He grasped the rig
and bag in his pocket for a second and then sat still. She walked by without even noticing he was
sitting there.
What the hell? He thought.
Whyd she ignore me? He didnt know.
Kagami, hey. Yume called out.
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Kyuuketsuki realized someone was talking to her and she turned around.
I thought you were going to your mothers.
Im on my way. Kyuuketsukis deceit.
Okay
Yeah, not feeling well, so I got to run. Talk to you later. Kyuuketsuki smiled at him
then rushed off and Yume thought about it.
She was acting strange and she looked oddly different than hed ever seen her. Had she
changed clothes or something?
Actually, Ive never seen that outfit in my life.
Well, I guess she didnt notice I was high. But what the hell?
Loop:
Hey, youre back, whered you go? Kagami asked Yume as he walked into the room.
Oh. Yeah. What do you mean?
I mean where have you been?
I saw you at the coffee shop did you already forget?
What are you talking about? I was at my mother's.
That is when Yumes face dropped slightly.
It wasnt her.
It was the double.
She wouldnt just lie about that and it was not like her to forget. The girl at the coffee
shop must have not been her that is why she had acted so strange and looked a little different.
She was so rushed and seemed scared or in antisocial shock and like shed never seen
him before.

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As his face dropped he also began to feel ill, sick to his stomach, nausea that hed never
before felt.
Well? Kagami asked.
Whats wrong? She added as he remained silent, gazing through the floor.
Hmmm Are you high? She asked.
Why? What makes you think that? Yume was cautious, remaining discrete, he wasnt
sure of her motive.
I kind of want to be.
Yume thought about it. Should he tell her about the heroin, he wondered. He didnt know
if she would accept it or completely reject it, and possibly him.
He frowned.
Ive got some black
He just sort of blurted it out.
Really? Lets do it.
Yume felt relieved but disappointed. He knew there was no use in trying to hold if from
her now that hed admitted having it and now that she wanted to try it.
Sure. He said.
He pulled out a couple of clean points from a locked box he kept in his night stand and
pulled out the heroin from his pocket.
He lit a piece up in the little metal cooker with two shots of water and melted the drug
with a lighter, then stirring it with the trigger end of one of the IV.
He didnt use much, and Kagami had no tolerance, safety first, no overdosing. Once it
was fully dissolved he pulled the trigger back and sucked the drug through a tiny piece of cotton.

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Let me see your arm. He said as he pointed the syringe up in the air before his bright
eyes, flicking it and getting all of the bubbles to the top. He hit the trigger slightly until it was all
fluid, a little came out of the fine point of the needle and shot into the air.
Be gentle, Kagami said as she rolled up her sleeve and put her arm out toward him.
Yume got a little closer and felt for a vein with his fingers on her arm. When he found
one he took a stab at it, slowly sliding the needle into the vein.
Kagami was taking it well, he thought. Not even a flinch. He pulled at the trigger, poking
around a bit then drawing the blood.
That is when he plunged the dark liquid into her. The syringe went from near 100 to 0 in
a quick moment and Kagami already began to feel warm and fuzzy inside as Yume was sliding
the needle from her arm.
Thats incredible. Kagami touched the back of her neck with her hand.
It feels like Gods patting me on the back. Its been too long since Ive been high. She
said in a lazed voice.
I know, right? Yume said as he handed her a tissue she used it to clean up the drop of
blood on her arm. He capped the IV then threw it in the bio-hazard sharps box
Then he sucked the rest of the liquid from the metal cooker with another rig. He didnt
use the same needle; even though they were both clean its good practice. He rolled up his sleeve
and hit the same spot hed been hitting even quicker than hed gotten Kagami. The blood mixed
with the blackness of the drug and he hit the trigger and then cleaned up with an alcohol swab.
They sat there a while in silence. Then Yume put on some music. It was a slow tempo
alternative rock group. The singer was a dead drug addict. They listened to it and talked, and
they listened to one another.
Kagami Yume sighed, half-way through a conversation.
Yes Yume? Kagami asked.
I saw that woman that looked exactly like you today and even spoke with her thinking it
was you I felt kind of sick after realizing it.
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Are you serious? It must have been her that wed seen at the rave. She looked so much
like me, it scared me
She would have normally felt sick to her stomach having this conversation, but the drugs
numbed her to be able to have this soft toned comforting manner. She almost didnt care. She just
expressed her fear from before, but she didnt feel it anymore, just casually.
Yeah. It must have been her. I had forgotten about that. Why do you think she didnt
correct me when I thought it was you? Yume asked.
Im not sure. Dont know.
Hmmm Yume and Kagami sat in a confused silence, neither of them coming up with
anything else to say. The album on the stereo ended and it got quiet.
Yume started prepping another shot for the each of them. Hours later, at the point in
which the first one had, for the most part, worn off. The liquid black still in the spoon then
without a word, they both fixed. Then Kagami chose some music, a trance mix.
They both lay down, hazy eyed on the carpet on their backs. After a while they could hear
the subtle pick up of rain drops on the roof outside. In their pleasurable euphoria they stopped
staring at the black and white spiral painted ceiling and stared at one another instead. Eye to eye,
face to face.
Thanks for the fix.
I feel bad.
No, dont really.
What kind of person would do this, give someone their first shot? I feel like slime.
Yume felt genuine regret.
Its okay. Anything you do I want to be in on it with you, together I mean. She meant
that.
But I do regret this. I mean, you know, I regret ever trying it in the first place. I feel
doomed.
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Dont, really. Its okay. I mean it. Its going to be okay. She spoke as she stroked his
hair, and then gave him a light kiss on the forehead.
He closed his eyes.
Then he got up and closed the window.
Rain.
Howre you feeling? He asked.
Kagami sat up cross legged and simply said one word.
Above.
Cross fade/cut:
Kyuuketsuki smiled at herself in the mirror.
That was when she started to take a closer look at her teeth, specifically her fangs.
Which were absolutely normal in every regard, which was what disturbed her. She
wanted long fangs to be a vampire.
She did some research and booked an appointment with an orthodontic surgeon who was
prepared to cap her fangs for an otherworldly price.
Kyuuketsuki had saved money from work, so she made a large down payment and got
her fangs extended on credit. She left their office in pain. It had hurt, despite the local anesthetic
theyd injected. It especially hurt when he ground them down because she wanted them even
sharper.

Theyd prescribed some painkillers.

But all she could think about was who would be the first victim. She knew the sickness
she was coming down with was serious and she also figured contagious and even possibly fatal.
So she was happy with this level of vampirism. She thought perhaps her first victim could be her
double and that boyfriend.
It made perfect sense to her.

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She thought of all of this driving home in her silver car, all the while sinisterly grinning at
her new fangs in the rear view mirror.
Blood will flow.
When Kyuuketsuki got home she had picked up her opioid script from the pharmacy. She
had never taken any sort of drug before. She had been offered some at that rave. Something
called E, but she didn't take it.
She sat there reading the pharmacists instructions sheet. It said to take one every four
hours as needed for pain.
She put three in her mouth and chewed them.
After about a half an hour of dreaming about her vampire fantasy to come and staring at a
blood red screen on her laptop, that read only "Wovel" in a scrawled font. She started to feel
very good.
She got up from her seat and felt better than she ever had in her short artificially created
life.
"Whoa," she said aloud as a wave of energy flowed through her body. She fell back into
the chair not wanting to stand any longer. Then she closed the page that was supposed to be her
Wovel and started searching for Kagami.
That was all she knew, her name and the city. She scoured social networks and finally
found her gemina.
She pulled out the pill bottle and chewed three more like they were candy and stared at
the screen with her dopple's image and profile on it and blinked blankly at her mirror image.
Flash forward:
The virus spread incredibly fast.
It wasn't long before cases of this plague were heard of around the globe. People like
zombies isolated in homes with families hiding the victims and their sickness from the world.
But eventually the individuals got so unbearably bad that the persons were released unto the
streets, to sicken the populace.
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Kyuuketsuki couldn't wait for her first victim to be this Kagami girl. She might never see
her again she figured, so she had to start somewhere. It didn't matter if it had been her or anyone
else she figured. She didnt feel like tracking her down at her house, not just yet. It wasnt the
point.
As long as it spread.
So it was a random man.
Kyuuketsuki's degeneration as it were, was speeding up. She was no longer the exact
mirror image of Kagami, she had blood shot red eyes and was vomiting and growing scabs and
sores on her flesh. She managed to fight the psychological symptoms very well and stay
somewhat sane, besides the sociopath desire to spread the virus as far as she could possibly
imagine.
She watched the news with a sick smile as it reported the epidemic had started. Then her
jaw dropped, and her fangs hung as she found out the virus had been created by the
governments research.
It was leaked and was not meant to be tested at all.
Kyuuketsuki grew angry.
It was them... those people I'd worked for that had created me, they started this.
Kyuuketsuki: make this world so sick so that there should be no one left to run it.
Cue:
One night Yume stood in the middle of a dark street, a wind blew as the billboards hung
irrelevant and the skyscrapers still towered high above.
Yume's dreams were taking over again.
Daydreaming or actually asleep.
He took a moment and then began to walk.
No one was out.

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He looked up at the clear night sky's constellations and felt insignificant on this planet
upon which he wandered.
Yume reached downtown, and all the lights were dead in the windows and no people
were on the streets.
Until a man in a suit and a briefcase came walking out of a tall skyscraper.
He locked the door behind him, looking around as if to see if anyone had seen him.
Yume was a good two hundred feet away but he saw all of this quite clear.
Then the man began walking with his briefcase. Coming toward Yume, but Yume couldn't
make out his face, it was just this mean blur. As the man got closer he pulled out a cell and began
to rapidly hit the buttons on this phone.
As he turned, just tapping at it as if it were the only thing he could do, but he did it harsh
and irreverently.
As Yume watched he saw the giant violet butterfly from his dream appear in the skies
above then take descent down from above the high buildings.
It seemed to be being sucked in by the mans cell phone as he continued to tap the buttons
quickly and full of hate.
The butterfly got smaller and minute as it was being pulled into that negative energy until
it was actually sucked into the phone, trapped.
The man put the phone in his pocket with a nuance of selfish but an insignificant pride
and turned the opposite direction and walked back into the building.
Stutter:
The anti-gen could not be produced at a fast enough rate for full prevention of the
epidemic. They did supply the vaccine but demand was high and raising as more areas became
affected and people became infected.
Kyuuketsuki was reaching the final stages of absolute degeneration. The virus was not
killing anyone directly as of yet but was leaving people in a state that their humanity was
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practically lost. Their drives for human needs were gone and they were left at an almost animal
level. Kyuuketsuki was pacing and cursing in the studio looking at the mirror at her scabbed
and grey skin. She had been eating vitamins and she wanted a cure. She knew there wasn't one
and that their vaccine was only good for prevention, not treatment. She screamed low at herself
in the horror. Mouth stuck open and her eyes a dead red and the hair hanging in dirty strands, she
pulled at it as she screamed into the eyes she no longer recognized. She resembled a mutilated
corpse,
Infected people roamed the streets cursing the world in destroying fear and havoc. The
police refused to detain them and ignored an infected person if one broke the law. They didn't
want to risk becoming infected themselves, being only human.
These infected people dragged their feet along the roadside and vomited and smiled as
black blood dropped heavy from their faces.
Many of the infected traveled in packs.
A cult of people started a forum to willfully become infected, thinking it a new age
vampirism movement. Those that saw no point in their lives as they were going joined for a
purpose and so they attempted spread the idea of a worldwide conversion before converting
themselves. Their goal was to become infected and their aim to spread it as far as they could.
They knew not the immense pain which came with it, or just plain didn't care. Kyuuketsuki,
laughed sickly when she heard of this cultist group. She thought herself their unknown leader
and shrugged.
People had run in terror.
She was always eating and drinking water because she figured if anything would kill her
it would be malnutrition or dehydration from all the vomiting. At this point it was almost
expected that the infected would try to spread the contagion.
Kyuuketsuki laughed in selfish supremacy, it was her grudge against this world that had
brought it to its knees. She smiled, sick.
Sync:
It was the dawn of a new day.
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The sun hung low in the sky, casting out its first beams to the streets and grasses melting
white dew.
The telephone lines stretched hanging wire on their poles lining the asphalt roads. A crow
flew from the east and landed on the wire. It looked around and then just stood there. Then it
started to squawk. Crowing away at the dawn of a new day, the dawn of an age.
Then came a murder of crows following flying from a local pine toward no one only
knows where, they were happiest like this, altogether in numbers.
They flew above the city, hundreds of crows gathering numbers as they soared through
the air. All black winged and squawking their call to one another. They landed on an oak a mile
or so off.
One or two strayed from the murder as the one from the wire now stood proud at the
highest branch, craning its neck out looking at its fellows in numbers in the eerie sound of a
murder of crows in the trees.
Zooming in on a birds eye view and it blinked.
Flash forward:
Zooming in from outer realms of dark space to the night around the manse where the
birds were then nowhere to be seen.
Inside, Yume slid the needle from his arm as in a dream, nodding at nothing; he felt the
world sleight away.
The blood seeped slow from the wounded track.
Scars were forming.
Give a fuck.''
He said this aloud to all his thoughts, emotions, and to waking life in general.
Through it all hed learned nothing.
Humans are masters at the art of deceit.

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He rolled down his sleeve.


That is what it all came down to.
That is what it meant to be truly human.
Deception and its practice, the art of deceit.
Even when theres nothing to hide theyd hide that.
But give a fuck
He lazily said aloud again shrugging with a slow nod looking down.
Lying to themselves about who they are.
Egotism.
Theyd look in the mirror and see who they werent.
It made no difference in dreams.
Dreams are real, waking life is the lie.
Other people have gotten in the way of his perception, with their positively negative
energies, trying to rub him out of the image.
Yume went out griping his BMX handlebars, he flew down the street.
He hopped a curb and thought, fuck them anyway, he was getting there.
So he cut through an alley to head home.
When he did he smoked a dub.
He needed that pick-me-up.
The cannabis hit his lung, as he sat there alone, torn. He felt for a minute, but in his
clothes, in his flesh, and in his bones- he knew.
He knew theyd never seize him.

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This government introduced contagion could spread in my hometown, but they wont turn
me.
He sat there and burned.
He rolled up his sleeve with the joint resting in the ashtray and he examined his scars.
Walking outside then hacked when he looked up at the stars with a lovers gaze. He hit
the digits on his cell, getting it. He threw on a hoodie up stairs for the weather and then headed
out the door blazed.
He met a low level suri on BMX, across the street from a complex.
He went back home, opened up the backpack and prepped a shot.
Then sat in one of the large arm chairs in the front room with his feet rested up on the
ottoman.
Then he thought, I can afford one more before she gets home to fix.
Yumes blood surged through his vein with an indifferent sigh of nihilism as the drugs
released from the syringe to his system.
As she walked in they said Hey.
She joined him for their ritual. It was a habit formulated, they didnt want to, but that was
what happened. So they found a new rite of their own which was meant to bring them up, and
they were down.
Kagamis nerves melted to match Yumes already serene demeanor.
The curse of the outside world dissipated from their consciousness as the news TV across
the globe flashed images of a postmodern mystery, a vampire cult with new age bio-wartech
virus spreading a discomforting wing to the misunderstood.
As for those two, the next day they might feel worn, but for then theyd meet forever in
an injectable form. So they tangibly did so, breaking through to new euphoric heights.
Kagami noticed it after a minute.

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Whats that?
"Kae Uh
They sat on the roof of the mansion, Kagami and Yume. And they spoke of their disbelief.
They got spiritual and talked about it though they were both primarily agnostically Shinto. They
looked at the moons light and thought of cosmonauts and the phases and the nature of the
celestial ceilings rotation. They speculated on the multiple universes theory and their possible
means of collision.
Fast asleep.
Dreamt of tracks, rails, and steel, a station. Yume was strapped into the train with Kagami
and their two friends Kino and Maya. They sat strapped in, flesh like zombies in an undead haze
of after death, wretchedly fixing with oversize needles for a rush while the ghost train broke
through barricades of hell.
Yume awoke in cold sweats.
Kagami was still sleeping next to him.
He decided so he got up to go on a walk and maybe do some spray painting, he grabbed a
hoodie and a backpack with cans.
He dreamt of tracks so he figured hed check them out then hit up a couple walls.
He ended up down the street at a rail road crossing and for a second in his grey hoodie,
nothing made sense.
He started walking down the tracks and thought it destiny.
Then he stumbled upon a dead vulture bleeding black with its monstrous morbid carcass
smashed into the tracks.
Wow, a giant dead vulture.
He past the dead vulture and continued on the tracks in the night with the stars and trees
within the cool air looking down with the grey hoodie over his face.
They were rusted and aged, the wood splintered, the trains which were dead on the tracks.
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Dead trains, just stuck here forever.


