06/27/07
Someone once told me there were only thirty seven stories. Everything else is a variation of these core dramatic situations. I find it hard to believe that life, in all its random glory, can be confined to such a small number. Someone else once told me there were 37 miracles in the bible.
Lost inside my mind, I stumbled through the Lower East Side. From bar to bar, drink to drink, casually glancing over my shoulder in-between sips so as to make sure they weren't coming up on me. To my left, a dark skinned rough by the jukebox seemed threatening but preoccupied by the selection of fine tunes. A bearded guy in glasses seemed to be watching me in the mirror from his seat across the bar on my right. Paranoid or not, they seemed to be the ones to watch out for.
I stepped out of the bar and lit up a cigarette. I could feel the pair coming up behind me as I walked down the sidewalk. My legs became rubbery, not so much from the beers, I just began thinking about my walk entirely too much. The speed, tempo, weight of each step was being recalculated as each foot hit pavement. A steady rhythm could not be found. My heart was beating irregularly and I was sweating. Unable to breathe deep enough, I found myself getting lightheaded.
"Hey, Charles? Charles Crown?"
I kept my pace and tried to glance into a window to see who was behind me, but somehow I knew.
"Listen, we don't have much time. You're in danger."
The guy in glasses was closing the gap between us, and I, very uncharacteristically, spun around to face him.
"What do you want? Why are you following me?"
I saw that his partner had fallen back a bit, watching the cross streets for witnesses.
"I'm Agent Fenris. That's Agent Spider. This book you're writing, there are people who are going to try and stop you from finishing it. We need to get you someplace safe until it's done."
So, they knew I was writing something. At least someone was reading it. At least there was a person out there paying attention. Even if it was a covert organization bent on the destruction of society.
"Hah! Really? So, you've read what I wrote then?"
Fenris was about a foot away from me. Spider was staring suspiciously down Rivington. I took a few steps back, not noticing the calm that was upon me.
"Well, not really. But we've experienced it thus far, and we think it's about to get dangerous."
You always expect a red laser line to point out a target well before a shot is fired to amp up the anticipation of an assassination. But the reality is there's just a bullet puncturing a human body. A bit of hot metal propelled forward, drilling through flesh, muscle, and bone.
Fenris fell to his knees gripping his chest as a gun dropped into his hand. His comrade in arms withdrew a small machine gun from his blazer and ducked behind a mailbox. Seconds later Spider fired rounds into the building behind me. A body tumbled from the fire escape and splattered onto the sidewalk.
I stood there, disconnected from the scene, as if I had just walked onto the action movie of my life. More assassins peeled around the corner, hanging out of a black sedan with high tech weaponry in their hands. Fenris stood up and, one hand pressed against his chest to stem the rush of blood gushing from his wound, he raised the other and began firing his handgun. He positioned himself in front of me, shielding me with his body.
His bullets ripped up the front end of the car, punched holes into the windshield, and caught a few of the thugs in the face. Agent Spider darted from his cover towards us, unleashing a stream of bullets into the vehicle until the tires tore themself apart. The driver jerked the wheel and the entire automobile lurched and rolled onto its side. It began to flip and tumble as the assassins were tossed wildly free. Agent Fenris grabbed me and we hit the ground behind a minivan. Agent Spider was still firing as the car smashed into the minivan and soared above our heads.
The car came to an obnoxiously loud crash landing against the side of an apartment building and for some reason it didn't explode. I guess too many movies make you think that no matter what happens in a car crash, it'll always explode. Especially if it was driven by bad guys with guns.
Fenris dragged me to my feet and we ran for the end of the block. I heard Spider firing off a few final shots as we hit Delancey. The wide open space felt comforting but seemed to worry Fenris.
"C'mon, we've got a car down this way!"
Fenris, bleeding as he was, seemed unaffected by his critical condition. As we ran he checked over his shoulder to see if I was still there, that Spider was behind me, and that more bad guys weren't following. But they were. In Hummers and fighter jets.
Fenris threw me into the passenger seat of his 1976 Lincoln Continental. He turned the key and the engine roared. Spider was reloading as he jumped on the side of the car. Fenris hit the gas and spun that badass dark blue monstrosity through the intersection making the most illegal u-turn NYC had ever seen.
I tried to take a peak out the back window but shrunk back down when bullets began pouring in through the roof. Spider was returning fire from the backseat and I felt like I was going mad from the deafening auditory assault. Fenris was getting a little woozy from the loss of blood but he tightened his grip on the wheel, furrowed his brow, and sped for the Williamsburg Bridge.
A huge chunk of concrete explodes to our right and the car skids and fishtails. Missiles fired from a jet didn't seem nearly as bad as I would have thought. And shouldn't their targeting system be able to hit an abnormally massive, classic automobile such as this? Are jets allowed to fly into a major city and blow stuff up with reckless abandon? And why were there jet fighters trying to execute me anyways?
