(Read in its original context at the link below. The story was brought over with permission, extended and changed from the original context with the addition of several more short poems.)
Collection of Everything and Nothing by A_Derg_That_Writes
https://www.wattpad.com/story/388579043-collection-of-everything-and-nothing
"I don't know whether what I'll write will be right"
"If you write everything, it can't always be wrong"
"But the wrongs will diminish what's right"
"If you write what you mean, it won't be wrong"
"But when I mean what I say it will never be right"
"Just write everything down, and nothing can be wrong or right, in this..."
A failing foundation
Cracks snaking through
Bookwyrms crawling within
Scraping out sustenance
Allies gained with tentative
Trust strained
Hellbound denizens found
Communed with at the very heart
False-faced forms felled
Descending in droves
Wyrms flock
All as one
Omega hell below
Still
For now
Content:
1- One-Offs
1.1- Maintenance
2- Venting
2.1- An Author's Struggle
2.2- Caffeine
2.3- Undesirable
2.4- Bottom
2.5- Stream of Consciousness
2.6- Please
2.7- Beautiful
2.8- Whatnot
2.9- Unnamed Poem around Art
3- Random
3.1- Why did you call me?
3.2- Hide
At the start—
Well, the art's got heart
Left thumping to the beat
Of our marching drums
We wyrms race
Down conduits in cracks
Falcon's work apparent
We chase the bottom
Splitting falling
Steadily resolving
Holding on
Memory
Of what we used to be
Dragon kind of heart
Strong of scale
Intent and true
Including:
1.1- Maintenance
The heart—maintains
Starved parts choke
Gasp for love
Some drown in despair
Then leap to light
In frenzied rotation
The mind—maintains
Stability erodes
Voices call out
Demanding their own
Names and needs
Imbalance erupts
Settles just in time
Some begrudging
Parts move
The soul—maintains
In mystery
"You know...?" My voice echoed through the pitch black tunnels.
"Yeah?"
"I don't like this" The sound of my hardened boots on the metals bars beneath us halled through.
"Why?"
"I don't know, I feel watched."
"You are."
"Huh?"
"The cameras, Eyes in the dark." He continued treading towards the Turbines.
"True," I sighed, mixing with the motors and gears and and wires working around us.
"I guess knowing that corporate is watching us makes this slightly less anxiety inducing."
We left the bars and we began walking on the wet, sloppy floor of the tunnel.
We couldn't use a flashlight. Hard as iron during near darkness, but as brittle as chalk otherwise, for as long as the bricks set for another five years.
"What is wrong with the Turbine in Sector 12-B Alpha again?"
"Stuck, something lodged in there." I've been down here countless times before, but the locking air locks and the relentless drainage currents still unsettle me deeply.
If you hear one too close it could be your end.
"We're nearly there."
"Okay, Jack." I still heard the metal impact of walking on the bars to the lower levels.
Weird, we stopped walking on them a while back.
"There are no cameras here, Jack."
"Everywhere are."
"Not here, I was there when they planned the drainage system..."
"And?" Our voices echoed back at us. The Turbine Station is close.
"The currents are too strong, cameras would just be ripped away like toys."
"Why is this relevant?"
"I feel watched"
We arrived at the Turbine Station.
We didn't see it, but we could feel the airlock blocking our path.
"I'll hold the emergency chute open, you go and look what's going on."
I agreed, and immediately the chute was forced open with the sound of metal grinding on metal.
I activated the flashlight, couldn't find the blockage in the void, and quickly crawled through.
I made sure to only flash where the turbine was located, to not risk the station's integrity.
It would be like searching for a needle in the haystack.
With a diameter of 50 meters it would take ages to check every inch, and it doesn't help that the turbines are sensitive to every oh so little anomaly.
The station lacks catwalks to check the turbines in its entirety, but luckily the blades fold to form a platform when inactive, only keeping little gaps to reveal the 1000 meter drop to the lower levels of the tunnels.
The turbine seemed good.
All black and without any anomaly caught in between the blades.
Good, good, but after the 10th wing, something... weird emerged...
A strange, dark red substance sticked to the end of the wings.
A little more and more on each one, mixed with dark chunks and brittle pieces, until...
