Happened upon in a shallow, fetid tide pool on a small, nameless island off of the western coast of Iceland, the Tempest Shell is an incredible natural wonder, unique to this collection and absolutely priceless.
It was discovered in 1891 by a Captain Arnar Fjalarson, an Icelandic privateer and ex-missionary who used the nameless island as a supply hold for his ship, the Sigur. Captain Fjalarson routinely walked the beaches of his tiny island, amassing quite a large personal collection of shells, starfish and other marine curiosities. (Amongst the other items in his possession were the now lost Twin Trumpeter Oysters and Arnold Richter's famed Black Glass Sand Dollar.) Fjalarson originally housed the pieces in a small shanty museum in the tiny seaside of community of Reykhólar. After reportedly running afoul of a mysterious Norwegian expatriate, Fjalarson sold the Sigur and the bulk of his collection to an American collector named Harold Regis Price. Fjalarson took that money and relocated his family (his wife and two mute sons) to Oxford, England, where they all tragically perished in a nighttime house fire some months later. The Tempest Shell, the crown jewel of Fjalarson's museum was not one of the items the Captain had sold to Price, although Price did manage to acquire it through an agent that had purchased it at the Fjalarson estate sale.
Although Fjalarson's thoughts on the Shell are lost, Price's notes upon its acquisition are still intact. In 1899 he wrote of it, "This object, above all else, is what I had longed for in the Icelander's possessions. My disappointment in noting its absence, a fault of translation (but mostly my own ignorance) was nothing short of devastation. Still, in the demise of the good Captain and his family, a beacon of luck has shone upon me. And while I feel obliged to mourn his loss, and never wished the man a whit of ill fortune, I cannot help but take note of what blessing has been bestowed upon me. This item is of rare beauty, to be sure, but the quality of it rests not in that glorious, glassy pink and blue variegation of the conch, but instead in the power that resides in this nautical wonder. I have seen it work, time and time again, and there is no doubt that, however imbued with the power, it does in fact operate like a damned magical device."
Sadly, Price was never again able to write further about the Shell, and it is never further mentioned in his journals. Whatever magical properties the Shell seemed to be possessed of, Price never got around to articulate them. He suffered a severe stroke shortly after acquiring the Tempest Shell. He lingered for years as a virtual vegetable, although his nurse, Miss Cloris Ostram reported that he seemed to "perk up, or be agitated, in the presence of his beloved and overly expensive seashell." Miss Ostram inherited the Shell when Price passed away in 1906 but quickly sold it to Herschel Hart's Traveling Museum of Wonders based in Ohio.
The Tempest Shell, an iridescent pink and electric blue nautilus shell, emits a faint hum, only audible when its protective bell jar casing is removed. Many viewers have complained of muscle aches, blurred vision and migraines after seeing the Shell. Nearly everyone who encounters the Tempest Shell relates having a vague memory of a sort of music box chiming melody for weeks afterward. There is undoubtedly a strange aura surrounding the thing, but its particular powers are only visited upon a portion of those who come across it.
Herschel Hart and his wife, Eliza, were two of the unlucky ones affected by the Tempest Shell. Upon the Traveling Museum of Wonders' acquisition of the Shell, Eliza Hart was overtaken with waking dreams and hallucinations of horrible storms of thunder and lightning, especially when near her husband. Herschel had similar visions of tsunamis and hurricanes of increasing intensity when around his wife. These visions, initially recognizable to the Harts as fabrications, slowly began to seem more real to the couple. Herschel Hart, in a frantic, scratched handwriting says (in a letter postmarked December 3, 1906, approximately six weeks after he acquired the Shell), "I can't begin to decipher the truth of these damned storms. It continues, with the forest now fallen to the winds and the whole of the town ripped to its anchors... but I'm assured by my kin and my friends that the losses are all in my mind. But what are they trusting but their eyes? Are my eyes somehow more easily deceived? How can any of us be sure that it isn't I seeing the truth while the others turn blindly away from the deadly grip of blasted nature?" Eliza expresses similar frustrations in a letter to her mother sent that very same week. It was quite brief. "Mother, this lightning shall kill me," was all it said.
The constant howl of these hallucinatory winds and the ever-present threat of imaginary lightning was, understandably, very maddening. Herschel, eventually realizing that the storms were worse in the presence of his wife, sequestered himself in a small toolshed on the back of his property. Still, even diminished, the storms seemed to continue. He took to writing his thoughts in black paint on the walls of his new quarters. The toolshed, on the Harts' old property in Brook Park Ohio, is owned, now, by a young man named Edward Morris. Mister Morris took photographs of the black painted scrawl on the walls of the shed, but painted over the writing because it made him uneasy. The words in the Polaroid snapshots are not always clear, but much of it can be deciphered.
"Even moved I still am afraid the howl Far away has been [?] better but still afraid I must go but to [indecipherable] This worry anguish and loss of Eliza She worries and we just [unsure of word, but usually transcribed as "need" or "know"] time IS crawled... to KILL us. Where I must go but to hide cowards!!! to hide In it OH ELIZA, love, you knew all along."
Eliza Hart eventually starved to death in her own home. She ceased writing in her diary weeks before she passed away, but the indication is clear. She was so terrified of the "storms" outside that she was afraid to leave her home. When she was found, every scrap of food, every can, every jar had been consumed. Herschel Hart disappeared without a trace. The property and his Museum were both considered abandoned. Hart's items, including the Tempest Shell, was assumed by Hart's cousin, Glenn Myers, who sold it, piece by piece at a Chicago auction house, where it was purchased, for a large sum, for this collection.
Further research into the Tempest Shell's history revealed that the Harts were not alone in their hallucinated storms or their growing terror. A trip to Reykhólar revealed, through the kindness of the villagers, several near identical tales, involving, over the course of seven years, seven distinct couples falling under the spell of the same malady. The locals understandably assumed something in their environs had driven the couples insane, but nobody could pinpoint a cause. The names of all seven couples were, however, found in the guest book of Arnar Fjalarson's museum.