The questions would have to wait as the jet circled back around. We were flying across the bridge with the meanest bunch of military vehicles made street legal chasing us. They plowed through any car in their path, full on monster trucking over some of the smaller foreign cars, and driving the larger SUVs right off the side of the bridge.
Once we hit Brooklyn, Fenris began to lose it. The car smashed off the road and through the basketball courts. I grabbed the wheel as we hit the street again and turned us towards the flow of traffic. The jet flew above and just seemed to watch as the trucks barreled their way along a block behind us.
"Hey! Hey! Wake up! We're going to crash!"
Spider took a moment to reflect. While he did this he reloaded and shot me a look that said that I wasn't worth all this trouble. That, although he enjoyed killing vast amounts of baddies, Fenris' life was not worth my own. Not by a long shot. But I could just be reading too much into it.
Spider, on his last clip, now began to pick and choose his shots. I decided that it was time to act. I tore Fenris from the driver's seat and slipped behind the wheel. I piloted that big bastard of a car through the confusing streets of Brooklyn, trying to shake our tale. I mean, tail.
I woke up with my head pressed against the windshield. I peeled my face from the spiderwebbed glass and saw the spray of my faceblood across it. My cheeks were wet. I wiped the blood away and more came. Smoke was pouring from the front of the car. A fine mist of various automobile fluids covered the scene.
Fenris was gone. Spider was no longer in the backseat. I grabbed the gun left on the dashboard and slammed my shoulder into the door to get it open. I rolled out onto grass and tried to find my footing.
Stumbling through the mist, as well as the haze of my fractured mind, I spotted a figure approaching. I hefted the gun up to eye level and planted my feet, my finger ready to squeeze the trigger. An empty click left my body to involuntary jerk when there was no recoil. I fell to my knees.
The figure came closer and I could see it was a female form. I never saw her face but I was glad I didn't have any bullets left in the gun. She lifted me up and brought me home.
Monday, June 27, 2011
Monday, June 20, 2011
Tower of Brahma - 36 - forgetful faust (edit)
06/26/07
I don't know if this happens in every deal with the devil, but I only remembered that I sold him my soul afterwards. Roughly about two years later, I'd imagine 666 days if I did the math, I find myself recalling the details of my swap with Satan himself.
At age thirteen I'm setting fire to plastic letters stolen off a display sign from the temple across the street. My friend and I are smoking cigarettes and sipping whiskey as we light up the plastic over a small pit, all part of our adolescent backyard conjuring of Mephisto.
No dark display makes itself known but perhaps that's when the door was open. From there my life fell apart. My grandmother died, a boy in love with me killed himself on my birthday, and I became a bastard who didn't care. I was numb, a soulless simpleton tumbling down a path of self-destruction. I slipped into a Hell of my own making, masochistically flogging my guilt with psychological torture.
So, two years ago I said I'd give whatever was left for a way out. He gave me words for the shred I had left. I'd have enough words for 64 chapters. Enough words to end it all and to do it right this time. We shook hands, I signed in blood, and off he went to the Underworld.
I prayed for the stories to come and release me, somehow redeem my unworthy self. I, like every sucker who swaps with the Devil, tried to use the gift I had to undo this deal. I exorcised my demons with symbolism and pleaded with my passion to get me in his good graces.
Maybe it all started before this. Back to a time I don't recall. A primal, power play where I die before innocence is lost and brought back before the judgment of my eternal soul. These words simply must save me for they are all I possess.
I don't know if this happens in every deal with the devil, but I only remembered that I sold him my soul afterwards. Roughly about two years later, I'd imagine 666 days if I did the math, I find myself recalling the details of my swap with Satan himself.
At age thirteen I'm setting fire to plastic letters stolen off a display sign from the temple across the street. My friend and I are smoking cigarettes and sipping whiskey as we light up the plastic over a small pit, all part of our adolescent backyard conjuring of Mephisto.
No dark display makes itself known but perhaps that's when the door was open. From there my life fell apart. My grandmother died, a boy in love with me killed himself on my birthday, and I became a bastard who didn't care. I was numb, a soulless simpleton tumbling down a path of self-destruction. I slipped into a Hell of my own making, masochistically flogging my guilt with psychological torture.
So, two years ago I said I'd give whatever was left for a way out. He gave me words for the shred I had left. I'd have enough words for 64 chapters. Enough words to end it all and to do it right this time. We shook hands, I signed in blood, and off he went to the Underworld.
I prayed for the stories to come and release me, somehow redeem my unworthy self. I, like every sucker who swaps with the Devil, tried to use the gift I had to undo this deal. I exorcised my demons with symbolism and pleaded with my passion to get me in his good graces.