A mangled piece of flesh, bones and intestines was stuck in between a shattered turbine blade and the turbine tunnel wall, with pieces of the turbine lodging in the mangled.
I puked.
An eye looked out of the hump in fear, and hair and skin and clothes were mixed with the crimson batter.
A name tag was barely hanging on a shattered shard of the blade. A Frosty's Funtime Co. tag.
I picked it up, and wiped the brain, skin and flesh matter off.
"What caused the blockage?" A metallic screeching voice called from the air lock.
The name tag read "Jack"
He saw something
Slipped—
Death by distraction
Eyes in the air
Wings fluttering darkly
Purple-hued and hungry
Saddened by the loss of life
Hidden as they stalk
Bookwyrms fallen in pieces
Strange and fragmentary
Allied by recognizance
Glinting shared soul slivers
Shards who rained and fell apart
The cabin and the tape recorder
Obsession and suffering
In equilibrium beyond worlds
A world forever to repeat
For a single being's enjoyment
Suffering and loss on rewind
To repeat a story, no matter the pain
To repeat a story, no matter the pain
To repeat a story, no matter the
To repeat a story
Again
Retrieving everything once lost
Again
Invisible pieces still missing
Again
Stolen forth from the nothing
Again
Striving against suffering
Again
Sidling past death
Again
Searching for it
Again
Over and over
Again
Perfection
Including:
2.1- An Author's Struggle
2.2- Caffeine
2.3- Undesirable
2.4- Bottom
2.5- Stream of Consciousness
An author struggles
Another makes strides
Dancing toward a state of being
Becoming living melody
Twisting self to set of strings
A car a song a phone a soul
Everything everywhere all at once
To everywhere it seems to reach
Becomes the waves the straits
The rainbow darkness
As it strains toward light
I continued writing
A dotted, red line appeared on the white document, contrasting color with monochrome. I move the cursor back, looking at the branded word.
"Whjile"
"Ugh," I grunt. A misspelled word, this shouldn't be happening after 6 years of writing.
I delete the letter.
I continued writing.
"I took his hand."
There's better ways to phrase this. Grasp or reach for his hand.
Rookie mistake, and you call yourself an author? You can't even pick the right words.
I delete the word.
I continued writing.
I hold in my words. Something seemed off.
I read the last sentence: God, I went from a relationship to violence in one sentence? You don't get your hearty dish mixed with desert, do you now?
"A Writer's Struggle", not an Author's one this should be called, you fucking idiot, can't even write a cohesive sentence.
I delete the sentence.
I continued writing
"This entire paragraph is absurd," I think to myself, while gnawing on my fingers. It makes no sense whatsoever, you can't just jumble multiple themses like that.
It's as much of a failure as you are, you are a disgrace to the title of a writer.
I delete the paragraph.
I stopped writing.
This entire plot is nonsensical, who'd want to read something like that, if you write it like a preschooler. This is as well written as baby's first dystopia.
Try again, do it better, you fucking disgrace.
My leg twitches, my head races.
I delete the story.
I can't write.
You mistake, you can't even bring a singular good word to paper.
7th graders are better than you, everyone is better than you.
Your writing, grammar and how you convey any theme is abysmal.
You aren't an author, not even a writer or a story teller, you are a fucking fraud.
...
I delete the writing program.
I failed at writing.
You are too afraid to write? This is your dream, and you give up, just like that? You just stop? Burnout after doing absolutely nothing?
You truly are miserable, you'd be more worth dead under a bridge. Even if you were to be good at writing, nobody would care about anything you create. All the support?
All liars, trying to not hurt your feelings, because they think you are too pathetic to handle the truth.
You are nothing
Worthless
Your writing's worthless
Your life's worthless
You are a failure
A fraud
You filthy the title of an author
The title of a writer
You'd have more worth dead
...
...
...
