Clipped

I think I feel shite. Proper shite. Not - what’s that phrase? - rainy day I’ve got to stay inside shite. Proper shite. Fucks sake. Sore neck and all. Burning itch on my thigh too. I can’t. Not sure where I am. What I am. The same as fifteen seconds ago no doubt. What have I been? Lonely. Are my eyes open? Have I any eyes? Lucid, yes I am. I can see so I must have eyes. Everywhere is white, just how I like it. If all I see is white then can I see and do I have eyes? Shades of grey in places I suppose. Grey for guilt. No shades of grey, but guilt still, perhaps. As good a place to start as any, grey for guilt, friends. Oh yes, very few friends. No friends. I wonder if they see white too? Perhaps we’re all stumbling about seeing white trying to find each other, searching for friendly embraces and reassurances. It wouldn’t surprise me, I distinctly remember having friends I do indeed that’s correct for sure you can count on me. Who me? What me? Any me. This me. This me will now extend some arms and feel the soft skin of a friend. Rather heavy work that. I’m not entirely sure where they’ve gone, if only I could see. Perhaps I’m snagged on something. No! I can’t move that must be it. Simple. What, then, can I do if not see nor move? Can I talk? If I could what would I say? If I could would I be able to hear myself? My brain does not function here. Where is here? Think Think THink THINk THink THink tHiNK. What occurred previous to this? Poor balance that’s right I used to have poor balance. Is my brow furrowed I wonder? The wobbles, poor balance, yes, and an upset tummy and hair in my mouth. I remember not remembering. I had forgotten something proper and serious and deeply important to me and my mission. Mission! There we are - ahem! there I am - a mission. Which, though? Free love free love. No, no love. No friends. Why though? What did I do, if it was me who did it? Guilt. That guilt. Is this what a second chance looks like? It can fuck itself if it is. I’d rather be dead. Dead. Now there’s some thinking for you - for me; there is no you here where there is barely a me. Dead. Should I attempt to be? Am I already? If only I could remember what I didn’t remember. My mission my mission my mish my shun. Was I shunned? Am I shunned, here and now? My shunning, then, have I forgotten my shunning? Me shunning or them shunning? Forget the shunning we need to remember the other. My mission. Dead. A dead mission. A mission to be dead, rather. A MISSION TO BE DEAD.

*

    A mission - my mission - to be dead. There we go. I am dead, then, for sure now. Billions have died before me so where are they? Why am I concerned with them and not with myself? I am dead. Dead is the worst it can get. There is no ‘it’ anymore, though, and perhaps that’s why I am so...lucid, so calm. Lucidity is offering me fluidity from thought to thought I am a detective tracing clue after clue in the state space of my deadness. No body no brain to be roused to action so I am still and I am calmness brought to death. The plants and the animals and the peoples where are they? Everything has its own deadness it seems - deadness is personal. It can only happen once to a person and that particular deadening only happens to them. Nothing is dead in quite the same way as another thing. So, what is my deadness? My mission brought me here. I wanted to be here, then. I am no longer suicidal but I must have been. I desired death and now I am dead. End of story end of worry I have solved the dirty mystery of it all. No, no it anymore, but still the confusion is gone. I’m not so sure. Can I be sure whilst I’m here? Here in my deadness? “Whilst” HA, as though it can end. What else would there be after this? Regardless, I’m unsure. There is a niggle somewhere in the back of my something, teasing and tickling me. It’s coming for me. We’ll call it Mr Gunnysack. I’LL call it Mr Gunnysack. Perhaps deadness is not entirely personal and unique, then, since dear old Mr Gunnysack has accompanied me here. There’s the teasing and the tickling but there’s a whispering too. Not quite a whisper, for I know I cannot hear, but an aura an atmosphere. Mr Gunnysack holds something close to him about my mission. He remembers what I have forgotten about before deadness. I wish we could converse. I wish I could persuade and interrogate and FUCKING BEAT THE MEMORY OUT OF HIM. The irony of the Tonton Macoute come full circle. No anger here surely. No. Anger has followed me. It appears I’m sharing my dead space with some cunt and I’m allowed to be angry at him. Fucking guilt, man. Fucking anger, too. If I could breathe I could suck it in and spew it out and away from me and move on but I’m no breather no more, there’s nothing to breathe and no way to breathe it in and nowhere to go. Nowhere to go and nothing to do but feel some prick know something he doesn’t care about that I do.

*

    Is that a shade of some colour I can ‘see’ over there? Hmm. No, no I don’t think so. I can’t do this anymore. Less clear, less lucid. I want to die.

