Lt. Boxy Angelman
I WILL EAT THIS GAME
I've been writing for as long as I can remember.
And I know plenty of awesome artists, writers, crafters of awesome, musicians, etc., who hit their stride simply by finding a place to put it and get some direction.
If there's anywhere such a thing should work, it'd probably be here.
That being said, it is with this thread that I encourage all those born with some extra-creative genes of any sort - all mediums welcome. By brush, or pen, or charcoal, or Krylon, or words, or, hell, stick figures even...(Happy Noodle Boy FTW.)
I hope I'm not the only one looking to give their efforts a little extra chutzpah
.
COME FORTH, FELLOW CREATORS OF STUFF :banana:
And I know plenty of awesome artists, writers, crafters of awesome, musicians, etc., who hit their stride simply by finding a place to put it and get some direction.
If there's anywhere such a thing should work, it'd probably be here.
That being said, it is with this thread that I encourage all those born with some extra-creative genes of any sort - all mediums welcome. By brush, or pen, or charcoal, or Krylon, or words, or, hell, stick figures even...(Happy Noodle Boy FTW.)
I hope I'm not the only one looking to give their efforts a little extra chutzpah
.So I've been trying to write this damn story since I was 14.
I've reinvented it god knows how many times, but for the first time ever, I've actually given it some meat and bones - and by meat and bones, I mean I stopped getting stuck brainstorming and actually started writing it.
I can promise you two things.
One, that there is a good chance much of this won't make any sort of sense the first time around.
Two, that before it's over, everything you see unfold will add up by it's end.
Hope you enjoy it.
As of now, the tenative title is "Elysium."
Any and all opinions are welcome...
(1. "NEVER LOSE THE ROAD")
"The sun's just come up,
The desert begins to glow,
The morning beckons..."
Feels like I've been watching this road go by for ages.
Like lifespans and lifetimes had been lost in the night, beaten into the shifting cracks of the beaten pavement beneath my feet, counting the waning stars and mumbling verses to myself. Broken stanzas from long-forgotten songs, if only for the sake of breaking the silence.
Year by mile, mile by year, watch the bad dreams disappear...
Even if there was anyone left to talk to on this pilgrimage, I wouldn't be able to properly put in words how deeply and darkly I miss the sound of music. The simple act of being able to get a song in your head and shortly thereafter summon it to your ears. Especially here.
The highway markers still count away the paces from here to my destination. 10'th of a mile here, another 10'th there, onward and upward, but without an honest clue as to my true whereabouts. No sense in trying to estimate time or distance; I've been lost since I got here. The only rule I was told to always follow when these days arrived was to make goddamn sure, no matter the cause, effect, or aftermath, that I never lose the road. It would be quite some time before I found its end, but it was certain among the few credible opinions of this place that this was the only way to get where I needed to go. Above all others laws or lack thereof during the course, this was the one commandment whose severing would lead to certain doom. It's too easy to get lost in this place, and doom isn't something I enjoy. So I follow the pointless signs.
I want to destroy them. Every one I see. It's like being mocked by faith; you know they're your only guide, your only means to escape, but their plain-sighted mockery drives you mad. I used to wish for the means to afford a cheap, dispensable TV to destroy via shotgun blast every time a terrible commercial disrupted the flow of my existance. Feels kind of the same. I hope that one day, if all somehow goes to plan, I can return to this road and personally exact my revenge on every sign I see from here to its end. Patronizing pieces of shit. They'll have it coming.
Almost makes you wish for confrontation, or look forward to crossing a wrong path. To a break from being the sole lifeform within reach. It gets so fucking quiet sometimes. There's evil out here, undoubtedly, but the pages of this particular endeavor are turning emptily today. You won't hear me complain. I may be lonely, but I'm in no hurry to have my work cut short. This place be damned if I came all the way to this sunrise not to see the road finished.
I ran into one of them shortly after I arrived. Emerald Beach, what once stood as a welcoming monument of sand and sea to the genius that used to litter this isle, was long gone. Replacved by some poor Normandy parody, littered with oversized shrapnel wrapped in barbed wire. Primitive means for a slightly-above-primitive population. Bunch of motherfuckers and their mind games. Jumped out at me when I was lighting a smoke. Standing under a billboard, that for whatever reason lost in time, read to the world in enormous letters, "JASON'S ASS EATS EVERYTHING," in the brightest of neon lights that could be seen for miles. Didn't take any chances. The moment it moved to strike, a throwing knife I was taught how to love and manipulate by my favorite gypsy in all the land, was sailing through the air like a goddamn paper airplane, and found itself buried in the chest cavity of the unfortunate fuck who took it upon himself to take the low road in my direction.
Strange place this was.
I've tried to maintain some balance of sanity.
Remember there's a cause to be settled.
A reason for all these steps, behind me and ahead of me.
Every morning, right the skies start to luminate, making that slow crawl from black to blue, I take shade behind a building shell or the lengths of wall where they once maintained barriers between the points of the city - had to try and keep the Destructive at bay somehow, I suppose - and I watch the sky light up. Always hidden from the direct gaze of the sun. Gives you a better view of all the different tricks the horizon can play. Every hue from blue to amber to orange and back, every morning. Partly for me. Partly for the dearest of friends passed who would see fit to harm me if I let such wondrous sights go to waste. Rosie would've liked this. She loved watching the simple things in life go by. Sitting outside the movie theater for hours with the tribe, our merry misfit alliance, just happy to be a part of the universe. Of course, there was also the time an outlandish drunken mascot man tried to make a pass at her after she'd just been laid off from her summer job, and in the heat of his horrible timing came within a few swings of beating him to death with his Chucky Cheese helmet...I fucking hate Chucky Cheese. Most irriating mascot ever concieved. And his arcades suck. I'm almost glad she beat him with his own head. But I digress...
There's just something about being there the moment the new day comes to life that makes it a little easier to survive. So I never miss a morning. Balance, and so forth.
I can at least still remember the last time I heard a real song. The last time I had the good fortune to hear the aural angels sing to me in soundwaves. And had I known, had I even had a hint of suspicion the night before that the next song to cross my ears would be the last I ever hear, it would've been no trouble to put every track I hold in my employ on a playlist and drown in the music until I went deaf; but alas, such luck was not mine to have. Instead, I would go to my unmarked grave in this desolate great beyond not to the tune of a proud swansong, or even a remotely enjoyable anthem of finality, but to the rhythm of some nameless bubblepop diva and her screeching voice of certain death, waking me from a dream as absolutely strange as she was deathly shrill.
