“There's no rest for the wicked,” Proverbs 4:16
The sentiment has haunted me since birth. Not because I’m exceptionally religious. And not because I believe I’m inherently evil or beyond redemption – well, maybe at a time. But there’s no point in dwelling on that right now. I see no point in asking for forgiveness for sins I know I’ll commit again so it’s mute for now. Really it haunted me so relentlessly because since before I can remember. I’ve never really cared for sleep. Whenever I can go a few weeks without a powernap trust and believe I’ll do it. I always felt it was just a necessary evil to become what I wanted. No matter how painfully ordinary I felt there was all this time to weave at my will. I had the means to sew and manufacture my future into whatever I wanted to be. Life was limitless because I was this insomnic child of time — basically: my 10,000 hours are shorter than yours. It was a gift. That’s how I felt in the beginning. But as I’ve grown older, as my doubts grow deeper, as my connection to my darkness grows stronger, and as my heart grows colder a new question screeched from the school of predacious voices swimming in my mind. Packed so tight that they became almost indistinguishable from each other, these grey ghouls swirling skintight through my mind never in sync but always welding together like a disorienting smoky cloud of whisps. But when it comes to this one question they always seem to agree.
See the thing about insomnia is that no matter how long you run, how hard you try, there’s nowhere to hide from the sandman. He’s a primordial predator – the prodigal son. And while everyone else sees him as this jolly, golden angel child sent from the heavens to deliver a valiant shimmer of hope to spark dreams of the impossible and ignite a revolution to herald a change in our current realities. But in my Contorted dimension in time, He’s anything but pleasant. He is a cascading beast of black sand highlighted in the dried red remnants of his victims. his beading eyes a galaxy hallow and grim: akin to the soul-reaping wonder of a black hole bore wide open so you can see into the barren abyss of his soul. In my reality, every morning I lay paralyzed in bed as his coarse ramparts prowl hunched over me – his wade tearing at my skin as I lay helpless under the immense pressure of his being with his mouth grueling, grin drooling at the thought of another taste of my flesh until he releases me from his gravitas as if to remind me that my feeble being is nothing, and he merely permits my existence for the moment. I was living in a borrowed pocket of his space.
It was in my rented pocket of the stars: set in silent darkness where solace stood to age under the pressure of the glossy, glacial air that consumed this chamber. The air crystallized around me until a winter cloud condensed against my frame comforting my heart with a gentle cloud-like hug: a contradicting embrace. This fragile crystalline chill, delicate but immense, was almost tyrannical in approach, as its sense of valor managed to slow the fiends screaming in my head to a hushed halt. Even still, this frozen silence, to my skin, felt more like the kind and gentle touch, a warming acknowledgment that radiated promisingly, as if to say: “You are not alone.” It felt like a friend.
The nimbus absorbed the room so only soft silhouettes of the lockers encasing the rooms could peer through the veil. Somewhere between the obstruction of my sight and the almost endearing cold I was finally – for the first time in weeks – allowed a still moment to feel. To feel the feverish tremble of my bones as they clashed expeditiously quaking under the tumultuous reality of my seemingly endless endeavors. The persistent ritual of hacking tirelessly at my existence like a tomahawk heaving against the grain of time. Chipping away at the bark that violently echoes my every failure to breach its hide. Its desolate screech rampages vivaciously throughout the room colliding and skirmishing with itself like the wild unkempt waves of a storm clashing until the waves collapse into a destructive trough that swallows me whole as I continue to hew, heave, and hack until I hurl from the sonic pressure; now constricting my conviction until it is nothing more than a feeble obligation to time wasted. I Feel how my skin has come to cling to my bones as if they hang from a cliff for dear life fearing more of the fall than the insurmountable pain that flashes through their grip as the continuous plea for existence tears through conviction like grated sandpaper shearing away at supple flesh – grating the essence until the damage is too egregious to bear. I felt the blood draining from my eyes dripping until it pooled sticking to my feet as they drug at the floor weighted as if restrained by a sanguine ball and chain leeching from my spirits and depriving me of any cheer: left to feel the intolerable gravity of my selfish servitude. But most importantly I felt my solitude.
A glimmering mirror managed to reach through the veil. I looked upon it in its entirety. The cracks gorged through its silhouette as if an earthquake had shacked it to its core altering its existence. Fragmenting it's being into five distinct islands swimming in a murky sea of carnage. The mirror was left tainted by a smokey tint that obscured the luxurious prism it once contained, while the vibrant hues of jovial oranges and creative yellows eroded away like the sands of time, the remnants of the past were harrowed by desolation and corrupted by darkness. Leaving:
- An impersonal and depressed Blue
- A dominant Red, comprised of bloodthirsty hues, that evoked feelings of immense danger.
- A greedy and stagnant green shone a faux-pax glimmer of luck amidst its dust-like splinters
- An arrogantly regal purple whose rampant instability could not decide between its immaturity and restriction.
- Lastly, introspective but yearnful indigo.
Each reflected different episodes of my life; definitive moments that shaped the maleficent figure I’d come to reflect.
As I looked upon the tainted lens, I became transfixed on the indigo Island that stood at the top of the frame. A scene adorned by stars defined its murky reflection and that contrast of beauty and grime was one I simply could not ignore. I walked towards the smokey glass and gazed at the memory closely. I yearned to return to that moment when everything seemed so right. But as I drugged forward my legs grew weaker, my chained feet impossible to lift. An erupting rumble burst through the cloudy veil as the locker shook violently as the contents wrestled devoutly to escape. A trickle of hellfire dripped from the sprinklers above. The ember: fell gracefully on the ground. The flame gradually grew as it fought to devour the air in the room, walking bullishly towards me – the lockers erupt. Out comes an army of upright basses, spinning in prayer as they pound their steel mounts into the sand… A subtle detail I had missed while under my reflective trance. The incanting basses established an evocative consistent beat. A simple 1-2-3-4 1-2-3-4 1-2-3-4 1-2-3-4 1-2-3… the kick continued to pulse through the room as I noticed myself sinking into the black sands below. I can feel the searing heat inching closer – my thoughts thaw over scorching waves more intense than the sun. Now, the grim ghouls of self-doubt, loathing, and fear were unbound from the restraints of my mind and cast over me like a cavernous raincloud parading with condemning thunder throughout the room. Their cacophonous chants now a devastating symphony as the sand had inched its way to my torso. It was then that he pulled me by strands of hair and pinned my eyes to see those gaping red eyes refracting through the stars. And as the mops stood to pluck the strings, the brooms stood to join in the dance, and the inferno erupted in a feverish entrapping circle that amplified a secular synth within its confines; The beast poured himself over me. The sand cascaded into my mouth ripping down my throat like violent rapids clawing against my larynx until it tore into something reminiscent of grated paper in the wind. He bore into my lungs as this devastating sandstorm abraded through its walls and tore at my breath like a hurricane of hot shrapnel tearing at the flesh with a ferocity that consumed all in its wake. Like a fiery black hole squeezing any signs of life, air, or thought from existence. Leaving: nothing.
I would love to say, that as we fade to black, this was the end. That I was finally laid to rest, cause of death: Suffocation. But alas, as my insides were ripped apart, and as the sand overflowed from my mouth. It was not death that brought about this black-out. It was – simply:
Seething, Mind-melting, Bone contorting, agony
Rest assured knowing that this is only the beginning for if he is Alpha, I am Omega. But we haven’t made it that far yet.