Nurse Ostram, too, makes passing references in her diaries to a Mister and Missus Ebenezer Dolan, who, after visiting Harold Regis Price (while in the possession of the Tempest Shell), complained of similar frightening visions. Records show that Ebenezer Dolan took his own life approximately a year after his encounter with the Tempest Shell. His wife, Clarissa Dolan, was admitted to the Whispering Woods Asylum in New York State in 1902, her complaints matching those of the Harts and the Icelandic couples' perfectly.
There may be more unrevealed victims of the Shell, and it is, in fact, recommended that couples do not view the piece. The specifics of how the Tempest Shell works are under investigation, but the circumstantial evidence is too voluminous to deny. The Shell obviously has a power to it, some sort of radiation that affects only particular people. Still, in that aspect, it is a much coveted curio, and a valued piece of the collection.
Showing posts with label psychosis. Show all posts
Showing posts with label psychosis. Show all posts
7.15.2009
Silver
Remember:
This silence is just a bit of the
Mourning,
Coming down in waves of amber on the hilt of her dark eyes.
These days, I forget so easily the cowering nights spent
Waiting to die on elixir,
She was there, like an angel, wings unfurled and her
DARK eyes fogged with some weird drug. I scanned the breadth of her for cunning, and she sought out chalk and dust and put me down onto paper. I couldn't even breathe.
Still, there were words and a song between us,
And she was gorgeously lit by the silvery moon.
It's just so easy to forget these days, now hushed and normal in my calm life...
There was a CAGE
Screaming and it was spent like dust. I fell off
because of it, bruised knees, bruised egos, bruised EVERYTHING.
But I find these hours just pass by without much
Crushing anymore.
I try to thank her in
these poems.
This silence is just a bit of the
Mourning,
Coming down in waves of amber on the hilt of her dark eyes.
These days, I forget so easily the cowering nights spent
Waiting to die on elixir,
She was there, like an angel, wings unfurled and her
DARK eyes fogged with some weird drug. I scanned the breadth of her for cunning, and she sought out chalk and dust and put me down onto paper. I couldn't even breathe.
Still, there were words and a song between us,
And she was gorgeously lit by the silvery moon.
It's just so easy to forget these days, now hushed and normal in my calm life...
There was a CAGE
Screaming and it was spent like dust. I fell off
because of it, bruised knees, bruised egos, bruised EVERYTHING.
But I find these hours just pass by without much
Crushing anymore.
I try to thank her in
these poems.
3.27.2009
The Monster's Bedtime Story (from "The City")
Once upon a time there was a beautiful and brilliant Princess. She was the pride of her mother and the joy of her father. A prodigy with a big heart and lovely brown eyes, she was the delight of the entire kingdom, the envy of every parent and the beloved of many a hopeful prince. She spent most of her time, however, alone with her thoughts and a friend no one else could see.
Many years had passed since the day her mother, the Queen, had found her wrapped in black blankets and whimpering outside of the palace gate. Attached to her basket was a hastily written note from the babe's mother. The letter explained that the poor child had been born to such ravaging poverty that any hope for her future would lie in the kindness of the royal family. The barren Queen had secretly prayed for a daughter to love and to raise. As she swept the baby into the castle, a tear rolled down her cheek and landed on the rosebud lips of her newborn charge.
The King was also ecstatic at the foundling's arrival, and he made sure to celebrate the royal family's new addition in a fittingly grand way. Musicians were called from the furthest reaches of the kingdom. Jesters and jugglers and acrobats performed, tirelessly, for hours in front of the assemblage of courtesans and peasantry. A wave of happiness spread throughout the realm. And the Princess, even in her tiny and infantile stature, was somehow aware of what was transpiring. Even as a little baby, it somehow made her very sad.
This preternatural child, with slender brown eyes and a wisp of curled black hair peeking from
under her bonnet, watched as her family and their attendants prattled on into the night, boundless in energy and drunk on joy. This preternatural child watched all the revelry and song and could not help but think of its end. She could not help but realize that at some point the celebration would dwindle, and in its wake would be disappointment and sorrow and heartbreak. This tiny baby, cuddled in her soft black blankets, somehow knew that all happiness was eventually rendered obsolete by the introduction of sadness. And she knew that history was nothing but the expanse from tragedy to tragedy. So as the congregated mass around her danced and laughed and gave way to all their mirthful abandon, the adopted Princess, too aware for her own benefit, softly wept.
As she grew, those who attended to her realized that the girl was gifted. Even before the Princess could speak, the aged and wise could see a sort of kindred spark in those dark eyes of hers. She seemed endowed with monumental intellect. She seemed to be cognizant of the minute workings of her universe, and could, as if by instinct, see how the tiniest pieces of her world fit together. And she was compelled to paint and to draw as soon as her miniature fingers could grip a pencil and brush. So she was an artist first, and when words began escaping her lips, she uttered nothing but poetry: ballads and songs so dense with meaning that most of her caretakers had only a notion of her brilliance without really understanding a word of what she said. She would walk the corridors of the castle, humming her own symphonies and daydreaming about the end of the world.
And though she was unfailingly polite and generous, and though she was sweet tempered and genteel, her parents fretted over her. They worried at the lack of smile on her lips, the lack of laughter from her throat and the expressions of concern that the beautiful child so often wore. The Princess, their beautiful gift, always seemed so burdened, especially for one so small. And the Princess knew of her parents' worries, and she did her best to alleviate them. When smiled at, she would smile in return. And when surrounded by laughter, the child would also laugh. When in the company of her family or her army of nannies and wardens she would contort her face into an uncomfortable simulation of peace and ease. Only in the solitary confines of her bedroom did she allow her lips to rest in their natural frown.
So as the Princess came of age, she was paraded amongst her peers, displayed for various suitors, all of whom were quickly enamored of her startling beauty and enchanted by her demeanor. They would fall into raptured spells as she spoke, her mellifluous voice florid with natural wonder and shimmering fantasy. She would speak, and they would listen and watch her with expanding eyes and racing hearts. But though she would never dare let on to them, these princes were, to one as bright and as old a soul as she, nothing but dullards. At the end of her brief engagements, she would return to her bedroom to drift into the seas of her saddened mind. She would lay in her bed and sleep and she would dream.