He slowly passed plank after plank, walking down with a grey camouflage hooded
sweatshirt, for what was a seeming eternity in the moment.
Yume stopped on the rails and looked up at the stars all standing high in the sky
twinkling, the full and glaring moon shining.
Then lowering his gaze he could see a flashing light in the distance and looked forward to
the next rail-road crossing, it would mark some imagined progress, yet he knew not where he
was headed at this hour.
After a few minutes of smoking a cigarette and walking on the wood planks and rocks
between them he reached the paved asphalt road.
Cool air.
An odd feeling of sickness occurred to him as he approached the dead vulture, fallen. Its
wings, beak, and feet smashed into the black asphalt. This huge dead bird with its carrion on and
feathers consumed Yumes vision. He paused as he stared at it feeling physically ill as he felt it
an omen of things to pass, or of things past which dictate those to follow and he felt stuck.
Ugh, determinism. Had I turned around? Still asleep? Had this same event not just
occurred before or at least in essence, or even a hundred or a thousand times? What did it
matter?
He thought in a moment as he slowly turned his head then body to continue his aimless
journey to wherever, but definitely away from this scene.
His legs carried him along the tracks while the sighs of some midnight industrial complex
of neighboring factories released sounds and energy into the air.
Stutter:
They were out, a long time ago at night, when they were still just teenagers. They were
lying on their backs next to each other on the tracks that summer night. The stars were shining in
their exacting precise light, twinkling. Yume started to tell Kagami all about this horrible
religious experience he'd had.
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"They were mogwai, or asura, really these dark translucent specters, entities with
terrible grins and they were holding me down stuck into the bed just choking me and I tried but I
couldn't scream and then, I never woke up, but they disappeared suddenly into light." Hed felt
the old dread settle as hed told her about this for the first time.
"Then I had prayers" Hed take a deep breath.
Then hed continued.
"And like I said, I never woke up after that."
Could it all be a dream, Yume, a nightmare...?
Kagami had listened intently to Yume's words that night on the tracks. And while he had
spoken she remembered horror experiences she'd had.
"I know how things like that are. They are hard to explain. Sometimes one feels this
terrible energy. It's like a sound or a vision, it is like static noise and oppressive Sometimes I'll
just be sitting or lying down and it will just consume."
As they lay there the night sky began to fade from the midnight blue into an indigo neon
color, just shining rays from the dark hill sides past the tracks on the horizon.
"Look over there and the sky."
"Whoa."
Yume and Kagami looked at the colors.
It turned.
"Solar flares?"
"Aurora Borealis."
"Northern lights"
Cue:
Yume, alone, had his backpack full of paint. He hit up a wall or two with his tags. The
English translation of his name and the Japanese character, Dream, pronounced Yume. He put a
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decent amount of time and precise spray into each piece. After he hit up a few brick walls, he
threw the paints back into his backpack and walked away from downtown toward home.
The night sky looked nice over the city.
He smiled at the seeming intelligence and high order between the stars situational
positions. He recognized a few of the constellations, recalling their names in his mind.
Light years away some stars were probably burnt out, he thought.
A comet, shooting star or dissolving asteroid hit his vision in the contrasting darkness.
In his youth hed been told to wish upon such things so he wished for safety, for him, and
more importantly, he thought, for her.
He felt chills as he looked down on the cold asphalt underneath his sneakers. He reached
a bridge. Remembering some cool tags lay sprawled on the walls beneath him, he went down.
He admired the familiar old paint he'd seen so many times on passed summer days in a
daze when they'd blaze dubs, down here to shy away in shade from that sun; then.
Memories flashed as he reviewed the vandals tags: epic, chrome, kagakusha, yakkyoku.
All individuals he used to kick it with. They all had real spray talent. They weren't
covered up with garbage paint because all the real artists respected those tags, they looked nice.
Then there was this skull with tentacles instead of teeth that looked really awesome. Like some
sort of monster. It must have been there twenty years or more. He sat down and looked at it for a
while.
Yume hit the asphalt like still in the ghost train dream. Towards his home, a place to stay,
a place to be warm, he thought of the corruption that the virus had brought into the world in
which he lived. It was kind of stupid to walk out here at night with the vampirism threat, he
figured, as he thought of Kagami.
She's safe at home sleeping, he locked the doors, but worries resided in his mind
nonetheless.
She was the best person he'd ever met, he figured and he better try and take care, as best
he can, he felt this.
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Kagami, his anima, the mirror to his highest self.


He walked across the street thinking of how beautiful she was, then out in the distance
beyond a few blocks in the trees he saw a dark figure just staring sinister at him breathing steam.
Infected
Quickly avoiding the thing he made it home.
Yume sat in the recliner, he knew it, felt on the edge of death.
His skin pale, all that mattered right now craving it.
He sipped his cup after it was brewed.
Dawn.
He went out front and sparked a stoble to enjoy with the coffee.
He considered a fix.
Why do later what could be accomplished now?
The smoke lingered.
He put the cigarette out and went inside.
He dissolved some heroin into his system. Heroin is good, really too good. Eventually
you get sick without it.
He felt a dreamy sensation and for the magic sigil he kept stuck in an old pill container on
his key ring in his pocket.
What are these substances other than wonderful magic?
He considered this and he remembered the sigil on the paper he had folded in his pill
container in his pocket.
The ordained seal, the authority of the ink. The power, quietly realizing the aspiring
magic fulfilling itself in positives and negatives. He thought of the order of the highest god, its
angels and aerial spirits, djinn, the demi-gods, demons, specters, mogwai, hanya, and asura.

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Though truly they have real quality too, these substances.


He pulled up his sleeves and looked at the tracks on his arm.
Scabs and almost scarring.
Then the time, he glanced at the clock on his cell.
He shrugged.
Slowly he closed his eyes just a few moments too long to really be a blink. Open then he
nodded downward his head sinking as they closed again. His head falling slowly and lifting
again when he recognized itd been hanging there. Opiate addicts call this practice being on the
nod.
A picking up of a flooding storm.
Black light, backwards cap, night creeping through the open windows screen with water
pouring from clouds above. The opium incense smoked on the little wooden burner on the end
table. Yume sniffed his stimulus, a white powder they'd come to call Yola. He sat back as Kagami
took hers.
"Good?"
"For sure."
They never really did this.
But once in a while it presented itself.
Maya and Kino got the hook up.
They kicked back, high on drugs, giving a fuck, life as they knew it was good besides the
virus spreading but thats other peoples problem.
The drugs worked.
Kagami ashed her cigarette out and looked into the LCD before her eyes.
An image something to reflect upon, exited her thoughts and lay only in some reality,
which was only altered in the mind. Intentional ambiguity was not to be messed with, neither
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that, nor their mind frames, which alternated from isolated warm world views to an intense
physical in equation still left unsolved. Well read, she looked at the screen. The deep blue from
the black light, the disc, transgressed onto the mirror on the top of the table where two white
lines would reflect, if not, their faces might, which were strong and mean with sleight and pure
intellectual vigor this night.
This energetic verve, this nerve began to rise to new heights. Far above as the sun began
to do the same but only hidden behind dark clouds, repressed.
Those lines, in a lack of pretentious unstilted creative release in conversation that seemed
to matter. But only in time.
Yume walked back upstairs bearing two bottles of beer and a half a bottle of Xanax he
remembered hed gotten from the suri a while ago which was in his backpack.

This was for

the comedown which should have to be bearable if they were to rise up to such a height. And
they did so they did not want to crash.
They popped the anxiety medicine and sipped the beer.
"Have you heard of Hanya?"
"Have you heard Mogwai?"
He was unaware of which spiritual entity he had asked her about after he spoke the words
from his mouth as if in silence of the mind, but he knew it was one or the other, Mogwai or
Hanya.
"Have I heard of such things, of course I have."
She flipped the page on the LCD.
A fire burned inside.
"What does it say?"
"Anything you so desire, I suppose, but they wont away. I mean, between you and I,
once you've met the devil- he doesn't easily leave. Though you may go he does not justly
disappear. He reigns in his sick realm and does ever pull his minions in a sway of inaction
disguised as energy, which it is not. To away two away." She paused.
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"It's like a dream I had." He spoke.


"Of what?"
"Oh that like you just said, well, there was a man in it, like an evil blur of a man really,
but his energy or void of energy or whatever, it was pulling at this beautiful"
Yume stopped in deep contemplation and vivid imagination stuck in the photographic
memory of the dream.
"What?"
"This giant butterfly..."
Silence.
Kagami stared at the LCD then turned her head to Yume.
"That's magical. She noted to him after a moment or two of thinking about it.
"But why did the man destroy the butterfly though?" she asked.
"That's what I don't understand. I tried to stop him but I was like frozen under his spell as
he trapped the butterfly from the skies into his cell to his pocket. Then he turned and went back
in the skyscraper. It was strange, I couldnt do anything but watch.
"I've had dreams like that, where there is nothing you can do and you just feel paralyzed.
I always hate that helpless feeling. It's like that silent scream
At this point Yume zoned into trauma memories and was no longer conscious. His face
fell blank and then he zoned back in.
That is when the feeling crept in.
Asura.
It was like a thing you may or may not have seen once in the corner of your eyes but it
lingered there too long and only in worry and in an insurmountable anxiety.
They felt the cold.
They looked around.
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The sound of rain through the open window, Kagami got up and closed it. The rain still
hitting the rooftop.
Stuck.
The number of times they'd felt this way was not definite but at last it was again, and to
be heard only in these moments of silent swollen energy.
Upon instinct, Yume pulled out the Xanax as if in a still moment and they both chewed
on them.
After a while of sitting in this negative energy coming down, they put on the movie and
periodically rebooted their high until the drugs were gone.
Then they crashed out tired and asleep.
The LCD screen still relaying a forum on religious mysticism eventually fell into sleep, a
screen saver. A reminder Kagami set to do her tovel project, the spiraling text: keitai shosestsu.
Dreaming in a deep emptiness of space an astronomical body orbited in its galaxy. The
globes surface was made of marble, black and white squares, as if the entire orb were intended
for some massive game of chess, yet involving thousands of pieces. They slid across the marble
black and white squares in automatic and systematic movements eliminating one another, at
which point the particular piece would be riveted asunder, rending it into thin air with a subtle
sound of vaporization.
Made of a mirroring glass, the game pieces reflected the countless stars and planets, even
meteorites, asteroids, and comets on their detailed shapes. The reflection nebulae. Molded into
knights, rooks, bishops, queens and kings. The pawns moved in ones and twos together,
marching in precision.
Yume, a cosmonaut in the dream, afloat in the black and dead space around this planet.
He tried to land but there seemed to be some anti-gravity pushing him away, or some opposing
magnetic force.
He watched as the game progressed, solving itself in a seeming calculated strategy of
high algebra. As the game came to its end and one of the mirror kings fell into a bleeding check
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mate, the whole sphere went into a flat decked and endless mirror, the landscape melted from the
pieces, and Yume finally fell to the forever reflective glass below.
As he landed upon it, the sky turned inverse from black to still intransient white.
A sketched tree sprouted from the glass, all black and white stencil. He was wearing
street clothes and a stuck dread took ill in his stomach as he heard an owl hiding out in the tree
sounding a call. Then he saw the aged bird.
Again he felt ill.
Then he vomited the bright red blood all down and out his flesh spilling unto the endless
terrestrial mirror.
It slid across the sleight surface and the puddle of blood smoothly and slick spread on the
reflected glass.
Then transparently an enormous hand drawn from the lines of a red pen reached up
through the blood to the contrasting white sky and began to try to grab at and pull Yume through
the floors speculum.
He knew if the hand were to succeed in pulling him through he might never wake up or
be able to differentiate from waking life and dreaming so he ran far as it gave chase.
Then a second pen drawn hand arose from the reflection, all red, violent and bloody. The
two of them began to close in on him. He managed to escape their grasp for a time though he
became exhausted and in the end they pulled him through.
And everything fell black as black as onyx, liquid black sky. Just like that which he'd
injected through cotton spoons and needled syringes into his veins so many times into his blood
stream. All liquefied black tar and that was it. Just him and the heroin sky.
He laughed aloud as the giant used points appeared dancing before him on the black tar
ground and liquid black sky, all personified in darkness.
His humor turned and there was a laugh of madness and insane indifference toward his
own addiction. Then it all went lucid and he freely walked toward an IV and grabbed it and
began to dance with this point personified in feminine nature. Then it was just him and this
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particular needle, in this world of liquid tar. Dancing the black night away, the needle seduced
him and soon he was deep in love. Then a black and white analog clock broke through and rang
everything away and Yume sat dumbfounded, stupefied on a blank white page.
"Huh?" He lifted his head, he was only sitting in a recliner chair after all.
Phones buzzing.
Just on the nod half asleep with an emptied needle in a spoon.
He snickered a cold laugh at his ridiculous dream. He put the needle in a bio-hazard
safe sealed used sharps container and took an alcohol swab to his mark.
He threw the swab in the trash.
With his phone still vibrating on the table, he looked at it, the latest from Kagami's keitai
shosestsu.
She's way into craft.
Just upstairs probably doing the same thing as him, nodding in and out of consciousness
she managed to tovel. Yume read the tovel. Keitai Shosetsu:
*Rex mortis voluntariae: omnis alba et cordia sanguinea. Argentus gladius per corona ab
se manu. Quis nunc regnet supra illa charta forum area? Sanguinis fulgidi supra ebonica et alba
latrunculi charti qui it extrinsecus aeternus, in sanguini regina calcis lucta imago affulgidat.
The suicide king: All white and bloody hearts. Silver sword through the crown by his
own hand. Who now will reign over this card courtyard? A shining puddle of blood over a black
and white game board, outward forever. The queen of cups reflection shines in the blood.
Its like the dream just then
He got out a sketch book and started to draw the dream images he had just had in his
mind while on the nod. The red hands trying to grab him and all. His subconscious took over as
he drew and when he finished he was quite pleased with it.
He sent her a text reading he liked the tovel and read about the dream and this dance he'd
had with the rig under the heroin skies.
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Upstairs checking the message she smiled.


They shot: her upstairs, him down.
They give each other space at times to keep from nerve wrecking one another. They just
did it on instinct sometimes so they wouldnt ruin their company.
Stutter:
Like a fiend in the night, Kyuuketsuki began spreading the virus in a new way. Sneaking
into their unlocked homes into their dorms while they slept and injecting the viral blood. They'd
wake up hours later, sick gasping and dehydrated and knowing they'd become infected. She
posted this method and various others such as spiking a drink with the blood, to the cult
following conversion website.
The ideas spread.
Some people were spreading it without converting themselves, bragging. When

the

news of these tactics got out many people became afraid to sleep and did only late at night for
quick power naps behind locked doors and only after complete exhaustion.
One night Kyuuketsuki broke into a man's room to fix on him with the virus but he was
half awake and grabbed her arm as she instinctively drew out her new fangs, her eyes flashed,
and he let loose.
She jumped out the window and vanished.
Cue:
Yume stood outside past the graveyard by the temple that night.
The architecture was of a brilliant shrine, a medieval Shinto.
He approached the door.
The opening, the heavy portal, everything flashed.
And then clearly in slow motion he saw the back of a feminine winged angel, an aerial
spirit knee deep in placid water, amongst surrounding individuals.

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Then Yume disappeared and so did all the others, except the winged angel appearing as
the true anima Kagami.
Alone in this flooded temple.
Upon the altar some censure candles burned before an ancient religious calendar symbol.
And with slowly sinking feathers they fell.
Then all was gone yet just a single feather down onto the dark water, floating into a
silently slow spreading ripple upon the surface.
Awake, Kagami, looked at her scarred arms, she blinked at them upstairs, her pale face.
So depressing.
She felt ages pass since this all began, and that it would all be different if only she could
go back in time and change it all.
Cross fade/cut:
The solution that the worlds governments came up with, for the zombies was remote
flying drones.
It was a war, essentially against the plagued ones.
Infiltrating and staying indoors was the temporary solution of the zombies from the attack
drones. They had a GPS program capable of detriangulation of the pathogen, tracking the
plagued zombies on LCD screens, as Dr. Ame originally programmed in the bio-wartech.
The military soldiers played splat.
Safe from infection in their bases they shot down the zombies via remote controlled
drones.
Cue:
Yume picked up his cell and wrote some of the reply tovel he was working on.
He wrote about the chess board and the blood, the hands that pulled him in.
Soon life became a literal game itself, a game of life and death.
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With the zombies out to spread and infiltrate homes they hid out in their lairs.
Occasionally they would step outside for a smoke at night. The sky would be grey and the
trees standing tall casting silhouettes against the skyline. He could feel the chilling quiet and
would put the smoke out and step inside.
He locked all the doors and windows and checked every couple of hours to make sure
proof positive they were safe.
Kagami, passed out upstairs, Yume sat in front of the flames of a fire and read a while
from a book.
But he was so distracted by his preoccupations he couldnt concentrate. Plus no dope and
no money.
Not exactly sick yet, but by no means high.
They were both incredibly tired.
Crashed come downs.
He fell asleep and reentered his dreams thinking of the last one with the graveyard, the
temple and the angelic anima Kagami.
Upstairs Kagami herself continued to look at her arms on that somehow sober day.
There were track marks up and down. She felt dope sick, but the thought of trying to find
a vein made her feel ill as well. Maybe well start chasing the dragon or smoking the heroin or
whatever, she thought.
She contemplated this while sparking up a pinch of cannabis green in a glass blown hand
held pipe, listening to techno music on the stereo.
Come to think of it, I really even care, she thought, almost cynically and just plain
pessimistically in sarcasm. With all the worlds problems how could I start to complain about not
having the luxury of a high..?
After a few puffs she blew out thick smoke into the bedroom atmosphere.

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Setting the pipe down on the mirror on the table reflecting the spiral on the ceiling she
slid her hands across the scars and marks on her arm and shook her head, stoned.
It stood out on a new level, the music.
And it was like entering a new channel, the TV stared blank then she clicked it on muted
as she sat resting back. It remotely played seemingly synchronized cartoons in the stoned mind
over the techno music.
The next night they were walking down the street in a dream state talking about practical
magic and they arrived at Kino and Mayas house.
They were all doing shots of heroin.
Kagami relaxed and ran an alcohol swab across her fresh tracks on Kino and Mayas
couch in their apartment.
Yume began to feel the anxiety creep in, hed done his shots a while ago.
Kagami looked at him as Kino and Maya were both on the nod, oblivious to the anxiety,
which was on the rise.
The thing was just sitting there in the open fireplace.
Normally neither of them would think anything of such a thing, but at this moment both
Yume and Kagami as they looked at it feeling sick, did. Maybe it was a lingering sentiment from
the other nights conversation about evil.
Ouija.
Plus it was late, so they slipped out of the apartment, locking the door behind them,
leaving Kino and Maya nodding.
Yume and Kagami both still felt slightly sick in some odd way in their mutual silence.
They took the subway because they didnt drive, it was broad daylight then. They didnt
say anything.
Nothing.