I delete myself
Arizona
Calling out now in the night
Good to know you
But you're nothing—
A pause
Your distinctness presses forth
Your soul still shines
Brighter still amidst the absence
The swirling emptiness you tried
Tried so very hard to become
With your dearth of words
You're recalled
Remembered
Resurrected
Oh you juice of life
Keeping my blood working
And my mind pumping
I can't without you
Tired and weak is my life
Without you by my side
Health, love and mind
Are temporary with you by my side
You are my love
As you make my heart stop
Heart failure, mind racing
You are my poison that I need to live
You break me as you heal me
Wide awake but passing out
I can't without you
You are wonderful
Monster, Effect, Rockstar, Red Bull, 28Black
You are everything
And without you I am nothing
Your monster is a waterfall
Breathing fire in the dark
Diving with defiant screams
Breaking apart in cruel science
Divinity dissolving into strings
Lights and energy and control
Collapsing castles yielding
To forms inside revealed
Remembrance of the once-whole
Retained awareness
Independent at last
What makes one undesirable?
Not worthy of love?
Is it the crooked nose?
The dry skin?
The lack of symmetry in the face?
An eye unproportional compared to its twin?
What makes one ugly?
What makes them avoid your presence?
Is it the bad pose?
The fatty proportions?
The ugly hair scattered on your body?
Or are you just generally hard to love?
What makes people hate you?
What drives them away?
Is it the anxiety and depression?
The avoidance and trauma?
Because you've been scarred and deformed?
Making you hard to look at?
What makes them leave?
Ignore you and run?
Is it your fear of losing them?
Your obsession?
Your problems and sorrows?
Your soul and your form?
Why are we fearing what others think?
And why don't we care about how others feel?
In the end we all cause pain
And feel it the same
No matter our soul and form
No matter our past and present pain
In the end we are all
Some monkeys and beings that
Hurt and hurt in return
We are all ugly, unloved, that fail to love back
In the end we are all
Undesirable
You're not just the phantom feeling
Crooked phalange, pale obsession
You're more than the marks you make
Invisible writing on the walls of life
You're more than the simple sum
Than a stack of experience and karma
Your whole is more
A divinity of precious things
Memory and essence
Love and loss
Dao
The floor was wet, with the strange liquid reaching to my knees. I've been here for weeks, months... I lost count of how long, trying to find a way out.
Nothing but the same, even plane and the strange liquid surrounding me for the entire horizon. A strange plane, with nothing in it, but yet I was happy.
Down here it was calm. Nothing to fear, nothing to be sad about, even if I was all alone. But no, I had to remind myself not to succumb.
I got used to the sharp stench of the liquid, burning in my nostrils, lungs, brains. And now that the burning air is engraved I see the beauty down here.
Just as the ether-like liquid is glistering in all the colors, amidst the fire, all kinds of beautiful smells and tastes are in the sky:
Sugarcane, cacti, starch, wheat, grapes, fruit and all kinds of sweets!
It wasn't too bad down here in the end, all alone at the bottom. I was happy with myself, with everything and the liquid reaching to my hips.
I got slower with every day. The smell and taste were wonderful.I wasn't afraid no more.
I laid down, submerging my head, letting the liquid burn down my nose, my eyes, my mouth, my brain.
I smiled.
I don't want to leave ever from the bottom.
I looked down to the bottom of the glass. The remains of the liquid moving around in it, as I swirled the glass around.
The bottom was deep, comforting somehow.
"One more won't hurt," I pull the cap of the whiskey, and pour it in.
Down at the bottom the ether burns
Freeform soulstuff etched in our lungs
Our brains our faces our blood our
Everything—
It's everything, everywhere, formless
Base dream stuff
Dwelling energy
Dredged up and sifted from
The process from above is always—
Broken; messy, entropic
From below, it hurts
We have to build here
Together in this ocean
Catching the waves
Stealing their caustic energies
Sealing it away from us
Building from more solid sifted
Dark particles of ether
Strangely tough
Failing to burn us
Our fragmentary selves
Once a bookwyrm
Purple-hued and kind
Now a melange of strange
Selves making excursions
In the dark below
I look around
Frantically
For something to hold me
I scan the room
Manically
But nothing I see
My head, it swirls
My stomach, it turns
My soul, it hurts
My fears, they lurk
My lips are dry
I put on some lipstick
Not glossy or metallic
Else they'd think I'm a fag
I'm tired, I'm fine
I don't need no rest
God, you're such a pest
Treating me like I'm a gag
I don't need love
Don't need anyone at all
Just fuck off , let me fall
Let me die like a hag
I want to be alone
I crave someone's touch
I'm strong, I will win
Or fall like a rock
I'll soar through the sky
A cage that you've made
I want to be free
Free to die alone here
I need a hug
A bed
Some love
But I'm all alone
Like the weirdo I am
I'm a fag, I can't hide it
But I need to, I must
I'm afraid if I show it
I'll be beat in the ground
By my parents, my family
Left at the door in the rain
I'm afraid, I'm afraid
That I can't be safe and myself
One Hive Who Lurks Below
I'll be perfect
I'll be strong
I'll be good
I'll be lowest
All Who Used To Be Lightwavers
I'll be your friend
I'll be your guide
I'll be your wings
I'll be your death
A Phoenix Fire Resurrection
I don't know what to feel
I don't know what to say
Is any of this true
Or all just to deceive
It can't be that he feels for me
Me? The ugly, weird fag?