And all this isolation may have sparked a minor sort of madness, or perhaps her imagination was powerful enough to bend a small bit of reality to her will. Whatever the cause, one day the Princess woke to find she was not alone in her bedroom. There, at a tiny table where she had stationed a silver toy tea service was a guest. The Princess, without the provocation of placating the fears of her family, smiled. And her guest smiled in return. She noted the strings of blood that plied between the spiny, splintered teeth in its grin. And she realized it probably should have frightened her. It didn't. The Princess was not afraid of anything.
She sat across from him, the tea set in between, and she stared. The thing stared back with eyes that seemed to flicker from inside. They sputtered from gray to blue to green, and then would die to black before sparking away again. It had great claws, yellowed ivory talons that clattered away on each other, and clinked against the silver cup it took in its hand. It sipped at imaginary tea. This monster was playing with her.
The rest of the creature was something she would scarcely, if pressed, be able to describe. It was slick, like oil, but misty, like smoke. It had no shape, just a vague Shadowy outline that, for the most part, was nearly paper thin. It hardly looked like it took up any space at all aside from its grinning gnash of fangs and it's decayed, marbled claws. It took another fake sip from the silver cup.
The Princess, quite aware of the horrible countenance of her guest, was nonetheless pleased with its appearance in her room. She had felt so very lonely, stranded amongst a wasteland of friendly but alien beings who seemed not even of her species. Despite its fearsome form, she saw in the strangely flitting eyes of the thing a sort of understanding. Whoever this was, now, pretending to drink from a toy cup, was someone, some thing, the Princess felt was an equal. Her smile did not fade as she took one of the taloned paws into her hand. Her guest's grin quite widened.
So for days on end, the Princess would quickly attend to matters outside of her bedroom, and hurry back to her newfound friend. She imagined that she must have seemed unusually buoyant and light to those around her. But that was not the impression she gave. Instead, what her nannies and wardens saw was a very stark grimness overtake their lovely charge. It was as if a specter of gloom constantly clung to her, a vampiric force sucking away at her life. Her flesh grew pale. Her eyes drowned under a heavy weight of sleeplessness. Her posture slumped. Her walk became slow and defeated. But in her heart, she was aloft. What appeared to her companions as a practical crawl to her bedroom after lessons or after dinner or after a social engagement felt like flight to her. She beamed as she rushed to the side of her new companion, wanting nothing more than to just hold its hand.
The days stretched into weeks and months, and her contingent of caretakers grew more concerned as outwardly, their vibrant, if odd, child descended into a very murky depth. The Queen took occasion to speak with her daughter, and the Princess tried as best she could to convey her disinterest in the dealings of the kingdom as well as her elation over the world in the monster's fluttery eyes. She tried to convey how, within the terrifying visage of some imaginary beast, she had somehow found a sense of wonder and peace that seemed to be completely non-existent anywhere else. She pleaded for her mother to understand that a life demarcated by benchmarks of conformal behavior and personal loss held no interest for her. She begged to be released into the custody of her new guardian, that Shadowy figure that without any spoken word promised so much more within its authority. But, of course, the pleas fell on deaf ears. The Queen was horrified and flustered. The King tried desperately to wedge in some wise words to aid his wife and alleviate his daughter. He, of course, failed.
The Princess' Shadow company was a powerful bit of witchcraft. It welled up from somewhere inside the girl herself. A reflection, distorted and magnified and then breathing. The monstrosity that sat across from her at tea was more than just an imaginary friend, then. It was the avenue for an escape from a life of good natured and well meaning tedium. And so the Princess found it beautiful. The Queen, terrified at the madness her daughter seemed to be overtaken with saw it too. But she saw no beauty in the thing. Just an ugly, scary, fang riddled horror. The Queen demanded the Princess stay away from the Shadow. She stood between her precious daughter and the monster, praying for some end to the magic it had ensorcelled the Princess in. The creature, fearing an end to its newly discovered friendship begged the Princess to leave the palace together. And the Princess, torn between the understanding of her friend that only she seemed capable of, and the knowledge of what her abandonment would do to her already grieving parents stood paralyzed in her bedroom, guilt ridden and miserable.
Finally, she kissed her mother's cheek and grasped onto the talon hooked hand of the beast. The Queen, so overcome, fell to her knees, wept and realized what her daughter had known all along.
History is merely the expanse from tragedy to tragedy.
(c) 2009 Jason "Danger" Block
Many years had passed since the day her mother, the Queen, had found her wrapped in black blankets and whimpering outside of the palace gate. Attached to her basket was a hastily written note from the babe's mother. The letter explained that the poor child had been born to such ravaging poverty that any hope for her future would lie in the kindness of the royal family. The barren Queen had secretly prayed for a daughter to love and to raise. As she swept the baby into the castle, a tear rolled down her cheek and landed on the rosebud lips of her newborn charge.
The King was also ecstatic at the foundling's arrival, and he made sure to celebrate the royal family's new addition in a fittingly grand way. Musicians were called from the furthest reaches of the kingdom. Jesters and jugglers and acrobats performed, tirelessly, for hours in front of the assemblage of courtesans and peasantry. A wave of happiness spread throughout the realm. And the Princess, even in her tiny and infantile stature, was somehow aware of what was transpiring. Even as a little baby, it somehow made her very sad.
This preternatural child, with slender brown eyes and a wisp of curled black hair peeking from
under her bonnet, watched as her family and their attendants prattled on into the night, boundless in energy and drunk on joy. This preternatural child watched all the revelry and song and could not help but think of its end. She could not help but realize that at some point the celebration would dwindle, and in its wake would be disappointment and sorrow and heartbreak. This tiny baby, cuddled in her soft black blankets, somehow knew that all happiness was eventually rendered obsolete by the introduction of sadness. And she knew that history was nothing but the expanse from tragedy to tragedy. So as the congregated mass around her danced and laughed and gave way to all their mirthful abandon, the adopted Princess, too aware for her own benefit, softly wept.