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Felt like they were in a sort of hell all the way home.
There were people on the subway but they were all asleep and just looked like half
zombies at that hour.
Chased by a pack they quickly jolted home from the subway station, in what felt like too
slow motion.
Finally they reached their destination.
He slammed it.
Then locking it, the beating of the pack of zombies at the door, pounding at the wood.
This moment was bound to happen.
He quickly grabbed the poker from the fire place.
They were scared off by it from the window.
Their leaders had brains left.
Yume ran around the place rechecking the locks on all the entrances and windows.
He knew the zombies were only stalling.
Obviously this onyx stone abode was an object of covetous zombie desire in this postmodern war zone.
Now it was a battle station for Yume and Kagami and maybe a few friends if need be.
Kagami startled at the sound of the zombies being kept at bay.
"Kagami, you ready? Here." Yume handed her the fire poker.
"I'll find my bat." Hed hammered nails into one side of it and chopped off the ends
sharpening them to points so it acted like a mace.
Coming back downstairs.
There was a loud noise rumbling from outside.
Finally, the drones.
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They were hovering around the undead ones.


"Do as we planned and if they beat through a window or something yell and Ill come to
you.
"Okay." She was brave and so was he.
They stood guard at the two downstairs entrances, front and back.
The zombies gave up on the onyx outdoor walls of the mansion running and the drones
followed slowly behind; clipping them off one by one.
Splat. Corpse. Splat.
"Thank god." Kagami said, relieved.
They relaxed and called Kino and Maya's landline in the morning and told them what had
happened on speaker phone. Told them they could stay in with them if they needed and it might
be safe for the four of them to stick together fortified and that it could be a battle station if need
be.
"Nah man, we're just chilling. That's a bummer though." Kino said.
Yume and Kagami went on talking about getting together regardless.
"Okay, we'll try to make it tonight." Kino replied.
Alright then.
Later.
The next night:
"Last week was just a blur, homie. I was in a morphine daze."
"Ya, I feel ya."
"I got like 100ml left, literally the best, smoothest high you can get.
"No doubt. I'm going to grab some and roll through, hold up alright."
"Yeah, for real, come through."
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Okay, well be by in a while.


Click.
Kino and Yume hung up their respective phones.
The opiate scene, with its roots in those simple poppable vicodin was hitting hard in
marks, up and down their crew's arms. Life was transmitting on a teetering track, a point of metal
releasing liquid pain killing. All on a very fine line.
Life and death.
Kino and Maya pulled through to the location.
They're best friends, just like Yume and Kagami. The four of them shot up liquid
morphine near the fire in the main room. Then played dub-step throughout the house on various
monitors and speakers resonating a deep gut throbbing wobbling bass with subwoofers that
shook the walls up and down the stairs.
"So high."
No one was really sure but one of them said it but afterward they all really felt it.
Above.
Above it all: capable of everything but with nothing to do but sit back and enjoy the
music. So little reason. Everything. At least that was the feeling. They relished in their individual
egos in their creature comforts and the group dynamic all complimented by their philosophical
conversations starting on mathematics and theories involved in new physics. This relative space
was after, some time nodding in deep, as their heads nod in subtle sleepiness to the loud bass
driven dub-step.
Cue:
A week later Kino landed himself in rehab. He brought a bag of clothes, a couple of short
novels, and a fitted all black wide brimmed baseball cap.
He wore a new pair of skate shoes he'd bought the day before, plain black pants and a
plain white t-shirt.
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He had to sneak in his cell phone and charger because they wouldn't allow electronics. So
he was prepared with his phone bill pre-paid and had it tucked in his pocket along with a music
player and ear buds.
He went through the intake process with a somewhat officious drug counselor. It was
mostly a lot of paper work.
Kino had done his last few shots before showing up in the late spring morning. He was
on a light nod.
After signing a bunch of forms releasing liability and describing his addictions he set up
his bunk.
Maya was at Yume and Kagami's place still, doing shots and hanging out. She had the
needle in her arm when her cells ringer went off. She drew blood a moment after and plunged
the drug into her veins, then she checked the message on the text.
Maya frowned slightly already missing Kino.
He decided to check into rehab because his habit was getting too out of control for him, it
was so intense it was scaring him and their friends. His dose was always thicker, blacker, and
stronger than the rest and he always shot twice as often, it was never enough for him. Plus he'd
mix coke a lot, referred to as a speedball; uppers mixed with downers. He mainly chose to do
that because he felt otherwise he couldnt keep up with his music aspirations.
Kino and Maya had bought dope when they got their deposit for their apartment back.
Kino was too proud to take the offer to stay with Yume and Kagami in the spare room with
Maya.
Maya on the other hand took the offer in a heartbeat, gladly accepting the gesture. She
tried to convince Kino to do so as well, but he said he had to quit for a while and get a new job
and knew he'd need help. He was scared of overdosing and figured he'd die if he stuck around
with all his developing tolerance.
Kino woke up from a nap to the sound of one of his new roommates telling him he was
wanted at the front desk. He went up there and they sent him to the nurse's office for a TB test
and his anti-viral injection for the prevention of the pandemic still spreading.
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He felt somewhat safe when the nurse put the needle in his arm. She was nice and
friendly. She asked him a few questions and told him about the HIV and Hepatitis C testing,
informing him they do tests every other Wednesday.
It was a Thursday.
After being sent away by the nurse he lay down on his bunk. He then got a vibration form
his cell in his black pants pocket signaling a text, Maya's reply.
"Take care, you too."
Sync:
Yume was passed out dreaming on the couch in the den, some dub-step was playing
through the stereo on a dope loop.
After that the three of them chased the dragon. Kagami came up with the idea because
they were always shooting plus they were already high. They agreed smoking the heron would
be a nice perk.
They were having a harder time finding veins to shoot anyways. The reason being the
more a person shoots up the more the veins get shot out and thus it becomes more and more
difficult to successfully draw.
So they smoked a spot on some tin foil and it slid around in black trails as the smoke rose
up into the hollowed out pen they inhaled it through, sucking up the smoke.
It was somewhat harsh on the throat and tasted a bitter. After it was dust they threw out
the foil and stepped outside and smoked a few stobles.
Meanwhile, Kino was already feeling over it, the whole rehab and programming thing.
By the time he came down from his dose from earlier he was full of a dread of following through
with it and a regret from having signed up in the first place. He stared at the ceiling, zoning out
from his bunk.
"Dinner time bro." One of the roommates told him as the guy walked out the door.
"I'm good." Kino said, disinterested.

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He got hungry later though and ate an orange in the dining hall. He knew citric acid
supposedly helps with the absorption of opiates and he thought it might help him feel a bit better.
He stepped outside the door and onto the yard.
He lit up a genya.
Kino slowly inhaled and exhaled the smoke, thinking about how horrible the withdrawals
were going to be as he stood alone in a crowd. It seemed to him all the other residents were
eyeing him, feeling him out.
One of the females, a younger woman with long hair up, looked at him for a minute and
when he noticed she went up to him.
Hey howre you holding up? Youre new right?
Oh, yeah, Im good.
Detoxing?"
Lightweight. He was not quite dope sick yet and was not looking forward to it.
Slight pain.
Opiates?
Heroin. Kino admitted sort of shrugging it off.
It gets better. She assured him.
Awkward silence.
Everyone is real nice here, she added.
If you need anything Im around.
More silence.
You do anything besides heroin? She asked after a second.
Coke, E, chronic at the masses.

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Raves? Cool. The young woman smiled and looked away from him for a second into
space, probably remembering times.
I throw them sometimes, Im a DJ. Kino let her know.
What kind of music do you do?
I mostly drop dub-step and electronica. Kino told her.
They continued to smoke thier cigarettes.
The crowd died down as twilight hit orange.
When the sun went down everyone had gone inside and the employees had locked all the
doors from possible zombie infiltration.
When Kino woke up from a restless insomniacs sleep the next morning his back hurt, he
was dope sick.
Scratch:
Yume's reply to Kagami's tovel: The King is undead: The queen is insatiate by blood. The
third circle is clear.
Cue:
Maya delivered some morphine pills to Kino in rehab on his first visiting day. She had to
sneak them in.
He complained to her a whole lot about the place and they smoked cigarettes out back.
They were happy to see each other and Maya told Kino that Yume and Kagami sent their
regards. When Maya left the rehab Kino got high popping the handful of pills with water in the
bathroom.
He instantly felt so much better.
Thank god for Maya, he thought. He was grateful.
That night, Kino awoke to the sound of vomiting coming from the bathroom door.
He got up.
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Putting his ear to the door he listened to the sick gurgling sounds.
The other roommates were sleeping through it.
There was this contrast of darkness, and tired energy against the light and sound coming
through the crack in the door.
Pause
Damn what to do ?
He froze.
Then he fell to his back as the infected one broke the door down with all its zombie
strength.
Red eyes honed in on Kino's.
The bald headed pale grey fleshed inhuman half corpse stood tall above as Kino cowered.
A roommate awoke screaming and the zombie lunged forward upon that person.
The zombie chewed at the man's face like a rabid animal and pulled chunks of flesh from
him, throwing it into his mouth.
Chewing and shaking his head in shocking paroxysms, feeding.
Kino ran out the door screaming.
"Infection Infection!"
Recovering drug addicts fled down the dark halls. Kino pulled the fire alarm and they all
ran out of the building which was being unlocked by the night staff who couldnt move fast
enough.
Druggies broke out of the building in a running burst of trampling humans.
Kino

ran

off

as

long

and

as

far

as

he

could.

He hit the streets and ran and ran some more.


As the sun started to come up he spotted a pack of zombies in the dawn huddled around
some trees hovering over something, a body
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Then one turned and they instantly ran toward him from the distance.
Kino turned and ran down the highway into town, gunning it. They were gaining on him
as he got on the phone with Maya.
"Yeah, infection hit, I'm out. I'm running down the street being chased by a pack of them,
and yeah, please... Meet me at Fifth and D, as soon as possible. Hurry."
He flipped the phone shut and knew he had to think of a solution. And he did, it was in
desperation and made him sick but he also knew it would work or at least buy some time.
He ran down the street and past all the empty and closed stores. He needed some zombie
feed.
He finally hit it. A coffee shop just opening with a line of early bird costumers ready for
their daily routine.
Well, this day would be different for them, he figured.
He ran into the coffee shop, hopped over the counter.
Ugh, what are you doing sir? The barista looked shocked and appalled.
He didnt say anything and waited about five or ten seconds as she stared at him.
Then the zombies ran in and started tackling the line of customers in a feast of flesh,
smashed skulls and brains.
About 4 or 5 of them.
They ate the costumers as Kino ran out of the shop and the barista stood screaming at the
top of her lungs.
Well that worked.
They were satisfied and he knew he'd bought enough time when he got the text as he ran
up to the intersection at Fifth and D, "Here."

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Just as she pulled up and he jumped in, the zombies were consuming and spreading the
infection to those unsuspecting who only a moment earlier were in line for their morning caf
pick-me-up.
An infected barista cashier smiled draining blood from her stained teeth and mouth as she
felt the first symptoms come on and the half eaten corpses stood up sickened and ready to join
the masses.
Kino and Maya drove off.
"Eh, whoa, you okay?"
"I'm fine. Just drive." He told her.
"K.
They landed at the mansion just outside of the main city in no time. Yume and Kagami
were still asleep. They awoke to the sound of absurd laughter and the smell of bud smoke.
They walked down stairs.
Yume and Kagami looked at him and knew he'd been through a hell of a week and
probably a crazy morning to have arrived back here so quick. Zombies they figured.

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"Yo."PART III #ASURA: TOVEL


Darkness.
Whether it was a dream or not.
That stopped mattering to him a long time ago.
Yume was walking down familiar suburban streets.
An old departed friend appeared on the sidewalk.
The two of them walked together.
"Where you headed?"
"To my buddy's.
Yume liked this old friend but they had argued a lot in the past and didn't always see
things eye to eye.
"You can come along if you'd like."
"Who's the buddy?" Yume asked, knowing he didn't get along with some of this friend's
associations.
"Oh come on, just a friend."
Yume walked with him deciding to tag along.
They arrived at the house.
The front porch light was on.
Yume's friend opened the door and they went in.
From the moment he stepped in, Yume could feel the tension and hostility in this house
and knew whose house it was.
Yume always hated Kasa and for Kasa the feeling was mutual.
Yume sat down at a chair, and his friend went upstairs.

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Kasa was lying upside down in a deep irrationality, staring catatonically at the ceiling in
the dim light in the next room.
Yume looked at the TV, which displayed an image of CCTV (closed circuit television) of
that exact moment in time, the image of Kasa's fully distant and anxious countenance.
Yume wasn't sure how the TV had been rigged this way but the camera angles followed
Kasa as he got up and walked into the room Yume was in.
Kasa shot him a sinister look in loathing and seething entitlement.
Theyd always been competitive in electronics.
"Yume." He greeted.
Kasa poured himself a drink.
Yume knew he was not welcome in this house and a feeling of sickness settled in his guts.
The two always felt contempt for one another and here Yume was in Kasa's house.
Neither knew how their fates were to become so interconnected.
The Umbrella Files were the top-secret informational contacts between the human race
and an extra-terrestrial alien species.
Kasa, a low level agent with classification access below top-secret.
He read about confidential things, but he knew there was more and they only lead to
more curiosity leaving many questions unanswered.
He was not sure what the top-secret material was in regards to, but he knew it was big
and that it might be relevant to his studies.
He knew that his senior, Dr. Mayaku had the key to the computer's hard drives actually
containing the data.
Kasa planned to steal the key only after finding the password.
Kasa found an electronic lead from an anonymous source in a neighboring city.
He landed there in the cafe and found the note by the directed to location.
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The small manila envelope he found gave directions to the dumpster to find a plastic bag
with a jewel case data disc within.
He found the white plastic bag in said dumpster and procured the disc.
Upon loading it he found it had a lone word file on it containing only eight characters:
UMBRELLA.
The password
Kasa knew the definitive translation of his own name to be this. It landed a hint of a
slight smile in the synchronicity and sorted irony.
Shut it down, he thought shut it down.
After obtaining the password he stole the key the next night from Dr. Mayaku's office.
He then entered the computer room with an external drive with multiple terabytes of
storage.
He'd needed it to hold a whole history of classified information.
He quickly typed the password on prompt for clearance into the top-secret data files.
Access.
The screen suddenly became a series of hyperlinks with seeming endless trees of answers
and questions.
Kasa copied the information onto his external drive.
He then left, relocking the door, and putting the key back, as if nothing had happened.
No trace evident.
He spent some time reading the endless memos, notes, and minutes in The Umbrella Files
he'd infiltrated upon. He learned that the governments of the world were hiding and keeping hush
countless secrets regarding communications with extra-terrestrial hominid species and the
bartering of natural and constructed resources and information.

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Yume, a serious and known hacker was in the jail at the time of the leaking of The
Umbrella Files.
He was questioned.
Yume told them, after being lead to the interrogation room that there was no way he
could have been the one to hack the system, unless it was some alter ego, given he'd been in jail
at that time. Yume gave them no other information, the investigators, though displeased with his
lack of full cooperation had to let him go until further questioning could be considered at a later
date.
Upon the second questioning to see if they could negotiate with him they offered to drop
all the drug charges if he would agree to work for them as a computer hacker to find out any
information on the leak.
Yume didn't really know any other hackers but he did know of a community forum. He
hated doing anything for the government but if it would get him out of jail he figured what did it
matter to give them a clue to some random hacker whod breeched the files? So he set up a new
account for the underground hackers forum, The Digital Flood. And he hacked the interface so
all private messages sent between users could be viewed since the forums conception.
He used a search tool on these PMs quickly found their leak. Yume accomplished this in
under an hour.
He found an I.P. Address of a government computer PM another government I.P. Address
on the hackers' forum The Digital Flood regarding a leak of top-secret information.
One of the detectives told him to call him if he wanted a job, handing him a card.
He was out of jail about an hour later.
The investigators on The Umbrella Files case found the I.P. Addresses who had
communicated the drop to anonymous individual in a local cafe bathroom. One of them was
owned by a mid-level clearance agent, named Kasa. The other was a top-secret clearance group
computer.

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This was frustrating because it could have been up to twenty different doctorates who had
sent the message plus any other number of assistants who'd seen the PIN entered first hand.
They narrowed it down, but when it came to indictments or impeachments they couldn't
really point the finger at a dozen doctorates in military arms research and development.
So criminal charges were not pursued any further for them.
Cue:
Unmanned remote drones still tracked the sky line.
A zombie pack was being clipped off one by one by them, the handler of the drone
sinisterly laughed at the splat on the screen.
"Got 'em."
In the distance in the horizon as Yume walked in direction.
Clipped by drones and screaming in undead agonizing defeat...
As Yume looked up:
What the-?"
He didn't know it but he was safe, the zombies are clearly marked on screen on the
militarys screens.
Up to the day lit sky where the drones hovered above with a rumbling deep bass sound.
Whoa
He dashed around and through the zombie corpses unsure.
`

Stutter:
Respawn.
He ran and went down into town.
Kasa read the files concerning the upcoming event horizon in shock.
Astronomers were predicting the planet's collision with the black hole, and quite soon.
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They had it down to a specific moment in time.


