Awake
My eyes opened, feeling crusty, and tired, like I hadn't used them for years… I guess I hadn't. I got up and dressed myself, blowing the dust off my dresser along the way.
"Might as well go for a walk."
I walked out into the street. It was chilly, but not quite enough for a jacket. As I walked down the all-too-empty street, looking at the overcast and grey sky, goosebumps raised slightly on my arm. I took a right turn, the upslope of the road is a little more intense here, and the wind picked up a bit, my nose was cold and getting runny, but it wasn't enough to go back and get a jacket now. It was a bit eerie, seeing all the houses still there, with the same large yards, but not seeing anyone out, I instinctively walked to the yard of the people who always had their dogs out, but, as usual, they weren't there. I took my left turn, looking at the graveyard to my right as I transitioned onto a dirt path, getting even steeper now. I was almost to the valley, the gate was closed and locked as usual, but the chain was rusted and the lock was brittle. As usual, there were flowers by the side, but they were losing their leaves as well, if they weren't dying.
"At least the weeds are alive," I said as I walked through the human-sized opening by the gate, and into the now eerily silent cabin. I remember when there was life here, when I would walk and a bird would frantically fly away, or I would hear their songs
Machine
I awaken to the sky pierced by the blazing eye again, it's lifeblood flowing through my windowsill and trickling upon the open abyss of my pupils, causing them to begrudgingly contract to adapt to the coming agony of light. Slowly I began to flex my stubborn and heavy muscles, forcing the twitch of a finger, then the movement of an arm, to eventually force myself into some semblance of a sitting position, though still unwilling -or mayhaps unable- to bear the full weight of my tungsten heart with proper posture. As the golden lifeblood of the sky filled the room, I found myself submerged up to my head and unable to breath, so I forced my rusting joints to move, straightening and standing, before wading over to my blinds to fully close them and ebb the flow of blood into my room, though eventually found the action pointless, as the room was now filled completely with a golden hue. I let out a sigh, and decided to simply allow the blinds to fully open, ignoring the pain the coming of the sun wrought unto my hollowed bones. I would again return to my empty halls, again I would take my hollow crown, and sit upon my meaningless throne. I still do not sleep, not only because their faces still appear before me to mock my failure, but because it does not matter how sleepless and miserable I am. I have gained a cursed immortality, I need nothing to survive, no matter how miserable I feel without it, and I will never age or die, no matter how many desolate millennia pass. The animals left behind are not intelligent. In a few million years they may gain some semblance of a mind, but at the moment they are simple reptiles, with no mental capacity for empathy or training, let alone complex thought. For the creatures of the changed world to offer even the basic companionship of a pet in the old world, I would have to selectively breed them painstakingly for generations, and I will have gone completely insane by the time the process has finished. Insanity is a poisonous temptation constantly whispering at my neck. Why not slip into the comfort of a broken mind? Perhaps if I become insane, I will be too stupid to comprehend the hopelessness, or the guilt. That's still here. I still see the faces. The faces probably aren't even the same, I'm sure they have changed through the many years, been morphed by my memories thousands of times until they were unrecognizable. That hurts me almost as much as the guilt itself, the forgetting. With the memories leaving me, I will have nothing. I think I fear losing the faces as much as I fear the faces themselves. Then I'll have nothing andno one.
Directrix Prologue.
The sky was black as pitch, the rain poured out of the sky in an unending downpour, even with my flashlight I could barely see my own hand outstretched, the howling of the winds seemed to my agitated mind as a banshee shrieking in pure and unbridled agony. Lightning flashed, lighting my surroundings for but a moment, but a long enough moment to allow me to remain on the path, then came the crash of the thunder, I felt the potent rumbling deep within my chest. Behind me, in the distance, I saw a sinister red glow, I turned around and quickened by pace, making ever the more haste to return to Asylum. I began to hear thunder again, this time from all sides but front, but this thunder was no thunder, it began as but a warning murmur, but crescendoed quickly to a tremendous roar, the red glow behind me began to grow larger, now appearing at the corner of my vision even as I was facing directly away. I was desperate, I had to make it back before it reached me, I could not let its reign spread to our home, I had to warn the others. My vision began to darken, the loss of blood coupled with the days without food or rest finally began to catch up to me, I desperately wailed my warning, hoping that the storm would not drown it completely, in this final warning I placed my very soul, praying that some soul could hear me and save themselves. I finished my warning with the last of the air within me, never to draw another breath again.
Madness
I had a dream
In this dream, I dreamed a dream,
And in this dream within a dream, I found a seam,
a seam in the dream within a dream, and as I pulled the seam, I felt a pulling in my chest, and blood pooling somewhere inside, and my soul came undone.
And the dream dreamed, and the sky was red, and my blood was only water,
And the rivers ran with tears, and the oceans writhed in anger
The dream within a dream does not think, as men do,
It breathes, it cascades across time and contracts the past into the present and the falsehoods into truth,
And I dreamt a memory, and I remembered a dream, but the memory of which I dreamt was not my own,
And the dream I remembered I'd never dreamt,
Because in this dream within a dream, time is not, and I am not one, but a collection,
I do not think, I am a thought, I cannot dream, for I am dreamt.