Maybe it all started before this. Back to a time I don't recall. A primal, power play where I die before innocence is lost and brought back before the judgment of my eternal soul. These words simply must save me for they are all I possess.
Monday, June 13, 2011
The Tower of Brahma: 35 - interruption (edit)
07/11/06
And suddenly I wanted to kill.
Who was this? An assassin...
Not likely. I thought this was a madness I was catching, but reality is the pain that forced me into insanity's fair arms.
She made me a mad sexy one, rebirthed through beetle recycling, and ready for damage. Tossing down the pieces, staring madly at the fortunes of trinkets, I saw the secret of the universe revealed unto me.
I have a countdown to solve the riddle. I can't wait til the final nail-biting seconds to defuse my literal existence. The answers must be found now!
But regardless of pace, the journey unfolds as it does, not as you wish. The signal is vibrating the tether in the centre. It shakes loose words, broadcasting them to acres of neurons, snapping puzzle pieces of sanity onto the coffee table.
Coffee table...I'm drunk. The future? Past? It feels like a memory and my consciousness lets go and I get into the pilot seat and scream and holler as I whirl my empty vessel into the night, headed straight downtown.
To the ground, laid down, and then up again until you're laughing in all of their faces one by one. You look around and they look upon, smiling down and across. Penetrating glances, glaring prances, fairy dust dances with phallic accuracy.
Jokester, prankster, playing the games but I forgot that I told myself not to remember anything so as to fool us all straight into the game. Our nights and dreams is all, it seems. Battle bravely, defending identity to its bitter end.
The girl dreams of the boy and he of her. That heart can't take the hurt, so, in hiding his dreams among the starry skies he rises and falls again. He knows, wanting to amuse and bemuse his lovely muse, so tries but fails to maintain his place. Quests for longing, meaningful masterpiece of my eye, I've gone inside.
Brainwash the self into betterment. Bridge that gap between perfection and yourself. Buy into the scheme that you've made to live within. Learn the rules and have fun. Further instructions lie...
And suddenly I wanted to kill.
Who was this? An assassin...
Not likely. I thought this was a madness I was catching, but reality is the pain that forced me into insanity's fair arms.
She made me a mad sexy one, rebirthed through beetle recycling, and ready for damage. Tossing down the pieces, staring madly at the fortunes of trinkets, I saw the secret of the universe revealed unto me.
I have a countdown to solve the riddle. I can't wait til the final nail-biting seconds to defuse my literal existence. The answers must be found now!
But regardless of pace, the journey unfolds as it does, not as you wish. The signal is vibrating the tether in the centre. It shakes loose words, broadcasting them to acres of neurons, snapping puzzle pieces of sanity onto the coffee table.
Coffee table...I'm drunk. The future? Past? It feels like a memory and my consciousness lets go and I get into the pilot seat and scream and holler as I whirl my empty vessel into the night, headed straight downtown.
To the ground, laid down, and then up again until you're laughing in all of their faces one by one. You look around and they look upon, smiling down and across. Penetrating glances, glaring prances, fairy dust dances with phallic accuracy.
Jokester, prankster, playing the games but I forgot that I told myself not to remember anything so as to fool us all straight into the game. Our nights and dreams is all, it seems. Battle bravely, defending identity to its bitter end.
The girl dreams of the boy and he of her. That heart can't take the hurt, so, in hiding his dreams among the starry skies he rises and falls again. He knows, wanting to amuse and bemuse his lovely muse, so tries but fails to maintain his place. Quests for longing, meaningful masterpiece of my eye, I've gone inside.
Brainwash the self into betterment. Bridge that gap between perfection and yourself. Buy into the scheme that you've made to live within. Learn the rules and have fun. Further instructions lie...
Monday, June 6, 2011
The tower of brahma - thirty4 - existence is futile (edit)
05/08/06
On the inside of my favorite book I found a collection of paragraph length prose scattered on seemingly random pages. Below is the collected words strung together. I hope it helps me make sense of this...
***
Gone is the boy that marches like a beast. Slipped into and then born anew, I am left and right. Odds and evens are added together creating poisoned man, complete man.
I'm not supposed to have this in my head. Its vulgar honesty is infecting my morals. Refusing refuge from the scarring truth I mangle my brains, mash my bones, and confuse myself further.
Two are down and the third is most important. It's the final movement that defines your choice. The last ark that careens through the sky and lands upon something that is different from the starting point. Shoot the hand and cry again, but fight through it and place it on top.
You made your decision and the plateau is relief incarnate. Rest a lie, sleep a dream, live the life and skip it all. You've made the moves and there's no going back. Started unconsciously can warrant no blame. Flames scorching the Earth, Liquifying the Sky, this is not what you did, it's what you chose. Or rather what chose you.