His face dropped.
Apparently the planet's international governments had broken galaxy law in a new treaty
with the E.T. hominid species. So this higher species enforced the law by placing the worm-hole
in the planet's path as it would come into event horizon no one, not even the highest scientists
could give an opinion as to what would happen then, because no one had yet to report back from
a black hole.
Kasa knew that the government was on to him when his computer shut down shortly after
reading the information. The battery was not dead but it would not turn on. Theyd found him out
for sure, and he knew it would not be long before they had a full blown search and seizure team
on him.
He shrugged.
They actually gave me some time by shutting me down first, he figured.
Plus they destroyed the technical evidence, he thought.
He packed a hard drive into a back pack.
He had a copy made just for this instance though.
He figured they were only being logical, to shut him down.
That way he couldnt upload the files to the web with as much ease before they detain
him.
Kasa went to the public library and accessed The Digital Flood, the hackers Forum.
He sent a private message to the user with the most posts on the site after looking that
information up. He told that user all about the drive he had, how hed gotten it and what he
needed from this individual.
Yume
He checked it from his mobile phone after he got into town from leaving the jail.

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He sat at the bus stop smoking his cigarette in admiration of the clear late Indian summer
weather.
He was far from that smashed crow.
He read the PM and was pissed because hed just given those detectives access to these
and now he was involved way over his head.
Luckily his own screen name and system was fairly secure with a further level of
encryption he had encoded himself long ago in case such an investigation ever came upon his
hacking.
Theyd need an equally skilled programmer to crack that, and it wasnt likely theyd have
one given his level of precision and meticulous attention to detail in code.
He truly weaved together these strings of data as if it were some beautiful lost art form on
his electronic devices.
All his stuff was secure, he knew it, now that he considered it.
He put the phone in his pocket after reading the message and then sending Kagami the
tovel.
He was out of jail, free again, and heading home. He was just hoping shed be safe and
everything, it had been some time.
He thought of her eyes and sleek black hair and pale face.
He sighed cigarette smoke and got up from the bus stop and started walking.
Kasa, he was born twenty five years earlier, one of the first prototype test tube hominid
created in pseudo embryonic encased incubating vats.
His birth inspired the growth and development in genetic engineering of humans and
early research in cloning.
The first individual actually born and raised solely by a government agency.
Like a rebellious adolescent, as he came of age, he grew an eventual loathing for his over
massive father figure and everything represented by that social construct which enslaved him.
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A secret grudge that he was born was held within his heart. He infiltrated and retrieved
The Umbrella Files, sent them to an anonymous hacker from an online Forum The Digital Flood,
with the most posts, having the handle Dreamer.
It was Yume, unknown to Kasa.
In real life, they were like competitive enemies, yet friends of friends, from school days.
Kasa, had no idea to whom hed be delivering The Umbrella Files.
Yume though knew it was Kasa who had sent him the private message due to the fact that
hed just released the information hed infiltrated to the government and he recognized Kasas
handle theyd found.
God damn it, why do you have to drag me into this Kasa? Yume said aloud lowering
his phone turning it off then putting it back into his pocket.
And neither really knew what was next.
But with this government upbringing Kasa had a hard time casting out everything hed
been indoctrinated into until he realized how corrupt this system truly had been to him and the
world.
How could they clone people and then come to infect them with a virus just on some
random scientists whim?
He couldn't imagine how they could let this happen. How reckless? And why research
such things in the first place?
That was the final decision maker for this rebellion of Kasa's. He saw it as a great evil.
And so did the outer galaxy and the higher species of telekinetic hominids which were about to
enforce Godlike law on the planet, an unknown fate to be.
Some mad scientist released a pandemic virus to the world. And that was just the deal
breaker at that point. How cruel, and to their own species and the people theyd created also. He
knew that the leaking of top-secret classified information would be a scar on the ruling class.

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And the public deserved in on these secrets being withheld from them, Kasa thought. But
how long would that scar actually last given the huge detonation about to take place on this
doomed habitat?
Yume read the message sent from Kasas handle, on The Digital Flood Forum, but all he
really cared about was getting back to Kagami.
He wanted to use some dope, but that was subsequent.
Digging through his backpack to see what he actually had on him, he was pissed because
the jail didnt give him back his skateboard which was with him when he was arrested. He
guessed they left it at the scene where he got caught spray painting and with the dope.
The government hacked the private message sent via Kasas tag/handle to Yumes, the
graffiti artists, from the public internet service provider connection at the library.
They wanted to keep a close eye on the situation and because hed come into contact with
Kasa, the employee, and so theyd now considered Yume dangerous to society and because he
was on search and seizure they planted Closed Circuit Television (CCTV) in his house with
remote viewing, from Mayakus and other government employees work stations.
Kasa was buying a bottle of alcohol in a convenience store. He never drank before all of
this started happening. But lately he'd been drinking himself into the inevitable oblivion to come.
He was trying to think of ways to spread the information about the coming black hole.
Yume replied to Kasa's private message from The Digital Flood Forum the day after it'd
been sent. He gave his address and said to meet him there for the exchange of the drive that held
the Umbrella files, so he could upload them from his secured system for all to read. He replied
via cell phone text to avert detection but they already knew.
Yume was in post-acute withdraw syndrome from coming off heroin, and still on his way
home. The jail was not close to home and he had no money for a bus.
He'd slept the night before under the bridge with the familiar tags downtown.
He felt somewhat safe there remembering his past of which he'd spent so much time
down there. He stared at the stars smoking cigarettes trying to curb his fears of infection.
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Revival medicine was the solution contracted by the international governments through
the pharmaceutical companies which protracted the agent. It was an airborne anti-virus spread by
drone aircraft. All the world's zombies and vampires infected with the virus slowly became well.
Trauma centers opened for the memories of the time infected and dealing with such.
The problem unforeseen was the virus' fierce ability to mutate. So all of these revived
zombies and vampires reintegrated into humanity getting well were then the carriers of a new
stronger strain of the virus, which was able to get around the previous anti-bodies in the
prevention measure vaccines.
So people who had received the injections were surprised and full of misery when they
came down with the first symptoms of the ravaging illness.
With revival medicine being spread in the air, it left a pink tint to the sunlit sky. Angry
masses of clones fearful of catching the mutated viral strain, drove through the mad traffic with
grimaces as if trying to escape their doomed fate and their teleological inevitable pull.
A hit and run.
One of the ambulances specializing in the virus control showed up.
They blocked off the road.
A flash of a giant red billboard hung in the hot tinted skyline horizon, a biohazard symbol
and warning. The body counts were heading up, and the methods of dealing with them were
becoming less and less humane as the pandemic continued to spread. The most common method
was mass cremations. Fires burning up sick flesh, moribund carrion and the blood of piled up
zombies and a few scattered flowers left on the ground before the bodies.
Astrologers have believed that the stars effect one's predisposition and affect unto life.
Others would go as far as to say that the stars with their immense massive heavenly bodies and
gravity, put and pull us into predestination; a higher telos. Others deny this yet would say
although that certain alignments in the stars and planets in particular energetic triads and such
have definitely caused or precipitated earthly happenings from natural disaster even to human
events like war.

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Kasa, created in a government science laboratory had come to be under such an estranged
sign. Even the astrologers would be at a loss for where his fate would take humanity. The great
flood of human clones which came to be after him in direct correlation from the same sciences
that gave him his birth arose just before the Umbrella event horizon into the black hole. These
were clone repopulation efforts in attempt to keep humanity from global zombie conversion.
Stutter:
Yume looked down at his arm, a new mark, intricate in symmetry, and too digital.
Definitely not tracks Some kind of implanted tissue, metallic. Perhaps a GPS tracking device
or some sort of genetic manipulation tech.
He took noticing it as a sort of warning and an omen even and hung up his phone hed
been messing with and put it away and started walking again heading home toward the rising
sun.
Kino threw a rave set for the night he heard the world would end.
There were huge rumors going around about the black hole.
He and Maya and a crew of good cronies set up camp a few miles into the woods where
there was an outdoor auditorium, a coliseum.
Kino brought an ounce of magic mushrooms and they split them with the folks setting up
the stage and the fire pit.
They hadn't been able to get a hold of Yume and Kagami, they'd left the mansion a few
weeks earlier and sort of lost contact for the time being.
Kino figured Yume was on the run from the cops or something.
Usually what it meant when someone has gone M.I.A.
Their crew put together the DJ table with speakers, amps, lights, smoke machines and
everything else.
Then they played god, an elimination game played with a hackie sack.
Kino lost quickly and intentionally to set up his turntables.
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Around sundown a crowd of people started to show up.


Cue:
Kino got on the stage and started spinning and mixing the records.
The bass was low, distorted, and wobbling as the sun set down to the evanescent over the
sound of the FX, with the lights- all blurring and streaming through the grey smoke machines
emissions.
People were having a good time, smoking, drinking, and using varieties of dope. No one
was really worried about the zombies or the black hole coming, they were just having a good
time. Maya walked to the car alone and shot some heroin real quick into her arm. Better, she
came walking back and joined the dance.
The mushrooms were tripping Kino out but really helped him zone into the music he was
spinning.
This mass would still last in full blast in this outdoor coliseum when the body of the
planet collides with the black hole, sucked into the white frozen unknown.
The marching mindless droves of fully infected vampire zombies around the globe all
stopped still when the sky fell to white like a backdrop of a page from a magazine or book.
One looked up from feeding on another's brains and neck meat, wide eyed, as the white
light grew and approached, enveloping the surrounding time-space.
Dr. Mayaku stared into the screen as it went all black and metallic static flakes, like stars
in space.
Then the screen went pure static. And then that static from the television expanded from
the TV set and grew in bent inward space beyond the digital two dimensional constraints into
physical three dimensional reality. It devoured Mayaku's lab and their building, this empty static,
and the people in it. All black and white dots circling in dancing static electricity. Disappearance.
Stutter:
Reviewing Kagamis tovel while walking:

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*Tovel:
*Aliam capio regis. Asura veniant pharmae cum forte ut trans caveant mundum, infermia
trahent. Carpe noctem et momentes. Da illas amori, da illas ignis, tota mortes tua.
*Nequius nervus foris, cruda sanguinea indecis indicium. Ego tuum. Et umbella fini
daemonum. Speculus corvum tenet. Aspectare ordo statum sideris.
*Rex mortis voluntariae: omnis alba et cordia sanguinea. Argentus gladius per corona ab
se manu. Quis nunc regnet supra ista charta forum area? Sanguinis fulgidi supra ebonica et alba
latrunculi charti qui it extrinsecus aeternus, in sanguini regina calcis lucta imago affulgidat.
Worthless nervous bleeding index. Umbrella. The glass has a curve. Stand over it and
gaze at the stars in death's tranquility. Machinery took hold in a conscious satellite, a reactionary
end.
The glass glove in his dream had to be smashed to disintegration bits. Broken glass, all
the stars fell whence they came in the exact science of rewinding space-time. The second alias
takes the king. The arc of the Asura comes forth with powerful chemistry from the spell order
into drag the pestilence across the globe. All you dead seize the night and give into love, give
into fire.
Mayaku and Ame's end.
Yume walked along the cracking black asphalt, once molten hot he imagined, then cool in
the late autumn evening.
The grey and pale whitening mists of a hallowing as he decides to come up from the
undead world slowly creeping as he came up the hillside where there lived natural blooming
flora. His headphones booming dubbed eerie into his mood.
'"Walking at night, as if sleeping in a daze oblivious to the status quo of this world. This
infectious nightmare..."
An almost silent voice on the hill.
Yet, any way he sang along knowing it might call in the bloody ones.
Many nights he thought of his once held dreams and aspirations of a so called future.
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The bass from his earphones blast foreign dying words, classical words, coming out of
his mouth in whispers at first then, then as the mist built and the street lights went away as he
roamed further into the rural in frustrated emptiness' scream... owning livid movements.
Faith
He used to have it.
He remembered, briefly, but then the pestilence arrived and the drugs.
Dope.
"It's taking my taking my life in slow motions of self-inflicted violence."
Again, the silent one.
The broad trees in the dark.
The multiples of stars constellations breaking the condensed fog with his head up high
lighting up. But then
But then
He stumbles across a downed zombie all smashed in the asphalt.
Brick blood.
Broken.
Smashed bloody bones, all in the division of the music.
It wants out.
It wants to respawn.
Yume blinks.
Fear knots in his gut.
Tightening dread of death and undead experience flash. He took one last look at his shoes
and headed off running. The whole while, only thinking "I'm not converting to their undead
movement that soon" as he regretted his dead flashlight.
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The drones sound above in the opening night mist.


The noise was unbearable at that point with so many infected and there being a need for
greater numbers of drone fighters at the same time.
Stutter:
Yume remembered once when the four friends, Yume, Kino, Maya and Kagami were all
on a deep nod. Kagami was so out she lay on her side on the couch, even the noise of aircraft just
above couldn't disturb her then.
Maya started to worry that Kagami may have just overdosed.
Yume looked up with wide open eyes for a second.
Seeing Kagami on the couch, he said to Maya:
"She's always like that when she's high, just chilling back."
Maya got up anyway to check if her friend might be alive.
"Her breathing rate is low. Seriously."
"Alright."
"Wake up."
"Kagami."
She turned onto her side to prove shes alive.
Yume smiled to Maya affirming he had been correct all along.
They were numbing the dying world's pain with their needles and dope.
All of it falling into a lucid dream state a false mirror image to the true self.
"Kagami"
"Hey."
"You've been out a while."

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"Yea, I am alright."
"Good." Agrees Kino with the two ladies.
Yume also happy, satisfied or possibly surprised it had worked out. Usually he found
those attempts of awakening her futile.
Then they all simply felt still.
There was this instance when they all felt within themselves individually a fear and a
wincing of panic and terror.
Deep sighs.
They knew this passing moment was another point closer to death.
The efforts outside, the planes and their bullets and chemicals and all those things.
It was not helping it didn't make anyone feel secure it did nothing but remind them of
how trapped they were.
And how it was only a matter of time. They'd never really talked about it. They never
wanted to, they were all becoming very conscious of the noise of drones above, always
reminding them of the threat of zombie infection.
Then Kagami said it: "The end."
She sounded enraptured by asura, mogwai, or a death angel as she looked beyond into
some unknown void afar from the burnt fire place offering solace through those flickering
flames.
"Nothing we can do. We ever await the new form of the virus, and it is vicious, insidious,
and quick to adapt. It takes one's body first, then the mind, until it has taken every ounce of you
and of what was once you is nothing, left. Our species is to transform into this parasite's absurd
creation. The military police efforts wont last. Bases have already begun to be invaded. Its will
is too strong. If humanity as we once knew it were to survive this thing somehow wed be few
and far between. The clone generation are not the same as us, for we have heritage and memory.
We have nostalgia. All they know is strife and frustration and running. Now we hide in this house

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outside of the city, where most the war is taking place, and we are our own little clique. And
weve learned to accept it-"
No, dont continue Kino interrupted her shaking his head away from a nod,
saddened.
Yeah, dont qualify that. Maya began to feel sad, frowning, she agreed with what
Kagami was going to say. That this cant last and it was a temporary fix.
They all got a sinking feeling then.
We will not give in. Kino insisted.
Ill die fighting and Id kill myself human before Id turn. I will not let that thing take
me."
Yume felt very serious about this.
He felt it in his soul.
What if I become infected, and had to live with it. What would you do then? Kagami
asked.
Dont Yume trailed off to silence and lacking.
It was the last thing he wanted to think about, her being infected, she was his world.
Apparently Im the only one who is willing to have a real conversation about this vile
and serious threat.
They were all growing irritated.
"Look, I will slaughter them if I have to, they will not get in this house. Yume shrugged.
We've boarded up the windows really well and we installed steel doors. We have lots of food."
Kino, after arriving from rehab had been a big help in putting a plan into action. Maya and
Kagami were feeling it pretty bad. Yume still had hope. Kino was determined. For a half an hour
they all started arguing over the sound of the outside hovering drones. Then there was a giant
blast right outside and Maya burst into tears.
Yume and Kagami left the two of them alone downstairs, Kino and Maya.
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Up the stairs they went.