What originally caught my attention in this dream wasn't the where, wasn't a who, no...it was the when.
1990, to be specific.
Midwinter.
The Bronx.
4 years old.
Standing at the foot of one of the stairway entrances to the 4 Train.
Outside of Yankee Stadium. It's grayer than gray, but no snow to speak of. Yet.
There's a McDonald's. I've got hotcakes.
And a toy. Miniature hotcakes. Figures.
Accompanied by my aunts while dear ol' mum picks out a handbag from a street vendor. I miss those guys. Used to be you couldn't walk two blocks in the old neighborhood without some regular joe at a table trying to sell you whatever useful goodies he saw fit to part with that day. But I digress. Because when I looked up to see my mother's salesman, there was no one there.
She was talking to air.
Then I made the mistake of blinking and rubbing my eyes, and opened to find that everyone else was gone as well.
Just me and my hotcakes.
And my smaller, much less edible toy hotcakes.
I turn and search for signs of life and see nothing. I turn again and find the station itself has vanished into thin air. Now things are starting to get really, really strange.
Because in place of this station, where moments ago stood a 10-ton structure of stone and steel capable of sending me anywhere in this city, now stood...a dog. Not even a big dog. Not even a MEDIUM dog. He was about Snoopy sized, give or take. And he didn't bark. No, that would've made sense. He spoke. "Turn, Square Soul. Turn. See. See Yourself. Yes."
Against all my better judgement, and in the hopes of putting a hastened end to this increasingly odd experience, I turn. I shouldn't have...but I did.
Behind me had been placed a mirror of great size. And in that mirror stood my reflection. But it wasn't the 4 year old incarnation of myself I'd been fully expecting to see in the event I crossed paths with a reflective surface. Oh no, no, no. I was life sized. 22 years, 5 months, 19 days old. Sebastian Oleander. I waved at myself to test for any spooky side effects, but nothing came of it. Just me waving at me. It was indeed an unenchanted, plain old mirror. But that was far from the key issue. The problem I had was what this canine poltergeist had decided to dress me in for our impromptu meeting of the minds.
I had never once wondered what I would look like as a blue ballerina.
To my everlasting shame, now I knew.
Tiara, glittered skirt, uncomfortable tights, shoes that make my toes like they've merged into singular super toes. And a wand. That, for whatever reason, had been topped with the most appetizing blueberry crumb muffin I'd ever seen in my life. Had I not been convinced it was a part of that wand for a reason, I would've consumed it as though I'd never eaten a muffin in my life. But I held my tounge. There were more important matters at hand. Like my wardrobe.
And as if to add insult to injury, I'd also been bestowed with a curly Q, 1930's silent movie evil villain mustache. Honestly, if I had tried in real life to duplicate the sheer terror this combination of looks would've struck in your heart, I would've failed miserably. Can't be glad enough that the world at large will never bear witness to that level of delusion.
Then things got weirder. So much weirder.
Because when my eyes finally shifted from the stunning sight of my ensemble, the reflection of the once-diminuitive dog that had started all this was changing far more dramatically than I would've ever been comfortable seeing. Imagine watching Baxter, the heroic young dog from Anchorman, contorting, shifting, writhing and morphing in inhuman ways into what I can only describe as some kind of horrible, cybernetic hybrid between a terrier and the Ultra Megazord. Remember him? I always wanted the Titanus set, but I could never save the allowance money.
I then became compelled to spit a few profanities in his direction on the subject of there never being an explanation as to how in almost every episode, at least once, during the course of the Mighty Morphin' Power Rangers, the city of Angel Grove was obliterated during the course of whatever giant mechanized battle the Rangers ended up taking part in. Constant destruction, devastation, doom, presumably enormous casualties, every week.
But as if the concept of a city in a constant state of being blown to pieces wasn't enough to take in, every new week would find the town completely restored, without a body to count or a negative word to say.
Then I realized I was in the middle of a tirade over a near-20-year-old children's kung fu show while an enormous robot dog was moments away from consuming me, tutu and all. And I came to my senses and began to run. Very fast. Dream fast.
I'd long ago developed the oft-ridiculous habit of getting lost in thought overanalyzing things that had no reason to be analyzed in the first place, and most times it led to nothing but the occasional smack in the back of the head. But in this particular case, my oral thesis in Mighty Morphin' Physics 101 was the saving grace that distracted the beast bearing his teeth in my direction, because when I looked back, he had shut his lips and rested his chin on his paw, as though my pointless goings-on had lost him in thought as deeply as I'd just been, now oblivious to my presence entirely.
Advantage: Me.
Then luck struck again, as the boulevard I'd happened upon happened to bear an item of great use: a podium, flanked by several blinking neon arrows and the letters "USEFUL ITEM" blinking bright pink, all pointing towards the podium's head, on the top of which sat a small remote with a large red button.
A brightly decorated, plainly identified useful device safely shuttered away from Dogbot?
Going by dream logic, this had to be a good thing.
So I press it.
And I immediately realize 2 things: First, it turned out there was a logical and well-thought-out reason why I had been placed in my aquamarine getup of idiocy.
Still no explanation for the mustache, but the clothes made sense.
Unfortunately, the second thing I realized is that I'd been placed in this outfit because it was indestructible, and thus would expand perfectly and symmetrically when I pressed the button and was forcefully distorted, grown and reshaped to reach even scale with my nemesis.
Now, I knew what it was like to be a 100-foot tall ballerina.
But now that size was no longer at any sort of a physical disadvantage, it was time for this cybernetic canine asshole to pay with his oversalivated robot life.
I'd been staring at the muffin on the tip of my wand since I saw myself in the mirror. One part mystery, one part hunger. But breakfast would have to wait. Technically, the dream logic of the button was right on the money, The battlefield was even. Now, it was time to try and double the winnings. With a muffin. It felt so insane, I almost couldn't do it, but I did.
I looked that robot puppy sonofabitch right in his colorblind eyes.
I squinted all Clint-Eastwood-dramatic style.
I'm pretty sure I saw a tumbleweed blow by out of my peripheral vision.
And I waved my magic muffin wand. Christ, even writing those words hurts.
There was a bright blue flash. Loud. Vibrant.
