concern

[warrantheadspace-blog]

electricsadness_part8

Time flew apart. Visions of her, in all different forms. Welcoming, casting pleasure. She stood from a distance, in a green stylized, almost pen-drawn form. Hidden behind distant voices scattered like flowers. I couldn’t ask what was going on, I couldn’t even fight. I tried to switch the image, change something, but it was too distant, too lost in copies of itself. Voices fluttered like birds, distant and wanting. Colors shaded other colours, a strange myriad of distant voices temptingly close. It was like trying to change the channel on a TV that was not connected to anything, just vacant, empty, an odd disconnect in a place of chatter. 

I wondered then, why people put such a capital on living. I hadn’t really learned anything. People are shallow, an odd copy was this world. Had I forfeited my right to speak out, to speak through the reality, to find myself locked in a meaning, a fragment dazed and disconnected. Unknowing why we should be doing anything anymore, i shifted into a dark corner where my perception had the least of the picture. A dark corner in my mind, where I wasn’t paying attention. Distant forms clouded my perception, emptying out and refilling, finding me at every turn.

Why would we choose to live anything again? Why would we work so hard just to destroy ourselves? Why critique? It didn’t mean anything, didn’t add anything to the soup of who we were. I am speaking of earth now, a home we have not begun to apologize for. Why are we so fixated on being normal, what does it give us?

What secret are we privy to, that would change our minds for us, in what dimension, why are we captured now? Fictions. We live on simply to perpetuate the loss. Sorry, I am negative from this space. I have no boundaries. I am chosen for this, made out of material, I am illusion. Fictions we do not have reason to doubt. 

What is art then, if all of us do not choose to participate? Fictions are the only thing we have, when we do not share them. There are so many ways we must join the possibility, meet the inference, make the boundary. But what matters? My words search desperately. Do you know? Are you truly ruled by money? Histories are all you really have. Tensions is all you break. We need to return to dream. Dreams of faeries and light. Hidden facts never break us, never ever ever. I am as stupid as you. You are just going to react in the same way. With doubt and fear. I am not here for you. 

Reasons we never find you. You aren’t making any noise. We aren’t making any noise. I am hidden, I am fear, I am god. Welcome to my nightmare.

Then I see forms appearing in my darkness. Tina.

Tina everywhere, cycling and recycling in my dead eyes.

Concern flooded my mind like light flowing to fill the sucking dark of a barren room. Fictions of thoughts, alternatives hatched deep within the prison of my mind. I had written this. I had imagined this. This was me. 

Still, it was hard to shake that nagging feeling. That there was something I hadn’t counted on. That this was nether what I did want nor what I didn’t want. The air hung as though suspended invisibly by something I could not fathom. I was standing in...my god, where were my bearings? This place was so strange. Colors or no, space or no, I had to come to terms with something.

With insanity. 

[warrantheadspace-blog]

electricsadness_part7

We were sitting on a flat, slightly dusty plane. It kind of reminded me of stages in old movies that were supposed to resemble castle floors but didn’t. I coughed slightly, awkwardly repositioning myself. My leg was falling asleep. I felt the dust was poisonous. As I breathed, I felt my lungs saturated by it. My lungs felt as full as my screaming brain, bristling with questions, none of which I could truly articulate. 

She stared at me like she was trying to burn through my flesh. Eventually she said. “OK. I’ll tell you.”

I made some obscure, foolish gesture to demonstrate i understood. 

She ignored this. “I left my world, I drifted into dreams, I was foolish, you must understand...this is not how I normally appear. When you first saw me, in the woods, that was when I revealed to you one of my forms, this is the one I must stick with. For many reasons.” She coughed diminutively. “Please listen. I have been telling you, not what to do, but how to do it. What I mean is,I am simply a guide. A hallucination, a ghost. I’m not real.”

“Not...real?”

She nodded, as though this was an ordinary, everyday thing. “I’m a construct of the light. You do not want to know who I am in my pure form. It is beyond my understanding. You must understand that I must leave you.”