As she grew, those who attended to her realized that the girl was gifted. Even before the Princess could speak, the aged and wise could see a sort of kindred spark in those dark eyes of hers. She seemed endowed with monumental intellect. She seemed to be cognizant of the minute workings of her universe, and could, as if by instinct, see how the tiniest pieces of her world fit together. And she was compelled to paint and to draw as soon as her miniature fingers could grip a pencil and brush. So she was an artist first, and when words began escaping her lips, she uttered nothing but poetry: ballads and songs so dense with meaning that most of her caretakers had only a notion of her brilliance without really understanding a word of what she said. She would walk the corridors of the castle, humming her own symphonies and daydreaming about the end of the world.
And though she was unfailingly polite and generous, and though she was sweet tempered and genteel, her parents fretted over her. They worried at the lack of smile on her lips, the lack of laughter from her throat and the expressions of concern that the beautiful child so often wore. The Princess, their beautiful gift, always seemed so burdened, especially for one so small. And the Princess knew of her parents' worries, and she did her best to alleviate them. When smiled at, she would smile in return. And when surrounded by laughter, the child would also laugh. When in the company of her family or her army of nannies and wardens she would contort her face into an uncomfortable simulation of peace and ease. Only in the solitary confines of her bedroom did she allow her lips to rest in their natural frown.
So as the Princess came of age, she was paraded amongst her peers, displayed for various suitors, all of whom were quickly enamored of her startling beauty and enchanted by her demeanor. They would fall into raptured spells as she spoke, her mellifluous voice florid with natural wonder and shimmering fantasy. She would speak, and they would listen and watch her with expanding eyes and racing hearts. But though she would never dare let on to them, these princes were, to one as bright and as old a soul as she, nothing but dullards. At the end of her brief engagements, she would return to her bedroom to drift into the seas of her saddened mind. She would lay in her bed and sleep and she would dream.
And all this isolation may have sparked a minor sort of madness, or perhaps her imagination was powerful enough to bend a small bit of reality to her will. Whatever the cause, one day the Princess woke to find she was not alone in her bedroom. There, at a tiny table where she had stationed a silver toy tea service was a guest. The Princess, without the provocation of placating the fears of her family, smiled. And her guest smiled in return. She noted the strings of blood that plied between the spiny, splintered teeth in its grin. And she realized it probably should have frightened her. It didn't. The Princess was not afraid of anything.
She sat across from him, the tea set in between, and she stared. The thing stared back with eyes that seemed to flicker from inside. They sputtered from gray to blue to green, and then would die to black before sparking away again. It had great claws, yellowed ivory talons that clattered away on each other, and clinked against the silver cup it took in its hand. It sipped at imaginary tea. This monster was playing with her.
The rest of the creature was something she would scarcely, if pressed, be able to describe. It was slick, like oil, but misty, like smoke. It had no shape, just a vague Shadowy outline that, for the most part, was nearly paper thin. It hardly looked like it took up any space at all aside from its grinning gnash of fangs and it's decayed, marbled claws. It took another fake sip from the silver cup.
The Princess, quite aware of the horrible countenance of her guest, was nonetheless pleased with its appearance in her room. She had felt so very lonely, stranded amongst a wasteland of friendly but alien beings who seemed not even of her species. Despite its fearsome form, she saw in the strangely flitting eyes of the thing a sort of understanding. Whoever this was, now, pretending to drink from a toy cup, was someone, some thing, the Princess felt was an equal. Her smile did not fade as she took one of the taloned paws into her hand. Her guest's grin quite widened.
So for days on end, the Princess would quickly attend to matters outside of her bedroom, and hurry back to her newfound friend. She imagined that she must have seemed unusually buoyant and light to those around her. But that was not the impression she gave. Instead, what her nannies and wardens saw was a very stark grimness overtake their lovely charge. It was as if a specter of gloom constantly clung to her, a vampiric force sucking away at her life. Her flesh grew pale. Her eyes drowned under a heavy weight of sleeplessness. Her posture slumped. Her walk became slow and defeated. But in her heart, she was aloft. What appeared to her companions as a practical crawl to her bedroom after lessons or after dinner or after a social engagement felt like flight to her. She beamed as she rushed to the side of her new companion, wanting nothing more than to just hold its hand.
The days stretched into weeks and months, and her contingent of caretakers grew more concerned as outwardly, their vibrant, if odd, child descended into a very murky depth. The Queen took occasion to speak with her daughter, and the Princess tried as best she could to convey her disinterest in the dealings of the kingdom as well as her elation over the world in the monster's fluttery eyes. She tried to convey how, within the terrifying visage of some imaginary beast, she had somehow found a sense of wonder and peace that seemed to be completely non-existent anywhere else. She pleaded for her mother to understand that a life demarcated by benchmarks of conformal behavior and personal loss held no interest for her. She begged to be released into the custody of her new guardian, that Shadowy figure that without any spoken word promised so much more within its authority. But, of course, the pleas fell on deaf ears. The Queen was horrified and flustered. The King tried desperately to wedge in some wise words to aid his wife and alleviate his daughter. He, of course, failed.
The Princess' Shadow company was a powerful bit of witchcraft. It welled up from somewhere inside the girl herself. A reflection, distorted and magnified and then breathing. The monstrosity that sat across from her at tea was more than just an imaginary friend, then. It was the avenue for an escape from a life of good natured and well meaning tedium. And so the Princess found it beautiful. The Queen, terrified at the madness her daughter seemed to be overtaken with saw it too. But she saw no beauty in the thing. Just an ugly, scary, fang riddled horror. The Queen demanded the Princess stay away from the Shadow. She stood between her precious daughter and the monster, praying for some end to the magic it had ensorcelled the Princess in. The creature, fearing an end to its newly discovered friendship begged the Princess to leave the palace together. And the Princess, torn between the understanding of her friend that only she seemed capable of, and the knowledge of what her abandonment would do to her already grieving parents stood paralyzed in her bedroom, guilt ridden and miserable.
Finally, she kissed her mother's cheek and grasped onto the talon hooked hand of the beast. The Queen, so overcome, fell to her knees, wept and realized what her daughter had known all along.
History is merely the expanse from tragedy to tragedy.