Hand it over. Accept no blame. God did this; his Universe, his rules, your life you lose. Orchestrated construction of eternal damnation: Celebration! Father forgives the weakness, cowardice, innocence, and common sense.
Did the devil dance in your eyes tonight?
In the end it's yours. Do with it what you will. Feverish impulses of sanity bursting forth from your flesh covered sixth sense. It's rumbling beneath, intensifying, igniting, and ignoble.
Monday, May 30, 2011
the Tower of Brahma - thirtythree - hourglass + gear = fractal wormhole (edit)
02/26/06
I recently came across this Tower of Brahma piece scrawled in a notebook. The notebook itself is partially burned and contains a handful of entries I don't recall writing. I believe these to be written while binge drinking when I first moved to New York City.
***
It took me 3.14 seconds to discover the universe's secret plan.
Imagine looking at a circle painted on a wall. Except it's painted on a piece of paper on the wall. Someone lifts the bottom of the paper and the circle starts to distort. From there your mind drops down a floor, landing softly. Here, the circle is a sideways hockey puck on a small stand. Another person lifts the object off the base and then it starts to turn. The tail-end comes into view and you see it's an hourglass that was set on its side, the sand evenly distributed among the two glass cylindrical domes. Your mind rollercoaster plunges into the hourglass and microscopically picks out the center of the tube where we see every grain of sand as it drops into the lower half. Each one of them, by itself, as millions, possibly billions, pressed forward on towards the bottom.
You slip into time itself, into the twisting grains of sand spinning themselves into your modern context, humanity's eternally imprisoning concept of time. You think of a clock face. The ever faithful arms clicking out the time for you forever. The endless circle of gears rotating round and round clicking out moments one metal twist at a time. The clock explodes from behind and the gears and springs and grease are sent spiraling outwards and towards you. It's around and around and back again as they travel slowly through a slo-mo scene.
Thinking this helps see the inside of the fractal lifting procedure which is currently being applied to your person. Please do not be afraid. This is a fairly harmless procedure that we are conducting.
Please enjoy the music.
The drilling continues and burrows into your mind.
You've seen a fractal right? You know what I mean. The trippy spirally pictures. Hey maybe that black light poster your stoner ass roommate had in your dorm room in college. No, that conch shell you found at the beach, with its oceanic recordings whispered among its grooves. Nah, the shore lines themselves, the seas carving away at the earth in a rotating and repeating pattern.
Those are fractals?
Why, sure! And what's even better is now you can see the fractal lifted from off the page of our known reality! Congratulations and thank you for choosing Tower of Brahma for your enlightenment needs.
***
There appears to have been a title that was completely scribbled out. Although obscured, we believe that from the impression on the page below it had read "CRUCIFIX A HIT SON".
I recently came across this Tower of Brahma piece scrawled in a notebook. The notebook itself is partially burned and contains a handful of entries I don't recall writing. I believe these to be written while binge drinking when I first moved to New York City.
***
It took me 3.14 seconds to discover the universe's secret plan.
Imagine looking at a circle painted on a wall. Except it's painted on a piece of paper on the wall. Someone lifts the bottom of the paper and the circle starts to distort. From there your mind drops down a floor, landing softly. Here, the circle is a sideways hockey puck on a small stand. Another person lifts the object off the base and then it starts to turn. The tail-end comes into view and you see it's an hourglass that was set on its side, the sand evenly distributed among the two glass cylindrical domes. Your mind rollercoaster plunges into the hourglass and microscopically picks out the center of the tube where we see every grain of sand as it drops into the lower half. Each one of them, by itself, as millions, possibly billions, pressed forward on towards the bottom.
You slip into time itself, into the twisting grains of sand spinning themselves into your modern context, humanity's eternally imprisoning concept of time. You think of a clock face. The ever faithful arms clicking out the time for you forever. The endless circle of gears rotating round and round clicking out moments one metal twist at a time. The clock explodes from behind and the gears and springs and grease are sent spiraling outwards and towards you. It's around and around and back again as they travel slowly through a slo-mo scene.
Thinking this helps see the inside of the fractal lifting procedure which is currently being applied to your person. Please do not be afraid. This is a fairly harmless procedure that we are conducting.
Please enjoy the music.
The drilling continues and burrows into your mind.
You've seen a fractal right? You know what I mean. The trippy spirally pictures. Hey maybe that black light poster your stoner ass roommate had in your dorm room in college. No, that conch shell you found at the beach, with its oceanic recordings whispered among its grooves. Nah, the shore lines themselves, the seas carving away at the earth in a rotating and repeating pattern.
Those are fractals?
Why, sure! And what's even better is now you can see the fractal lifted from off the page of our known reality! Congratulations and thank you for choosing Tower of Brahma for your enlightenment needs.
***
There appears to have been a title that was completely scribbled out. Although obscured, we believe that from the impression on the page below it had read "CRUCIFIX A HIT SON".