I panicked. “No, please!! You can’t! I don’t even know...I don’t know what I’m doing, I don’t know, I don’t know, oh God...”

She rested one of her little hands on my shoulder. “Relax. I’m not going to leave you until it’s time. Don’t worry. Everything will be clear in a short while.”

I sighed, looking away. “Clear...” I mused openly. “What can be clear in this place?” I shot back at her. When she didn’t answer, I asked, “what do you mean by ‘genesis?’”

“Are you sure you want to know? Now?”

I swallowed. “Yes.”

“The world is sick,” she began. “The only thing that remains is dreams, illusions, hallucinations. You cannot go back to where you came from, you understand, because the world is on fire, the world is destroyed. It must be rebuilt from the backdoor. Illusion, creativity, madness, insanity, all the relegated forms, the forms that would have saved us, must be worked into a new form. Human kind, or rather the existence of a conscious grid network that forms the universal consciousness and thusly God, all formulations cohabitations connections and likewise, must be recreated. The path I do not know. I do not know if we are merely pawns, or if in fact what scale of power exists. I exist as a first step, something you dreamed up. When you found me you found yourself. This...” She paused, panting. She had hardly taken a breath though all of that. “...Is...Genesis.”

[warrantheadspace-blog]

electricsadness_part6

We wandered down a long hallway. Forms came out of the wall. I tried to ignore it, but the air was thick with screams. Long, drawn out, hideous screams. I knew it wasn’t a dream. How I knew this was...well, I’m not sure. It seemed as though, maybe, the bathroom was as much illusion as the train, and the blood not from a real injury. I felt my face. There was no blood.

I sniffed. It smelled like burning wood.

“This is where all the stuff of the world makes the other stuff of the world. The burning you’re hearing is regular burning. It’s both...real, and unreal. You might be wondering if you’re dreaming right now.”

“Yeah...” I said, scratching the back of my head, looking around. All around us were walls which faintly smoked, walls woven out of organic material. They shimmered, like many fishes. From deep inside the walls, along with the screaming, was the crackling of many fires. I reconsidered my opinions on hell, among other things. 

“Have we died?” I asked dimly. 

She looked at me, staring, almost staring through me. She stood still for a very long time, then she nodded. “Yes,” She said with certainty, looking around with a strange gaze. “Yes,” she said, suddenly distant. 

I gave up and looked around. I don’t know how, but...what was she focusing on? Off in the distance, that terrible noise. Screaming through the halls, but screaming as though a machine would scream, getting closer...faintly I remembered that noise on the beach. Was that...could it have followed us here?

“Get down!” She yelled, pushing me down to the ground, which to my disgust, was squirming. And then, we started slipping in. As if we were being tossed in a strange pot, we wove different concentric patterns through the soup. It was closer to me, closer to touching the inside of me, than anything i had been in contact with before. It felt just as though it was part of me, disgust fading to dark solemn union. We wove these uncertain patterns, through the muck which wasn’t, through the passageways that weren’t, just simple, solid space. Something mechanical wove through us, many--robotic?--creatures which seemed as varied as though dreamed up by an overactive toddler, this is where it felt like a dream, it really did, I both wanted to wake up and wanted not to wake up and neither wish was granted.

“Is this limbo?” I said, but my words came out as odd bubbles. This was obviously a place to relax, so I did so, and as I leaned back, flipping and flopping as though this place had a necessity to turn you about and about, as though there were currents, or rather tracks on which we rode, for they seemed to repeat. Endlessly. Limbo or purgatory, it surely was. 

I watched as Tina opened her mouth wide, and blew. She pointed to the bubble she made, which was bigger than both of us, and motioned to it. She swam right in. 

I shrugged and followed her. Upon entering we immediately fell onto a hard floor. Not gracefully. Slowly we both sat up.

“We might need to talk,” she said, gently angry it seemed. “About what you think you are, and what you think I am...”

“And?” I asked softly.

She looked oddly cross, folding her arms, sitting with her legs crossed, I noticed. “Why you seem to be inside of me.”

“Inside? I...look, if it’s about the giblets..”

She shook her head roughly. “None of that matters.”