(c) 2009 Jason "Danger" Block
3.23.2009
Disaster
The impending disaster was spelled out in a flurry of yellow Post-Its and ragged edged notebook paper. It was nonsense to any outsider looking in, certainly, but as it was my hand that scratched the angry words in ballpoint, I had a different perspective. This is not to insinuate that I was, in any way, in control of what was spilling out from my clutched pen. I was not. But I was there, inside of my eyes, watching it all happen. And I understood it. I understood what it meant and I was scared.
Despair is a rotting disease, culling the tissue from your brain and melting it into a sort of useless, frightening sludge. I could feel it burning away. I could feel my sensibilities crumbling like termite-infested timber and as it gave out, any hope of my escape was thwarted. I was trapped within the confines of a mind unfit for piloting. This part of me, this reasonable, normal part of me, was lodged within a splintered, broken mess of a structure fully decimated. Debris should have been falling from my ears. Smoke should have belched from my mouth.
The process of degradation was slow and nearly imperceptible. It came in inches. I had begun with such a slew of hope raging around in my guts. I wanted nothing more than to do well, to provide for my family, to do an honest day's work for an decent wage. The money, at first, was slight... but it was understandable. They had taken, I assumed, some pity upon me. They had propped me up, given me a chance and so it was only fair I proved my capabilities to them. I wanted, desperately, to show them that I was worthy of the kindness that had shown me. I worked hard. I tried to do well. I assumed that competence and loyalty would be appreciated and repaid.
Looking back, it's all my own naivete that led to this point. It was silly of me to believe in some sort of reciprocation, especially from people so assured that they were my betters. Degrees hanging on their walls and beautiful cars in their driveways, I suppose, easily led them to the conclusion that I was less than they were. And in many ways they were right. My assets were intangible: a mind willing to dissect their problems, however menial, and solve them; an ability to untangle logical knots; a genuine desire to help my benefactors in any way I could. It was easy enough for them to pluck the thoughts from my brain and steal the credit. But I didn't mind. It was only a matter of time, I figured, before the truth would come out and I would be acknowledged for my utility. I toiled away for them, a minion at a flourescent lit desk, watching their conversations drift to the edges of bad taste and moral delinquency. These were not good people. But that was unimportant.
Imagine a dog being kicked for so long that the abuse becomes baseline, so that a lack of pain is translated as a shower of affection. I became accustomed to their rudeness, to their snake-tongued lies and manipulations. They all hated each other. My peers were little more than chewed-up waste, barely there bodies punching clocks at very regular intervals. They were chair-fillers and everybody knew it. The drones were content in their sub-mediocrity. Their superiors were thrilled to have such a vile pool to elevate themselves above. I was locked, however, in the space between. My competence and my ethic led me to easily crawl over the heads of the slaves, but my lack of formal education and politcal savy kept me cowed under the bloodshot gazes of the fraternity of drunkards signing my paychecks. I was kept at bay by their plundering mentality, their casual villainy. They were invested in my work, my usefulness, but wholly disinterested in me as a human being. I was more like a calculator or three hole punch in their eyes. I was, in all respects, a tool.
Slowly, I guess, the injustice of it began to seep into my conscious like a leaking beaker of acid. This was tragically coupled with a new found understanding of just how very trivial my work had been. I was increasingly aware of how worthless my presence was, and how my only impact was to benefit a veritable army of idiots and grotesque pirates who lived solely to grow a business through any means necessary. It was my own fault for being stupid enough to care. The changes in me were not swift or even noticeable. I tried to shift my mindset. I tried to relegate my many hours of labor into the category of unpleasant necessity. But I was failing. I tripped over the ideas and began to curse myself for having been such a company man. I hated myself for ever having worked so hard at something so innately ridiculous to aid a cadre of disgusting people.
My brain began to melt inside of my skull, and I watched it happen, detaching from my day to day life. I was chastised by my superiors. Interest was feigned in my declining well being and I feigned thanks for their fake concern. I saw my projects topple under the weight of my neglect. The niche I had carved between captain and private was being eroded, and so was my peace of mind. I lost sleep, worrying about my past and its wasted years and fretting over just what the hell to do with my future. That lost sleep spiraled into full on insomnia, and this left me further remote and ever weirdening in the long hours of staring into darkness.
This is my life, I would repeat to myself. This is my life and it's draining away. I have so little to show for it. No advancement. No money. No fulfillment. Nothing but the sour taste of being used. I was a whore for a company of bastards, just another means to a higher profit margin. I should never have expected anything to be anything more. But I let them fool me. And that made me angry.
Anger fueled my sleepless nights and the broken part of my thinking became obsessed with the scum that had been cheating me. I became focused on the faceless, foul-mouthed and blatantly horrid executives that had taken advantage of my inexperience and my enthusiasm. I had listened to the outskirts of their talk for so long, listened to their misogyny and ignorance. I held my tongue, kept my thoughts to myself and fretted at the guilt of it all. I let them run roughshod over me and laugh at me. I took their abuse, but I kept record of every slight, every insult, every transgression against my sensibility. I never forgot. Never forgave. And that grudge that I held so tightly, it began to live on its own. It became a rotting thing, a writhing machine of grubs and millipedes squirming around in my skull and sending me into a sort of silent whirl of despair.
And then I began to split.
This living thing, this living despair, hijacked me. It did. The normal, rational and justifiably angry bit of me was pushed aside and control of the whole works was given over to this charred, squirming pilot. It was just handed over. And then, suddenly, I was stuck inside of myself. I was watching as a crazed version of me began to plot.
Post-It notes and scavenged loose leaf started to fill with a sort of anti-corporate manifesto. My hand was writing it, but my head was not. It was someone else. Someone far more bitter and far sicker residing in my brain and making my clutching, aching hand scribble out rant after rant after rant. Most of the words were indistinct scribbles, furious scrawls that looked lifted from a psychopath's case file. But others leapt from the pages. "LIARS." "CHEATS." "BASTARDS." Other expletives stood out. I wasn't writing them but I could sure feel them being yanked from my skull. I wasn't writing them, but I could sure feel them angrily marring the tattered sheets that surrounded me. Cruelties began to slip from my mouth while my hands worked on autopilot. I wanted to make my tormentors suffer. Make them pay. But that's not quite right. I didn't want that. Not this me. The other me. Not my bruised ego, not my sucker punched normal self. The other one. The worm riddled and foul mouthed creature that snuck in, that built itself up from ruins of despair left behind by broken promises and needless machinations. That thing, that living thing of despair spelled out in frightening chaos and pitch black lettering exactly what it planned to do. Disaster. And I was trapped, helpless to stop it, horrified at what was coming in the guise of me.
