Beside Myself

Beside Myself

Ever faced down one of your DEMONS?


This is how it went for me!

 I open the door and walk sullenly into my room—head down eyes still wet from the storm of emotions. My day has been anything but good. 

     I search half-heartedly for the light switch on the wall. I know exactly where it should be but am not quite sure if I want to turn it on. Somehow, darkness seems as bliss right now. 

     I am in luck; a flip of the switch brings the sweet sound and brilliantly bright flash of a bursting filament. The floating orb of annihilated light lingers for a moment, then dies, leaving only the violent vacuum of darkness to consume my sight. 

     Staring into nothingness has always been a great thrill for me. The notion that God was in it, or rather, was it, has comforted me since the very first time I comprehended the fact. 

     That realization came an eternity ago, and my days have grown darker ever since. 

     My drunken stagger brings my shin in painful contact with the glass table at the end of the hall. The pain awakens a sudden awareness of the room—and the shadow lurking in the corner. 

     “Shadow” seems to be the only word that makes sense to me right now; and yet that word seems to be a mere fraction of the complex equation that is unfolding before me. I blink my eyes hoping to relive myself of this vision, but to no avail. As my beer-addled sight adjusts to the darkness, so to does the thing before me seem to adjust to being seen? It is feeding off my curiosity; changing itself a little more every time I start to get a fix on it.

     The shadow is “evolving” with my foolish expectations. It begins to collapse upon itself, never changing size but folding, repeatedly, from the inside out. Each fold brings a new color, a new texture; from the brilliant azure waves of a sea I once dreamed myself drowning in, to the hellish crimson inferno I once believed would be my final resting place. It is as if my entire life has been reduced to the coalescing madness of this little orb of light. 

     Suddenly there is a sound such as none I have ever heard before. It is not even so much a sound as it is the ‘feeling’ of a sound. I try to understand ho the thing is making it but I cannot fix my thoughts well enough to comprehend—the sound is absorbing all my thoughts, all my feelings, everything I have ever known—if I could formulate a though, I would probably think that I was in heaven. 

     Suddenly, with the evaporation of thought, everything is gone: the table, the hallway, the light switch, the apartment, the little ball of chaos that had started this all… EVERYTHING! 

     A new type of thought begins. It is the thought that is no though; no me, no you, no I, just us. Time, space, and entity itself are but undreamt nightmares from a bygone era. I am in neither heaven nor hell, I just am. Everything is… 

     What the fuck?

     Where am I?

     Who am I?

     What is that thing in the corner? 

     Slowly I remember. I have begun to seep back into me. But what happened? Did I pass out? I vaguely remember a dream of something wonderful, but… 

     …that thing. It is different somehow—more menacing. The colors and shapes have disappeared and left what appears to be some sort of demon. It is watching me as a sentry would his castle; with tentative eyes and a grin of anticipation. Our eyes meet and it is as if we were born of the same womb. I feel as if I know this curios little creature, as if I had been his friend fro and eternity, or longer. 

     However, the anticipation is growing in his eyes. I can feel it piercing me like an arrow. He is daring me to approach his castle and telling me that he will destroy me whether I do or not.

     The choice is no longer mine. The battle must be fought. 

     For a moment, the alcohol tells me that I can win. That moment passes quickly, however, and it is upon me. 

     I feel its lithe little body scrambling up my legs. Tiny claws, like a cat, sink into the flesh of my thigh. Its speed is amazing; its ferocity even more so. There is a sudden rush of confusion as it sinks its razors into the soft flesh of my throat and uses its speed and momentum to vault over my shoulder and land on the nape of my neck. This must be its intended destination for there is a moment of anxious stillness—what feels like a slight caress on the back of my neck—a low, guttural moan—and then… 

     …I feel a piercing pain at the base of my skull—small at first, and then mind numbing. The pain grows as the hole widens and the shadow begins to crawl in. Its claws are reaching for something to grab onto; searching for the handhold that will gain it access to the shell I call ME. They find my spine and the journey begins. 

     Screaming now, I flail around the room. If only I had not gotten so drunk, perhaps I would be able to fight this thing off. Or maybe I would have been quick enough to keep it from getting on top of me in the first place. What the fuck is this thing anyway? No time for retrospective now—my spine is… 

     …broken by the wrenching of his claws; I drop lifelessly to the cold linoleum below. My jaw shatters on the floor and I see a red river beginning to flow towards the upturned palm of my right hand. The world collapses on itself and leave me all alone… 

     Now, as I open my eyes, a feeling of peace rushes through me once again. Below is the foul sight of my body being devoured while up here is nothing but…nothing; no pain; no anger; no drunken befuddlement and apathetic self-pity. Here is just the person I cal ‘I’ watching me be torn apart below. 

     The night grows old and disappears—as do the days and weeks. All the while, I delight in the violent drama below. I know I cannot feel what is happening but, at the same time, I seem to have some sort of knowledge of what is going on.