The unmistakable sound of a choir singing the word "Jelly" in the background.
All possible comprehension of this dream was lost at this point.
It was just me, floating in the white of the blast, wondering how the hell a muffin on a stick managed to turn the world white and cause the religious to sing about condiments...
But, much like this moment of nostalgia, the wave of that wand brought my dream to an ed. And with the sun all but risen to set the sky a uniform blue, it seems like high time to get on my feet and make for my point of interest.
I'd fallen asleep on the canopied roof of a shelled-out convienience store I'd found before the sun went down. No trees or grass life nearby means no cover for the unsuspecting hunters of my imagination to hide amongst. Reassuring, at the least.
A cigarette to start the day before my morning arrives. Down the safety ladder and into the scattered rubble strewn across the floor of the shop. It's a wreckage, but it's to be expected. Not a lot left standing worth looking at. I can only be grateful I wasn't here to watch the onslaught unfold. There would've been no stopping it. But that's why I'm here. Mumbling lyrics to myself, pilfering Newports and coconut donuts, and praying for the end of this doomed road to arrive before my legs lose the will my heart and mind are trying to adhere to.
To make sure it doesn't get any worse.
Having already giving the deserted mart a few once-overs, I take in one last drag before tossing the butt into the shattered, whiskey-soaked shards of what was the liquor aisle, left broken and flammable in the course of the plight.
Figure I'm not gonna be back here any time soon, nor is anyone who could possibly be of use. No sense in letting potential lieges of ill intentions gain an advantage.
Hence, fire. Big fire.
Out the door I go, surroundings examined and dismissed as safe enough to venture through. Only one rule to follow, and that rule is the road. After a few paces, I turn to watch the store as the lick of the flames grew longer and heavier. I felt a twinge of guilt, having taken the shelter that kept me safe through the dark of the night and turning it into an effigy.
But there are bigger things to worry about.
Another cigarette seems like the perfect accompaniment to this visual.
Was planning on quitting. Fair to say I've lost my motivation.
Law is gone. Sense is gone. And in my humble opinion, a vice in a lawless, senseless world is just a simple habit. Won't do me any good to break them now.
~Oleander.
(2. "SOUND THE STELLAR ALARMS")
~~Not too long ago...~~
With a blink and a twitch, he was awake.
Eyes wide open, vision shifting back to the scope of normality.
The familiar walls of the apartment let him know that whatever mindfuck he'd crawled into was now all but behind him. He shook off the still-present waves of confusion and lit a cigarette, crawling out of the short but sturdy twin size bed from which he'd awoken and walked towards the window, where sat the alarm clock radio that shook him from the dream. Absent from its call was the typical linear beeping and bopping you'd hear from a morning wake up alarm, replaced by the damsel who had purchased it for him with an unidentifiable song that he could only conclude had been written and produced solely for the purpose of irritating and enraging anyone who heard it. Hell of a way to wake someone up in the morning. This morning.
A night like no other laid behind him. A night beyond concievable recognition.
He had seen the ancestors. Escaped the grasp of Death. Dances the waltz of old.
He'd also ingested more cough medicine than any individual, regardless of stature or poor health, should ever consume in a single sitting. Not the best time to take a walk.
He'd lived in reclusion since leaving home; not in the sense of hiding from the world, but simply making the decision to face it on his own. He had friends to his credit, an arguably normal life, nothing that one could really call out of the ordinary...no, it was his perception that had always left him at a difference. He believed there was good in the world, but it was outnumbered. Outmatched by darker tides. So in a particularly enshadowed moment of weakness - taking place during the course of a sleepless night riddled with a horrid cold and even more horrid news - he had found his way to the bottom of the bottle of a local's market's take on cough syrup, and in the throes of an infuriated argument with himself, threw on various pieces of winter clothes in between bouts of insults, and marched out of his apartment building, nestled in an out-of-sight-out-of-mind nook of comfort between two bigger towers, down the street towards the center of his troubles...where his troubles always seem to begin and end...he lit a cigarette, silenced himself for the sake of saving face in fron of the few souls still awake and wandering the streets at this hour, and made his way towards New Woodlawn Cemetary.
He vaguely remembered the events of the evening, but they were beyond his grasp at that moment, as the only thought on my mind was the blaring, seething hatred of this fucking song and all who enjoy it. It had been placed strategically, away from all sleeping apparatuses, and turned to an earth-shattering decibel, so as to guarantee that whoever it was meant to wake would have to force themselves to rise to put an end to the near-bloodletting shriek of the song blaring from its speakers. But as his dream had denied him the satisfaction of seeing his enemy fall in defeat, there was still a lingering desire to have the last word. And this accursed contraption's combination of stinging static and off-key yelping was just adding fuel to the fire. Whoever this was had no business being in the same time zone as a microphone.
So he found a pen and a pad of post-its.
He scribbled a note to himself, stepped into the kitchen, and stuck it to the fridge.
Then an object caught his eye; a skillet sitting on the edge of the counter.
Cast-iron. Clean as a whistle. Heavy as a human head.
He took it back with him to the window sill and unplugged the clock.
Breathing a sigh of relief in the silence that followed the abrupt end to the static song, he tossed what was left of his cigarette out the window and picked up the now-silent device. Harbinger of needless noise in one hand, object of vengeance in the other. Fresh out of flat surfaces against which one could take part in severe-degree smashing, an improvisation needed to be made. So the clock was given a light toss in the air, the crescendo of the cliff diver before he looks down and realizes he's plummeting to his demise, and before it had a chance to make it halfway to the ground, was met from behind by the whipping steel obliteration of the cast-iron skillet.
Like Reggie Jackson in the 70's. Outta the fucking park.
The note on the refridgerator read, "I owe someone a new alarm clock," followed by his signature. He had no issue replacing it, but at that particular time, in that particular mood, there was no moving forward with life unless that goddamn thing met a malevolent end. He placed it back safely in the kitchen and wandered towards his hallway closet. Black door, white frame, and hopefully a constructive way to pass his morning by. It opened to an unmanageable mess.
He had planned to dig out a mixtape - some Billy Joel, wrapped around Dustin Kensrue, with a side of the Eagles and a taste of some instrumental soundoffs - and play it to accompany the background noise of his morning, but distractions would lead him elsewhere. He ruffled the last of his slumber out of his hair, shoulder-length and stuck hopelessly between jet-black and amber brown, and took a step towards the kitchen towards a victory bagel when he heard another familiar ringing fill the air. Not the ghost of the fallen clock; the telephone beckoned.