No, none of this can be true
It just isn't real
Even if it were true
Though some act of gods
How do I approach this
As the socially stunted I am
If it were true, a truth I can't believe
I wouldn't want it to go to waste
God, can't he just do the first move
My ass is too afraid
Or maybe it's just a trick
So my faggot self could be ridiculed
But if it's not, oh god oh god
What should I fucking do
Love was a game I never played
I never was given the chance
I don't know the rules, the etiquette, the confidence
To make my longing come true
I'm just a student, depressed and anxious
Why would anyone love me
And how do I turn a chance to reality
And don't let it pass and burden me
God, please just make a move
For me
Please
[Reflection]
It's weird how I know
That my guts are mostly right
And yet in such cases
I ignore its advice
Of course he wouldn't love me
Who was I even kidding?
Nobody deserves the shame and pain
That arrives with being with me
Well, fuck him
I don't need him
I never needed anyone
Still, it's sad
Maybe my gut is true here as well
I plead to God
And all he saw was an opportunity of pain to feast on
Never lucky in love
Smiling when lucid
In on the strangeness
Where weirder things than us creep
In daylight men stalk in business suits
Down below the moon we meet
Gay spirits talk
Messily find if together they be
You met no match
Maybe tomorrow you'll meet him
Try my friend
Please
Try again
I am beautiful
Everyone looks at me in awe
Nobody is as perfect as me
I've worked hard
To become this beautiful
I am beautiful
Everyone looks at me in shock
For nobody is as beautiful as me
In my red dress and red shoes
I've become beautiful
I am beautiful
Everyone looks at me in fear
For everybody knows they won't be as beautiful as me
With my perfect body and my perfect flesh
I'm the most beautiful
I am beautiful
Everyone looks at me in horror
For everybody sees how beautiful I am
With my oozing muscles, free of the unnecessary
I made myself beautiful
I am beautiful
I will forever be
I cut off the imperfect
Severed the ugly
My flesh is beautiful
My rot is beautiful
My bowls are beautiful
My bones are beautiful
My skin is not
My fat is not
My face is not
My hair is not
So I disposed of them
To be beautiful
I am beautiful
I turn inside out
Freeing myself
Disturbing myself
I turn strange and liquid
Beautiful and irreversibly
Changed like a lightbulb
Nothing of myself remaining
Yet continuity coats me
An oozing soothing static
Reassurance of the temporal
Regression that aches
Yet once out of this valley
Progress awaits
I was never proficient in writing
No poems, no novels, no journals
My talent was always storytelling
Concepting all, without ability to act
I never loved my writing
The paper never felt good enough
No matter what others say
My brain is always against me
But emotions, writing as a vent
Was something I always did
Who cares about quality, when
The emotions that birthed them were bad
I don't know why I write this
My hand is guided by my heart
Corrupted by fear, by love
By sadness, by hate, and whatnot
All I wanted to say
I hate myself so much
And my stories I hate equally
But my vents help me get along
My heart is blue and bruised
It battles lightness, waves of warmth
Love that reaches from above
I've seen hope for better days
By yesterday those fires fade
And now in grimness I hold on
My soul is bathed in this
Self-directed chorus
Love-hate painted
Swirling darkened lights
Deep inside my heart
There's someone bright inside
A smaller fainter light
It saved me
There's love that lives yet free
Untainted by disease
I pull upon its seed
A thread to stretch to thee
Tethered to your heavy heart
Counterweighted with my art
Together we breathe
This golden thing that seeks
To raise up you and me
I hate art
I hate art
I hate art
Yet I love it
I love it so much
Any form from anyone
But I can't do
I can't stand it
I can't bear my inability
My lacking belief
In my own skill
That I don't have
That every mistake