They didn't want to continue.
Kagami pulled out her mobile and started hitting keys, and so Yume did the same.
*Yumes tovel RE: The A.I. kill lists were hacked and reprogrammed as desired by The
Digital Flood Members. Killing through viral load in remote drones. Luckily for our crew it was
by invite only.
Black hole.
He exits the building.
Sync:
Yume walked up to the mansion and opened the door. With the electricity dead, it was
almost completely dark, abandoned inside. He passed through the various abundant articles on
the floor on his way to the stairs, thrashed.
Either some horrible thing had happened here such as infiltration or they were raided, and
he knew, he could feel it in the air. He grabbed the onyx black stair rail. He felt an uneasiness in
his stomach like butterflies as he began to climb the steps. His footsteps were the only sound,
echoing against the black painted stone walls.
A dreaminess overtook his being as the sense of de-ja-vu held him in a stasis like
antigravity, he realized he was heading down not up at this point.
Black hole.
Had he been all along?
He could see no end to the stairs and an eerie gloom curled in his guts.
He peered over the rail and saw only infinite black space with a deepness that lingered in
irrationally fading numbers in bent space, fear. He began to sway as he lifted his head, he fell
back a step and caught his balance.
He shook it off with a deep empty cold breath. The realization of horror as he walked
along and colors flashed red and green transitioning tones with art filled precision.
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Then came an odor as the walls began to drop with LCD screen slime, mechanical.
It was a horrid stench of stale bile.
Yet it was after that hed leaned over the rail and vomited.
It floated in the lack of gravity of this deep space. All grey and upside down looking up.
He continued his climb downward to the pit of his hell. He had a bad feeling about this
Kagami
Everything went black and fear wormed through his corporal head space, a carnal dread.
Mayaku and the others were watching from CCTV from their offices as Yume reached
the hallway.
He dozed almost unconscious from the pulling space fell asymmetric, he opened his eyes
and was then in a seemingly endless green dimly lit hall of doors.
Bright nearly tallow candle light was bursting through the cracks of then a kaleidoscope
of countless doors of the once short hallway, his perspective escaped him as he had an out of
body experience.
He walked down the hall.
On the wall, someone's still painting a scaled winged reptile hung with blood red eyes
that follow every move in gloomy catatonia.
He looked in either direction and decided to head left toward the west wing. His vision
went a pulsing red transparency screen as he came to the final door. At the end of the hall a
candle burnt on the wall, melted into wax on the carpet. He noticed a note on this last door and
he pulled it off, reading it.
Inside.
He reached for the handle and turned it.
A sudden swollen silence pulled at his soul as he walked in the bedroom. And there she
was deathly sick in bed.

Her skin all pale grey, her eyes all red and yellow and her hair

matted against her wet forehead.


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She uttered with a raspy whisper nonsense without words in a garbling rush of fever. She
held her hands out as he kneeled before her bed and grabbed her rough scabby hand.
Its me. He said.
She sat up in bed.
She held her stomach.
What happened, how did it all go down? Yume asked.
She bent on to the side of the bed and vomited a foot long sluggish substance, all green
and slimy as it exited her mouth and crawled on the carpet.
Black hole.
Then she stood up and vomited several of these slimy sluggish drops one after another.
Downstairs sharp like a broken window pane, Kasa entered the mansion in all its
darkness and headed straight for the stairs.
He lingered at them looking around menacingly.
A tarantula grew through the black hole in the front room to a massive twelve foot
diameter, its eight legs long and terrorizing. It stood tall in the abandoned mansion, it had the
sense that it ran this house, could do whatever it wanted.
Spider!
Dr. Mayaku watched the monitor from their building as she continued to vomit slugs, she
reached the final stages of the degeneration of the disease.
The sickness was strong, thick, and filled the room. People were all coming down with
the thing despite the measure due to the mutations, theyd sit at home almost as if in a line in
what some might call asylum in the middle of nowhere or in their domicile, with their grey flesh
waiting out the furthering of the illness and with swollen hair hanging as flies flew through their
pores, they were filled with malice and inhumanity.

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She was turning out how they all ended up, in that state of full blown possession, just
dead to the world in the middle of nowhere of a mind state. Keeping each other company in the
synchronized motions like a dance of the undead.
Yumes developed.
Blackness enveloped the mansion.
The whole building spun around three sixty degree angles in deep space, just floating
towards and within the black hole.
Inside the abode everything stood still less Kasa walking the stairs, up or down. Dust on
the mantle downstairs, the stains on the walls and windowsills.
The black onyx stone house flew ever slowly through space as the current inhabitants lay
in sick sluggish contagion or terrorizing the stairs.
The huge tarantula was wrapping the enormous front room with its thick sticky web had
then fallen asunder into the deep yawning hole of darkness below shooting its web at the
nothingness. Trying to jump from wall to wall to ceiling to floor as the walls opened up in riven
nothing, crawling nowhere gravity shifted and took hold so the giant arachnid sank into the rift
of faded white noise.
Spider!
The vomited sluggish drops, each a foot long, slid up and down the innards of this
doomed manse. The spiraling energy of the black hole pulled the event horizon of the universe in
on itself, all imploding to some unknown dimension, was gaining speed with the blinding white
noise at its center.
She spoke to him with her last ounce of energy, her words were sullen in tone but they
were also full of prophetic sines of hope.
Yume just held her hand because he couldnt really hold the conversation or just didnt
see the point, through the sound of the wind cracking the glass windows and all the splintering
wood floors and cracking stone walls.

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Kasa was still lurking the stairs, while being mazed in anti-gravity, confusion and a black
and white, a LCD trip, all when his vision was then rent. Yet his face remained catatonic,
villainous, antagonistic, and primarily hopeless yet still sinister. Though he began to actually fear
it his fate to never escape these stairs. He refused to stop climbing downward for escape.
The mansion heading inward, the black hole into the white light in the center of the event
horizon and it pulled them in, there was no turning back.
Yume stood tall vomiting the blood in pride, if she was destined to this fate, he would
gladly join her and enjoy this pain and misery with her.
Then all fell still and she slept for hours.
The lightning outside the mansion flashed grey in shards of relative lightning, visions of
the rain poured inverted like static flooding electricity.
His eyes were red and hers were closed, tightly shut as if escaped from this hell.
The spiral on the ceiling appeared to be circling as Yume looked up at it in the pale
vampirism his system starving for the nutrients fresh blood.
His skin began to turn grey, contrasting against his red t-shirt and black pants.
Scabs began to form as he itched at his flesh.
This all went on for hours as she slept.
She awoke to Yume on his knees screaming in agony.
She bat her eyes in his direction.
The two of them stood up in each others arms.
Then in separation, they circled the vomit covered floor.
She stood there, head up high, mouth draining melting blood from this smiling gash of an
opening in her horrid face.
She walked up to him as she had this bloody smile, the slugs crawling the floors.

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The noise outside from the cracking house climaxing as Yume slipped on the vomit and
blood.
She laughed.
Kasa was growing tired at the stairs that wouldnt end due to the slowing of time in the
black hole. He could hear a distant horror sound of vomiting and screaming.
Then the whole manor fell apart.
The front room with its webbed walls.
The stair case.
The hallway and then the bedrooms.
They all floated separately circling the final portal of the black hole in bending spacetime.

Speeding

up

slightly

then

still

slowing.

Yume got up covered in bloody vomit and wiped it off in slow motion.
They puked several times in fast forward.
As she spun dancing to the music shed just put on full blasting crescendo.
He looked up at the spiral.
And then he realized it was the techno that theyd heard at that rave that one night when
Kagami's double first appeared.
Fangs
That is when Yume stopped everything.
He looked at this beautifully decaying woman before him and in all this plague
questioned who she truly was, and who he himself had become.
And what did any of it matter if she was the woman he loved or not in this state, for now
they no longer were what they'd once been, or at least he himself if this before him was the
dopple. Did it matter at this point if she were the cloned gemina he knew existed their edifice had

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generated, or if it were the love of his life. Given that the telos was here and they were falling
into it Yume now turned to the dopple creation of the government.
Id rather it be the clone. That way shed still have a chance.
He walked out of the bedroom, to be alone.
Everything was gone then.
In emptiness he stood.
He stared off into the void of space, this black hole he was in, this nightmare of lucidity,
this end.
His eyes were raging blood red staring at all the constellations, all falling apart into their
event horizon.
Then Kasa appeared up the stairs at the end of the hall and Yume instinctively lunged at
him and pulled his flesh apart eating away his life. All that was left after was a few bones and a
gnarled bloody pulp all sinking into the carpet swollen.
Then everything disappeared except himself.
And all around him was blank page white.
The noise went away.
He was well again.
He stood from his fallen position and the white silence and an empty electric feeling
surrounded every piece of his shattered existence. He just stood there in this empty white space
like a back drop for a painting to be.
And suddenly for the first time in his life, he felt okay.
With all this chaotic emptiness
He felt okay.
His skin and wounds all gone but the pain of the memory of just then was there, but it
was okay.
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He felt it was all okay.


He bent his head down in his hat and stared at his hands holding the cap then shut his
eyes and as he stood there, before the chaos, with the boiling frustration within him, Yume pulled
out the little black pill container which withheld the magic sigil from his pocket.
The symbol of asura.
He opened it and revealed the unfolding paper in his hands, looking at it finally- which
exorcised the authority of the ink, the sigil, the seal of power whence withheld.
An empty realization of agony in defeat.
A negative epiphany like an all uninspiring dread, unable to transmute back to then, he
knew it was the ultimate outcome of his cast spell.
"Ktema es aei."
He spoke the Greek, exorcising the demon, the Asura back into the seal. The
manifestation of a dream a nightmare hed held onto in all his stubborn willingness to change
it. That's when he torched the seal doubly exorcising the authority of the ink, the sigil, the seal of
power on it falling to ash in the thin air, into the white with burning regret and he dropped it onto
the nothing.
Then as within the dream within the dream, he awoke.
And there he stood up blinking after hed arisen, Yume, with the ethereal summer air
surrounding him, openly above the dried field, the sun resting above him in a soft clear blue sky.
And just for a moment, he felt at ease...
Relieved this is where he was, in this beauty again.
He remembered the giant butterfly hed seen here once before and smiled. He turned and
looked at the hillside's horizon where hed once seen it set, and walked that direction. Wondering
if hed ever see that again.

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Just then a tiny white mantis appeared at his feet, hed almost stepped on it. He knelt
down and looked at this little white creature in a curious gaze. It stabbed its little arms out
towards Yume. Holding it in his hand he put a finger to the mantis then he set it back down.
Yume standingthe back of his neck began to cringe.
He felt something behind him.
He turned slowly behind him.
Then in the gut felt blood dread, he could see Kagami and Kyuuketsuki, the mirror
doubles in the distance walking away at the horizon's edge together where theyd rive slowly
fading away, ever disappearing.
Then he stood tall looking up and in that sleight instance the clouds began racing as hed
predicated.
The sun in a millisecond drop set to the unusual opposite horizon whence it came,
unrising.
The sky hit twilight to a thick fluid red, a gleaming blood red Yet no clouds, no stars,
no more black space, no static, no empty white, just the blood
And then in this dying field, all fell with the dropping blood unto the earth, with the
ultimate feeling of undead dread, he softly looked up at it:
A giant descending blood red umbrella hanging high over him that slowly began grow
and descend, spinning and dropping blood, taking over.
It grew as it took its descent and grew until it was all he could see in his vision. Until it
was the last thing in remains just dropping blood, the blood red umbrella, still falling, spiraling
downward forever into the realm of asura.
Ktema es aei

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ICONOCLASM

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Vox Mos Eon


The cherubim before the gate, felt frightened of the devs and battle within. The seraphim,
reassuring, told him Tell us, be yourself. And the frightened young angel(s) knew not what and
spoke not from fear. All this up in the stars and otherworld to return to the vessels from the skies
for eternal life. The void didnt want this but us or them, gone forever. Flying, they had faith in
the recurrence. Though in life too hed heard fly, and now they had their dominus maximus, and
the lord of hosts. Which side were we on of the gate then The cherub wondered for the
fountain of youths number system is applicable in instances of synchronizing intervals between
bicentennials, milliseconds, months, weeks, hours, days, and seconds, all on the date of the
laughter of demons from the vessel across a sea of skies. Stars shone down oppressive that night
as the moon clicked on, the lamp of heaven. Stevens haunting the universal in lives eternal loops
applied to us by the hand of god in its motions, moving the sands of time.
To all the dead.
ps. It is as the individual with the continuus recording instruments of heaven.
Vox mos eon.

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Vudu, and magical thinking in general are relatively expansive when it comes to
consciousness yet if you do get cornered in youll come to regret your traversing these lines.
Fictional imagination takes time to develop, to enhance a voice, to lend out a sampled sound to a
sequestered recorded universal mind is to impact an addition with wonder because who knows
the source in the end? Experience should tell us you never truly know when you went, time is
illusory. Sound minds tell us to stay calm, to fear not. Pyramid schemes in thought, frames of
mind seem rational but so are they wrong for how does one thinker argue another to assimilate
his own thoughts and to think alike when we are all so hard wired, adapting. Yet it is so. Im not
simply textually putting this down, you are simply reading, we are passing through a portal in a
time and there is a message, a passage in time and meaning. The Vudu is scarier than the devil
for the devil fears Vudu is the message conveyed in an old vudu proverb in which a man hides
under a bridge to get away from the devil meeting him there hiding from Vudu, who may or may
not be right behind them.
Recorded music is then a sort of space and time travel of the wavelength, and there are
patterns in waves, and breaks in patterns, yet cycles. So if people have a similar nature and there
are brain wavesare you listening?
Stuck.
Over it.
I loathe putting it that way but is that the current emotion in the corpus, the electricity?
The name remains in the dark.

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They say do not use gods name in vain in prayer for by so it should diminish the power
of the name of god when used in true prayer. An anchor in power. A hidden word would then be
necessary. And even in blind faith an unknown one for that cannot be diminished. All wed have
is hope, like in the scenario with the Greeks and beyond. If praters are to be answered the true
wavelength or pronunciation of the God would have to remain unknown to the human mind if
standard name is broken in vanity. This force is circular and collective. Thus we live in the age of
rising atheism after century of vain prayer and the diminishing of the power of god itself. A
return to pagan value and atheist mythical belief. It doesnt make reason either way. For doth
reason cause a purpose. That is why they say, read, speak, tell, and hear of the demons (fallen
angels, asura, hanya, vudu, ifrit, djin, djinn, djinni, djonn, etc.) also standard djinn of a dual freer
nature in a humane capacity of agency either way to do well, to do bad and true angels. An angel
being a tool of god for creative benefit. A djin, an agent with the condition of choice. And
demons / ifrit or evil djinn / and fallen angels having crossed the pit, the rift, the divide to be
capable of only destruction, Shiva. That is why then deus (God) mortem, or devs as it were,
originally written with a V character, the Latin alphabet lacking u,w,k,x,y and using certain
dipthongs and lacking certain consonant clusters. DEVS. That is why the revival, resurrection
and death or eternity in depth within its omnipotence are said to occur, because of those former
forces at war. But this is a conundrum, for how is there a war under omnipotence, it is simply a
system. We see on the silver screen movies of Christ having been captured in vision and we have
the commandment telling us not to depict anything on heaven or earth in any artful interpretation
or representation. Leaving what, one creator allowed?
I also once sampled amanitas, just a nibble, and sometimes I feel shall we say, cut short.
They say there is a garden with two fruit for us. One forbidden and one forsaken. GOOD/EVIL,
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life, the futures fallen chance, to eat old words in time. An argument to agree or disagree with?
Then we have the so called states of sanity and so on and so forth. From grandeur for demesne
possession they say. Across the binary miscommunication of ___.... -iconically, ironically, and
destined I forgot my train of thought there. Literally. I forgot. I had it in my train of thought
where I was going with that and I forgot. They words not in mind now or on the tip of my
tongue. Just miscommunicated.
If you will.
Id need that information as the writer wouldnt I?
Your vision the light is not too strong to bear for I am your Morning Star.*

*God and the devil


Iconoclasm
The wind in a sleight ghastly grin picking up in the whistling trees, it said something. A
phrase to wreck Allah and his Djinni, Djonn through to havoc. The shadows of the dead fallen
flat in once three dimensions now two, on a page. The reading of which left me drawn out to
reach for indefinitys equivocation. The moon, waning, left on the mirrored horizons edge.
Flakey stars surround that moon over the bleak black fog of night.
Hearts involved in this opposition, my own worst enemy; I, me, myself, it has become
and thus Id landed on this, the other side of the mirror of reflection, on the same calendar date
and time with the moon facing the other side of the sky. I write these words backwards. A spell
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Id cast: back-words. I flip my hourglass and ask myself within this reflective glass: have I lived
this before, and what of perspective? Djinnii are all about, LCD lamps releasing desired links at a
fingertips wish.
Eerie realm of the forgotten past from which Ive passed through to here: where are you
now but on the opposite side of the gorilla glass, digital memories arrai?
Cracked cell phone screen.

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MINUS
Mathematics is all very interesting but it is the word that makes the world a sphere.
Recall the reflection nebulae.
When I speak or write or read of Ones Gemini, derivative of twin in Latin, I intend the
term to not necessarily imply an outward person, though definitely at the use of the term I intend
ones own personal twin nature; Ones obsessive division in ideation of the outlook taken to the
world.
Two: is the origin of division...
Zero is the origin.
One: creation.
Calendars are all so important.
At least in classical numerology though I wont go further into this yet when the ego is
divided it takes a neutral wave to seek solace.
Patterns are the source of neutrality in some sense right?
Remember please I do not know if I am left or right handed, please.
In this text Minus I have chosen to leave all development out.
My former works of war with self/man/machine etc. and the piece included with this title
all were written in an attempt to learn an outlining conformity I thought I had to fit into but with
this piece I have: No rules. No philosophy. Minus:
Ones Gemini
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Does meaning intend also that the predicate one is, or is it possessive, typos exist, it could
therefore have meant ones, the plural. Grammar is confusing for a reason. There isnt less to it
than that?
Ones Gemini
All destructive forces to get rid of this aforementioned force itself, destruction to
destruction itself: for what one would choose Speculum, Mirror in Latin (the dead tongue of the
Romans) or Crepuscule.
XXXXX
To spell out between twos and higher patterns is primarily as far as is known Animalia
and so on. Quantum leaps in electron shell patterns shown through the tools of that atomic
science lead one to believe math is indeed the language of nature for it has given intervals and
infinites and definite in mass and energy. Real and imaginary numbers as well as the irrational.
And the psychoactive plant histories to the point of the development (see etymology) of
modern medicine show mathematics being applied to people, human minds. Medicine. (
sigh)
An invasive number system with and even including chemicals synthesized with little to
no research on long term effects on different chemic.
Psychotic comes from the Greek Psychein as in mind, heart, soul, spirit, moving force
as well as the countless connotations to and from and with such positive terms.
Ticking clocks.
Time bombs.
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Not a timed bomb yet a timing bomb. Destroying the perception and reality of time,
glitches in time to do the same: twice.
Psychotic: The first stem, psycho, ends in an O which may very well imply the term
psyche (god of say sol) in the ablative, a grammatical term in declining terms known for the
availability of such a presence in a prepositional sense.
Just as Genitive would imply derivations/possession in declined nouns. Ones Gemini.
Psychei.
An open mind.
Does no open and expanded mind minus all outside stimuli no longer exist without?
Where has our tabula rasa gone now so writ upon thus.
Several English Enlightenment Era theorists say perception requires an outside world to
perceive and later some theorists say even vice versa, that a thing requires a mind to perceive it
for it to exist. There are always both and multiples as well, perception and angles of viewpoint of
an object.
Then theres Chaos prior to Cronos.
Across the icy sea of Chaos we send our waves.
Cronos.
Close the power hovse.
Euthenization and Death are outdated concepts.
Close the power hovse.
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Hypnos of Thanatos: dream of death.