A phone call. A simple phone call. Where the voice waiting on the other end of the reciever would lead him, he'd later wish with every sliver of his being he'd known before he held the reciever to his ear. But on this morning, it seemed like nothing more than a simple call. So he answered, and cemented that terrible track as the last song to cross his ears before the end began.
As far as I can tell, I'm still on the road. Could be wrong. Could be seeing a road. Just seeing it. But is it there? Maybe there is no road, and the wrong half of my mind is the only one who knows it. But I keep walking. Have to. Been too long now. All purpose in giving up is gone.
(Don't lose the road. What fucking road? God, I need to sleep...)
Haven't slept in days. Not since I found the perch on top of the market the day I arrived. Unaware when last I wrote of how much more...well, interesting...things were going to get, what would be seen, done, spoken and heard...sufficed to say I was heavily unprepared for this silver hell. The noise, it took my words. Even in ink. Now they've poisoned the inkwell.
Lovely.
Wish I could remember what day it was, just to have an idea of how long this place has kept memoving. Yet to find anything close to a haven safe enough in which to rest. The road I was told to follow, like a thread to salvation, had led me to conclude it's entirely possible I've already died along the way and been relocated to my own personal plane of damnation. Because if I remember correctly, this used to be a city. It looks like a goddamned cobalt bomb went off here. My old chemistry teacher - I don't know whether or not he was weaving tales or telling the genuine truth, but he sounded lucid enough to believe - he told me there was a certain type of bomb, a certain tybe of cobalt construction that, when detonated, could unmake every shred of life in its path, while leaving every structure standing and sound.
I wonder now if Ocean could've been capable of it...
It's all still here. Only time has taken its toll.
But it's always grey. No sun. No moon. Just grey.
Living inside the belly of a fucking Super Boo.
And this isle was its fortress, waiting in the northeast of Chocoland.
Or the southwest. There may have been two of them. Fuck it.
It's perpetual grey. Without solar or lunar company, I have no faith in time whatsoever, at least none that I'd be willing to stake on the capabilities of a plastic watch. At this point, I'm marching to destination or demise. one of them is reached.
Constantly glowing. Constantly cloud-ridden and on the move in some direction or another. Like the most vicious, teeth-gnashing storm you've ever seen cross a horizon; the ones you see on TV tearing through entire towns like silverware through a three course meal.
Every now again, you hear a scream or hear a flash in the distance.
Or turn a corner wrapped from bow to stern in the inescapable feeling you're being watched like a lab rat in its polyurethane maze.
But it's best to just ignore it.
I'd imagine adding such fear to this kind of desolation could drive a person mad.
You remember the Boos from Mario?
Those spooky ghost bastards?
Imagine living inside one of those. Inside of a giant grey Boo. No white. Not your normal ghost. Normality has left him. He's a strange one, that Boo. A terrible spirit indeed. But he's far away enough for the rest of the world to avoid. And they do. They don't want to know what's wrong. God gave them a free pass. They never wanted to know. Never wanted to face the inevitable, heavenless truth of what went on. They don't care anymore.
So he stands alone. To brood. To ponder. To plan.
He doesn't resent them. He thanks them, because it was their neglect that made him strong. And insane. But mostly strong. And the strength of his madness has turned him grey.
Just picture that. Picture that for a moment.
Stuck in it. Enveloped and consumed. A sky made of smoke and steel.
Civilization, euthanized and reborn again, inside a giant fucking super Boo.
To hell with the Mushroom Kingdom.
It was like a desert in black and white. It could get so still and quiet, you'd forget there was color or sound at work at all. A silent movie in an empty theater.
Having reached the peak of delirium, I'm seeing faces and figures in its aerial workings I desperately wish I wasn't laying eyes on right now. Nimbus turns to nightmare. Cirrus turns sadistic. I believe I've just seen an ice cream cone reborn as a cerberus.
Enough of the sky. Focus on the road.
Walk, fucking legs. Walk.
The bats go by every now and again. Like vultures combing the dunes of Death Valley. They come and go as they please. Calm and omnipresent. No sense of malevolence about them, nothing to indicate they were here to bring about suffering, but when every other mile of this eternal wandering is flanked by beating wings and blinded, glaring eyes, you can't help but feel a little unnerved.
They remembered me from the starting line.
Waking up facedown in the sands of Emerald Beach. The green-tinted shore that preceded all the traps, tricks, and tragic flaws of the island to which I'd been delivered.
I came for the stone. Elysium's misery. The last bullet in the chamber.
It'd been a terrible mistake, what happened here. They said they wanted progress. They wanted change. They wanted to see good done for the world that had been prone to a heavier bearing of suffering than it had seen in some time.
Fulfillment in a myriad of failure. That was their story, anyway.
So often the catastrophes of both fantasy and factuality stem from some wretched sect of fools taken with the idea of playing God. So it was that New Camden Isle was laid to rest. Consumed in the shadow of night by the mistakes of its inhabitants. A reclusive group of researchers who'd been at work beneath the city since before I was a twinkle in my mother's eye. "Project Ocean," they called it. The ongoing efforts of a ceaseless trudge towards a terrible end.
And, as was revealed only after the city built above their conspiring was flooded in light and wiped clean of the downtrodden souls they'd claimed to be protecting, towards the mastery and manipulation of a previously untethered intangible that, in my humble opinion, mankind had no right trying to toy with in the first place.
Barely enough was known publically about what had been transpiring under the island; even now, the exact details of what turned this place from a shimmering populus to a desert of lost souls has yet to be revealed.
I get the distinct feeling that's what I'm here to discover.
I've seen enough in the days past to realize this isn't the kind of place you tell someone the whole truth of before you send them here. You wouldn't be able to get them within half a mile of a harbor, let alone on the boat.
Maybe that's why no one would give a direct answer when questions came up about life left to be salvaged or dealt with. No one really knows what kind of wreckages the great destruction left behind, but someone has to find out. Why else would such a task be undertaken by scattered individuals instead of a collective unit? We all have a purpose, our own reasons for embarking on this delusional journey, yet it was somehow argued and agreed upon that we would be acting independantly instead of as a party? Because there's no turning back when you're alone, no matter what horror or half-psychotic mess you should happen to encounter. It's success or death. Can't bail on the mission without the ability to bail.