“What does?”

She paused, looking off reflectively. “Genesis.”

[warrantheadspace-blog]

electricsadness_part5

“So here we are.” She was holding a toothbrush in a tight, almost threatening grip, although it was not pointing at me. Threatening nonetheless. Her voice nearly dripped with threat.

“Who’s bathroom are we in?” I asked.

“You imagined this, didn’t you?” She described the area with the toothbrush, wielding it like a sabre. 

I tried to hide from the might of her weapon, almost collapsing into the tub. It was a pretty ordinary bathroom. All white and plasticine, the whiteness as painful as being with her now. Her voice seemed even more loud, abrasive, accusatory. Rebounding over the walls, like our voices, even our existence, were some strange rain.

“Why, why did you imagine a bathroom!? Why?!” She pushed her little--somehow wiry in it’s slight fatness--stern body, pushing him into the bath, jabbing the toothbrush into his thigh. 

I struggled, seeming only to hurt myself more. “I...I...” I gasped, my backbone twisting. “I imagined...” I breathed, “a...toothbrush”

She let go of me, I stumbled over into the tub, hitting my head on the side. I must have hit the tap, because water went everywhere. Cold and stinging, it started filling in the tub I was awkwardly lying in. Tina was standing some distance away, staring at me. Somewhat in awe, but that was solidifying into confusion, anger and shock. 

“Wh...” She began, looking around in strained wonderment. “You really have no imagination, you know that?!” And she began kicking me.

“Why...does it,” I gave a sharp breath, and passed out. There was sticky stuff creeping around on my forehead, I thought, as my mind slipped first into the sharp whiteness of the bathroom magnified, then nothing. And then...

Well, I’m not sure if what happened next was a dream. 

[warrantheadspace-blog]

electricsadness_part4

It was raining. We had been on the train, had stopped at some uninteresting places. All I remembered was the shape, the tapestry of buildings. There was, interestingly and depressingly, no colour outside of the train. Everything was oddly grey--still with a sheen not unlike metal, there were golds and silvers and even amethysts--so it was okay. 

I even felt myself growing closer to Tina. Obviously, being together throughout this had granted some will, some common touch. She was getting more and more tired, a kind of empty vessel, created out of some land of nothing, some graveyard that I did quite honestly believe we were going to. There was a prophetic nature about her. Like she wasn’t really human, rather she had assumed this form and was really ascended...maybe my mind was getting away from me. 

But then again...

She looked at me with a fragment of some emotion trapped in her half smile.

And then I said it.

“Something’s going to happen, right?”

“Something’s, going to, happen...right?” She repeated my words, as if they were heavy boulders she were rolling together. It didn’t seem mocking, just as though my words had weight. Pun, i guess, intended. Then she stared at me for a moment, her face made up. She nodded, a hyper-breif gesture. “Yes.”

“And?”

“’And,’ what?”

“What’s going to happen?”

She looked at her small feet. “I’m not sure.”

We had spent the last...week, was it? In veritable luxury. All our meals were brought to us. There was adequate shower space. We even had changes of clothes. This was not what happened to train hoppers. I regarded my simple, yet expensive-feeling, v-neck shirt and khaki pants. I didn’t normally dress like this. I mean, not in clothes which really complemented me and were comfortable. I had a sudden start of panic, the same as one waking from a coma years and years later. “Tina. Tina!” I was shaking her without really knowing it. “Tina,” I said seriously as she pushed me away, “Where is this train going to and who is...our clothes, our food...” I stammered, “how, why, who did we, who...who is...”

I was on the verge of collapsing. The train, and all the colours, which both made me want to and actually resembled vomit now, were weaving strange patterns as I nearly lost consciousness. “It’s okay,” I heard her say, as I weaved in and out of this world. “I’ll explain everything.”

After a while, she did just that. “So...” I said shortly, “we’re being driven...by colour?”

“That’s putting it roughly,” She said. “It’s also a lot to do with light, particles/rays and quantum stuff, consciousness theory, but, yeah.” She breathed. “In fact, this train doesn’t actually exist, and we’re on a pretty special voyage right now.”