It took days and days to formulate its plan. And while it did, I was cut off, tossed into some nightmarish cell of gray matter and impulse. I watched from behind those synaptic bars as power struggle dreams flooded my conscious. I watched the thing of despair tower in its ego and its pufferfish pride. It was growing. It was stronger than I was by far. Meaner. Angrier. And worst of all, it was unhinged. It was unbound by logic or threat of consequence. I could see what was happening with all too much clarity. I saw it all through my unclouded eyes and I was trembling, by God. I was absolutely quaking inside of my prison. Outwardly, I'm sure, I showed no signs of anxiety. There wasn't a shred of it to be found in my monstrous pilot. It was moving through my life without a trace of fear.
And then it acted.
The motion of it is still a blur. The logistics of it were simplistic in execution. A gun was procured. It was cheap and it was old. It smelled like oil. It left a strange film, a strange odor on my hands. I've never fired a gun in my life. I've never held one. I don't like it. It's like holding a bomb. Inside of my cell, I shuddered, worried that a false move would send a bullet into God-knows-what-or-(worse)-who. This did not deter my captor. It elevated him. It bolstered him. He took to its use without a problem. Rounds were discharged into a decaying tree stump the night before the disaster. The ejecting shells hit my hand and it burnt. I felt it. He didn't seem to. This was hellish. This was pure torture. I wanted out. But I had nowhere to go. We stayed up that night, awake and wired in my rocking chair. My family was gone. I barely noticed their absence. I was terrified. I was awake and wired and terrified. And when the morning broke, I drove to work like I would on any other day. The gun was tucked in my pants, hidden by a long, black shirt.
And I walked in, a jumble of nerves and sweat, but outwardly calmer and more content, I suppose, than I had seemed in months. My anger had become commonplace. If there was any hint as to my motive, that day, it was belied only by a seemingly better mood. The thing even whistled, nonchalant, with my damned lips. It was grotesque. And I marched, determined and swift, from the timeclock to the big boss' office upstairs. I bounded, two steps at a crack, upward practically in a sprint. And the despair addled thing inside of me, it painted my face with a horrific joker's grin. It moved my arm and it twisted the boss' doorknob and it moved my legs and paraded me in, smiling like the devil, and it used my hand to close the door behind me.
And then, using my voice, it spoke to him.
"How's it going?" it asked, mocking interest. My boss looked up from his big oak desk, his big oak desk covered with important papers and catalogs and stacks of business. He looked up with such a withering look of disdain, of disgust. He was angry that I had barged in. He was angry that I had dared to bother him. His big ruddy face was a mask of sourness. It was jowly and wide and was so much bigger than it should have been. His cornflower blue shirt was buttoned up and practically strangling him. Fat poured over the collar in bulbous tumors. He was an ugly, toadish man and he felt like I had no right to be there. "No seriously," my despair asked again, how's it going?"
My boss did not answer. Instead, he asked who I was.
Years of working with this man, years of toiling for his benefit, of working long hours to sate his appetite for profits and he didn't even know who I was. He didn't know my name. My despair didn't tell him.
Instead, my voice cackled. It was mirthless. It was creepy laugh that even jolted my fat, red faced boss. He sat up straighter when it happened. His eyes opened a little wider at first, and then he narrowed them again and spat out a "what do you want?".
And my hand reached for the weapon tucked into my pants. And, slowly, it curled my fingers around the handle and revealed the gun to the angry man behind the big oaken desk. And then the balance of power shifted. He wasn't going to ask questions in such a disdainful tone anymore. He wasn't going to begrudge my presence in his beautiful office. He was, instead, going to listen. There was a fear in that man's eyes that I would've thought would've bought me an ounce of joy. But it didn't. It made me sick. It made me sick with worry, with guilt. My brain was rocking back and forth as I threw myself against the walls of my cell, pleading with my despair-born jailor to please let me out and end this before it went too far.
"Your life," my despair said to the terrified, sweating man, "is nothing, do you understand? You have elevated yourself above everybody, so proud of your achievements, so pompous in your success. You have stood on our backs and built your miserable little empire out of our blood and bones. You have lied and cheated and stole and manipulated your way to this position. You have kept me under your polished heel, and God, you don't even know who I am! But you are just as pathetic, just as fragile as anybody else. Your money isn't going to buy a way out of this. Your perceived power isn't going to keep you safe from my wrath. Do you understand?" My despair was making my voice absolutely thunder. My cheeks ached from the constant grinning. "DO YOU UNDERSTAND?"
My boss, the imposing tower of masculine rage and bellowing command was sobbing like a little girl. Big, sloppy tears were pouring down his pore-riddled, blotchy cheeks and snot ran free from his nose onto his upper lip. He looked absolutely pitiful. He looked so afraid, probably because I looked so damned crazy. This was not bringing any satisfaction. None. It was horrific. I didn't want to watch it. I didn't want to see this. My despair pointed the gun between the fat man's eyes and I watched my poor, terrified and awful boss follow it, cross-eyed and about to vomit. "Please, please, please..." he whispered. "Don't."
And then: disaster.
I tried to close my eyes, but my pilot, my despair, wouldn't let me. The shot rang out louder than anything I'd ever heard and it rattled every bone in my body. There was nothing to stop it. There was nothing but a thin layer of skin, a bit of skull and then my boss' brain. Hunks of him flew like splattered watermelon, showering me with gore and staining the walls with white, pink and deep red. And it was over. He was just a smoking rind of a person, a mess of busted bone and ripped, burnt flesh and tissue. The smell made me absolutely sick. Inside of my head, I was shrieking. I was screaming for mercy, for forgiveness for the sin that had been carried out with my hands. I was broken, a wrecked thing left behind and smoldering almost like the corpse that spilled over the desktop. The grin stayed plastered on my face.