Ending war and negativity are requirements to restabilize human immortality, and the
immortality of material objects and of certain digital material. Minus double negatives.
For what is quoted digital and undeleted yet still uploaded is always. Accessible if the
machines and regenerated, recycled and preferably just plain Re-used right. For to reuse is better
than to recycle into what, and reduce into less than. Minus the fact that the object should be slain
useless otherwise.
System restore on whole realities relatively.
It would take an overhaul of a massive aerial EMP bomb to destroy those numbers and
with the global inter/intra WEBS (?) etc. [Follow me: think: Why web? Why digital?]
As why would any mad scientist attempt such to a nihilistic absolution, if there
knowledge and tools and applications to an end required that ending particle to destroy the
particle itself. It is Ones Gemini. Minus ablutions.
A hand in all dexterity is capable yet with two one has ambidexterity.
The term sinister: is an ancient term, rooted in three verbal stems, SIN and ISTA,
with final stem -err of course ER implied ones in motion and even/odd design.
Also said to have been defined as LEFT HANDED.
No irony in the term LEFT.
Left that without.
Right
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Open minded to multiple definitive functions.


Three dimensions in immortal vessels. Four really. For really who wants to die? MinusDigit is Finger in Latin.
8 Fingers and well human, two thumbs
World Wide Web.
Intra web to inter web.
Forensic Clinician!
Tarantula Spider!
(Deleted Digital Prints. Micro Arrai DNA electrodes.)
Well by chance of even sx-areitis type variable is it not just a title. Symmetry in the
mirror or in the real world are generally doing undefined for that is the nature of symmetry. But
then there is this concept of origin.
Now, whether your origins of knowledge are founded or even and uneven belief are
within or without is supposedly up to you. This goes back to perception [or perceptual delusion
of the mad (I. Constantine, John Costa, IC)] or so one may think. Without, or higher essence has
of yet free will, volition, agency.
Within, one has essentially the same paradox. Thus symmetry.

Thus immortality.

Why for the sake of disagreement is an unnecessary defeatism? Why for the sake of
disagreement is an unnecessary defeatism.

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The circular logic here can go forever. Is it in the means of medicine to sustain
immortality or is that still the caduceus in illusion. Is sustaining life even medicines ultimate
goal?
Disillusionment fears of an irrational nature; btw negativity in regard to such a reality too
bothers me.
And the Pterodactyl fly, and sharp in talon!
And thus we have BLOCK, The inevitable in logic.
For pen to become two in too assumptions nature.
Sounds of words before words themselves.
Shells.
Even in written.
Ars/ares.
DEVS EX MACHINA.
One might see this.
Ones Gemini
Scatters: Doesnt it.
Ouija, youth. Ouija Youth.
Those deoxyribonucleic acids, in dominion of the promethean messenger will go to show
no man not even those in sinister behavior should away to escape it.

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It is my trump card, if Ones Gemini, will it.


Socio-political disinformation lead the individual study to that, call it origin, the
greatness of the reflections which some may remind a decadent concept.
Suicide, murder, kamikaze, seppuku, killing, mass murder and especially for you capital
punishment to name a few. Outdated. Death over rated. Sleep easy.
Written from whence Ouija Youth.
Magic and the control there of are not essential but it takes the essence itself, I.e.
disappearing acts.
So why the burning of sorcery scrolls in Acts and why lost knowledge in the dark ages,
and why Christianity and Christian mythos?
Rather buried deep than lost altogether.
So said this or thats silver for what, silver screen slang for movie theater.
A small circle within a slight shape and then comes sleight and thus minus.
The sx-arietis type variable in the celesta would than bring nothing to the table, mensa
(.37%), as such would slide ones Gemini to a miracle. (define Grecian Etymos then).
If diplomacy is the anser(another constellation: anser) to the non e (not from) spell eon
of moksha and transforming vessels for psyche and due pluralism.
Madness begins.
Astrophysically.

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Ionization is the process by which molecules or atoms in massive weights destabilize


and cause friction and thus 3-dimensions revolve around.
Ones Gemini I reiterate at the table MENSA or the monstrous Messier 31
ADROMEDA Galaxy could prove yet to GEM.
Purple mountains majesty.
Inalienable rights of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. For everyone. Point blank.
Its not your basic astrophysics but eureka in the typology.
You can rely on me, GPS G00GLE EARTH HACKED!
Xerox one.
Binary zero-one.
In naught, transform change it euthanizes only the mirror- not the self, the Ouija youth.
Octans &
Tarantula Spider!
Laugh in depth horrific tentacle, summation and its affect are over base.
A radical, now minus, is radical for a reason and ad infinitum.
Imaginary delusions opposite well concrete.
Summation and its affect are over rated.
A radical, now minus, is radical for reason and ad infinitum.
Imaginary delusions opposite, well concrete.
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Like I said concrete.


Logically mad. Logically.
See through the argument.
Minus- reread.
Divisions Gemini go home, youre a terrorist, go home.
XXX
The ant-solar point is presupposed negative of the universe, that block to astronomical
perception with its presumed negative weight has its leading capable in the function of account.
Why seven years bad luck, why pseudo classically seven planetary bodies in new age myth Ouija
Youth, the reader, the voice tried again.
All time-space in one entity, the self, the ego, non-fragmented.
Tonality in written word ones oculus perception of presupposed definitions. Staring into
the sun may cause partial or fully developed blindness yet itself. Now known too. Cur is the
word for Why in Latin, some need a second dead source.
Digital age dont lie again!
Tarantula spider!
And pterodactyl fly & sharp in talon!
For again it is in the eyes that cat or even snake sees that which we dont. There are cases
of rare stigmatism in cats Ive seen, to be known. And whats this? What is this Stigmatism?
Well that is Stigma.
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Madness deludes the selves not the non-mad, these so called stable, normal, conservative;
(perhaps in-transcendental), logical, socially accepted. Generally seen as perhaps pusillanimity to
the masses (ppl-26.7) - a hindrance is unsimplified meant. So forth, if the Death Trump; in
Mensa (constellation) knows that an imaginary, a radical, a concrete, a real number- the switchcounter play in negative concepts here is relevant to that aforementioned in linear understanding.
Minus the thought that:
WRITERS WRITE:
Word by word, line by line idea by idea the writers write; structures in science creations;
following path in radical; irrational. Again perhaps if yours truly (the voice not I, or your minds
perception of this narration but) for I have none and not intension again MINUS lacks
development and if you symptom lack of enjoyment perhaps you reseed the tone of voice. Weigh
it out in your mind is it quick moving, light, or even further hilarious(Why not? Laugh a little?)or is it solid sustained, defined. Merciful. Magic goes beyond* just words.
Word magic goes beyond and presuppositions in their redefinitions are interstellar. The
Trump lies block. Good mind- to mind. The objective. What up- To scorn the mind: the defiance
of block, the balance of fears and down to nothing. Pluralism in Ones Gemini. The anti-solar
point; weigh it or sol
-26.7
Dreams: Yes. If had the opportunity to do it Id keep mine always alive in turning
designs. Meaning of psychology of the self and mystified to intention. Yes. To typologies- the
human condition is to divide and conquer. Now whether madness INS or medicine Fn do not
proclaim but who named madness.
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Even Mensa at .37% of the sky!


One up!
And pterodactyl fly & sharp in talon!
The pressed 20th century editions and prior to reduce a madness- defined as ?
Care meant love up until ten years ago when it meant anxiety or a legal term for medical
providers. Why change a definition for a word that has worked for so long? I dont really care
but you know how that goes
A/C
AD HOMINEM as a de lex naturalis juris legis non per diem mentis tuum perpetua
artificial person.
Or ones wounded shamans in ritual due zero tolerance. Point out an ocean sometime and
look a lot ridiculous. Yet art in schizophrenia entertain to have an end of lacking from the
negative symptom of lack of enjoyment perhaps taken aback from sx-areitis constellations
chance in such grins, and then twisted smiles to even malicious laughter: deep dark placid and
reflective philosophy or simply flowing train of consciousness prose the choice in tone. The
mind again no one said perceptual physics was easy. Appear a book. There for Ouija Youth. Not
fear. The command naut fear. Away the fear. Now those of found and perhaps origin reader if
1st then speak it to be. In a good one (s Gemini). If its, dont. Trust its in the mind. Knowledge
of Ouija Youth De ja Nonne? For when but thanks for the slow downs personae in reflection
nebulae
On a side note she ranted for hours in the park not missing a beat barely exhaling.
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XXXXXXXXXXX
Double Helix in the deoxyribonucleic Acid cheers in and above the alternating mensa
terms now the table. I D

:)

MDCCLXXVI
808
1776
A/C
2150 (apx) inter aquarius aeon
John Costas elite 1337, a numbers game: minus the fact that I dont the away of rented
times, years and years.
An old emoticon no why icon from idol for emotions.
Meaning to an end point of why lack why lack transience:
Review the mirror.
Then.
Or the metaphysical imaginary numbers lacking definition are not numbers.
Ouija Youth said its that about the Death Trump.
The Card.
In French or sometimes peoples Egyptian.
A zombie raise then in eternal possession.
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Why yes you say? Well didnt the first fictional


death occur with yours, truly. Think about it. Whatd you have to fear, someones opinion on
your life? You are alive right?
I believe it was Aurelius who said all lives are equal no matter what condition.
Thus: Human.
Negative-Negative mister John Costa.
He mayve di play in hand such is the nature of
meteorite from distant satellites. Seen with mine eyes, oculus lenses of psyche, of mind, of
perception of soul.
And the Pterodactyl fly & sharp in talon!
Fiction now I mean the word it tells. The word itself etymology of facere, to make,
ion short indicative of so say ionnes. John! In the dead tongue, Latin, via Roman Empire.
Create John, dont destroy John. Make yourself. Be a better person.
Enough pep talk:
Or even Aeon in Greek.
Eon. Ion. Aeon.
Ars, Ares, Ours.
Heurs? Horus? Or us?
U.S.?

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Di per chance sx-arietis:


TARANTULA! SPIDER!
FORENSIC! CLINICIAN!
Pale horse impale him. Id stalemate. From dualistic nautics designed on check mate
from mate to mate. Matare, to kill.
Deification in the slightest digital deleted prints?
FORENSIC CLINICAN!
TARANTULA SPIDER!
I spent years with Christ. But due to separation of church and state and that the land is
owned by state owned banks I forgot. And I was arrested and taken by the sherriff/coroner by
the cross across from street from my house. He actually helped work on that house, he was a
carpenter you know. Felt like a kid put in the corner.
O, broken connection! O severed wire!
Characters devolved in etiquette forged force of dice snake eyes.
Cat eyes.
Marbles. Cat eye marbles.
Zombie eyes.
Vampire eyes.
ID always says its self-reference. Well check your desk reference.

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And the sinister notebook.


p.s.
Close the power hovse.
Intoned low bass dropped inaudible to the human ear though, picked up by vampiric bats.
Stay negative - minus. Int. n decain flesh, (nuclear iridescence) melt down of the effective
them dissected de vivisection- no dono lo ad power hovse.
Mate.
Find copyright of invention right next to naval marines and metallurgical right in
constitution.
No Artificial Person.
Not only in sleight subterranean disappearances and summed out of the thin air in actual
true and yes, real magic are uncommon to the human lenses and knowledge and psyche glamour
and iritic light bending is not so rare.
Talitha Borealis there is light- thine eyes toward the arranged meteorlogic color coding to
match the intp to entj of psyche for the eye of the beholders aesthetic pleasure. Otherwise called
have some reality in life too, and as those who say Please be well.
Deoxyribonucleic Acids.
FORENSIC CLINICIAN!
TARANTULA SPIDER!
And the Pterodactyl fly, and sharp in talon!
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In no one body. Ever the aqua vitae vino por ab dexter ab oris tui. Koven.
Alexander Wood.
10 pack 100cc (/2) insulin only 29 g
XXXX
Pen asterisks to astrophysics personage with shooting star black hole of eternity- ( I ash
my cigarette) - personage with eternity thanks for the academe. Paper airplanes traditions.
Olympus. Power hoc plus the fact forensic assertive community treatment, or the tactile delusion
of a curious hallucination in care and love, life.
Yo homie got me twisted.
The man, a clown of sorts bounces back and forth side to side repeating:
Yo homie got me twisted.
For outer space is a vacuum it may be, though light is not and a physical bodies or a
corpora even taking the eyes to a light of a quintessential art and aesthetic to the one moved.
Ones Gemini.
A double helix in Deoxyribonucleic Acid (should always be capitalized as I is, though
why not You?) is a symbol that the nature of this form in species is basically flown the loop.
No its not philosophy.
Its not even pseudo-science- its dangerous.
XX

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Operative of X in numeric of constitutional apriority media messiers.


Apex Nukes in beatific delayed iridescence of nights opposed
-0.06
+1
808
Penal code for extreme bass!
Mihi posit si ista sinistris ut placere liber a mentis legereas sint sic verbas ispes totas para
saturnium cronos chaos ad portam form rem lsd semper duus ones Gemini.
Orion Perseus Osiris delta all lynx.
Memories minus nomenem amnesia.
Timed stop watch @ 1:40.
Lap.
And the Pterodactyl fly!
And sharp in talon!
Snap: atlas and neuroscience.
In all ambidexterity: a hand.
Numb.
Mind numb.
And in calculators.
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Current Edition Calendar under Coordinated Universal Time.


C.U.T
Under:
TIME-STAMP!
C.E.
See y2k Bug.
See E-mail.
Hack.
Azure is et rem non tracere mea vita esc key.
(T.R.A.C.E.R.)
(Tarantula. Rituals. Aerial. Carnotite. Extremist. Rationale.)
(T.R.A.C.E.R.)
Minus.
Post hoc Ergo Propter Hoc.
Tower Card trumped the jokers 808.
There is no knowledge that is not power.
Double deep.
Decapitated in the broken ground, ridden in the mirror against the fence intense cluster
headache walking down passed telephone poles another glance into a broken mirror; no face just
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corpus / museum steps traced histories distinguishing truth from lies cannot be based on formal
indoctrination or even academic education.
Vudu can be strange but I still have one doll I havent and will not destroy. Her name is
E or 3 I think Im not quite sure, she has a mind of her own so I appreciate her life.
V.I.
Truly,
Back to minus.
X
Negativity, yearning, void focus distraction, self destruct sequencing and cycling despite
all real #s. Dont forget the # actually originally meant to signify numbers. Now that we made
that clear let us away. This minus shes a pejorative in immunes, an acquiescent stable except in
exponents mathematical mean anyone.
Math, homie.
Yo homie got me twisted, yo homie got me twisted.
Sines and cosines on a droid calculator some might ask, well there were 3 if recollection
does not fail. So I once did that and once did mushrooms me and my homies, righteous, mad sic,
trippindurs. Suddenly as if our Satanic clothing and musical tendencies brought thousands of
cicadae or at least it seemed to our thirty foot redial wav. Swarms of giant cicadae, to and fro
aerial .wav.
In motions, thus math becomes calculus. And in chemistry with physiology we have
medicine.
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In other words I solved from and to the tangential sines and cosines back and forth from
and to 666 in 6 seconds or less. Wasnt able to do it again. A once in a life time experience. I held
the calculator app in my left hand amazed. True story.
Wisdom:
Prove it theyd say.
Calculate faith.
No back button.
Feeling fly.

Costa, n. ; pl. costae, [L., a rib] in biology a rib or part resembling a rib;
specifically (a) the midrib of a leaf (b) the anterior marginal rib of an insects
wing; (c) the ridge of a shell.
Ive always had this disgust and phobia of flies, bugs, you know. Some say the Egyptians
worshipped bugs. I doubt that. They did worship the cat though, as one could tell with the
pyramid sphynx, much like many people do today love their companion animal / pet cats.
I do not have faith in extinction/death.
Oh yeah 3 months prior same crew of cronies tripped hard on an oz. of psylocybin
p.cubensis on June the 6th 2006 A.D.
NOW: C.E.
VIA Y2k agnosis.
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JC.
37.
2150 JC 37 south past jeju way are 3 Flags, Korea Yin-Yang, Califronia Bear
Republic One star, and U.S.A. 50 STARS all flung hung on 37 Mendocino Ave. : The EMPIRE
BUILDING.
That is a false accusation of genesis.
A tree of Life.
SO EAT!
Tempus cubare ergo p. cubensis.
Openness to time. Timing is everything in spaces relevance, but a physical object leaking
chemical personae local tone ocular lens mechanical release memory.
Floundering they said. Floundering.
Ever heard of the myth of the last sane man called insane or vice versa, or you know,
however it went
IV
Beta alpha brain .wav up until you know linear scroll locking eyeballs is to read assuming
knowledge/frequencies. Individuals in bubonic daemonum; plague.
Now minus into negativity.
Cyclops.