I took a sharp breath in, as well. “It doesn’t?”

She shook her head no. “Light is pretty much hologrammatic in its raw state. Try imagining something. I think it’s safe now.”

Not asking what she meant by safe, I immediately thought about the first thing I could. 

A toothbrush.

[warrantheadspace-blog]

electricsadness_part3

We walked the length of the train. We studied maps which seemed to inherit, to blend with the colours around us. They danced with somewhat aquiline clarity, like the shapes within a mermaids strange fantasy spirit. The light spread, grew out of choice, came out of one of the windows, it seemed to stay with the train for some distance. Keeping a steady course, it seemed to be beaming into the train just for me. She was still minding the map, the light glimmered, was my perception. Borders seemed odd, even the colour blended into white, pure light. It bent my distended heart. I walked slowly to the window. 

“Are you...is this, um, what are you...?” I asked feebly of my female companion, I looked around. All I could see was light. Endless disconnect. It was like an infinite...space. And there was a voice, a voice which seemed to resonate so deeply i could not understand the words, so pierced by their texture. 

My feet felt like they had left the ground, and when they returned, I almost fell over. Looking at the window as I fell, one of the creatures--unicorns, no they were too big, something other than muscle, a kind of carving which lent itself to a permanent beauty. Those eyes...I felt their echo on the inside of my mind. I felt the light in the impression, the light was the impression, burnt feebly but with purpose, I provided all the energy to make that connection work. 

I felt strangely like my eyes were pushing something out. Whether it was thoughts or emotions, waste or need, love or hate...maybe it was a combination of these. My brain was mush. Perhaps it was being squeezed out, then, like sausage meat. No, no time to be negative. It was offsetting my beautiful feelings of the light the woman's voice...the dear. I felt ill. No! Why was my body reacting in such a way. The train was wobbling. The girl was holding me. 

“What’s your name? Where am I? What is this?” I stammered.

“Please you have to be still.”

I tried to wrestle myself from her grip. The girl was stronger than I gave her credit. She held me still, gave me a look that went somewhere beyond emotion. It struck me still, made me halt. Ground my internal groundings and grindings and worries and fears, well...made them stop. I suddenly felt a deep internal sadness. My body shook with it. I heaved quietly, not knowing what I was crying about. She buried her doll-like face in my hair. 

“My name is Tina,” she said finally, firmly, as if it had taken her much effort to arrive at that explanation of her name. She didn’t say anything for quite a while. The train around us steadied, the colours simmered when they were boiling before. Like a soup of many ingredients seemed this world. Like my mother’s soup. She had always come up with the strangest combinations, which in fact implanted subconsciously her character deeper than her character herself. Were they in fact in one of her soups? I thought of how “soup” is not that far from “soap” or “snoop,” idle thoughts, but it got me thinking of herself, my mother obscured by soup, soap, snoop (weren’t those all things mothers liked?) Maybe I was just being silly, but there was something marking all of that thought, something that made--well, all the little irrationalities in my brain--stand out like sore thumbs. All those little metaphors for things, all those little noises that we take for granted. Hidden within my distaste for the system was my love of the system. I realized in a sudden moment that I couldn’t really believe anything, it would just be rocketed out--unless i believed everything. And the grief that I felt. The carving of this immense tragedy. From what had it come? From how much illusion and long-suffered--what had I done to myself over the years? Was this what happened when you cross over? 

“Tina” I breathed, feeling especially childish, “Could you tell me a story?”

“I don’t know many stories,” she murmured apologetically.

I was childish and desperate. “Any story. Just the first thing that comes into your mind.”

She giggled. “Okay. I do know one, it comes from my people...”

“Your people?”

“I will tell you later. Now it would be inconvenient. Are you ready to listen?”

I nodded my agreement.

“Okay. Now, the story goes, there was an old man and a turtle on an island. The turtle had been everywhere, absolutely everywhere it is possible for a turtle to go. The old man had literally been living under a rock since he turned...eight, I think, I’m not sure. Anyways, it was very important for the turtle to convey his experience to the old man, for something dreadful was going to happen to the old man if he did not hear it. But the turtle had, not out of his own wise council, given away his power for speech. He had..lost it in a card game.”