*

    I wonder what Time is doing. It doesn’t mean anything of course, I can’t be any older or younger or wiser than I am now or was at the end of the before but it’s interesting. HA HA, curiosity is here too, and pride it seems. If they left I would cease to be and I would be comfortable. Could I be uncomfortable? Who knows? I don’t, so no one does. I am uncomfortable. That niggle in the back of me. Somewhere behind me. I’m certain that if I could be certain I’d spin to try and catch him but he’d move on out into the periphery of whatever vision I have. I’d just miss him every time. The niggling nagging is there. What is it what is it what is it? I wonder I wonder I wonder. Wobbling and poor balance and mouthfuls of hair. What would or could it mean? I fell over I must have fallen over. Or off something. Over it must have been over. You can fall off anything. It doesn’t help. Over it must have been over. Over and into something or somewhere, something somewhere dangerous. The road. I was run over. Water. I don’t think I knew how to swim, or if I did it was only theoretical. Down the stairs. Out of a window. Surely I deserved a better end than these. Embarrassment is here too it seems. I am slowly growing into a fully conscious human dead, complete with affect. Perhaps that’s why I feel shite, for I still feel proper shite. Perhaps it was a shite death. Or is it the embarrassment. I feel it so intense. So intense. The embarrassment could have killed me no doubt it could have true. I just don’t know I simply can’t remember what happened why I’m here what I did. I’m a suicide I thought but is that true? I hope someone is upset back where I used to be for however they think I am now. I wonder. I wonder was there a touch of the diabolical about me? Now that sounded like a “Yes” and no doubt about it. He’s getting louder and crisper is Mr Gunnysack. He’s getting to know me. Like a dog sniffing about until it’s comfortable with all, he knows me now. I feel it proper. So, I was a diabolical one, was I sir? An “Of course” this time. Closer and closer and closer together as a team. Age and sex and place. Age age age age age. I say closer. Young or old? Naive or wise? Which which which. My thoughts are sharp therefore I am young I was young. Sex now. If I were not here that last statement would have been a demand for the good good. That’s just a feeling I’m getting - ahhh so the gut feelings are here too. I can gut feel. I have no guts. I’m a coward too, then. No guts but gut feelings. Guts. Steal me some, Gunnysack, there’ll be some somewhere in this nowhere. Here’s a thought, a thought to accompany the guilt and anger and pride and curiosity that constitute the me I am now...I am pure transcendentalism. Pure subjective intuition. Doesn’t make this all worth it, but at least I can be abstract. I feel bad and I don’t know why for sure. Suicide suicide suicide. Young. Male. Suicide. Diabolical indeed.   

*

Focus, now. May I focus? Can I focus? I must focus, I am losing that lucidity I had before, not before all this but before this now. I will focus, now, on that burning itch on my leg, what feels in my mind to be my leg. Perhaps I am a phantom case. No body but an incorporeal consciousness modeled after the structure of a corporeal brain. A brain whose regions devoted to tactile sensation are firing proper and fierce, showing off a phantom experience of this all whatever all this is. Focus, now, phantom. You managed just then to dedicate yourself to strategic thought, arriving at a conclusion. Now focus, then, on that phantom leg that ghost of a leg. That ghost of an itch. Focus and focus. Focus some more. Enhance the itch, focus it into a searing pain, what might be a searing pain. Discern its shape. What is its shape? Focus more and now and more and more. If this itch, this now burning stimulation were searing its way into flesh, into fresh thigh meat, what would it look like? What shape could it take? Longer than it is wide - a sense of dimensions, it seems - for sure. Blurred. Blurred in the edges? But, why? Blurring edges are not sure of themselves they are not sharp nor clear nor crisp. Curved, then. A pain curving into a 3-dimensional cause. Cylinder. Not only curving back on itself creating depth, but curving in its length. An arc perhaps. A cylindrical arc. Perhaps. PERHAPS. Phantom sensations, why not a phantom consciousness and phantom thoughts and phantom conclusions. Why on a leg? Out of place, maybe. Intended to be somewhere else. No room for doubt. Plenty of room for doubt, there is nothing here to stop its tenancy. Doubt can join me alongside Mr. G, guilt, anger, desperation, pride and all others that find their way back to me. Why not stick with it though? With my arcing cylinder? Ebb away now, searing pain. Release the focus. Keep the conclusion. The conclusion means certainty, and Gunnysack offered no objection to my findings. A diabolical suicide, then, with a cylinder, gently curved, pressed against a thigh at the moment of. Some certainty but less lucidity.