Monday, May 23, 2011
The Tower of Brahma: Chapter 32 - the Widow's Son (edit)
06/13/07
I had a gun to kill my father. I brought it over one night when I stopped by for dinner. I was delirious, dazed by the continuous bombardment of my senses after nearly three years of living in New York City. Now I was home.
Sitting across from my father, I knew he must die. That it was he who orchestrated my life so far. That he manipulated me, and was grooming me, to suit his mad plans. Plans handed down to him by his Freemason elders.
I had no idea what those plans were. But they involved initiating me, bringing me into the fold. I shook off the veil he had his brother cast over my mind. I remembered sitting here at this table in the past, or is that happening now? Someone, white haired, yet young, is on my left speaking in slow concentrated syllables lulling me deeper into connected confusion.
My father and the mentalist they sent to charm me were babbling on about honoring secrets and I saw things before me that seemed commonplace yet complacently antagonistic. To block their mesmerizing act I sped up my internal dialogue and began telling myself a story about Agent Fenris and Agent Spider.
They went West to find a place where they could develop their talents. A place where they could reinvent themselves and set themselves up as kings. Alone together, they suffered the elements, braved the world, and found a kingdom. They shared a telepathic conference room where they formulated a strategy.
"Conquer the self my boy. We'll have a new one ready for you by the time you recall all this."
So, here I was, back in front of the man who turned me against myself and he was going to pay.
"I remember when you invited me here. I quit writing after the last time I visited."
He just looked at me. Empty. Was he even my real father? A plant? A brainwashed sucker forced to coerce me into going along with their diabolical plan. The gun was heavy in my lap.
"Why did you do it? What do you get out of this? God, say something!"
The gun slipped into my hands. My arm snapped into a locked position. Hammer cocked, trigger held, and yet no sign of anything in his face. He'd have to be held accountable. He must.
"You goddamned sonofabitch. This ends now. I won't be used as your pawn."
He stood up slow, pushing the chair back with a slight groan against the wood floors. Marionette muscle spasms jerked his body, simulating life. I thought about pulling the trigger. About killing him, or this hollow shell of him.
"You'll never get my book. I just won't write it. Or I'll write it in defiance of all you stand for. Tear down everything that is structure and math and the mechanics of us. Chaos is my lord and I am here to deliver his wrath!"
Caress the trigger back, banging blasts of shells emptying themselves of all they once were. Closing the distance between us, friction scorching the specialized bullets, forging them into spears.
"I hate you!" I screamed. It resonated within the bare walls of my former home.
My father lie dead, hunched over the table, bleeding out like a stuck pig, as the saying goes. I felt nothing, but wasn't numb. It was easy in the end. An afterthought as I cleansed my palate of the bitterness of my childhood.
I felt free, as if my back had burst open and wings had erupted forth from my pain. My nefarious enemy was now slain and my mission was complete. My mind was my own again. I had become a god of delicious apathy.
I awoke in the past, at the moment of hypnosis. I looked over at the fictioneer, as he referred to himself.
"You'll feel a bit disoriented for a few hours, but nothing a nap and some fluids won't wash away."
"You made me kill him."
"I'm not dead, son. I'm sorry. I mean brother."
I turned to my father's voice and saw that he was looking at me, smiling.
"I'll kill you. The future. My book...it all goes horribly wrong. They'll hate me in the end and persecute me. What you're asking me to do is to give up everything for this plan..."
"Just as I have, and he has...” he said motioning to the hypnotist. "We killed our own."
"But I killed you! It was a vision of the future, I only dream of the future!” my voice was flushed with a madman tremble.
"After today you won't remember much of what you saw. You'll know there's a list of people to find, a story that you'll need to tell your own way, and the core secrets of the universe we've crammed in that head of yours."
My dad glanced down at the Mason symbol in his hands. "As for my death, well, we'll see what comes. In the meantime, you are now free.”
The faint sound of someone counting down backwards was clashing against the trace memory of holding a gun in my hands. I swam in the true rage and hatred I needed to end the life of god and to begin the death of man.
I had a gun to kill my father. I brought it over one night when I stopped by for dinner. I was delirious, dazed by the continuous bombardment of my senses after nearly three years of living in New York City. Now I was home.
Sitting across from my father, I knew he must die. That it was he who orchestrated my life so far. That he manipulated me, and was grooming me, to suit his mad plans. Plans handed down to him by his Freemason elders.
I had no idea what those plans were. But they involved initiating me, bringing me into the fold. I shook off the veil he had his brother cast over my mind. I remembered sitting here at this table in the past, or is that happening now? Someone, white haired, yet young, is on my left speaking in slow concentrated syllables lulling me deeper into connected confusion.
