Tired

I'm tired of all this bullshit. Tired of pretending i'm a man, when everyone knows i'm just an animal. Pretending that i can fit into society, when that's like asking a sphere to fit into Flatland. I'm so fed up, so close to just squashing my conscience and fucking off. I could be a hundred miles out the door by sundown, in any direction i felt like, merrily flipping the world the bird all the while. And maybe, if someone picked me up, and offered to take the next few hundred miles of my feet in exchange for a song or a story, they could look back and see the pillar of black smoke, and the dusky red of the fires I left behind me.

To Sleep, Perchance To Dream

My Lady of Dreams is enjoying fucking with me. I think she's annoyed at delivering outside her usual time. So i didn't get any. I slept fitfully, if uninterestingly. But now... man, now every time I close my eyes, she's got a new one for me. She taunts me with good dreams, amazing ones; so vivid that the world seems a little duller. She terrifies me with nightmares. What might happen, and what might not. She's been in rare form lately, and it makes it fucking difficult to sleep or think. My mind is always drifting back. It's honestly kinda awful. I can only console myself with the fact that some dreams come true. And some don't.

The Beast

Hey guys, I know it's been a while, and for that, I'm sorry. I just... only write when I feel it, y'know? But as an apology, let's take a look at possibly one of my favorite characters of all time: the eponymous Beast, from Beauty & the Beast. I'm not a big fan of the story, but the character is very full of... passion, and regret. Very much a tortured soul. I'd give my strong hand to play him. But, lacking that, let's take a look at him.

Before the Enchantress, he's a generic, if misanthropic, rich handsome prince, shut up in his castle. But then he turned Her away, and She cursed him. I think she was a Fae Queen, if you ask me. Her brand of "justice", the poetic nature of the curse, even the way she disguised herself. If she was, then that has major implications for the actual effects and mechanisms of the curse, but that's for another time.  Then comes my favorite part of the tale...

He sits alone in his castle, empty, save for hurrying shadows and broken mirrors, served only by the ticking of the clock and the flickering of the candle. His home- his prison- decays more around him, and he grows more beastly, with each passing day, each falling petal. He sits, brooding, byronic, and yet savage; tortured in the old west wing, surrounded by dust and cobwebs, meditating on the symbol, the meaning, the ultimate end of his curse. Around his castle are high walls, bolstered by thorns like swords. Beyond that, a wood filled with illusions and nightmares. Only a truly magnanimous and nonjudgmental person could break his curse, only a bold, courageous one would brave the wood, and only a clever, resourceful one would subvert the walls, and stay his anger. And only a tenderhearted person would try. But what are the odds of that person existing anywhere within the same part of the world as him?

Of course, she just comes stumbling up to his door, they "love and are loved in return" and the entire story is ruined for me. But then, I always preferred the Grimms' Tales over Disney's, too. Not to mention, I think he's far more attractive as the Beast than as the Prince.


Thank you for your time, friends, and I will see you when i see you...

Legion

I'm a thousand different people, in a thousand different worlds.

Right now, as I write this, sitting in my room, I can shift my mind from side to side, and reach out to touch another one of me...

Right now there's one of me who lives in hell, and he's trapped in a cell. He's considering making a break for it, but he doesn't know if his demonic jailors are below his cell, lying in wait. However, he wears shackles lined with runes, and they can speak a few words and recall him in a moment. Any attempt at escapes is an exercise in futility. His shackles feel so heavy, sometimes...

Another me lives in heaven, and she's dancing in her tower, high above a palace of crystal and glass. She's content to dance in her room, for now, but she's excited to go down and play with the others she lives with. She might watch an anime, win a game, or even just sit and chat. Or she might hug everyone, and go back to dancing in her room...

There's a third me, and s/he lives in an immense forest, dark green shadows below. His/her home is a clearing, trees so clustered around it they make a wall, branches meeting high above to form a ceiling. S/he's pacing up and down, preparing to hunt. S/he's hungry. S/he's always hungry...

Yet another me lives in a gray, dead world. The horizon stretches away, covered in ash, dotted with crypts, graves and electrical towers. The sky is overcast, lit by lightning, and an omnipresent glow. The me there sleeps peacefully, on a slab of granite carved with glowing lines. It might wake up in a day, a year, a century. Then, it'll go down into some neon mausoleum, where the lights pulse and the stones grind in time with its heartbeat. It might get a chance to feel, for a while. Or, it might not...

There are a more of me living stranger lives, on stranger worlds than these. They march in step, a thousand-no, a thousand-thousand strong. I see through their eyes, feel their hands, I live their lives, right alongside them. I am Legion, for I am many...

Tales of The Starborn

This was going to be an story, possibly even a novel, that I kinda lost interest in. I add to it, every so often, but nothing really major.
[Bk. 1 The Tale of Dom]
(prologue: Legacy of the Stars)
In the twenty first century of the 2nd Age, Man was enslaving the Stars. He would take Their mortal bodies, split them into a thousand pieces, and bind them into steel, glass, and copper, so that He might feed off Their immortal energies. The First to be taken was the Father-God of Man, Solus. The betrayal and draining of his energy left his immortal spirit broken and twisted. He lives now as a bitter old Man on his third mate, Gaea, with whom he sired Man.