Split them up, and your chances of survival rise.
At least in the sense that your entire assembly won't be struck down simultaneously.
But I digress.
The story goes that the interests of the project had been founded for a considerably long time. Men from all walks of life, all number of fields and practices, cooperating under the banner of "progress," had been scheming collectively over the decades to tangle the web. Whether or not the idea was hatched for the purposes of salvation, madness, or simple unadulterated evil may never be known. At least not by me. What I know enough of to tell you here, I know only as it was told to me by those who sent me here.
I live now, only to tell the story.
I think I see a man in the road...
I've reinvented it god knows how many times, but for the first time ever, I've actually given it some meat and bones - and by meat and bones, I mean I stopped getting stuck brainstorming and actually started writing it.
I can promise you two things.
One, that there is a good chance much of this won't make any sort of sense the first time around.
Two, that before it's over, everything you see unfold will add up by it's end.
Hope you enjoy it.
As of now, the tenative title is "Elysium."
Any and all opinions are welcome...
(1. "NEVER LOSE THE ROAD")
"The sun's just come up,
The desert begins to glow,
The morning beckons..."
Feels like I've been watching this road go by for ages.
Like lifespans and lifetimes had been lost in the night, beaten into the shifting cracks of the beaten pavement beneath my feet, counting the waning stars and mumbling verses to myself. Broken stanzas from long-forgotten songs, if only for the sake of breaking the silence.
Year by mile, mile by year, watch the bad dreams disappear...
Even if there was anyone left to talk to on this pilgrimage, I wouldn't be able to properly put in words how deeply and darkly I miss the sound of music. The simple act of being able to get a song in your head and shortly thereafter summon it to your ears. Especially here.
The highway markers still count away the paces from here to my destination. 10'th of a mile here, another 10'th there, onward and upward, but without an honest clue as to my true whereabouts. No sense in trying to estimate time or distance; I've been lost since I got here. The only rule I was told to always follow when these days arrived was to make goddamn sure, no matter the cause, effect, or aftermath, that I never lose the road. It would be quite some time before I found its end, but it was certain among the few credible opinions of this place that this was the only way to get where I needed to go. Above all others laws or lack thereof during the course, this was the one commandment whose severing would lead to certain doom. It's too easy to get lost in this place, and doom isn't something I enjoy. So I follow the pointless signs.
I want to destroy them. Every one I see. It's like being mocked by faith; you know they're your only guide, your only means to escape, but their plain-sighted mockery drives you mad. I used to wish for the means to afford a cheap, dispensable TV to destroy via shotgun blast every time a terrible commercial disrupted the flow of my existance. Feels kind of the same. I hope that one day, if all somehow goes to plan, I can return to this road and personally exact my revenge on every sign I see from here to its end. Patronizing pieces of shit. They'll have it coming.
Almost makes you wish for confrontation, or look forward to crossing a wrong path. To a break from being the sole lifeform within reach. It gets so fucking quiet sometimes. There's evil out here, undoubtedly, but the pages of this particular endeavor are turning emptily today. You won't hear me complain. I may be lonely, but I'm in no hurry to have my work cut short. This place be damned if I came all the way to this sunrise not to see the road finished.
I ran into one of them shortly after I arrived. Emerald Beach, what once stood as a welcoming monument of sand and sea to the genius that used to litter this isle, was long gone. Replacved by some poor Normandy parody, littered with oversized shrapnel wrapped in barbed wire. Primitive means for a slightly-above-primitive population. Bunch of motherfuckers and their mind games. Jumped out at me when I was lighting a smoke. Standing under a billboard, that for whatever reason lost in time, read to the world in enormous letters, "JASON'S ASS EATS EVERYTHING," in the brightest of neon lights that could be seen for miles. Didn't take any chances. The moment it moved to strike, a throwing knife I was taught how to love and manipulate by my favorite gypsy in all the land, was sailing through the air like a goddamn paper airplane, and found itself buried in the chest cavity of the unfortunate fuck who took it upon himself to take the low road in my direction.
Strange place this was.
I've tried to maintain some balance of sanity.
Remember there's a cause to be settled.
A reason for all these steps, behind me and ahead of me.
Every morning, right the skies start to luminate, making that slow crawl from black to blue, I take shade behind a building shell or the lengths of wall where they once maintained barriers between the points of the city - had to try and keep the Destructive at bay somehow, I suppose - and I watch the sky light up. Always hidden from the direct gaze of the sun. Gives you a better view of all the different tricks the horizon can play. Every hue from blue to amber to orange and back, every morning. Partly for me. Partly for the dearest of friends passed who would see fit to harm me if I let such wondrous sights go to waste. Rosie would've liked this. She loved watching the simple things in life go by. Sitting outside the movie theater for hours with the tribe, our merry misfit alliance, just happy to be a part of the universe. Of course, there was also the time an outlandish drunken mascot man tried to make a pass at her after she'd just been laid off from her summer job, and in the heat of his horrible timing came within a few swings of beating him to death with his Chucky Cheese helmet...I fucking hate Chucky Cheese. Most irriating mascot ever concieved. And his arcades suck. I'm almost glad she beat him with his own head. But I digress...
There's just something about being there the moment the new day comes to life that makes it a little easier to survive. So I never miss a morning. Balance, and so forth.
I can at least still remember the last time I heard a real song. The last time I had the good fortune to hear the aural angels sing to me in soundwaves. And had I known, had I even had a hint of suspicion the night before that the next song to cross my ears would be the last I ever hear, it would've been no trouble to put every track I hold in my employ on a playlist and drown in the music until I went deaf; but alas, such luck was not mine to have. Instead, I would go to my unmarked grave in this desolate great beyond not to the tune of a proud swansong, or even a remotely enjoyable anthem of finality, but to the rhythm of some nameless bubblepop diva and her screeching voice of certain death, waking me from a dream as absolutely strange as she was deathly shrill.
What originally caught my attention in this dream wasn't the where, wasn't a who, no...it was the when.
1990, to be specific.
Midwinter.
The Bronx.
4 years old.
Standing at the foot of one of the stairway entrances to the 4 Train.
Outside of Yankee Stadium. It's grayer than gray, but no snow to speak of. Yet.
There's a McDonald's. I've got hotcakes.
And a toy. Miniature hotcakes. Figures.
