Broken Record

Rinse and repeat.
I stare blankly at my feet
And watch my sinful suds gurgle into the drain.
Today's filth will be tomorrow's dirt.
Did you hear about?
Fill-in-the-blank.
The skeletons in my closet are the corpses
Of lost causes.

Such Stuff as Dreams are Made On

I sat squatting in the far corner of my apartment and bit my nails. It’s a bad habit I’ve never had the desire to quit.

There is some masochistic pleasure in being able to rip up a piece of your body painlessly. To investigate the ridges of the tears. To see how much farther you can go until you feel it. And sometimes even more.

Clipping my nails has only ever given me mild pleasure at best. The sound of the sharp snap is a satisfaction which dissipates quickly. My throbbing fingertips, however, last for days.

The simple grey light of the early morning hung in heavy silence. It had not yet reached my toes, and I watched it indifferently.

And then something peculiar happened. A silver sliver caught my eye, reflecting what little light protruded the room. My eyes followed it to the wooden floor, upon which a small green spider stalked.

Its legs emerged like antennae. They rose to a peak twice its height. The lanky legs moved quickly, precisely. It reminded me, for some odd reason, of a ballerina. Pointy toes moving just gracefully so.

It scuttled about my room, investigating various discarded items. A half-finished puzzle depicting the oil on canvas “Napoleon Crossing the Alps” by Jacques-Louis David. An empty bag of Calbee wasabi mayo flavored potato chips. My La Vie en Rose DVD case. A pocket-sized packet of tissues.

Then it turned toward me and froze. It seemed to regard me in a curious fashion from its 8 protruding eyeballs. I felt judged and momentarily looked away. When our eyes met again, it immediately started toward me in a menacing way.

It tilted its head toward the floor as if charging. I noticed a horn protruding from its forehead complete with about a dozen sharp hooks growing from it like little hairs. Its glossy shell seemed impenetrable.

As is possible in dreams, my room possessed an oddly warped angle. My presence seemed to weigh down the corner I had claimed so that everything else appeared insignificant. As a result, the approaching spider grew in size as it charged.

Although the spider had proved to be nearly the size of a golfball in all actuality. I wasted little breath in a quick uptake of the knee followed by a most satisfactory thud to the ground. I promptly squashed it with the heel of my foot.

The outer membrane resisted my weight at first, only to give in to an irresistible POP! Mmm, I sighed. Finger biting ain’t got nothing on this. I relished in my newfound guilty pleasure, then investigated the results. Its legs, somewhat crumpled, twitched amid a small puddle of what resembled green applesauce.

However, my moment of zen quickly vanished. As if awakened by my actions, two more spiders slightly larger than the first appeared. They didn’t give me any dirty looks, but I squashed them for good measure, too.

In retrospect, I have to admit, it was a mistake. The room suddenly darkened, and I glanced at my balcony window. I was shocked to find that the entire window was enveloped in web.

What must have been thousands of spiders moved about, spinning, clipping, sucking the blood from helpless victims of fate. Simultaneously, they paused. The web jostled in the breeze, and they clung tightly to it.

At first, I could only see the sharp tips of the large hairs. Then as it lowered itself, the beastly legs came into clear vision. This spider must have been the size of a small car.

I hunched motionless in the corner. Nervously, I began to bite my nails.

As if on cue, the choir of spiders spun single strands of silk and dropped from the web like parachutes. The army of legs tap tap tapping my wooden floor filled the room with a horrid sound much like scratches on an old record playing.

My hands became clammy, and I swallowed a lump welling in my throat. I began grabbing the spiders, now the size of fists, and popping them. At first, I was almost welcoming the opportunity of poppage.

But as they kept coming, I couldn’t keep up. An endless sea of green abdomens and spindly legs. They tickled my skin as they crawled up my arms like grape-sized goosebumps.

And as the stories always go, I woke up.