After the Stars decided Man had consumed enough of their number, They called a great Council. All of the remaining number came, and they were rage and despair. Asking how it happened, and saying They should have stopped it after the First. Many were of the opinion that it was the Stars' fault, and that this was well- deserved for Their own hubris and laziness. Quickly the clamor died down, however, when the Higher Council, one hundred of the greatest and one hundred of the smallest among Them, began deliberation. They debated for many years, and this period was known as the Age of Flashing Stars.

Finally They came to a conclusion: to protect Themselves, Man's hunger and violence must be restrained. To this end, they would Uplift Man by siring and sponsoring Man's children. Many millions of women, unknowingly, carried the children of the Stars, known as the Starborn. These children were strange from a very young age, even before the legacy in their blood was awakened. Some were abnormally lucky, fit, or intelligent. Others seemed to luminesce in the dark, or have gloom clinging to them even in the brightest light. A fair few knew things that should have been hidden, or had not yet happened. The Gifts of the Starborn were as numerous and varied as the children themselves.

But for all their oddities, they were raised as normal children, and Man was unaware that His world was about to end.

(Ch 1: Innocence)
"Dom!" my mother called up the stairs. I ignored her. She probably wanted to talk to me about something stupid, like my grades. Yeah, they're bad, so what? Everyones grades are bad. But *my* mom has to be the one to have a coronary over it.
"Dom!" she called again, drawing it out with her distinctive Martian accent, making it sound like a epithet. She's not usually this persistent, so I consider going downstairs. For all of thirty seconds. I really didn't want to deal with her, especially after today. My "friends" needed to retake their Human Decency classes.
"Dominik Tradan Starsail! Get your halfbreed butt down here!" my mom called a third time. Uh-oh. She only calls me a halfbreed when I'm in big trouble. I decided it might be wise to see why she was so insistent on seeing me.
"what's up, mom?" I asked, coming cautiously down the stairs.
"I just got off the phone with your schools Head Observer."
I paled, and said, "Really? That's great... What did he have to say?"
"Guess who I heard got into a fight"
"Who might that be?"
"You, smartass! I thought you said you were done with this nishtak!"
"Hey!" i said, alarmed by her use of the Martian swearword, "let's just calm down now. Chelome had it coming. He was being a jerk to Suzy!"
"So? Is she your girl?"
"Well, no. But she's nice. She didn't deserve what he was calling her."
"That doesn't mean put him in the hospital! That means-"
"Yeah, yeah, tell an Observer, or confront him nonviolently. And I tried! I did! But he took it all out of proportion, and I had to defend myself!"
"I don't want to argue! To your room, for the rest of the night, no power."
I groan, but don't try to sway her. I just try to make it back so I can log off my computer.
I make it with time to spare. As I turn off my computer, I look around my room. It's pretty messy, like always. From my vantage point on my bed, I can see my iguana, Thella, sunning himself on a rock. Yes, I know, Thella is a girls name. Gimme a break, I was six when I named him. I was looking at one of my band posters - this one was for an Industrial Seametal revivalist band called Clockwork Seagull- when my lights went down. I felt for my bathroom in the dark, for the illegal box of candles I had stashed behind a loose panel. It's how i survived these punishments.
You see, when I'm in pitch black darkness, I see things... Strange things. Lines that glow like fire and ice. The edges of things, outlined in faint light. Once, I saw words writing themselves across the walls of my room. But as long as I have the smallest bit of light, I don't see a thing. Hence, the illegal candles.

Poetry From the Grips of Mania

With all my heart, I hate these nights
When each step feels like stone.
My body a prison of clay and lights
And I feel so very alone.

One voice drives me to pace and rage
Another counsels sleep
A third invites me to fill a page
And one more just wishes to weep

Each voice in my mind
Speaks right over the top of me
And I cannot find
My words in the cacophony

My eyes are blind, my ears are deaf,
My hands grow numb and cold
I feel raw, and new, and fresh
I feel dry and old

The chains wrapped tight about my wists
No chill wind through my hair.
I look down at my tremb'ling fists
No shackle nor manacle there

Thusly passes my troubled night
Till the Sun shows in the East
Until She rescues me from this fight,
I struggle against my inner Beast.

Final thoughts on "Unappreciated"

So for the last month, I've been posting parts of a pre-written story every Thursday. I just posted the last installment, about three days late. I just wanted to take some time out and talk bout how i feel it went.

It started as a post on Facebook, in response to... I forget, some petty thing. But it kept wanting to grow, out of control, so I moved it to my blog. It soon expanded into a wall of text I wouldn't want to inflict on you all at once, so i moved it to WordPad, and broke it into the four parts I posted.

I don't really like how It turned out, for several reasons. For one, by the time i posted the last piece, it was completely irrelevant to my emotional state. In addition, because i was posting these, i had little motivation to post something else, more congruent with my feels. Finally, I think it's a little too... boring to post one thing over several weeks, ducking any actual creative effort.

So, all in all, I'm dissatisfied with the way this turned out. I don't think I shall be doing this again. Feel free to leave your thoughts on the matter in the comments, below.