That’s how it all started. The writing, the songs, visions, books read in the dead of the night, red wine, the three years of smoking slims, the love, the orgies, the pain, Italian coffee…with a drop that fell in an ocean and sent ripples across the universe. Across my universe. And looking back now, to all that it was all that could have been, I feel empty, pointless, directionless. All lost faster that the tick of that fossil of a watch I still own somewhere on a shelf back in France…

So listen here sonny, that guy is also a fraud. Don’t believe everything he is telling you. I see a bright future for you. But stay away from him and his doings. There are stories they tell about his kind. Stay away…

The heart was beating strong much like a well oiled pendulum going berserk. It sure did not make the windows vibrate but his chest was not far from getting ripped apart by the insistent throbbing. It was dark and one could not tell if the sun just went down or it was supposed to come up anytime soon. The darkness was motionless and the scarce, fugitive moments that a couple of stars shown their glitter, did not let the cognition form definite ideas. The silence was consuming. Nothing seemed to protrude the smooth, tense surface of his eardrums. It was as if the only disturbance in the perfect motionlessness was the beast trying to get out of the prison of his  rib cage.

He could not move. Nor he intended to. There was no need, no appeal, no desire to change anything whatsoever. The machine was working, mechanically pumping the red liquor through a network of tubing extending far beyond his understanding, carrying atoms and aggregations of them to the most far regions of these, yet to be charted, territories. And they were everywhere. Relentlessly sailing their tiny ships on the troubled rivers that flew through him. Restless automatons that continuously fed and built and took out the dead parts that eventually came off the walls.

But none of these mattered. Not in the slightest. Everything was going well, built millions of years before, the human body continued to exist and will for a very long time. It was built it the image of perfection as it was continuing to perfect itself with experience and the passage of time. It was the abstract of existence that was important. The fight that caused electrical discharges passing from neuron to neuron. A self sustaining hunger for affirmation that came from a nexus of information reaching a certain unique condensation point and erupting into sentience.

Love was not easy thing. Or rather the lack of any. How could everything that seemed to go so well possibly turn into its total opposite? Not that I am talking about hate. Far from that, for the absence of love is not hate, is…nothing. Indifference that turns the acts of a play into vulgar automatism. Being there in the middle of life happening and wondering at the same time, away, imagining, hoping, building, talking. What is left is the shell that may fool the audience into thinking that nothing ever changed. For a while. Until one reaches, grabs and tries to hold a hand, or, even worse, intends to nurse a kiss on the other person’s lips. The acting could be flawless, it is the cold that gives it away. It feels much like touching a corpse that still moves. The dance is on the right steps but is void of any substance.

It’s such a shame the dead can not speak. They would scream like in the horror movies, frightening everybody away so they could break free of the enclosure once the smoke dissipates and understanding is offered, and the living shells would again turn into warm blooded creatures hoping for everything and seeking salvation.

I’ve told you sonny. It’s not all butterflies and honeybees. There are monsters in those caverns leading to the abyss. And it’s going to get ugly, twisted, miserable and painfully lonely before anything else. I admit there is light at the end, but it is so far, it sure is not yet even born, but, yes, there is hope. Hope for the beating to stop, the play to change, and the story to end. But first we need to dissect, to slice it open, replace the burnt fuse and hope we can stitch it back together as it was.

“This is just oxygen, inhale deeply” said the nurse while the doctor slowly injected his veins with a smooth and milky serving of Propofol…