Late Night Chats

heykeriann02: what are you up to?

superphryxis: folding laundry
not sure what im gonna do for the rest of the evening tho!
might look thru my old pics and find some shit to edit

lol
you would
i really want to do some writing
but i think i'll last another 30min before i crash

lol
dude
blogs need updates more than once a month

hush
i'm drained of creative energy

yeah
i feel ya

tell me a story

hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm

wow
that was compelling!

lol
thx
im bad at stories
esp with remembering them on the fly
i have to be reminded of something

well
hey remember that time you told a really good story to one of your boring friends?
you should tell me that one

lol

you keep my boring friends out of this!!!

okokok
so i have an idea
and it's corny but i'm just like that

nice

i'ma start a story

ok

and you help me finish it

ok

it was one of those nights that just wouldn't end.

we should do every other sentence

the incessant ticking of the clock echoed in my empty bedroom, and as i slipped out of unconsciousness, time seemed to slow.

yeah yeah well wait
ok sry

i got to set it up

oh ok

the ticks faded into the darkness and the tocks swallowed me whole.


i said it would be the last time. but this would be the last time. the syringe falls from my shaking hand.
edit: i said it would be the last time so many times, but this would be the last time. the syringe falls from my shaking hand.

i held my breath for a moment, as if i could hold this moment indefinitely. the rush. blood bubbling. racing. i rested my head against the cool wall and stared at the ceiling, which began to waver.

the walls began to close in, reality faded from my body. this time was stronger than the others. i felt myself tumbling down the rabbit hole. the hallucinations began to creep into my mind.

my pupils dilated into black pools. i hovered over them, inspecting my drooping face. but the opaque waters showed only the emptiness lurking inside me. i leaned closer and squinted for good measure, but it was too late. i tumbled forward, swallowed whole. then, nothing. utter silence. don't panic. it's a black out. enjoy the moment while it lasts, because you won't remember it. the darkness was so thick i could run my fingers through it.

i waded in the void for hours, which were probably just seconds. a pungent odor filled the air. roses. i feel around, i touch the ground. silky petals titillate my fingertips. slowly, the shadow begins to lift.

a milky crimson wave surges, and i brace myself. it washes over my body, and i am in ecstasy. at once every hair on my body stands on end. my toes begin to tingle, and a slowly my skin prickles as if it is about to fall asleep. i'm as numb as novacain. i sink into myself and try to relax, but my mind is racing.

my heart hammers at my chest. palms sweaty, i close my eyes and take a deep breath. vivid rainbows and shapes dance across my eyelids. i open my lids, and am suddenly in a psychedelic world of color and light. i see something in the distance.

the mass seemed to boil over on itself as it slinked forward. it would bubble up and then spew forward, exploding from its own weight. as my eyes went in and out of focus, i began to realize that it wasn't something creeping toward me. it was many things. many tiny things creeping and crawling over one another in a mad race toward me.

sheer terror consumes me. i turn to run, but it is too late. i feel them scurrying up my legs, my body, my neck, my face. my scream is muffled by the millions of particles filling all of my orifices. i gasp for air, but each breath inhales them into my lungs. i'm drowning.
lol i like how you're writing in past and im writing in present

their miniscule pinchers tear and tug at my innards until i feel as if i am ripping at my seams. my gurgled scream emits only flesh, as the tiny creatures pull me inside out.
(there now i'm in the present)

the excruciating pain is replaced by the most intense euphoria ever felt. each bite sends sparks of pleasure through my body. my flesh withers away as the ravenous monsters have at my being

i am suddenly aware of each individual cell in my body. i marvel at the thought of thinking, feeling, moving, acting as a collection of these infinite beings. suddenly my sense of euphoria multiplied exponentially. i giggled helplessly.

the giggles turned into laughs, the laughs turned into hysteria. my brain was on the verge of implosion.

my thoughts ran wild. tangled roots pierced my brain. the once massive trees with outstretched branches of imagination come tearing through the vines and lay rotting in my damp and molding head.

let's continue this later, it's really fun, but my brain is too tired to think
save it
and we can pick it up

yeah i was gonna say the same
i was supposed to be in bed an hr ago

Impressions of a Man

A quick glance
Stolen breath
A chill fingers down the nape of my neck
I bite my lower lip
A new fixation
His lips taunt mine
As each word projects from his tongue
My heart grows weaker
A throbbing pain consumes my chest
My knuckles whiten
I am ravished
I am shaken
I am wanted
I’m not mistaken
But he does not move
He does not take me
He rests alone in the shadows
Untouchable
A mind retreated into uncharted waters
And those eyes reveal the mind within
Muddy water
Unclear thoughts
Unknown depths
A haunting fog of possibilities
Intrigue grips me
I tilt my head for a better view
One
Singular
Overwhelming
Peek
A knowing grin
A quiet nod
Unspoken words whisper in the air like smoke
They curl between my fingers and through my hair
Faint murmurs I don’t quite hear
Stoically he sits
Stiff yet slouched
He paws his beard and ponders
Nostrils flaring
Those knowing eyes wide
His world escapes me, and yet I rest
My head in my hand
Warmly watching
As distant worlds unravel like wire
Splaying out in every direction
Rocking back and forth
He collects them all
Polishes and intertwines his fantasies
Into a reality that he evades
While I sit there still
And wait
And wait
And watch

