I Have a Special Plan for This World by Thomas Ligotti
When everyone you have ever loved is finally gone
When everything you have ever wanted is finally done with
When all of your nightmares are for a time obscured
As by a shining brainless beacon
Or a blinding eclipse of the many terrible shapes of this world
When you are calm and joyful
And finally entirely alone
Then in a great new darkness
You will finally execute your special plan
One needs to have a plan someone said who was turned away into the shadows
And who I had believed was sleeping or dead Imagine he said all the flesh that is eaten
The teeth tearing into it
The tongue tasting it's savour
And the hunger for that taste
Now take away that flesh he said
Take away the teeth and the tongue
Take away everything as it is
My own special plan for this world I listened to these words and yet I did not wonder If this creature whom I had thought sleeping or dead would ever approach his vision
Even in his deepest dreams
Or his most lasting death
Because I had heard of such plans such visions
And I knew they did not see far enough
But what was demanded in a way of a plan
Needed to go beyond tongue and teeth and hunger and flesh
Beyond the bones and the very dust of bones and the wind that would come to blow the dust away
And so I began to envision a darkness that was long before the dark of night And a strangely shining light
That owed nothing to the light of day
That day may seem like other days
Once more we feel the tiny legged trepidations
Once more we are mangled by a great grinding fear
But that day will have no others after
No more worlds like this will follow
A very special plan No more worlds like this No more days like that
There are but four ways to die a sardonic spirit might have said to me
There is dying that occurs relatively suddenly
There is dying that occurs relatively gradually
There is dying that occurs relatively painlessly
There is the death that is full of pain
Thus by various means they are combined
The sudden and the gradual
The painless and the painful
To yield but four ways to die
Even after the voice stopped speaking I listened for it to speak again
After hours and day and years have passed I listened for some further words
Yet all I heard were the faintest echoes reminding me
There are no others Was it then that I began to conceive for this world
There are no means for escaping this world
It penetrates even into your sleep
You are caught in your own dreaming
And a hell forever where there is no time
You can't do nothing you aren't told to do
There is no hope for escape from this dream
The very words you speak are only it's very words
And you talk like a traitor
Under it's incessant torture
There are many who have designs upon this world
And dream of wild and vast reformations I have heard them talking in their sleep
And cunning annihilations I have heard them whispering in the corners of crooked houses
And in the alleys and narrow back streets of this crooked creaking universe
Which they with their new designs were made straight and sound
But each of these new and I'll conceived designs Is deranged in it's heart
For they see this world as if it were alone and original
And not as only one of count with others
Whose nightmares all precede
Like a hideous garden grown from a single seed I have heard these dreamers talking in their sleep
And I stand waiting for them
As at the top of a darkened flight of stairs
And none of the secrets of my special plan
While I know every crooked creaking step of theirs
It was the voice of someone who was waiting in the shadows
Who was looking at the moon and waiting for me to turn the corner
And enter a narrow street
And stand with him in the dull glaze of moonlight
That my plan was misconceived
That my special plan for this world was a terrible mistake
Because, he said, there is nothing to do and there is no where to go
There is nothing to be and there is no one to know
Your plan is a mistake, he repeated
This world is a mistake, I replied
The children always followed him
When they saw him hopping by
A funny, funny, funny man
He made them laugh sometimes
He made them laugh oh yes he did
He did he did he did he did
One day he took them to a place
And told them things about this world
This funny, funny, funny world
Which made them laugh sometimes
He made them laugh oh yes he did
He did he did he did he did
Then the funny man who made them laugh
Revealed to them his special plan
His very special funny plan
Knowing they would understand
And maybe laugh sometimes
Oh yes he did He did he did he did he did
Their eyes grew wide beneath there lids
And how he made them roll
I first learned the facts from a lunatic
In a dark and quiet room that smelled of stale time and space
The human phenomenon is but the sum of densely coiled layers of illusion
Each of which winds itself upon the supreme insanity
But there are persons of any kind
When all that can be is mindless mirrors
Laughing and screaming as they parade about In an endless dream
But when I asked the lunatic what it was It swore itself within these mirrors
As they marched endlessly in stale time and space
He only looked and smiled
Then he laughed and screamed
And in his black and empty eyes I saw for a moment as in a mirror
A form the shade of divinity In flight from it's stale infinity
Of time and space and the worst of all
My special plan for the laughter
We went to see some little show
That was staged in an old she'd
And in it's beginnings all seemed well
The miniature curtain stage glowed in the darkness
While those dolls bounced along on their strings before our eyes
And in it's beginnings all seemed well
But then there came a suttle turning point which some have noticed
And I was one Who quietly left the show
Because I could see where things were going
As the antics of those dolls grew strange
And the fragile strings grew taut
With their tiny pullings, tiny limbs
The others around me became appalled
And turned away and abandoned the show
That was staged in an old she'd
But I wanted to witness what could never be I wanted to see what could not be seen
But the moment of consummate disaster
My puppets turned to face the puppet master
It was twilight and I stood in a greyish haze of the vast empty building
When the silence was enriched by a reverberant voice
All the things of this world it said
For which there are no words
This is the greater part which has no beginning or end
And the one essence of this world for which there can be no words Is that all the things of this world
This is the lesser part which had a beginning and shall have an end
And for which words were conceived solely to speak of
The tiny broken beings of this world it said
The beginnings and endings of this world it said
For which words were conceived solely to speak of
Now remove these words and what remains it asks me
As I stood in the twilight of that vast empty building
The question echoed over and over
But I remained silent until the echoes died
And as twilight passed into the evening
I felt my special plan for which there are no words
Moving towards a greater darkness
There are some who have no voices
Or none that will ever speak
Because of the things they know about this world
And the things they feel about this world
Because the thoughts that fill a brain
Because the pain that fills a body
Each of which stands alone in an infinite empty blackness
For which no words are being conceived
And where no voices are able to speak
When a brain is filled only with damaged thoughts
When a damaged body is filled only with pain
And stands alone in a world surrounded by infinite empty blackness
And exists in a world for which there is no special plan
When everyone you have ever loved is finally gone
When everything you have ever wanted is finally done with
When all of your nightmares are for a time obscured
As by a shining brainless beacon
Or a blinding eclipse of the many terrible shapes of this world
When you are calm and joyful
And finally entirely alone
Then in a great new darkness
You will finally execute your special plan
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