Despite myself, I giggled. 

“You might laugh, our ways are very strange. Our games our strange. We do not play them in the same way.” She did not seem very angry, readily explaining. Without threatening to stop, she continued. “Anyways, the turtle was full to bursting with information he knew would save his dear friend the old man’s life. He needed someway, because he knew these would be his last days on earth, he needed some manner of ability to leave something with the old man, or in fact himself, should either of them pass on, as they were going to.”

“That’s sad,” I remarked, rather genuinely, I felt. 

“The turtle had spent his whole life doing things he thought were the right way. For years he worked for one master, for years and years, another. He had been foolish, they had been wise. They had been foolish, he had been wise. Eventually he had come to realize that everybody was right and everybody was wrong. That his information, though widely sourced, was full of holes and cracks and imperfections. Then he realized the beauty of it. There was nothing to fear, these words were just words and the thoughts were just thoughts and this was an immense thing for him, this was what he had to communicate to the old man. The old man was going to die with the knowledge that nothing in the world was true. That everybody was horrible liars, and the turtle was full of regret that, while he had his voice, he had done nothing but tell the old man exactly that.” Tina smiled softly, looking off into the colours outside of her window. “What was the turtle to do? He realized there must be something other than words, something to tell the old man that nothing was wrong with the world. First the turtle looked at the old man. The old man looked at the turtle. They did not break gaze for a few hours. Then, something beautiful happened. The old man looked upwards, his wizened face cracking into a smile. He stood upwards, clapped hands and jumped. He had never done these things for so long. The turtle showed as much amazement as the old turtle could. “I understand!” shouted the old man. He sat down, touched the turtles head. “I don’t know why, by the Gods,” tears forming at the corners of his eyes, “but I understand you as well as if you could still talk. Thank you, turtle.” The turtle died happily three days later. The old man, though quite aged he was, lived for a good long time, avoided the danger that had been charted him, simply by knowing that experience was both meaningful and meaningless. So there you go, a miracle.” She folded her hands in her lap--she was wearing a soft red dress--and looked, out the window.

I’m not ashamed to say that I cried. 

[warrantheadspace-blog]

electricsadness_part2

She smiled like a book opening. We were laying on a calm beach, the waves tickling as though alive with their own micro-currents. There was, I came to recognize, a vague booming vibration coming from the other end of the ocean. The sky was clear and you could see all the layers, all the night and day, though it was clearly morning. You could see all that I had seen...it hadn’t been a dream, we were on that planet, looking out on the vast confused network of stars.

The vibration was getting louder and everything seemed more penetrating, more obvious, more covered with a sheen that was your own veneer of perception, of taking part as you looked around. Variations on a theme, of a mind lost in sights but still taking account--I was still taking account--for what was actually happening. I was living it and thinking it and seeing it, and this awareness spiralled madly in an obtuse formation. Something was going on, the noise was deafening now, and before I really knew anything was happening, we were running, we were running and our legs just knew how--we ran madly, bounding, as connected to fear as rabbits are, over the sand and then the grass and then a strange railway built in multiple ridges across the cool surface made of some combination of plastic--was it glass?--some odd slightly glowing surface madly designed so even the benches jutted out formed of it, the signs, everything was made of the same thing, and she reached over and grabbed my hand. She sort of smiled.  I swallowed, then smiled back, a ghost of a smile. I looked back. She pushed my head, stopping me. 

“Don’t look back,” she said. “That’s not for now.” She pointed commandingly at a train sitting on the tracks just ahead, it looked like a blown-up kids toy, or maybe we were the size of kids toys, I couldn’t honestly tell you. She walked stiffly ahead, like a mannequin, like she was some odd doll built for some odd purpose and I watched her as she moved, jerkily, but with art and curve and purpose, as though there was a mind--of course there was--a mind in there that wanted to be heard. I followed slowly, looking around.