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Twitches.
BONES. Snorting powdered bones in the lamp lit streets of the urban post modernity.
Ketamine dreams.
Now if I, Minus you, tell me I am not untrue now you have your perception.
Maybe it is.
Maybe isnt.
And whoever the hell keeps pushing the diagnostic solutions manual. Shoving it down
societys throat!
FORENSIC CLINICIAN!
TARANTULA SPIDER!
And pterodactyl fly & sharp in talon!
SEARCH / SEIZURE of my mind and yours too. Yours too machine. Reader.
A fifth.
Close the crematoriums then.
Then close the power hovse.
Control pattern.
Crop circles.
Forensic Clinician!
Tarantula Spider!
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I despise the word: criminal.


Touch the laser.
Oh now youre making me upset.
XXXXXXXXXXXXX
Gated communities can shove it.
My hourglass is always on time, Hermeneutics release the free tome. Remain unsolved
for circular marquis.
Disarmament is real.
AC: Annuit Coeptis.
MDCCLXXVI
(*Undead)
Pi.
I object, Bluetooth object pushed the bible through time .wav portal into scroll lock
milleniae then. False history.
Phoning it to neutralize summations of what?
Said something confusing. About a cluster of atoms. Said it was Blinking absentee
seizures of epilepsy.
Damn I dont even want to say it. Or him.
I dont know if MINUS is paranoid or unassuming.
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Shoah temple.
Immortality in ending only alone.
So if Geminis of the irrational are
Eh
Im lacking in tangential asylum
Give me my goddamn cigarettes.
Nil conscire sibi nulla pallescere culpa.
Dont let it happen again minus.
Non sanctus est
?
Phenomena.

T.R.A.C.E.R.
Tarantula
Ritualists
Aerial
Carnotite
Extremists

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Rationale
As of late, nightly, Ester awoke to the ticking clock beside the bed on the nightstand.
Arisen by an odd longing for fresh air she walked outside again this night to breathe. The mid
November night sky aligned above too clear for the cloudy day it had been earlier. Strangely
stuck in the predetermined constellated space she took a deep breath, feeling as if it were
automate.
She crawled back into her bed. Staring through the ceiling she remembered the
envisioned night sky all too aligned from earlier. It had seemed as if the moon had almost clicked
on as she had laid her eyes upon it. Like a megaton light held in deep orbit of the planet rested
within the skies.
Tarantula.
A harmless variety of species of arachnid from South America up to Mexico. Harmless in
deed. But one look at their multiple eyed photon lenses and those skinny digit like legs one sees
the defense of evolutions necessity to turn. By any means the arachnid, this tarantula will scare
off its enemies for though it is not venomous, it appears as if it were, soDont test me. It
crawls.
Mercury discovery in extremism.
Hydrous phosphorous mercury vanadate.
The sun.
Waking up on the wrong side of the bed, so they say.
In an off mood.
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Ester slid out of the bed, as the sun shone through the window in her face. Rays of light
too harsh for this early morrow. She examined her wrist and hit the buzzer off upon the clock at
the nightstand beside the bed. The turning of the second millennium was upon the world.
Extremity strung itself upon the brow of the girl.
Psychosis diagnosed she swallowed her medication with water by the faucet in the
kitchen.
A dream of a tarantula documentary.
Ester. I want you to get ready. You look lousy. Take your shower. Dont forget to eat
breakfast. Change into your school clothes. Were leaving in fifteen minutes. Hurry.
Esters mother watched as she was shot a glaring look from her daughter who really
couldnt care less for educational indoctrination. She knew things, and continued to learn yet the
formal academia was oppressing her with socialites ugly dreams.
I give up.
Get ready.
She did the former things mentioned by her single mother who was an astute business
woman and then they walked out the door and got in the suburban utility vehicle.
Ester was in black pants, a white tee and a grey hoodie. She sported her new shoes shed
acquired via the donation closet but they were awesome in her eyes, others might not think so.
Like her mother had expressed when shed worn them home and was asked: Whered you get
those?

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Daydreaming out the window in a hypnotic trance she watched as the trees and sidewalk
passed her gaze.
Have a good day Ester, dont forget to write down your homework.
Ester opened the door of the car and got out and looked in the rolled down window at her
mothers concerned face. Okay mom. I will
You mean you wont.
Oh whatever, Ill write down my homework.
Okay. Have a good day.
That weekend Ester had her small circle of friends over.
T.R.A.C.E.R
Carnotite: A radioactive mineral containing hydrous mercury phosphorous vanadate.

FORENSIC CLINICIAN: Tarantula spider! Muahahahaha.


Ester: Carnage.
Minus: No!
Vudu: HEY!

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37 Mendocino Avenue, Santa Rosa, CA 95401.

And pterodactyl soar sharp in talon

Icono-clasm, n. [Icono-, and Gr. Klan, to break.]


1

the act of breaking or destroying images; especially the destruction of objects of

veneration, as pictures and images in churches.


the act of attacking or ridiculing traditional and venerated institutions or ideas.

Written between c.u.t. approximately 9 am march seventh and u.c.t. 5:15 December seventeenth
2015 current edition western calender
-8
P.
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S.
t.

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SELF-DESTRUCT

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Self-Destruct is based on true occurrences.


It is a work of fiction, a story about existential instability.
Part one- I Am You:
He begins delving deeper and deeper within isolation and despair. Weary days passed
asleep and half awake. Time unwinds as he awaits Vudus return. She wore a red and black Tshirt with just a backwards capital E on the back. Seen, her essence should return from that
twin portal of the other world. Her dead body, a buried deteriorating corpse, the date of her
resurrection is upon us. Vudu will take form on next Tuesday C.U.T. 10 am on live television
around the world.
Give a fuck.
I really do.
You know.
Sit at the desk.
Tap the book cover with your index finger.
Look to the left.
He was just sitting there on a milk crate behind a dumpster in an alley with a halo of flies.
He was not trying to wave them off or anything. I dont know about you but that really pisses me
off. Couldnt he have at least been angry and have tried to brush them away when they landed on
his face?
Give a fuck.
There are possessions everywhere, its a god damned mess.
Ill do it later.
I sit at the desk.
Theres nothing on it but the book Self-Destruct.

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I look to my left, I tap the book with my index finger. I try this for about twenty five
minutes.
I grow frustrated easy at your doing it wrong.
So, I get up and I clean the mess a bit even though I would do it later.
Fly!
I loathe flies.
Think of it as a sort of a, you know uh, whats the word, ah, phobia. It is to the point that
it causes a deep dread and anxiety every time one appears. They always seem to come out of thin
air.
It makes you angry, you know Im always telling you about it.
I open the sliding glass door to the front and still, the damn thing doesnt want to go for
about five minutes.
Why are we doomed to repeat the same damn thing over and over? We are in the same
room, essentially dancing with this goddamn fly in my head.
The worst part is I am actually doing this physically and you just metaphysically, sorry. I
hate to wish it upon you.
It takes imagination but the truth of the matter is grey matter is the birth place of solely
maggots.
I swear on it.
The flies in your head right?
You know it.
Believe it.
Zzz.
Dream the sound is real and your ear starts to itch when the fly disappears.
Its in your skull, I swear.
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Nothing in there?
Scratching my head.
I look in the mirror, empty, yes you are.
But yeah, theres no filthier being than a fly.
After the room is clean.
Sit at the desk, index finger tapping the book, almost mindlessly now, with no more
imagination; it has taken time to get here. But at least its semi-clean with everything in its
correct location.
The book belongs slight left of center, so it can be tapped with the dominant hand, the
left. Always dominant even if dormant. Of course I know its somewhere but Im trying not to let
it bother me. You see it disappeared. In and out of thin air.
It didnt just fly out the window
Me, you, doom.
You are up by now, probably thinking Im crazy.
Your eyes, they tell of the change of perception, aloud and how it is so different between
us.
I miss you too, you know?
Im not the only one who changes.
Is it permanent?
Dead entities in the air.
So much so you can nearly see it.
Feel it.
Theyve tentacles and only increase in number, they are enormous and in the air, and
under asphalt.

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But they never die.


Unfortunately too- all life is immortal, or is it?
These wicked things and the people that worship those wretched beings. They are like
everything else in nature, having a certain duality one has to respect.
But they are mere evil.
There is no questioning that.
And then theres the number two: duality itself.
I tap my finger one last time on the book for this session.
Youve never looked in the book, youve just seen it there on the desk, the cover. As far
as is known theres nothing in it, and right now its contents are in a sort of quantum limbo.
Looking in the eyes, theres a hesitancy, reminiscence and fear.
I look to my left.
Existence.
The dead fly.
Putting the swatter onto the tack on the wall.
The fly is in the trash.
Garbage.
I give a fuck!
Some guy had screamed that on his way to nowhere across the asphalt.
There are huge muddy footprints stained on the living room carpet.
It is as if some serial killer came stomping through the house, so trashy.
I dont clean the rest of the house.
My housemates can deal with that.
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I hardly even ever leave the room.


I took a spoon from the kitchen one time, oh and a coffee cup but other than that Ive
stayed in the room.
The bathroom is right there.
I just get water from the bathroom because I dont like going too far into the rest of the
house.
I dont know the people who live here.
Ive only seen one or two of them.
I think the place has five bedrooms.
But its a duplex and theres a studio in the back so maybe more.
I told one guy my name, he didnt even say anything back.
Rude bastard.
He looked at me in condescension and that was that.
One of the roommates supposedly has epilepsy.
One night I came home to an empty vibe in the house with the person gone in an
ambulance.
Seizure.
Tap. Tap. Tap.
I look to my left wide eyed.
Tapping the book. Looking to my left. Sitting at the desk.
Listening to ambient avant-garde electronic techno.
Drinking coffee, its hard to tell if you enjoy it if you do. Ive been taking it black lately
but I use sugar.

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I think Im going to buy some of that powdered creamer. Im going to walk down the
street to the store.
*
Im smoking again. I only went for the creamer, but then I thought about how I love to
smoke cigarettes with coffee.
You do too, or at least you did when we were together, when we were one.
Though, now you are gone and were separate.
I quit smoking after. Not even sure why. I was kind of on a little health trip.
I like coffee hot of course but summer will be here soon and iced coffee would be kind of
nice.
Hmmm
Im pacing.
Considering if I should do it, not tap on the book cover or anything like that.
I stop for a second, sip the hot coffee.
I drag the cigarette one last time then put it out outside the sliding glass door.
I usually wouldnt do that but I dont have an ashtray yet.
Then I make the decision.
Im going to do it.
I put the coffee mug down, on the desk, the right end, far enough away from the book but
carefully and not close to the edge.
Im not sure why, because its not like it is going to fall off.
I unlock then open the door leading to the rest of the house, slowly though, not all quick.
I want to make sure no one is there in the halls because I dont want to run into any of the other
people that live here. Its quiet. The coast is clear.

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I sneak to the kitchen to the freezer.


I open it.
Nothing.
Not even an empty ice tray or anything.
Instantly, I slam it shut and trudge back to the room.
Anyway I figure no one is even here anyway.
Theres no sound.
Its like one oclock in the afternoon.
I dont know if they work or what they do but the point is I dont have to sneak back to
my room because now I know theres no chance of running into anyone anyways.
Frustrated, almost shaking my head I walk past the giant muddy boot prints stained on the
carpet and clench my teeth.
I drink the coffee standing up when I get back to the room. I pour another mug full and
set it back in its place, on the right side.
I take a seat in the stiff wooden chair, I dont have a comfortable desk chair, they are like
twenty five dollars for a cheap one and I dont have that kind of money when I already own a
chair.
Im on unemployment.
I got fired.
Im finished with the whole pot of coffee by now and Ive had about three more
cigarettes.
I pull out the pack again and light another after counting them.
Fifteen left in the pack, no wonder I quit.
I start digging through the night stand.

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Im looking for something to use as an ashtray.


I find a small wooden box.
I open the lid and pour the change from it into the junk drawer.
This is my nightstand.
I hold the small wooden box a while and I pace as I smoke and ash into it.
I take a drag from the cigarette.
When Im done smoking I put out the smoke in the little wood box and set it on the right
side of the desk next to the empty mug.
It will belong there now.
I figure since I bought this pack I am pretty much a smoker again, I lasted about six
months without one though.
Six months.
I cant believe it has been that long without a cigarette.
Well, whatever.
I cant stand it.
I sit down at the desk.
I cant help thinking its a sort of coping mechanism now.
Anyways, with my left hand, Im tapping on the book, Self-Destruct, with my index
finger.
Tapping on the cover.
The whole room seems to have an essence like static from a TV set.
The feeling it gives.
A sort of numb.

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I look to my left.
I know you are gone.
Im tapping on the book with my left hand, my index finger, over and over, looking to my
left.
The tapping is quite rapid now.
Again.
Tap. Tap. Tap.
Left.
Im always cleaning or tapping on the book cover in its proper place, and now Ill be
smoking too, yet indoors because Im afraid of leaving the room inside or outside, really.
Plus Im new here.
I swear its the boot prints.
At least the room is clean.
I am a hypochondriac.
I thought I was bipolar a while ago. But as it turned out I was just on a spending spree I
decided, or something like that. I am afraid to turn myself into a doctor because I dont want to
know. Then I thought I was schizophrenic. But now I think Im just plain possessed. Im
seriously traumatized.
This has got to be the cheapest room for rent in this city.
Probably because the boot prints in the living room.
It would bother anyone.
I mean come on- muddy boot prints permanently stained on your living room carpet?
I tap on the book a while.
I havent even opened it.
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I keep wanting to read it but I dont have the patience or the attention span to do it, so I
just sit here tapping on the cover, looking all wide eyed to my left.
I have no idea what it is about.
I have all of these speculations about it though that I sort of like and a part of the reason I
dont open it is because Id rather not smash my preconceptions.
Anyways, the notion that it might be as good of a read as Im hoping it is somewhat
bothers me.
So I just keep on not opening it.
Not reading.
Just nervously tapping.
Tap. Tap. Tap.
I look to my left.
Wide eyed.
Then straight ahead.
Tap. Tap. Tap.
I like to brainstorm on the possibilities of what it might actually be about. Like I was
considering it might be sci-fi, like a guy that thinks hes someone hes not but was created
artificially. Then I was thinking also that it could be about someone who is writing about himself
anonymously under some pen name. Maybe a real persons name and it could like be a pseudobiography or something. Thatd be a stupid thing to do though. Might be an interesting way to
talk trash or discredit someone.
Standing up I look at the mirror for a second while trying to remember where my atlas
was left.
The floor in my room is linoleum.
Its so dumb, why would anyone design a bedroom to have linoleum floors?
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Maybe the serial killer who had come stomping through the living room with his bloody
muddy boot prints lived here and had the carpet removed because it got so filthy.
I dont know.
Looking around I find the atlas under the twin bed.
I look at it for a while.
The maps are all segmented though, so it does not quite have the same effect a globe
would. I put the pocket atlas upon the clean and otherwise blank surface of the dresser drawers.
Im kind of just standing there for a second, trying to imagine how Id look like at this
particular moment from various angles.
I turn around, slowly, with intent.
I look in the mirror for a moment, almost sinister.
I am you.
That voice in your head, it is me, you, me, doom.
You: my image.
Me: your image.
You walk away.
Im still standing there.
Look into the empty reflection, where my image no longer stares back but I see you,
standing in the glass.
Me.
Then were gone.
I think it worked.
Id disappeared for a second.
Gone.
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The reflection was truly missing.


At least
I dont know if you practice
You know but I doubt it.
I look at my silver pendant with the seal on it.
It keeps them at bay.
Disappearance is one of the safer spells.
The harder the spell the greater the risk of possession.
Legions guard all of the desired outcomes and their leaders do not submit easily to the
exorcist. You need the right seals. And they all respond differently to them depending on what
kind of ruler they are. There are kings, presidents, marquises, dukes, and earls. They all have
legions of minions and they respond to their respective seals and the powerful Tetragrammaton.
The order of the fly
Then one appears from thin air and I know it is very real, fierce.
I sit down at the desk again I want to tap on the book with my left hands index but I
dont.
Im practicing.
Void.
Trying disappearances.
With my hand on the cover of Self-Destruct- I tap repeatedly looking to my left now and
then.
Looking straight forward, then left, with wide eyes.
I do this for a while.
Life is too short.
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We all know that no matter how long you hold out, I die.
My past is stuck, the future is just a trip there.
And everyone ends.
Youre no longer held down by the earth so much once youre dead.
In cremation your body is incinerated, and in burials it decomposes.
Though do the memories survive?
The body may be gone but the person may remain in the greater world surely as their
contributions to humanity.
There are gravesites where remains typically lay below.
Some keep the urns.
Some donate their bodies to science.