And my despair fired another shot, just for good measure.
(c) 2009 Jason "Danger" Block
Despair is a rotting disease, culling the tissue from your brain and melting it into a sort of useless, frightening sludge. I could feel it burning away. I could feel my sensibilities crumbling like termite-infested timber and as it gave out, any hope of my escape was thwarted. I was trapped within the confines of a mind unfit for piloting. This part of me, this reasonable, normal part of me, was lodged within a splintered, broken mess of a structure fully decimated. Debris should have been falling from my ears. Smoke should have belched from my mouth.
The process of degradation was slow and nearly imperceptible. It came in inches. I had begun with such a slew of hope raging around in my guts. I wanted nothing more than to do well, to provide for my family, to do an honest day's work for an decent wage. The money, at first, was slight... but it was understandable. They had taken, I assumed, some pity upon me. They had propped me up, given me a chance and so it was only fair I proved my capabilities to them. I wanted, desperately, to show them that I was worthy of the kindness that had shown me. I worked hard. I tried to do well. I assumed that competence and loyalty would be appreciated and repaid.
Looking back, it's all my own naivete that led to this point. It was silly of me to believe in some sort of reciprocation, especially from people so assured that they were my betters. Degrees hanging on their walls and beautiful cars in their driveways, I suppose, easily led them to the conclusion that I was less than they were. And in many ways they were right. My assets were intangible: a mind willing to dissect their problems, however menial, and solve them; an ability to untangle logical knots; a genuine desire to help my benefactors in any way I could. It was easy enough for them to pluck the thoughts from my brain and steal the credit. But I didn't mind. It was only a matter of time, I figured, before the truth would come out and I would be acknowledged for my utility. I toiled away for them, a minion at a flourescent lit desk, watching their conversations drift to the edges of bad taste and moral delinquency. These were not good people. But that was unimportant.
Imagine a dog being kicked for so long that the abuse becomes baseline, so that a lack of pain is translated as a shower of affection. I became accustomed to their rudeness, to their snake-tongued lies and manipulations. They all hated each other. My peers were little more than chewed-up waste, barely there bodies punching clocks at very regular intervals. They were chair-fillers and everybody knew it. The drones were content in their sub-mediocrity. Their superiors were thrilled to have such a vile pool to elevate themselves above. I was locked, however, in the space between. My competence and my ethic led me to easily crawl over the heads of the slaves, but my lack of formal education and politcal savy kept me cowed under the bloodshot gazes of the fraternity of drunkards signing my paychecks. I was kept at bay by their plundering mentality, their casual villainy. They were invested in my work, my usefulness, but wholly disinterested in me as a human being. I was more like a calculator or three hole punch in their eyes. I was, in all respects, a tool.
Slowly, I guess, the injustice of it began to seep into my conscious like a leaking beaker of acid. This was tragically coupled with a new found understanding of just how very trivial my work had been. I was increasingly aware of how worthless my presence was, and how my only impact was to benefit a veritable army of idiots and grotesque pirates who lived solely to grow a business through any means necessary. It was my own fault for being stupid enough to care. The changes in me were not swift or even noticeable. I tried to shift my mindset. I tried to relegate my many hours of labor into the category of unpleasant necessity. But I was failing. I tripped over the ideas and began to curse myself for having been such a company man. I hated myself for ever having worked so hard at something so innately ridiculous to aid a cadre of disgusting people.
My brain began to melt inside of my skull, and I watched it happen, detaching from my day to day life. I was chastised by my superiors. Interest was feigned in my declining well being and I feigned thanks for their fake concern. I saw my projects topple under the weight of my neglect. The niche I had carved between captain and private was being eroded, and so was my peace of mind. I lost sleep, worrying about my past and its wasted years and fretting over just what the hell to do with my future. That lost sleep spiraled into full on insomnia, and this left me further remote and ever weirdening in the long hours of staring into darkness.
This is my life, I would repeat to myself. This is my life and it's draining away. I have so little to show for it. No advancement. No money. No fulfillment. Nothing but the sour taste of being used. I was a whore for a company of bastards, just another means to a higher profit margin. I should never have expected anything to be anything more. But I let them fool me. And that made me angry.
Anger fueled my sleepless nights and the broken part of my thinking became obsessed with the scum that had been cheating me. I became focused on the faceless, foul-mouthed and blatantly horrid executives that had taken advantage of my inexperience and my enthusiasm. I had listened to the outskirts of their talk for so long, listened to their misogyny and ignorance. I held my tongue, kept my thoughts to myself and fretted at the guilt of it all. I let them run roughshod over me and laugh at me. I took their abuse, but I kept record of every slight, every insult, every transgression against my sensibility. I never forgot. Never forgave. And that grudge that I held so tightly, it began to live on its own. It became a rotting thing, a writhing machine of grubs and millipedes squirming around in my skull and sending me into a sort of silent whirl of despair.
And then I began to split.
This living thing, this living despair, hijacked me. It did. The normal, rational and justifiably angry bit of me was pushed aside and control of the whole works was given over to this charred, squirming pilot. It was just handed over. And then, suddenly, I was stuck inside of myself. I was watching as a crazed version of me began to plot.
Post-It notes and scavenged loose leaf started to fill with a sort of anti-corporate manifesto. My hand was writing it, but my head was not. It was someone else. Someone far more bitter and far sicker residing in my brain and making my clutching, aching hand scribble out rant after rant after rant. Most of the words were indistinct scribbles, furious scrawls that looked lifted from a psychopath's case file. But others leapt from the pages. "LIARS." "CHEATS." "BASTARDS." Other expletives stood out. I wasn't writing them but I could sure feel them being yanked from my skull. I wasn't writing them, but I could sure feel them angrily marring the tattered sheets that surrounded me. Cruelties began to slip from my mouth while my hands worked on autopilot. I wanted to make my tormentors suffer. Make them pay. But that's not quite right. I didn't want that. Not this me. The other me. Not my bruised ego, not my sucker punched normal self. The other one. The worm riddled and foul mouthed creature that snuck in, that built itself up from ruins of despair left behind by broken promises and needless machinations. That thing, that living thing of despair spelled out in frightening chaos and pitch black lettering exactly what it planned to do. Disaster. And I was trapped, helpless to stop it, horrified at what was coming in the guise of me.