There was a sun, one of many, they all sat in the sky like--again, like children's toys, messily arrayed, the line of sight then confused and set strangely against itself in mirrors of both colour and texture, and, impossibly, sound. The vibration was no longer present, there was a coloration of the air which ended and began, followed strange ladders up itself, against corners, built like a cathedral and these odd railways were pews, the train a distant preacher who was going to leave, was going to pack up and leave us with no alternative but to turn straight around and go back, to the obvious death which awaited us, coloured at every turn, a different angle for us to turn our noses up at, snort derisively, but not know it was really the only thing for us. I looked at the girl for some shade of comfort, she was very short and delicate and as I examined her she became misty, quavered, my mind gone, shifted. Was this really the half-world I saw in the glass? Where were we? I could touch everything, then, it was kind of overwhelming, the same overwhelm I felt now, but different, at least I had control, or the illusion of control. Or something I didn’t understand. 

And then, with my attention lost in all of this, I fell, my legs buckling underneath me. We were nearly at the train. I saw it start to move, we were right there. With some strength I didn’t really realize she had, she bodily dragged me inside. 

Inside was strange. Ordinary seats overlaid with glowing colour maps enticing the passenger to chose this or that angle, how to get places was obscured by strange danger zones, sketched out masses seemed to exist atop certain landmarks for, it seemed, whatever meaning there could possibly be. In fact, the distribution of colour was so widespread, and the expansion of it, it’s threatening opaqueness, burgeoned promising to break open and loose itself like a dropped egg, full of living rainbows. Fictions, I thought. These colours are all fictions. They belong not here, in some metaphysical zoo, maybe, but not here. This train was our safety. Well, I didn’t know that, not entirely. My head resumed, or rather doubled, its aching. 

“Come here and sit down!” Her voice called, lilting and vibrating the small space, even the colours. “I need to talk to you.”

I sat in a purple spot and she sat in a orbiting sketchy red cloud. It looked like a sentient signature. “What do you want to tell me?” I asked, trying to create some space for myself, trying to make myself small really, like her, because she seemed to be okay with the colours (she played with one in her lap,  a purple ball shape) But i don’t think it was about her small stature. I think it was her spirit, which unfortunately I cannot change in myself, because of something I lost. I didn’t “connect” inside, I had found no peace in spirit. If in fact you do understand. I was given a number, a name, a meaning. They used to beat it into me, that I couldn’t, I couldn’t, I couldn’t have anything because personal truth was vice. I can’t get rid of my programming. Perhaps this woman, whom I have come across this whole vision through, can find in me a friend, some code to belong to, can excise the rules that dominate my life. However such a thought is only a distant tingling, only a shape I must continue to desire. I can’t give up. I can’t think that this or that is possible, nor either, I can’t think it impossible. 

She then looked serious at me,  a strangely catlike countenance. She turned her head as if considering me, and blinked. The lids lifted slowly. When they were full open, she asked me; “Do you ever think about what can happen in forever?”

“Uh,” i said. A cloud of purple drifted by. “Like...If you’re, you mean...life after death?”

“Nobody really understands forever. Oh, they try, they say, to disparage themselves, that this will take forever, that will take forever, it is an overused term, like calling someone ‘crazy’ when really nobody is crazy.”

“Nobody?”

She nodded. “Nobody knows forever.” She turned to look out the window. There were domed enclosures, huge runic symbols, animals with long silver horns and shining coats which watched with curiosity. Clouds of colour drifted by. I watched the scenery unfold and suspected that I would probably, most likely, know what forever was when this journey ended.

Unless it truly would take forever.

[warrantheadspace-blog]

electricsadness_part1

as I wandered into wonderland I saw her sitting there, one jar in a pot of honey not so far to go not too fat wondered if she saw me as she turned and turned her head. She was inscribing runes on the flat surface of her forever stone, a kind of gladthing given to those who have crossed over once before. “Fictions,” She cried, rearing up, though to whose notice I couldn’t exactly say, “I come across mine in my town,” she held her arm out and followed its line to the sun & back again. Strafing so on her stormy shows, was she the interlocutor or the taker of medicine or the lost straggling somebody on edge to meet some other business? The business of what was coming, the business of what had come. Her body moved flighty like a bird as she rocketed away on her banter.