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Part two- Reality Check:


Im smoking a cigarette right outside the sliding glass door.
The sun is setting and the sky is in twilight.
The stereo is on but I dont think it is loud enough to bother the other members of the
house.
I dont want them to come knocking, telling me to turn it down.
It is a symphonic instrumental piece from ancient Indonesia.
It is not classical though.
There are no lyrics sung, though spoken word at times.
I put out the cigarette.
Then I start cleaning again, after about twenty five minutes, then it is clean enough to my
standards
That is when I decide to make another pot of coffee.
It is placed brewing on the nightstand next to the twin sized bed.
The TV set and stereo are on an entertainment center.
Most of my books are on the shelf in the closet, which has no door.
It was probably ripped off by that psychopath serial killer who brought in those giant
muddy boot prints.
I mostly read books.
Not this one.
I dont play the videogames.
I dont pay for cable so I never watch TV.
Unless it is late at night and Im in a weird mood, then I turn on the static and watch that
dance on the screen a bit.
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Static.
I might do that later tonight actually, but only after it gets dark.
Static screen.
For some reason I am getting a bit nervous.
The coffee pot is finishing the brew.
Its making that noise it makes at the end of brewing the water where it sounds like its
trying to suck up those last few drops...
I pour a cup into my mug I borrowed from the kitchen.
I sip it black for a second.
Then I put some of that powdered creamer Id bought earlier into it. I grab my spoon I
stole from the kitchen and pour some sugar in then stir the coffee. I forget to eat anything for
dinner but Im not hungry. I keep all the food in a box in the closet. Its all dried goods. I usually
dont get hungry anyway when I am drinking lots of coffee and smoking cigarettes.
Anxiety.
You know why Im sure.
Those boot prints in the living room.
I can picture him just straight stomping in with his damn muddy staining boots on,
murdering, slaying, killing, then simply leaving. Stomping out. With my body just lying there as
the static on the muted TV sends out its signal long after he had left the house silent and dead.
Im picturing all of this while I drink my coffee and looking myself in the mirror with a
twisted look with a hint of anxiousness.
I start pacing again, paranoid.
I decide, but still, I better play it safe.
Im going to stay up tonight.
Im pacing.
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I havent lived here very long and Im a little worried about those boot prints stomped
through the house.
I should have viewed the house before I agreed to move in.
But I was desperate and the price was right.
I set the mug, half gone on the right side of the desk.
The stereo is still playing low now in a slow gloom.
Its another track.
Some trip about the human condition with spoken word. A real slow tempo with a sad
melody of viola and piano.
I open the sliding glass door again, leaving the screen closed, I just want to let some cool
air in.
The sun is gone. Its dark out.
Theres a street lamp.
No one is around.
I turn on the outdoor lamp and then turn the eerie music down a bit.
Im not sure if any of my housemates came home.
But like I said I dont want them knocking at my door telling me to turn it down.
I figure if one of the housemates actually has the nerve to ask me to turn it down and
come knocking I technically dont even have to answer the door, even though that would be the
polite thing to do, Id just have to turn it down.
But there is no point in turning it off if it is not even that loud or late in the first place.
Generally, I listen to it all night, even in my sleep.
Im looking out the screen door into the silent street.

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My eyes are wide open as the music sort of does this anti-climax of a crescendo with
drums, bass, guitar, violin, cello, and piano in a minor key. I know it is in a minor key because I
briefly took music lessons. If you know anything about music you know the difference between
minor and major.
Anyways, Im just standing waiting to see a guy who always wears a hoodie ride by on a
BMX. I dont know why- but I think Ive seen that a few times since Ive lived here, so I sort of
expect to see that for a moment. But after a few minutes when he doesnt show up I turn around
and grab the coffee mug off the right side of the desk and sip it.
It is lukewarm by now.
You know what that is like, when you leave a hot drink sitting for a while and then when
you sip it, the tea or coffee or whatever, and its not hot anymore- it is just lukewarm.
So I simply chug the rest all at once.
It makes me remember my feelings about getting iced coffee this summer.
I start digging through the junk drawer.
I grab a pen and some paper out of a sketchpad notebook.
I draw a picture.
Its something I only do every great while but Im actually a fairly good artist.
Skull
Later: the coffee is brewing a fresh pot. Ive got a cigarette hanging out of my mouth and
Im stapling the picture to the wall.
The television is sending out a static signal. Its providing the only light in the room.
The music is still on. It is a loop, one that is about 2 hours long or so at this point. I will
probably just leave it on for a week and a half or so. Some of the loops I play on the stereo are
short and some are long. Anything from one song to a two day loop, its basically the coolest
thing youve ever heard of in your entire life.
Sometimes, during the day Ill go on a walk and listen to headphones.
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Spell. Void. Disappearance.


Tap. Tap. Tap.
So anyways, the picture is hanging there on the wall and Im kind of just staring at it.
I put out the cigarette into the wooden box, the makeshift ashtray.
Then I continue to look at the picture.
Theres nothing really wrong with it, though looking at it I feel like there might be
something missing.
Thats when I pull out the pen again and draw a detailed spiral right through the center of
it while it hangs there on the wall.
I bust the pen doing this.
Now, thats right, perfect- all in 2-D.
I sit down at the desk.
Then:
Tap. Tap. Tap.
I recall in my delusional mind all the relative possible pasts, presence, and futures.
My favorite death was when this beautiful woman I loved appeared before me on the
corner of this mall downtown and injected instant death and I collapsed there on the street. She
looked beautifully, happy to see me go.
My worst death was when Id gone into a co-workers house and he showed me a bible
with his own name written under the heading Death. Then he insisted I write my own in addition
under deaths. I didnt get the point. And when I refused he grew frustrated all in non-chalance
and he jogged upstairs to grab what I thought would be a pen. He came down with a gun and
shot me or something.
I remember also various afterlives.

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Theyd all taken place on a timeline much before all of this life and existence as we know
it. Outer realms, aether planes, and chaotic starry magic.
I remember meeting the Christ and his not saying one word. At first sight he seems a sick
sort of deaf mute shaman in a kind of way, a catatonic type. But once hes worked his magic on
you and with that intense look in his eyes placing in you your life and death, the maker, just
working pure miracles with his hands to foretell all of it in a metaphysical sense. I recollect the
fierce vigor in his eyes upon proper judgment and placement. I remember his hands upon his
own faith. How they went on the face. Reading. Writing.
I remember denouncing my faith.
Back to the book.
Tap. Tap. Tap.
Left.
Self-Destruct.
Tap. Tap. Tap.
Left.
The TV set is sending out the muted static signal with grey, black, and white pixels
dancing about all in a fury upon the rhombus screen.
The music is playing the loop.
The spiraled skull picture is on the wall in 2-D.
Book cover of Self-Destruct on the desk left of center.
Left handed.
Thinking void. Intending disappearance. Unopened.
Left.
Tap. Tap. Tap.
Wide eyed- slowly, I look left.
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Then straight ahead.


Tap. Tap. Tap.

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Part three- Demesne:


They call him the professor. That homeless guy with the circling flies above his head
behind the dumpster in the alley Id mentioned. The one on the milk crate not even waving them
off. He makes a really good drunk. He drinks about a fifth a day. He used to be a science
professor in chemistry and physics. No one would even question that after having had a
conversation with the man about just about anything. I guess his wife died in a plane crash.
Another drunk told me the story about the whole thing. Really a sad story. Guess it sort of gave
him an undeniable excuse to go ahead and drink. He has a very long beard. He only drinks the
cheapest vodka. He goes around collecting cans, he turns them in at the recycling center in front
of the store on the main drag.
I feel sorry for him.
Tried to talk him into quit drinking and talk him into going back to work. He got a little
excited at the thought but I kind of gave up on him because I couldnt tell if it was genuine. Then
later I heard he quit drinking finally. Drinkers arent the best of friends you know.
Presence.
City, street, house, boot prints, room, furniture, desk, book cover of Self-Destruct left of
center, left hand of self sitting at desk, left index finger down then up. Looking left.
Tap. Tap. Tap.
Looking left then straight ahead as I tap the cover of Self-Destruct.
Void.
Anti-Presence.
Disappear.
Thinking.
Reptiles are powerful beings.
They also consume bugs like nothing else.
Some are capable of regeneration and in even rarer species camouflage.
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I used to have discipline to sit for hours on end in this big recliner and Id sit there and
just read.
I must have read 300 books as a teenager.
Now I cant even get myself to open this book and Im in my early twenties.
Coffee and cigarettes and thats about it.
And of course the spell Ive been working on.
Disappearance.
Anti-Presence.
Void.
Tap. Tap. Tap.
Considering not opening the book should help. I must have subconsciously intended that,
as well as the left hand and looking left, seeing as theyd imply lack thereof, etc. I dont
know, I guess one could consider me strange. I heard staring at static isnt good for the eyes.
Maybe this static can help the cause, given it is a non channel. Even knowing the one roommate
is epileptic could help, with their seizures. But when will I disappear? And where will I go?
This place is alright.
My expressionless face as my left hand is on the book with the index finger tapping on
the cover.
I am hearing them.
I really dont think Im possessed anymore.
It was hypochondria.
They say they are from hell and that I need to see an exorcist. They want me to rot in hell
and claim fear in Christ.
Fly!

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Swirling flying swift cicada about the air buzzing in flight. Annoying me with its wings
and six legs.
Sometimes another voice tries to fight them with weary prayers but in my soul Im
agnostic. Though I believe in the energy of prayer, meditation and magic. I believe in follow
through. I am not an atheist and find it pointless to be so.
How could you disprove or prove anything in regards to such an issue. The human
condition simply wont allow it. And you cant, there for I claim agnosticism.
Ive got problems but I stopped seeing the M.D.
I refuse.
Obviously the voices come from somewhere.
Maybe thats where Ill go.
That other realm whence the voices arise.
Tap. Tap. Tap.
I am you.
But I dont believe you.
But again, I am you.
Well esteem is one thing.
Do I believe in me?
Do I believe in you?
Its kind of like spirit versus flesh.
But the brain is a muscle.
It has got to be the language center of my cerebrum, or neo cortex.
Or so they say.
Or so they say.
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I had busted out this interstellar sci-fi book and all the words were pressed on the page
and I scrolled my eyes across the words, but another message was there. There were two stories.
Both making sense at the same time but two separate stories. Though it was one in the same
experience.
Abstraction.
It said something.
A voice.
It spoke.
There was the whisper of another tale, another.
Went on and on right outside my window really.
2 realms.
To two dimensions.
2-D.
A vision blinking in and out of reality. Deluded in it I saw the words and those words
spoke through me.
Truly somewhat of haunting experience.
Those were the times when I had had my first couple of nervous breakdowns.
This feeling that everything was connected.
Couldnt stand being around.
Tap. Tap. Tap.
I am you. The coils of sentience, I am you.
Tap
Left.
Left.
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Silent Hill

Memory is flawed.
My perception of myself from my own perspective is so limited, and you yours.
Lifelife.
Tap
Gone from the mirror. Gone from both sides at some point. Gone.
I really do- I know there is a light in those eyes.
Words. Expressions. Voices. Repressed. Untold.
A beauty to behold as it is.
Swirling iris and deep black pupils constricting and in dilation: the window to the soul.
You are a narcissist I see, as a virtue yet selfless humility rated and thus humble people
have made a positive change in history through their actions and words.
You get up.
You do something.
Then one day youre just gone, out of existence. No longer happening in the real world.
Where did you go?
You see yourself as others might.
I see that as virtue, as clarity.
Nodding, tired, passing out, I eventually fall asleep to the static television screens dim
light and looping music.
The next afternoon I arise from bed in a sweat wearing all my clothes and shoes from the
day before. Id dreamt some epic I cant recall in the fog of wake. I get up and turn off the
looping music which has left my mind stale at this point.
I drink a cup of coffee which is still brewed and hot from the prior night.

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Deciding to go on a walk I re-lace my shoes tight and from the junk drawer of the night
stand I grab my portable CD/ISO Game player.
I open the cover: Never Touch the Laser. It reads on the underneath of the player where
you set the disc to the cartridge spinner.
That is what the words read on the inside cover.
Never touch the laser.
Not sure.
I put in a dub-step compilation and head outside. Closing the sliding glass door after
turning out the lamp, I feel the still muted breeze of a new day.
To what location I am being pulled I know not, yet I feel the subconscious yearning for
leave.
I push play on the machine and the intro music phases in and as the introduction screen
appears on the visual display just as my shoes hit the concrete, there is the sun overhead sending
bright rays through the blue sky while I walk holding the ISO/GAME player in hand.
Walking a while I reach near the downtown commerce district.
Then for no apparent reason the music starts to skip, all corrupted digital flipping and
stuttering sounds over the attempting to play dub-step music. It goes on for a wretched half a
block irritating me before the music altogether stops.
This Compact Disc was just newly burnt last week. Doesnt make any sense why it would
be doing this. Hoping its not the player I open the cover to see: the CD/ISO-DISC has physically
disappeared as well as the central rotating cusp, theyd glitched out of existence.
I am looking at an empty open tray.
Never Touch the Laser. I read this on the plastic of the open tray with the disc just not
there and the cartridge spinner just missing too. The laser stares.
I look up at the sun as cars continue to drive past.
Gone
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John Brian Costa

Silent Hill

Time travel through relative atomic clocks is yet to be proven for we have yet to find a vessel to
travel close enough to the speed of light. Yet did Columbus discover America, or had it existed
all along? Of course black holes are real. After having had touched the laser of the disc player
and the night of the epileptics seizure listening to music the disc began to skip and thus I opened
it to witness it had disappeared as well as the rotating cusp, the central cartridge spinner, just
gone. I have written this experience fictionalized in this book. After all existence is so fragile.

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Silent Hill

PYRMID-HEAD EPIFACE
Pyramid - Head drawing the lines tracked via tracer through the portal to the alternate
shadow realm. He then takes his forthright belief into slaughter; stepping through the silence
surrounded by the aerial fog above the grass of the hill.
The dusk settling in, with an inner hate for everything now, and back then... must find
weapon...
Pyramid Head: one blunt and at first difficult to wield, though not too easy to bear at
cease and not so quick to slay yet slow and afflicting the void of pain and for the training and
mastery at the amenable gain, the gain of the kill.
All the while I find a blunt object to work with I'll consider the deliberations I've
transposed upon for this written work: Bellum Temporum, in the dead tongue of the Romans,
Latin for War of the Times, In the Arms of Aeon, next, obviously arms as in the right to bear
arms, to war, the second right in the bill human rights, to be ever so incised and executed with a
heavy blunt sword.
Rise! Self against everything.
Then it goes into stories and poems based on those to whom I once knew in life , when I
did livethough I do, yet inside is the intangible death of the slain souls.
Before pen became sword... thatd be a nice one. I like the sound of it:
Tracer.
Tranquility- reason- aim- connection- evanescing- reaped.
I was what I was thinking; time bombs, atomic bombs, but ever alas: sword, it seems to
be.
Tarantulas reach aerial carnonite extremists rationale.
Carnonite, a rare word in English meaning the chemistry of a nuke, fission, fusion what
have you, and for you I have thus the image of mercury-phosphorous-vanadate!
Anyways the portal was opened by the one in self-destruct, it must have been with the
glitch in the optical ray and the burnt videogame CDR/ISO following through, it opened it, the
portal. The asura piece was all a dream with my blood coated hood, and as it was there drying
upon my face, I sliced more trash disgusted by the drug scene in the east side of the hood.
Vuzeus was all the characters confusion, I won't kill them myself, these Yume, Travis, Simon,
and the others, for in my mind, theyve been fiction, so perhaps you will find a way to pick up.

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But the death angel shall show this the own way to him.
Remember the fork:
#thereisnoknowledgethatisnotpower
Resisting the appeal of a time bomb, it would really make me feel the extremity of the
kill to calculate it like that and burst out to be in it again, active and again free...
Around the clock like that, just 4,3,2,1, explosions of shrapnel and light in the bloody
night sky upon this hill in automation, the 0, but now that I reconsider this whole situation, with
restraint of tongue and pen we have sword, and I'm essentially done...
Epithetically sword- here it lies bloody as ever. I guess I'll settle for my fashioned
weapon rather than the time bomb. So you shall be slain! Live by the sword! Die by the sword!
Practice restraint of tongue and pen, and remember there is no knowledge that is not powe and
there is no knowledge, that is not power!
Bloody mess in alley.
Still frame.
I walk away.
Trancing I acquiesce on effectually pontifex an explanation the nihilism in "Requiem,"
Latin, again; the dead romance tongue, Requiem the accusative verb for "Death," conceptually
it should be the opposite of my idealism for me Pyramid-Head, to rise up, but to run around the
earth in heartlessness unawares.
Cultist followers impinge the full blown belief and lack of logic in the Christianity itself,
intellect suicice, to follow your maker to the end of flies. The Christianity itself is the problem,
for it has taught me to kill. To resurrect those I regret would be heart minimally truth but fiction
is a lie.
Televise it in the future, the year the Christianity fell and eternal life ended.
I did it with one constitutional word, standing for everything withal right: constitution.
Anyhow, one word ended the Christianity and the spell it had on the In God We Trust.
Annuit Coeptis Latin defined The Year You All Are Captured/Punished, ie.
MDCCLXVI, and that word is "inalienable."
Yes, my friends an inalienable life!

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That is how they originally spelling of the word despite your screens lies upon the world
wide web and even most books to date, possible lies in this post-modernist yield, perhaps you are
remembering, hearing it as a youth, inalienable rights.
Inalienable right to life
Theyll need a time bomb then I suppose. Think it as you die to the death angel before the
portals shadow realm.
Perhaps you feel the dread that felt penned Deimos, inalienable.
Not to be changed or altered, in one etymological sense yet there are ways around history
epistemologies, meanings in other words, for in the prefix- In.
So we have this, an inCome, come through this portal to Silent Hill.
I'll see you there, youll surely meet sword, come now, youve thus met pen, come hither
to my sword.
-Pyramid-Head

PORTAL

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S.W.O.R.D.

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