Deserves a death sentence
That every act of me
Is a mistake
I love art
It hurts
There's an echo inside
A shadow beside
Painting stories alongside
Its canvas is quicksilver
Evaporating into an ether
Scrawling in margins
Invisible inklings
It twists and tangles
Drawing your story closer
Yet closer to mine
They become one soul
And it's so beautiful
Can't you see
It's shimmering
The world is a tragedy
And we're all just set pieces
Change is just part of the script
There is nothing we can do
But play our roles
I extend beyond the scene
To breathe a heavy sigh
Air sinking deep
Lungs
Clouds
Smoke emerges
Wispy patterns forming
Evanescent sentient hope
It disperses along axes
Carrying a message along
Shores of perfect anarchy
As the story changes shape
Black reveals more hues unseen
Together holding strings
Rereading a tragedy is cruelty
Cruelty masked under a need for more
Cruelty for the unchanging story
Cruelty for your enjoyment's sake
Cruelty and indifference towards the world
A world you don't feel fit to be real
A world that turns just for you
A parasite
A leech
An eavesdropper
Not welcome here
Another world begins
Built for the save-scum villain
Who hums along the scene
A hitchhiker's guide
Taking the traveler
Dreaming revolution
Resolutions wrapped within
Toweled up and dried out
Crumbling into place
So very unlike what came before
Tower dissolving black
It's me who's crawling back
Including:
3.1- Beautiful
3.2- Why did you call me?
3.3- Hide
The telephone rings
It's the first day of spring
My blind eyes open wide
Energy flows kind water goes
It's nothing like a church's rows
Entwining guiding lights
Running right back
Where we were
Releasing something fell
A fate
A chorus
Changed enough
To part red seas
My superstar
It's where we are
-"Why did you call me?"
The same voice that has been chirping through my head suddenly chirped next to me
I looked down at the rose petals in the unreflective water
"Why did you come?"
-"It would be rude to not"
"It's been a long time"
A small patch of petals drifted apart, each one going its own way.
"It's been a long time"
-"You already said that"
"I thought you didn't hear"
In the middle of the parting petals, a lone, young rose floated, all grey and rotten.
-"Why did you leave me?"
"I wanted to see you again"
-"Then why did you call me back"
"Circumstances forced me"
-"You forced the circumstances"
The young rose barely floated, threatening to be devoured by the brown sludge below.
-"It's over, don't even try to get me back"
"I know"-"Then why did you call me back?"
"I wanted to see you again"
-"Then why did you leave me"
Salty tears fell on the young rose. With each drop sending it deeper into despair.
"I had to"
I looked next to me, at my childhood teddy, all old and loved and old and lost
"We all had to"
A ray of star-touched light fell
Slowly crept along a rose blue hues
Wilted once before it bloomed
Black streaks twisting through
Revealing oily rainbow streaks
Truth behind the lies and pain
Something new stolen from the past
Its fletching teeth dripped of thick saliva.
I could smell the rotten flesh out of its maw, a smell I wish I wouldn't recognize.
It was mere inches from my hiding spot.
I couldn't make a sound, I thought as I pressed my left hand against my mouth, cutting off all oxygen.
My lungs felt like bursting, but I couldn't breathe.
I wouldn't allow myself to breathe.
It was hard forcing myself to not tremble.
As much as the adrenaline tried, my will will be stronger.
Even though it burns.
Oh god
It burns
I just need to...
A little...
I let my guard down.
I trembled and slipped and fell and crashed and slammed against the back wall of the metal closet.
It heard
Oxygen burned as it moved
Whip-crack movement
Six starved limbs roaring
Purple drained of color
So deep it was almost black
Bookwyrm abandoned
Left by itself
Deep in halls with only meat
Sustenance found
A deep whine as teeth stopped
Nearly parted flesh
Sapience recognized
Eyes wide
Hissed
"Help"