Accompanied by my aunts while dear ol' mum picks out a handbag from a street vendor. I miss those guys. Used to be you couldn't walk two blocks in the old neighborhood without some regular joe at a table trying to sell you whatever useful goodies he saw fit to part with that day. But I digress. Because when I looked up to see my mother's salesman, there was no one there.
She was talking to air.
Then I made the mistake of blinking and rubbing my eyes, and opened to find that everyone else was gone as well.
Just me and my hotcakes.
And my smaller, much less edible toy hotcakes.
I turn and search for signs of life and see nothing. I turn again and find the station itself has vanished into thin air. Now things are starting to get really, really strange.
Because in place of this station, where moments ago stood a 10-ton structure of stone and steel capable of sending me anywhere in this city, now stood...a dog. Not even a big dog. Not even a MEDIUM dog. He was about Snoopy sized, give or take. And he didn't bark. No, that would've made sense. He spoke. "Turn, Square Soul. Turn. See. See Yourself. Yes."
Against all my better judgement, and in the hopes of putting a hastened end to this increasingly odd experience, I turn. I shouldn't have...but I did.
Behind me had been placed a mirror of great size. And in that mirror stood my reflection. But it wasn't the 4 year old incarnation of myself I'd been fully expecting to see in the event I crossed paths with a reflective surface. Oh no, no, no. I was life sized. 22 years, 5 months, 19 days old. Sebastian Oleander. I waved at myself to test for any spooky side effects, but nothing came of it. Just me waving at me. It was indeed an unenchanted, plain old mirror. But that was far from the key issue. The problem I had was what this canine poltergeist had decided to dress me in for our impromptu meeting of the minds.
I had never once wondered what I would look like as a blue ballerina.
To my everlasting shame, now I knew.
Tiara, glittered skirt, uncomfortable tights, shoes that make my toes like they've merged into singular super toes. And a wand. That, for whatever reason, had been topped with the most appetizing blueberry crumb muffin I'd ever seen in my life. Had I not been convinced it was a part of that wand for a reason, I would've consumed it as though I'd never eaten a muffin in my life. But I held my tounge. There were more important matters at hand. Like my wardrobe.
And as if to add insult to injury, I'd also been bestowed with a curly Q, 1930's silent movie evil villain mustache. Honestly, if I had tried in real life to duplicate the sheer terror this combination of looks would've struck in your heart, I would've failed miserably. Can't be glad enough that the world at large will never bear witness to that level of delusion.
Then things got weirder. So much weirder.
Because when my eyes finally shifted from the stunning sight of my ensemble, the reflection of the once-diminuitive dog that had started all this was changing far more dramatically than I would've ever been comfortable seeing. Imagine watching Baxter, the heroic young dog from Anchorman, contorting, shifting, writhing and morphing in inhuman ways into what I can only describe as some kind of horrible, cybernetic hybrid between a terrier and the Ultra Megazord. Remember him? I always wanted the Titanus set, but I could never save the allowance money.
I then became compelled to spit a few profanities in his direction on the subject of there never being an explanation as to how in almost every episode, at least once, during the course of the Mighty Morphin' Power Rangers, the city of Angel Grove was obliterated during the course of whatever giant mechanized battle the Rangers ended up taking part in. Constant destruction, devastation, doom, presumably enormous casualties, every week.
But as if the concept of a city in a constant state of being blown to pieces wasn't enough to take in, every new week would find the town completely restored, without a body to count or a negative word to say.
Then I realized I was in the middle of a tirade over a near-20-year-old children's kung fu show while an enormous robot dog was moments away from consuming me, tutu and all. And I came to my senses and began to run. Very fast. Dream fast.
I'd long ago developed the oft-ridiculous habit of getting lost in thought overanalyzing things that had no reason to be analyzed in the first place, and most times it led to nothing but the occasional smack in the back of the head. But in this particular case, my oral thesis in Mighty Morphin' Physics 101 was the saving grace that distracted the beast bearing his teeth in my direction, because when I looked back, he had shut his lips and rested his chin on his paw, as though my pointless goings-on had lost him in thought as deeply as I'd just been, now oblivious to my presence entirely.
Advantage: Me.
Then luck struck again, as the boulevard I'd happened upon happened to bear an item of great use: a podium, flanked by several blinking neon arrows and the letters "USEFUL ITEM" blinking bright pink, all pointing towards the podium's head, on the top of which sat a small remote with a large red button.
A brightly decorated, plainly identified useful device safely shuttered away from Dogbot?
Going by dream logic, this had to be a good thing.
So I press it.
And I immediately realize 2 things: First, it turned out there was a logical and well-thought-out reason why I had been placed in my aquamarine getup of idiocy.
Still no explanation for the mustache, but the clothes made sense.
Unfortunately, the second thing I realized is that I'd been placed in this outfit because it was indestructible, and thus would expand perfectly and symmetrically when I pressed the button and was forcefully distorted, grown and reshaped to reach even scale with my nemesis.
Now, I knew what it was like to be a 100-foot tall ballerina.
But now that size was no longer at any sort of a physical disadvantage, it was time for this cybernetic canine asshole to pay with his oversalivated robot life.
I'd been staring at the muffin on the tip of my wand since I saw myself in the mirror. One part mystery, one part hunger. But breakfast would have to wait. Technically, the dream logic of the button was right on the money, The battlefield was even. Now, it was time to try and double the winnings. With a muffin. It felt so insane, I almost couldn't do it, but I did.
I looked that robot puppy sonofabitch right in his colorblind eyes.
I squinted all Clint-Eastwood-dramatic style.
I'm pretty sure I saw a tumbleweed blow by out of my peripheral vision.
And I waved my magic muffin wand. Christ, even writing those words hurts.
There was a bright blue flash. Loud. Vibrant.
The unmistakable sound of a choir singing the word "Jelly" in the background.
All possible comprehension of this dream was lost at this point.
It was just me, floating in the white of the blast, wondering how the hell a muffin on a stick managed to turn the world white and cause the religious to sing about condiments...
But, much like this moment of nostalgia, the wave of that wand brought my dream to an ed. And with the sun all but risen to set the sky a uniform blue, it seems like high time to get on my feet and make for my point of interest.
I'd fallen asleep on the canopied roof of a shelled-out convienience store I'd found before the sun went down. No trees or grass life nearby means no cover for the unsuspecting hunters of my imagination to hide amongst. Reassuring, at the least.