I could see Kana's head bobbing up and down as she paced outside my classroom. She's one of my students. She's always early. Occasionally she peeked above the horizon where the frosted glass becomes clear.

"Open the do-or, 1-2-3." Class ended, and Kana appeared in the doorway. I cocked my head to the side, questioningly.

She smiled. "Teacher. Blue marker, please."

I pointed to my basket in the corner, and she rushed to it and disappeared to the other classroom down the hall.

There are three girls in this class: Kana, Kanako, and Koko. They are all aspiring artists, specializing in the erasable marker medium. And since I like to consider myself a laid back teacher, I let them explore their art to its fullest.

The first three minutes of class are spent solely writing names on the board. The girls take full advantage. They each have their preferred color: Kana, blue; Kanako, orange; and Koko, green.

Koko almost always draws a palm tree with her name written on its leaves. Kanako prefers to draw a giant sunflower, the seeds spelling her name. And Kana's tends to change according to season: a Santa Clause in December; and most recently, a rat in lieu of 2008, the year of the rat.

And so it was no surprise when I walked into the classroom, I found Kana finalizing her furry friend. I explained to Kana that I was born in 1984--also the year of the rat--so 2008 should be a lucky year for me.

Kanako and Koko arrived shortly and drew their respective sunflower and palm tree. They sketched precisely six petals for the flower and six lines on the trunk of the tree for the six activities we would do in class.

I like to break up the monotony of class with games, partly for my own amusement in watching them play dirty and partly for their own benefit to learn while having fun. As an incentive, I give one point to the winner of each activity, who then has the privilege to add the point to her name.

The girls like to incorporate their points to their pictures, thus the strategically drawn petals and lines. Kana had spent so much time designing her picture that she had not premeditated a point system to her rat. So when she won the first game, she paused momentarily to consider precisely where the point should go.

She had written her name on its belly, which left the only blank space on the animal wedged between its head and her name. She promptly drew a 1 with the only marker left at the board, my red one.

Giggles spouted from Kanako and Koko. Now Kana's blue rat had red pouring from its mouth like blood. Kana looked at me confused, and I, too, couldn't help but laugh.

"Kana," I said. "It's a zombie rat."

A continued blank stare.

I smiled devilishly, raised my arms, and staggered toward her, licking my lips. I grabbed her arm and--"Ar rar raar ra arar!"--faked gnawing it.

She squealed and we all erupted with laughter. As the games progressed, Kana continued to win. With each additional point dripping blood from her rat's mouth, the class chanted, "Zombie rat! Zombie rat! Zombie rat!"

From then on, anything red was instantly zombified. Zombie boots. Zombie eraser. Zombie dice.

And then suddenly, Kanako jutted her finger at me. "Look!" They looked.

An exaggerated "Ehhhhhhhhhhhh!" that only the Japanese can pull off emitted from their tiny mouths.

"Zombie sensei!" yelled Kanako.

I had worn my red ribbon in my hair that day.

Nuchida Takara

Limbo

The inevitability of life generates on the pulsing mystery in which it is shrouded. I could elaborate on this issue. Tell you there is no God. No salvation. But then what is the point of that? Existence is a grain of sand churning in the belly of an oyster. And, like humans, it demands to be recognized as more than merely a grain of sand. We all view ourselves as pearls in the making.

Only sometimes, life intervenes with our plans. We are pried open and sucked into the sagging jowls of death, only to be spat out as nothing more than a slightly larger, and somewhat misshaped, grain of sand. And there we rest at the foot of the endless sea of death, nothing more than a spec of sand among infinite others. We glide this way and that in sync to the rhythmic ebb and flow of life continuing without us.