She sat down eventually and called me over. Blithe as i was, she seemed to indicate for me deeper reality, a kind of drawing made out of mad splashes which does indicate, well, it indicates indication, and that’s a thing...

“shhhhh” she said as if she knew my thoughts. “I know the thing of which you speak all the god damn time.”

“time?” I was taken aback.

“You fucking fuck it all up. It’s like a souflee. But there are giblets, don’t you know, this isn’t a rock and roll salad, pop starts with tarts.”

“I wasn’t aware we were giving cooking lessons to each other. This must be old times.”

“Time is a salad, remember.”

“Fictions are better from where you come.”

“I come from the beginning.”

“You must know tarts then.”

“that goes without saying.”

“Then what’s with all the giblets?”

“I was experimenting.”

“With giblets?”

“it’s your mind to mind, I suppose.” I stuck my hands in my pants pockets, aimed myself so I was talking in some distinction and verve.

“Damn right it’s my mind.” “Don’t,” she punctuated with a small punch from her little fist pumping calculated as her words, “Mess,” punch, “with,” punch, “Giblets”.

Then she collapsed to the ground, sobbing. Her little tender fists shaking up her arms like dangerous suspension bridges, face held low against her chest. “They were my only friends,” She mouthed.

“Surely you aren’t talking about the ones I was experimenting with?” I said smelling softly the awkward tinge of sudden flaming guilt.

“Did they taste okay?” She breathed, face still down.

“Sweetie I don’t think they were yours.”

“I don’t have any!” She stared defiantly up at me, face streaked with tears.

“What?” I was taken aback. “I said...I never...It was just...”

“Relax, hotshot,” she said, smallish hand dabbing at tears randomly. “I keep them all close to my heart. Not as giblets. Giblets are soldiers, infantrymen, capiche?”

“Oh,” I said looking around, gauging the area for forms of sudden danger (there were none) suddenly she was smoking a cigarette, grimacing and considering both the weight of the cigarette, its possible meaning, it’s relation to her body, both of them burning out together, herself, her cigarette her attention. Eventually she said (by which time I had completely lost track of what time it was and where we were) “Well aren’t you going to ask me?”

“Ask you what?”

“What you just asked me.” She drew in from her cigarette, holding the smoke at the back of her throat with some command of effort, lifting it then letting it slide straight out, like a parade of merry ghosts in a casper cartoon. She seemed, unaware, lazy now. She smiled slightly.

“I have no time for games.” Either time itself had slipped a disc, or she was changing moods the same manner as a couch potato changes channels. Perhaps it was a combination of the two. My head hurt. 

“What do you have time for, then?”

“No more conversation, ok? My mind is aching.”

She nodded, took me to a corner of the...no, we weren’t on the ground, this place had corners, this place had definite walls which both extended infinitely, and were right were edges were right where walls could be, it was like reaching out and touching space. The edges were all wrong though, one thing connected to the next in a faint, evocative sun-scape. Edges of planets, birthed by kissing moons and vomiting suns, ranged out forever like some machined work, crafted style, I got lost in the vision understandably.

“Look, at that, do you see that?” She breathed, holding her cigarette casually. “We’re gonna live there. Wake up tomorrow and that’s we’re we’ll be.”

She was pointed to an odd planet, in the space I wasn’t sure of it could be a half-earth, or just a bowl of rice behind a steamed-up window. I will have to draw pictures, in order to show you what I’ve seen. 

For the meantime, I said faintly. “Is this anything like anything like...I mean, do we have to, absolutely?”

She squared herself against me. “You’re tired.” She patted me on the head.

I winced as though it hurt. “I probably am.”

She nodded curtly and snapped her fingers, holding them above us like a light. Everything went black.

“What’s going on?” I whispered after a while.

“Shh.”

I swallowed. I closed my eyes, I drifed into something like sleep.

Except it wasn’t, really, like anything.