A cigarette to start the day before my morning arrives. Down the safety ladder and into the scattered rubble strewn across the floor of the shop. It's a wreckage, but it's to be expected. Not a lot left standing worth looking at. I can only be grateful I wasn't here to watch the onslaught unfold. There would've been no stopping it. But that's why I'm here. Mumbling lyrics to myself, pilfering Newports and coconut donuts, and praying for the end of this doomed road to arrive before my legs lose the will my heart and mind are trying to adhere to.
To make sure it doesn't get any worse.
Having already giving the deserted mart a few once-overs, I take in one last drag before tossing the butt into the shattered, whiskey-soaked shards of what was the liquor aisle, left broken and flammable in the course of the plight.
Figure I'm not gonna be back here any time soon, nor is anyone who could possibly be of use. No sense in letting potential lieges of ill intentions gain an advantage.
Hence, fire. Big fire.
Out the door I go, surroundings examined and dismissed as safe enough to venture through. Only one rule to follow, and that rule is the road. After a few paces, I turn to watch the store as the lick of the flames grew longer and heavier. I felt a twinge of guilt, having taken the shelter that kept me safe through the dark of the night and turning it into an effigy.
But there are bigger things to worry about.
Another cigarette seems like the perfect accompaniment to this visual.
Was planning on quitting. Fair to say I've lost my motivation.
Law is gone. Sense is gone. And in my humble opinion, a vice in a lawless, senseless world is just a simple habit. Won't do me any good to break them now.
~Oleander.
(2. "SOUND THE STELLAR ALARMS")
~~Not too long ago...~~
With a blink and a twitch, he was awake.
Eyes wide open, vision shifting back to the scope of normality.
The familiar walls of the apartment let him know that whatever mindfuck he'd crawled into was now all but behind him. He shook off the still-present waves of confusion and lit a cigarette, crawling out of the short but sturdy twin size bed from which he'd awoken and walked towards the window, where sat the alarm clock radio that shook him from the dream. Absent from its call was the typical linear beeping and bopping you'd hear from a morning wake up alarm, replaced by the damsel who had purchased it for him with an unidentifiable song that he could only conclude had been written and produced solely for the purpose of irritating and enraging anyone who heard it. Hell of a way to wake someone up in the morning. This morning.
A night like no other laid behind him. A night beyond concievable recognition.
He had seen the ancestors. Escaped the grasp of Death. Dances the waltz of old.
He'd also ingested more cough medicine than any individual, regardless of stature or poor health, should ever consume in a single sitting. Not the best time to take a walk.
He'd lived in reclusion since leaving home; not in the sense of hiding from the world, but simply making the decision to face it on his own. He had friends to his credit, an arguably normal life, nothing that one could really call out of the ordinary...no, it was his perception that had always left him at a difference. He believed there was good in the world, but it was outnumbered. Outmatched by darker tides. So in a particularly enshadowed moment of weakness - taking place during the course of a sleepless night riddled with a horrid cold and even more horrid news - he had found his way to the bottom of the bottle of a local's market's take on cough syrup, and in the throes of an infuriated argument with himself, threw on various pieces of winter clothes in between bouts of insults, and marched out of his apartment building, nestled in an out-of-sight-out-of-mind nook of comfort between two bigger towers, down the street towards the center of his troubles...where his troubles always seem to begin and end...he lit a cigarette, silenced himself for the sake of saving face in fron of the few souls still awake and wandering the streets at this hour, and made his way towards New Woodlawn Cemetary.
He vaguely remembered the events of the evening, but they were beyond his grasp at that moment, as the only thought on my mind was the blaring, seething hatred of this fucking song and all who enjoy it. It had been placed strategically, away from all sleeping apparatuses, and turned to an earth-shattering decibel, so as to guarantee that whoever it was meant to wake would have to force themselves to rise to put an end to the near-bloodletting shriek of the song blaring from its speakers. But as his dream had denied him the satisfaction of seeing his enemy fall in defeat, there was still a lingering desire to have the last word. And this accursed contraption's combination of stinging static and off-key yelping was just adding fuel to the fire. Whoever this was had no business being in the same time zone as a microphone.
So he found a pen and a pad of post-its.
He scribbled a note to himself, stepped into the kitchen, and stuck it to the fridge.
Then an object caught his eye; a skillet sitting on the edge of the counter.
Cast-iron. Clean as a whistle. Heavy as a human head.
He took it back with him to the window sill and unplugged the clock.
Breathing a sigh of relief in the silence that followed the abrupt end to the static song, he tossed what was left of his cigarette out the window and picked up the now-silent device. Harbinger of needless noise in one hand, object of vengeance in the other. Fresh out of flat surfaces against which one could take part in severe-degree smashing, an improvisation needed to be made. So the clock was given a light toss in the air, the crescendo of the cliff diver before he looks down and realizes he's plummeting to his demise, and before it had a chance to make it halfway to the ground, was met from behind by the whipping steel obliteration of the cast-iron skillet.
Like Reggie Jackson in the 70's. Outta the fucking park.
The note on the refridgerator read, "I owe someone a new alarm clock," followed by his signature. He had no issue replacing it, but at that particular time, in that particular mood, there was no moving forward with life unless that goddamn thing met a malevolent end. He placed it back safely in the kitchen and wandered towards his hallway closet. Black door, white frame, and hopefully a constructive way to pass his morning by. It opened to an unmanageable mess.
He had planned to dig out a mixtape - some Billy Joel, wrapped around Dustin Kensrue, with a side of the Eagles and a taste of some instrumental soundoffs - and play it to accompany the background noise of his morning, but distractions would lead him elsewhere. He ruffled the last of his slumber out of his hair, shoulder-length and stuck hopelessly between jet-black and amber brown, and took a step towards the kitchen towards a victory bagel when he heard another familiar ringing fill the air. Not the ghost of the fallen clock; the telephone beckoned.
A phone call. A simple phone call. Where the voice waiting on the other end of the reciever would lead him, he'd later wish with every sliver of his being he'd known before he held the reciever to his ear. But on this morning, it seemed like nothing more than a simple call. So he answered, and cemented that terrible track as the last song to cross his ears before the end began.
As far as I can tell, I'm still on the road. Could be wrong. Could be seeing a road. Just seeing it. But is it there? Maybe there is no road, and the wrong half of my mind is the only one who knows it. But I keep walking. Have to. Been too long now. All purpose in giving up is gone.