*

Next - a concept of linearity - focus on the phantom throat. Not the phantom throat. The soreness in the phantom neck. Neck or throat? What’s the difference? Throat or neck HMMM. Throat. It is throat. Solidify the throat. Cast the phantom out of it as much as you can. Focus focus. Just as the leg, intensify this into obviousness. Into clarity and beyond doubt as beyond doubt as can be had in a place made of uncertainty, in a place that sucks away the clarity of mind that it first offers. Tightening. Focus. Unfocus. Looser. I see. No, I sense, don’t I? Focus again...tighter. And blur a last time...looser. Focusing doesn’t amplify the soreness, focusing tightens it. Focusing makes the soreness stifling. Suffocating, that’s it. Suffocating. If I could talk...focus...this would...focus...stop...focus...me...unfocus. If I could gasp I would suck the air out of all around me if there were air all around me. Not a suicide then? Perhaps not so diabolical after all. Rather a shame in some ways. Some kill to be diabolical, can’t have been one of those types can I? I wasn’t a killer. A killee? The object of a murder? Murder through a suffocating soreness in the throat, strangled, surely. Perhaps. Strangled for what? Can I have been so terrible that I was worth murder? I suppose that is an honour too in and of itself, an honour as horrific as suicide if you ask me. No one asked me no one can ask me, but the thought - the projection of a thought - is out there now somewhere in this nothing if place and time mean anything. I am sure, yes Gunnysack. I decided with the leg cylinder that doubt is pointless in this, better to settle on a good guess than to keep on teasing through the possibilities. Strangled is the closest. It’s the best fit to the tightness. Another one? Well, yes, there is another that it might be but I don’t know that it suited me - who I used to be - all that well. In denial? NO, of course not. No, never, not. No denial around this aura. All these things, these internal mood states that now float around in a vague approximation of what the me that use to be would feel, if they can follow me and find me as I am now then why not some preferences? Even preferences of how I should die? Of the way I should enter into deadness. I can tell you now Mr I Want To Poke And Niggle At Everything Gunnysack that I know the other, the suicide one, doesn’t fit. There. Strangled with a cylinder - a pipe, yes, that’s the word that’s the representation, I had forgotten pipe - pressed to the thigh. I had no mission, then. No mission to be dead. If I could be relieved I’m not entirely sure I wouldn’t be. If I were here proper or anywhere proper, if I were proper, I imagine if I could imagine that all this thinking within thinking would have made me very tired. Perhaps that explains this tinge that is offering itself all around me. It is a tinge, is it not?

*

There is a definite coming together of something occuring. There is, then, something in this nothingness. A sensation, beyond my power, oppressing me as it were. What is it what is it? Heavier and heavier and darker and darker. Particles spiralling into one another, clumping into one another. You say there is a pattern to them, do you? Focus? Of course, comrade. Focus I shall. Where are they coming from where are they going? No origin of any import it seems. They come as though the very fabric of the white nothingness is being torn away from itself and replaced by itself, nothing lost and nothing gained. Darkening into a fierce red as they come together, hurtling into...what? A line, you say? No, no it is no line. It is a beam. Out there, I see it extends endlessly. Focus. Focus and impress upon where your head could be a weight to cause what could be your head to lower. Yes, focus. Lower and lower, the beam does not falter. It approaches me and focus focus passes through the white occupied by the phantom chest of this consciousness. Unfocus, now. Eeeeease off, now. A nice change indeed. Who would have thought there might be something new, something interesting round these parts? I didn’t so no one did. Endless. Miraculously it extends into eternity. From this point to infinity. Why infinity? A beam of deepest red, coloured with a hint of iron, summoned out of thin nothing. There are no limits to what is true, if truth is real. It could end. Yes it could yes it could you don’t know Gunnysack you were wrong about the strangle. I’ll show you. Focus. Inspect it. Throw yourself forward to the end, what might or mightn’t be the end. Do it, focus, do it some more and focus some extra. Is it moving? Am I moving? Focus. No way to know, no landmarks, no reference points. How am I to kn - it’s dripping. The beam, it’s dripping. I’m sure of it, perhaps. Yes. Red is dripping from the beam. There is a solid bottom to this nothing, then. The red is leaving its mark on the solid nothing. Pooling, yes, a pooling of red. What is red? Red liquid, not just red, though, a red with a certain characteristic. Deadly characteristic. If the me I was before wasn’t diabolical this projection I see before me now is. Honesty is important, so let’s be honest with myself. Blood. It’s blood. A beam of blood dripping blood and flowing into an ever-growing puddle of blood. Not just blood? What do you mean, Gunnysack, blood is blood and nothing else. Focus? Focus, then. Magnify and amplify and look deeper. Bring it closer. Get closer. The puddle does have a certain roughness to its surface. Blood is blood though. Focus. The roughness, enhance it. The blood is covering something, I suppose. Hair? Perhaps. Teeth? Perhaps both. Blood, spilled out over teeth and clumps of hair. What is this projection? What could this scene mean? If this is my reality now, this reality is monstrous. I can stand it no longer. I am beginning to break, I sense it. A true and tangible crack, splitting this phantom consciousness.

*

    Away from this. Focus and tear away from this. Back away from this infinity and toward my origin, where I came to be as I am now. Yes, Gunny, away is right. Focus. Faster and faster, retreat. Ease off now. Back to the start. No, it’s still dripping. Back to where it won’t drip, back away from the blood and the teeth and the hair and your louder and louder voice, Gunnysack. Focus and go faster. Still the beam seeps red. The nothingness is almost entire blood. Nowhere exists no longer. There are no laws to it and it moves as it will. Teeth floating up out of the pool. Breaking apart, chomping together, vaporising as some will dictates. Hair spinning under no apparent force, spitting off droplets of deep, dark, and honest red. Faster. Focus. Add more velocity to your haste. Keep it up. Fewer drips more white now. No drips just beam now. Not as it was though. This section is thick. This section her