It took days and days to formulate its plan. And while it did, I was cut off, tossed into some nightmarish cell of gray matter and impulse. I watched from behind those synaptic bars as power struggle dreams flooded my conscious. I watched the thing of despair tower in its ego and its pufferfish pride. It was growing. It was stronger than I was by far. Meaner. Angrier. And worst of all, it was unhinged. It was unbound by logic or threat of consequence. I could see what was happening with all too much clarity. I saw it all through my unclouded eyes and I was trembling, by God. I was absolutely quaking inside of my prison. Outwardly, I'm sure, I showed no signs of anxiety. There wasn't a shred of it to be found in my monstrous pilot. It was moving through my life without a trace of fear.
And then it acted.
The motion of it is still a blur. The logistics of it were simplistic in execution. A gun was procured. It was cheap and it was old. It smelled like oil. It left a strange film, a strange odor on my hands. I've never fired a gun in my life. I've never held one. I don't like it. It's like holding a bomb. Inside of my cell, I shuddered, worried that a false move would send a bullet into God-knows-what-or-(worse)-who. This did not deter my captor. It elevated him. It bolstered him. He took to its use without a problem. Rounds were discharged into a decaying tree stump the night before the disaster. The ejecting shells hit my hand and it burnt. I felt it. He didn't seem to. This was hellish. This was pure torture. I wanted out. But I had nowhere to go. We stayed up that night, awake and wired in my rocking chair. My family was gone. I barely noticed their absence. I was terrified. I was awake and wired and terrified. And when the morning broke, I drove to work like I would on any other day. The gun was tucked in my pants, hidden by a long, black shirt.
And I walked in, a jumble of nerves and sweat, but outwardly calmer and more content, I suppose, than I had seemed in months. My anger had become commonplace. If there was any hint as to my motive, that day, it was belied only by a seemingly better mood. The thing even whistled, nonchalant, with my damned lips. It was grotesque. And I marched, determined and swift, from the timeclock to the big boss' office upstairs. I bounded, two steps at a crack, upward practically in a sprint. And the despair addled thing inside of me, it painted my face with a horrific joker's grin. It moved my arm and it twisted the boss' doorknob and it moved my legs and paraded me in, smiling like the devil, and it used my hand to close the door behind me.
And then, using my voice, it spoke to him.
"How's it going?" it asked, mocking interest. My boss looked up from his big oak desk, his big oak desk covered with important papers and catalogs and stacks of business. He looked up with such a withering look of disdain, of disgust. He was angry that I had barged in. He was angry that I had dared to bother him. His big ruddy face was a mask of sourness. It was jowly and wide and was so much bigger than it should have been. His cornflower blue shirt was buttoned up and practically strangling him. Fat poured over the collar in bulbous tumors. He was an ugly, toadish man and he felt like I had no right to be there. "No seriously," my despair asked again, how's it going?"
My boss did not answer. Instead, he asked who I was.
Years of working with this man, years of toiling for his benefit, of working long hours to sate his appetite for profits and he didn't even know who I was. He didn't know my name. My despair didn't tell him.
Instead, my voice cackled. It was mirthless. It was creepy laugh that even jolted my fat, red faced boss. He sat up straighter when it happened. His eyes opened a little wider at first, and then he narrowed them again and spat out a "what do you want?".
And my hand reached for the weapon tucked into my pants. And, slowly, it curled my fingers around the handle and revealed the gun to the angry man behind the big oaken desk. And then the balance of power shifted. He wasn't going to ask questions in such a disdainful tone anymore. He wasn't going to begrudge my presence in his beautiful office. He was, instead, going to listen. There was a fear in that man's eyes that I would've thought would've bought me an ounce of joy. But it didn't. It made me sick. It made me sick with worry, with guilt. My brain was rocking back and forth as I threw myself against the walls of my cell, pleading with my despair-born jailor to please let me out and end this before it went too far.
"Your life," my despair said to the terrified, sweating man, "is nothing, do you understand? You have elevated yourself above everybody, so proud of your achievements, so pompous in your success. You have stood on our backs and built your miserable little empire out of our blood and bones. You have lied and cheated and stole and manipulated your way to this position. You have kept me under your polished heel, and God, you don't even know who I am! But you are just as pathetic, just as fragile as anybody else. Your money isn't going to buy a way out of this. Your perceived power isn't going to keep you safe from my wrath. Do you understand?" My despair was making my voice absolutely thunder. My cheeks ached from the constant grinning. "DO YOU UNDERSTAND?"
My boss, the imposing tower of masculine rage and bellowing command was sobbing like a little girl. Big, sloppy tears were pouring down his pore-riddled, blotchy cheeks and snot ran free from his nose onto his upper lip. He looked absolutely pitiful. He looked so afraid, probably because I looked so damned crazy. This was not bringing any satisfaction. None. It was horrific. I didn't want to watch it. I didn't want to see this. My despair pointed the gun between the fat man's eyes and I watched my poor, terrified and awful boss follow it, cross-eyed and about to vomit. "Please, please, please..." he whispered. "Don't."
And then: disaster.
I tried to close my eyes, but my pilot, my despair, wouldn't let me. The shot rang out louder than anything I'd ever heard and it rattled every bone in my body. There was nothing to stop it. There was nothing but a thin layer of skin, a bit of skull and then my boss' brain. Hunks of him flew like splattered watermelon, showering me with gore and staining the walls with white, pink and deep red. And it was over. He was just a smoking rind of a person, a mess of busted bone and ripped, burnt flesh and tissue. The smell made me absolutely sick. Inside of my head, I was shrieking. I was screaming for mercy, for forgiveness for the sin that had been carried out with my hands. I was broken, a wrecked thing left behind and smoldering almost like the corpse that spilled over the desktop. The grin stayed plastered on my face.
And my despair fired another shot, just for good measure.
(c) 2009 Jason "Danger" Block
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