     The creature works its way, inch by inch, down the broken pole of my spine. I can see it inside my skin—it nibbles on my rotting flesh as it goes. This, however, is not its main goal as the gleam in its eye is ever looking downward—yearning for the feast that fills its stomach with the power to move on… 

     The scene is almost comical—that foul little beast satisfying itself on my putrid remains—and yet I am enjoying it on an n altogether different level. Up here, in the sober serenity of nothingness, the idea of watching the immolation of the vehicle that took me down so many wrong roads in my life is like the sunset at the end of an old western; the blood an endless death that littered the whole of the story are rendered all but forgotten in the warm rays of that forgiving star. All the torment, all the anguish; they are nothing more than the salty residue of my tears, dried buy the sun. 

     That vehicle drove me into the pits of hell. Well, that is a lie. It was more as if I drove myself there while I looked for a place to refuel. This absence of time and body is starting to fuck with me; all that I can do is think.

     Could I possibly be trying to blame the train wreck that was my life on the limp, half-eaten pile of flesh lying below me? I mean, of course the body has needs, but they are nothing but basics. The mind adds to the list of necessities. The mind that controls the degrees of what we call quality of living. Without the mind, we would be licking our balls before breakfast in the morning and rolling in shit the rest of the day. Then again, with the mess I have made of my life, the difference is only a matter of opinion. 

     I spent every waking minute of my life finding blame with everyone and everything but myself and, now, as I float through the ether of eternity, I try to place the blame on the home that I have been living in for this entire life. It is the very object that allows my mind to perceive its own existence and everything around it. The good and the bad are all the same; nothing more than a collection of experiences as known by one little shining light in the abyss of eternity. 

     …and suddenly it has reached the main course. With an orgasmic howl, it thrusts its way around my tailbone and latches its gnarly teeth onto my lower intestine. The art of nibbling is as lost to it now as that of casual drinking was to me—now there is nothing but the binge. 
It begins to move in the exact opposite direction of the course that has taken it months, possibly years to traverse. 

     Three or four bites—the lower intestine is gone. 

     Five or six—now the upper. 

     It is eating me from the bottom up and suddenly, along with the sense of freedom that I had in the beginning, the joy of the carnage is lost to me. 

     Suddenly the sound begins again from behind me—or is it around me—it sounds, at first, like a sweet lullaby. It grows continuously closer and eminently louder, until it is as thunder in my ear and lightning in my soul. It speaks no language I have ever heard before and yet its words become images before my eyes. They are the tale of my life woven of the sorrowful moan of the universe. Everything I have ever known is singing out before me in a chorus that would bring Christ himself to his knees. It is the song of salvation that rings true in the very inexplicability of this sound. It is a cry of hope from all those who have gone before. It is the mantra of the universe urging me back to finish what I had begun all those millions of year’s ago. It is simply the rhythm of life. 

     Its beat is chaos, and its tempo madness. Its affect is a torrent of rage like none I have ever felt before; rage perpetually molested into motion by crashing waves of love. 

     This is not the love of a boy for a girl, nor is it the love of a parent for a child; this is the love of eternity sweeping over the manifestation of time. It is the be all and the end all of everything I have ever known but could never, in a million time a million years, ever learn any multitude of words that would ever come close to wrapping themselves around the object so as to form a coherent picture of what I am experiencing right now. 

     It is that moment, which every person will experience in their lifetime, where, for apparently no logical reason at all, everything seems to come to a halt around you and tears run freely from your eyes. It is the only heaven you will ever truly know. 

     Rushing now, with the pace of fire and the intention of earth, onwards towards the body I shunned and the demon that is raping it. My thoughts are a dagger that I wield with pure intent; to carve this unwanted filth from my very being and set it to the task once occupied by myself—that of slave. 

     There is a rush of adrenaline as I plunge back into my half-devoured carcass. My mind engulfs the mass now gnawing on the bottom of my heart. Its attention diverted, the thing fights back. Words and images are the weapons of choice; all flung at me with the intention of distraction. They are demons in their own right, this barrage of obscenities, culled from the, seemingly, bottomless pit of my minds own illusion. 

     Everything is somehow different now, however, as I no longer see things the way I used to. Fear no longer has any meaning to me and death is something I’ve already overcome. The rules have changed and these temptations to doubt myself are so many empty threats hanging limply in the air outside. In here, in this circle of fire born of my own burnt understanding, there is nothing that can lead me away from myself. There is only me, and I am no one if I am not we…and therein lay the goal. 

      It is not the complete transformation, but it is the start of something so wondrous as to defy explanation. Even now, as the dominatrix howls with every lost ounce of control, the world is changing before my very mind; that is what I see with now. Your arguments hold no water, for they were mine a million years ago. You are no less than an extension of ideas I had when I was a child. There is no hurt, no fear, no doubt—it is all the same to me know. I yearn only for the day when I can perfect myself and will happily pass the time with this apish little creature by my side—doing my bidding for the sake of light and the destruction of darkness. 
The goal in mind, I set forth…