My father and the mentalist they sent to charm me were babbling on about honoring secrets and I saw things before me that seemed commonplace yet complacently antagonistic. To block their mesmerizing act I sped up my internal dialogue and began telling myself a story about Agent Fenris and Agent Spider.
They went West to find a place where they could develop their talents. A place where they could reinvent themselves and set themselves up as kings. Alone together, they suffered the elements, braved the world, and found a kingdom. They shared a telepathic conference room where they formulated a strategy.
"Conquer the self my boy. We'll have a new one ready for you by the time you recall all this."
So, here I was, back in front of the man who turned me against myself and he was going to pay.
"I remember when you invited me here. I quit writing after the last time I visited."
He just looked at me. Empty. Was he even my real father? A plant? A brainwashed sucker forced to coerce me into going along with their diabolical plan. The gun was heavy in my lap.
"Why did you do it? What do you get out of this? God, say something!"
The gun slipped into my hands. My arm snapped into a locked position. Hammer cocked, trigger held, and yet no sign of anything in his face. He'd have to be held accountable. He must.
"You goddamned sonofabitch. This ends now. I won't be used as your pawn."
He stood up slow, pushing the chair back with a slight groan against the wood floors. Marionette muscle spasms jerked his body, simulating life. I thought about pulling the trigger. About killing him, or this hollow shell of him.
"You'll never get my book. I just won't write it. Or I'll write it in defiance of all you stand for. Tear down everything that is structure and math and the mechanics of us. Chaos is my lord and I am here to deliver his wrath!"
Caress the trigger back, banging blasts of shells emptying themselves of all they once were. Closing the distance between us, friction scorching the specialized bullets, forging them into spears.
"I hate you!" I screamed. It resonated within the bare walls of my former home.
My father lie dead, hunched over the table, bleeding out like a stuck pig, as the saying goes. I felt nothing, but wasn't numb. It was easy in the end. An afterthought as I cleansed my palate of the bitterness of my childhood.
I felt free, as if my back had burst open and wings had erupted forth from my pain. My nefarious enemy was now slain and my mission was complete. My mind was my own again. I had become a god of delicious apathy.
I awoke in the past, at the moment of hypnosis. I looked over at the fictioneer, as he referred to himself.
"You'll feel a bit disoriented for a few hours, but nothing a nap and some fluids won't wash away."
"You made me kill him."
"I'm not dead, son. I'm sorry. I mean brother."
I turned to my father's voice and saw that he was looking at me, smiling.
"I'll kill you. The future. My book...it all goes horribly wrong. They'll hate me in the end and persecute me. What you're asking me to do is to give up everything for this plan..."
"Just as I have, and he has...” he said motioning to the hypnotist. "We killed our own."
"But I killed you! It was a vision of the future, I only dream of the future!” my voice was flushed with a madman tremble.
"After today you won't remember much of what you saw. You'll know there's a list of people to find, a story that you'll need to tell your own way, and the core secrets of the universe we've crammed in that head of yours."
My dad glanced down at the Mason symbol in his hands. "As for my death, well, we'll see what comes. In the meantime, you are now free.”
The faint sound of someone counting down backwards was clashing against the trace memory of holding a gun in my hands. I swam in the true rage and hatred I needed to end the life of god and to begin the death of man.
Monday, May 16, 2011
The Tower of Brahma - 31 - hollow saints (edit)
11/02/04
"Rocking it out, and taking it in, I scour the city searching for the power and mystery of the chaotic moment. That random coincidence beating back the stifling categorization of structured simplicity. Where will this mad city of beauty and balance lead me?
To Jesus costumes and veggie dogs and everywhere between. Creation sings out on the open streets and celebration beckons from the parks. The air is colder but their hearts are warmer, toasting beside the warmth of myriad bliss and eternal communion. All things are won. The battle has long been over. Spread the word, the gospel of peace, love, and understanding."
"Mocking hellish fright, madness born of spite and ego. Gore dripping fangs of ferocity, gouging out the jugular of society's bloated body. Searing sensations, flickering flames in the darkness of my solitary torment. I can't know, I can no longer tell myself to remain calm.
I am infected with humanity and it poisons my mind. Inclined to stalk and purge and disembowel the darkest of mankind. Two guns in two hands firing a barrage of bullets through the zombie zealots shuffling down the streets. Chainsaw slash slicing limbs, shoutgun blasts decimating torsos, rendering them inanimate once more."
"My god!" she exclaimed. "How long have you been drying your spine?"
I wish I could have responded but since she was a formless female voice I felt it was unnecessary. Not to mention the fact that I felt wild and out of control, piloting a human-mech with animated wreckless abandon.
The rats are coming and surging forward towards me. One by one they creep and scurry.
"Rocking it out, and taking it in, I scour the city searching for the power and mystery of the chaotic moment. That random coincidence beating back the stifling categorization of structured simplicity. Where will this mad city of beauty and balance lead me?
To Jesus costumes and veggie dogs and everywhere between. Creation sings out on the open streets and celebration beckons from the parks. The air is colder but their hearts are warmer, toasting beside the warmth of myriad bliss and eternal communion. All things are won. The battle has long been over. Spread the word, the gospel of peace, love, and understanding."
"Mocking hellish fright, madness born of spite and ego. Gore dripping fangs of ferocity, gouging out the jugular of society's bloated body. Searing sensations, flickering flames in the darkness of my solitary torment. I can't know, I can no longer tell myself to remain calm.
I am infected with humanity and it poisons my mind. Inclined to stalk and purge and disembowel the darkest of mankind. Two guns in two hands firing a barrage of bullets through the zombie zealots shuffling down the streets. Chainsaw slash slicing limbs, shoutgun blasts decimating torsos, rendering them inanimate once more."
"My god!" she exclaimed. "How long have you been drying your spine?"
I wish I could have responded but since she was a formless female voice I felt it was unnecessary. Not to mention the fact that I felt wild and out of control, piloting a human-mech with animated wreckless abandon.
The rats are coming and surging forward towards me. One by one they creep and scurry.
Monday, May 9, 2011
The Tower of Brahma - Chapter 30 - getting old (edit)
10/18/04
Spider walks over to Fenris who sits lounging on the couch. Waiting room soft rock sifts from the speakers as Fenris scratches his beard thoughtfully. Spider slides out the chair and sits backwards, bored stiff splashed across his face.
"So, what's the haps?", Spider sighed.
"Same old. Introspection and amazement at the dazzling spectacle of life changing events.", Fenris groaned.
"Kind of a one trick pony, eh? Where's the fun and excitement?"
Fenris thought for a moment before replying. "He's off doing his own thing. Lots of Red Bull and vodka nights, long days of celebrity photo polishing, too busy to deal with us now that he's gotten what he was looking for."
"That fucker." Spider could barely muster the intensity to squash a bug.
The pair sat there for long days and nights, glaring at the patterns and designs of random dots upon the wall. These dots seemed to connect and words began to form. Physical objects began to break down into raw concepts. What was once sheet rock, paint and plaster became merely a wall, then the idea of a wall, then the mere word.
Wall.
Barrier, obstruction, support structure. A montage mosaic of literary thesaurus-esque concepts soon stood before them. Their waning interest in their own existence was slowly being infected with surging power. They knew what to do instinctually.
Spider tied back his hair in a samurai style smirking grin. Fenris straightened his tie and snapped the cuffs of his suit. One swift kick spilled the words to the floor, now just a splash of letters and half-recalled slices of verbiage. Black hole swirls spinning cylindrically into the eternal beyond.
"Nice." Spider stared into the great unknown and felt the blood rush up from his legs, coursing its way through his entire body.
Fenris took one last look at the holding cell he was about to leave behind. A glorious facsimile of life that sat somehow between moments like a bubble adrift in the seas of time and space. Now that they had burst a hole it began to spread.
"Too late to think about consequences my friend."
Fenris was wearing what he thought was the perfect outfit, Tarantino tough guy disheveled black suit, now rumpled and ready to rumble. He looked over at Spider who was wild eyed, tensed, filled to the brim with action scenes ready to tear free from his limber frame.
"Let's kick some ass."
And with that they leapt forward.
Spider walks over to Fenris who sits lounging on the couch. Waiting room soft rock sifts from the speakers as Fenris scratches his beard thoughtfully. Spider slides out the chair and sits backwards, bored stiff splashed across his face.
"So, what's the haps?", Spider sighed.
"Same old. Introspection and amazement at the dazzling spectacle of life changing events.", Fenris groaned.
"Kind of a one trick pony, eh? Where's the fun and excitement?"
Fenris thought for a moment before replying. "He's off doing his own thing. Lots of Red Bull and vodka nights, long days of celebrity photo polishing, too busy to deal with us now that he's gotten what he was looking for."
"That fucker." Spider could barely muster the intensity to squash a bug.
The pair sat there for long days and nights, glaring at the patterns and designs of random dots upon the wall. These dots seemed to connect and words began to form. Physical objects began to break down into raw concepts. What was once sheet rock, paint and plaster became merely a wall, then the idea of a wall, then the mere word.
Wall.
Barrier, obstruction, support structure. A montage mosaic of literary thesaurus-esque concepts soon stood before them. Their waning interest in their own existence was slowly being infected with surging power. They knew what to do instinctually.
Spider tied back his hair in a samurai style smirking grin. Fenris straightened his tie and snapped the cuffs of his suit. One swift kick spilled the words to the floor, now just a splash of letters and half-recalled slices of verbiage. Black hole swirls spinning cylindrically into the eternal beyond.
"Nice." Spider stared into the great unknown and felt the blood rush up from his legs, coursing its way through his entire body.
Fenris took one last look at the holding cell he was about to leave behind. A glorious facsimile of life that sat somehow between moments like a bubble adrift in the seas of time and space. Now that they had burst a hole it began to spread.
"Too late to think about consequences my friend."
Fenris was wearing what he thought was the perfect outfit, Tarantino tough guy disheveled black suit, now rumpled and ready to rumble. He looked over at Spider who was wild eyed, tensed, filled to the brim with action scenes ready to tear free from his limber frame.
"Let's kick some ass."
And with that they leapt forward.
Monday, May 2, 2011
The Tower of Brahma - Twenty-Nine - Dead Gods (edit)
10/13/04
The story opens and all that existed before was mere backstory, setting up the situation that exists at this very moment.
I awoke scratching my beard. The bed seemed familiar yet completely new. Transposed from one situation to another I found myself, and my memory, immersed in a new life. Sketchy details float on back to me through alcohol induced moments of blissful, eternal oblivion. No thoughts or feelings rising, except those that are necessary to keep me standing. The dulled senses help when I leave the bed.
Outside the cave, where I entered this new world, lies a city. A sprawling metropolis that seems to be a controlled experiment in the continual derangement of the senses. Experiences here are made every minute. Polished off and passed out on every street corner. I'm making my way down Delancey and the sun is punishing my eyeballs. Characters come and pass me by, screaming loud their silent insecurities and desires. My innate insight into the human being seems to be jarred and not fully functional yet.
Then I remember why. Beer, shots, wine, and liquor, have split and separated what was merged and then put it back together into one incohesive whole. This new me was the pendragon, the bearded explorer of this foreign land. The submerged me was the calculating fighter, the action hero waiting to burst.
I'm staring in my new work bathroom mirror, a replacement for the one where I once stood and became inspired to write about that person I saw on the other side. I'm looking at the man I see before me and wonder how I got here. But I know. Somehow.
Fine tuning the celebrity machine, processing the transactions of the fame bounty hunters. They steal a snippet of a person's visage to sell to the highest bidder and I clean up the kill, polish it, and send it off to the masses to consume, dream, inspect, and scrutinize. Killing celebs one snapshot at a time.
Fluid flows from my frontal lobe, extended invisibly across the table of 7A where we are about to be served brunch. God's searing flame reflects off the wall of yawning yellow void across the street. The conversations seem far and distant and sadly cynical and depraved. Animal totems charge up those around me and then I hear the ideas come forth, creeping soundlessly. They strike without warning nor mercy.
We are all fragments of dead gods, living out the broken battles of ages and aeons. Mixed and matched, distilled from ancient ancestors and blood that comes from the center of the world.
The story opens and all that existed before was mere backstory, setting up the situation that exists at this very moment.
I awoke scratching my beard. The bed seemed familiar yet completely new. Transposed from one situation to another I found myself, and my memory, immersed in a new life. Sketchy details float on back to me through alcohol induced moments of blissful, eternal oblivion. No thoughts or feelings rising, except those that are necessary to keep me standing. The dulled senses help when I leave the bed.
Outside the cave, where I entered this new world, lies a city. A sprawling metropolis that seems to be a controlled experiment in the continual derangement of the senses. Experiences here are made every minute. Polished off and passed out on every street corner. I'm making my way down Delancey and the sun is punishing my eyeballs. Characters come and pass me by, screaming loud their silent insecurities and desires. My innate insight into the human being seems to be jarred and not fully functional yet.
Then I remember why. Beer, shots, wine, and liquor, have split and separated what was merged and then put it back together into one incohesive whole. This new me was the pendragon, the bearded explorer of this foreign land. The submerged me was the calculating fighter, the action hero waiting to burst.
I'm staring in my new work bathroom mirror, a replacement for the one where I once stood and became inspired to write about that person I saw on the other side. I'm looking at the man I see before me and wonder how I got here. But I know. Somehow.
Fine tuning the celebrity machine, processing the transactions of the fame bounty hunters. They steal a snippet of a person's visage to sell to the highest bidder and I clean up the kill, polish it, and send it off to the masses to consume, dream, inspect, and scrutinize. Killing celebs one snapshot at a time.
Fluid flows from my frontal lobe, extended invisibly across the table of 7A where we are about to be served brunch. God's searing flame reflects off the wall of yawning yellow void across the street. The conversations seem far and distant and sadly cynical and depraved. Animal totems charge up those around me and then I hear the ideas come forth, creeping soundlessly. They strike without warning nor mercy.
We are all fragments of dead gods, living out the broken battles of ages and aeons. Mixed and matched, distilled from ancient ancestors and blood that comes from the center of the world.
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