There is no remorse, though I’m not sure if there would be had I been able to hold on to lifely matters like emotion. Unfortunately, it drained out with every other conceivable liquid from the crevices of my body when I died. Perhaps Death itself soaked it up with bread and savored its volatile relish. I wouldn’t put it past the beast. It’s been known to do much worse, or so I’ve heard.

It’s interesting the things you hear when you die. I don’t know whether it was my body going into shock or massive loss of blood; but I heard many things. The secrets of life whispered to friends, priests, the night, were screaming into my ears. It was like the sudden gales of of a hurricane whipping through the canyons of my ear canal. A most horrible sound, it was nothing more than the pains of life in its unspoken purity.

The shrieks scratched at my eardrums until I’m pretty sure they burst. I lost all sense of equilibrium and fell into a vortex of voices. They spoke of the beast in many tones. Its fur matted with the sticky sweat beading on the brows the nearly still-living. A belly so swollen that not even the sun rises above its horizon. It walks in a permanent shadow bleeding from its heels.

Though it is most vicious, always victorious, Death should not be feared. It creeps slowly, silently, and it has no face. It’s the chilling darkness that curls around you tight, tight, tighter until you are helplessly paralyzed. It swallows you whole, wrapping its thick lips around you and devouring you sometimes more slowly than others.

Here is my limbo, my fear. I wait attoseconds, eons, in the vacuum of emptiness for my fate to unravel itself. Death could care less if you are Muslim, Buddhist, Christian, Atheist. Not time, not gravity, not pi, and certainly not faith can survive Death. There is only myself and what I discern to be the heavy breathing of the beast now digesting what’s left of me.

I fade in and out of what I can only perceive to be reality.

A stray cat shrieking in the night, a coastline devoured by the persistence of the tide, the sands of time fed by our own rotting corpses as we are each claimed by the insatiate appetite of decay.

For reasons such as these, there rests Aguni Jima. Perched on the edge of the Pacific, the sprouting land bears the scars of its time. Neither the savagery of the sea nor the gnawing jaws of death of conquered the crags cutting defiantly into the winds above.

They whip sharply in and out of the rugged coastline, screaming tales of those who refuse to be forgotten. They are plagued with the knowledge of things unspoken--the secrets whispered by the reeds, sung by the crickets, and seen in the eyes of the beast called death. They sleep in warm blood, prisoners to the hearts of the living, until that singularly final croaking breath taken in vain hopes to seal one’s fate.

These secrets are the very fibers of the first apple eaten upon birth. They are parasites meant to carve holes into our hearts, and they plunge from our throats and eyes as they burst open in horrific recognition the moment we die--the moment when time stands still and we can no longer deny our destiny, sealed in eternity before our failing vision. It is then we stare into the face of the demons who haunted our dreams.

Its eyes watch us, bemused; its nostrils curled as it hungrily awaits our souls. Drool bleeds from its oozing mouth, baptizing us into our damnation.

We are, at this point, helpless. We watch with inanimate eyes as our yellowed limbs are engulfed into flames. Those we once loved before emotion drained away with every other fluid from the crevices of our bodies wail in despair of our passed lives, in knowledge of what was to come. The last beams of light we’d every feast upon fingered their way through the smoke of incense and the dust of bones we lie in, crippled.

Here, then, in these last fleeting moments of solitude, the hunger sets in.

Meditations

Are you feeling it?
I’m faking it.
A vision opaque
Buried in split ends.
Close your eyes
Do you see this red wall?
Can you look past your nose?
I think I just got a whiff
Of Abraham Lincoln
Forgotten souls of
Lost
Bodies.
A life progressing into
Static reality.
Don’t jump the gun
Choose wisely
Or Wait.
It’s your choice.
I’m overgrown
Shackled to these weeds
Whose roots penetrate to depths
Unknown even to me.
Open up and swallow.
Take a swig of this sweat
A tad pungent
A little rusted
And mostly perforated.
You bit off more than you could chew.
Please read the instruction manual before using
Warning: choking hazard.
I would have said something, but
I’m blue.
Inhale through the nose and
Om.
Unconscious of my consciousness.
So I sink.
And expand.
And slowly
Dissipate.
The thunder rolls away
Tucked under the black horizon.
The flashes of light
Suddenly subtle
Muddy
Minute
As I drown in a pool of my subconscious