(Don't lose the road. What fucking road? God, I need to sleep...)
Haven't slept in days. Not since I found the perch on top of the market the day I arrived. Unaware when last I wrote of how much more...well, interesting...things were going to get, what would be seen, done, spoken and heard...sufficed to say I was heavily unprepared for this silver hell. The noise, it took my words. Even in ink. Now they've poisoned the inkwell.
Lovely.
Wish I could remember what day it was, just to have an idea of how long this place has kept memoving. Yet to find anything close to a haven safe enough in which to rest. The road I was told to follow, like a thread to salvation, had led me to conclude it's entirely possible I've already died along the way and been relocated to my own personal plane of damnation. Because if I remember correctly, this used to be a city. It looks like a goddamned cobalt bomb went off here. My old chemistry teacher - I don't know whether or not he was weaving tales or telling the genuine truth, but he sounded lucid enough to believe - he told me there was a certain type of bomb, a certain tybe of cobalt construction that, when detonated, could unmake every shred of life in its path, while leaving every structure standing and sound.
I wonder now if Ocean could've been capable of it...
It's all still here. Only time has taken its toll.
But it's always grey. No sun. No moon. Just grey.
Living inside the belly of a fucking Super Boo.
And this isle was its fortress, waiting in the northeast of Chocoland.
Or the southwest. There may have been two of them. Fuck it.
It's perpetual grey. Without solar or lunar company, I have no faith in time whatsoever, at least none that I'd be willing to stake on the capabilities of a plastic watch. At this point, I'm marching to destination or demise. one of them is reached.
Constantly glowing. Constantly cloud-ridden and on the move in some direction or another. Like the most vicious, teeth-gnashing storm you've ever seen cross a horizon; the ones you see on TV tearing through entire towns like silverware through a three course meal.
Every now again, you hear a scream or hear a flash in the distance.
Or turn a corner wrapped from bow to stern in the inescapable feeling you're being watched like a lab rat in its polyurethane maze.
But it's best to just ignore it.
I'd imagine adding such fear to this kind of desolation could drive a person mad.
You remember the Boos from Mario?
Those spooky ghost bastards?
Imagine living inside one of those. Inside of a giant grey Boo. No white. Not your normal ghost. Normality has left him. He's a strange one, that Boo. A terrible spirit indeed. But he's far away enough for the rest of the world to avoid. And they do. They don't want to know what's wrong. God gave them a free pass. They never wanted to know. Never wanted to face the inevitable, heavenless truth of what went on. They don't care anymore.
So he stands alone. To brood. To ponder. To plan.
He doesn't resent them. He thanks them, because it was their neglect that made him strong. And insane. But mostly strong. And the strength of his madness has turned him grey.
Just picture that. Picture that for a moment.
Stuck in it. Enveloped and consumed. A sky made of smoke and steel.
Civilization, euthanized and reborn again, inside a giant fucking super Boo.
To hell with the Mushroom Kingdom.
It was like a desert in black and white. It could get so still and quiet, you'd forget there was color or sound at work at all. A silent movie in an empty theater.
Having reached the peak of delirium, I'm seeing faces and figures in its aerial workings I desperately wish I wasn't laying eyes on right now. Nimbus turns to nightmare. Cirrus turns sadistic. I believe I've just seen an ice cream cone reborn as a cerberus.
Enough of the sky. Focus on the road.
Walk, fucking legs. Walk.
The bats go by every now and again. Like vultures combing the dunes of Death Valley. They come and go as they please. Calm and omnipresent. No sense of malevolence about them, nothing to indicate they were here to bring about suffering, but when every other mile of this eternal wandering is flanked by beating wings and blinded, glaring eyes, you can't help but feel a little unnerved.
They remembered me from the starting line.
Waking up facedown in the sands of Emerald Beach. The green-tinted shore that preceded all the traps, tricks, and tragic flaws of the island to which I'd been delivered.
I came for the stone. Elysium's misery. The last bullet in the chamber.
It'd been a terrible mistake, what happened here. They said they wanted progress. They wanted change. They wanted to see good done for the world that had been prone to a heavier bearing of suffering than it had seen in some time.
Fulfillment in a myriad of failure. That was their story, anyway.
So often the catastrophes of both fantasy and factuality stem from some wretched sect of fools taken with the idea of playing God. So it was that New Camden Isle was laid to rest. Consumed in the shadow of night by the mistakes of its inhabitants. A reclusive group of researchers who'd been at work beneath the city since before I was a twinkle in my mother's eye. "Project Ocean," they called it. The ongoing efforts of a ceaseless trudge towards a terrible end.
And, as was revealed only after the city built above their conspiring was flooded in light and wiped clean of the downtrodden souls they'd claimed to be protecting, towards the mastery and manipulation of a previously untethered intangible that, in my humble opinion, mankind had no right trying to toy with in the first place.
Barely enough was known publically about what had been transpiring under the island; even now, the exact details of what turned this place from a shimmering populus to a desert of lost souls has yet to be revealed.
I get the distinct feeling that's what I'm here to discover.
I've seen enough in the days past to realize this isn't the kind of place you tell someone the whole truth of before you send them here. You wouldn't be able to get them within half a mile of a harbor, let alone on the boat.
Maybe that's why no one would give a direct answer when questions came up about life left to be salvaged or dealt with. No one really knows what kind of wreckages the great destruction left behind, but someone has to find out. Why else would such a task be undertaken by scattered individuals instead of a collective unit? We all have a purpose, our own reasons for embarking on this delusional journey, yet it was somehow argued and agreed upon that we would be acting independantly instead of as a party? Because there's no turning back when you're alone, no matter what horror or half-psychotic mess you should happen to encounter. It's success or death. Can't bail on the mission without the ability to bail.
Split them up, and your chances of survival rise.
At least in the sense that your entire assembly won't be struck down simultaneously.
But I digress.
The story goes that the interests of the project had been founded for a considerably long time. Men from all walks of life, all number of fields and practices, cooperating under the banner of "progress," had been scheming collectively over the decades to tangle the web. Whether or not the idea was hatched for the purposes of salvation, madness, or simple unadulterated evil may never be known. At least not by me. What I know enough of to tell you here, I know only as it was told to me by those who sent me here.
I live now, only to tell the story.
I think I see a man in the road...
COME FORTH, FELLOW CREATORS OF STUFF :banana:
