The Unclaimed Shadow Chapter 2

People smoked mania and drank liquid madness. Some wanted to forget while others fed the despair that they felt. There were those who mimicked the symptoms of happiness, hoping that the real deal will follow. He saw the futility of it all. He just wanted to go home. Then he saw her. She was indulging madness with another. Suddenly reality wasn't what it was cracked up to be. And insanity washed away his apathy in one giant wave of emotion. He was now stranded on an island surrounded by an ocean of alcohol. He made the stupid decision to drink until he found land, until he found home.

Memories flooded him. He was happy that he was drowning. The sound of her voice filled his lungs. The sweetness of her lips enveloped him. The words that won’t come out muffled his hearing. The “what ifs” that only exist in the shadow of his mind squeezed the entirety of his body. His consciousness floated in his false perceptions of her. Is he dreaming about her? Or was he just a figment of her imagination? Was he just the whims and wishes of a goddess given fleshy material form?

Either way, he was drowning in her. Yet he was still thirsty.

He woke up because his throat was parched. His bloodshot eyes witnessed the aftermath of insanity; the misery of learning that you could only reject reality for so long.

"When you gaze long into an abyss, the abyss also gazes into you." - Friedrich Nietzsche

Th Unclaimed Shadow Chapter 1

His body was in overdrive. His heart was blasting blood into his arteries. His skin expelled water to draw away the excess heat created by his straining vessel. A thunderstorm raged in his mind. Electricity carried information that was collected through years of education. Carefully, he chose among the arbitrary sounds that humanity has agreed upon. He willed his lungs to eject air through his vocal chords as he adeptly played the strings to create vibrations that he then molded with his tongue and lips.

“Hi.”

She smiled. She didn't just show her teeth out of courtesy or habit. She smiled and said, “Hey, what’s on your mind?”

He squirmed like a worm that hasn't come to terms with its mortality while it is being peppered with salt by a bored eight year old. He kept touching his face as if he was making sure that it was still there. He once spent an entire week locked up in his room with silence as his only friend. But now silence is torturing him with fire, which would explain all that sweat.

“Nothing much.” He said.

"Ok." She showed her teeth out of courtesy.

"The biggest cynics were once the most naive."

Night Ramblings

The lack of light always scares us, which is weird because everything stays exactly the same. The only difference is the fact that we can’t see. This isn't always bad. In fact, we tend to like being scared. We won’t admit it in the moment but once we look back, we call what was once a nightmare, an adventure. Maybe this is why I like staying up at night. I like being scared. Being scared of not knowing what comes next; being scared of the dark places that the human mind can wander into; and being scared of being the only burning mind in a world of apathetic blindness.

My father once told me that everyone thinks about everything that they have done wrong when the time comes to lie down and let the night take us. Not everyone will admit that though. Self-righteousness is a plague that’s worse than the very essence of evil itself. We can sympathize with evil. We have evil within us. But an evil man acting all righteous, now that is stomach turning. Like our very soul is rejecting this unnatural abomination in front of us.

Why do we start thinking about our depravities come night time? Is it because it is the only time that we can actually listen to our minds? Is that why we spend every waking hour of our lives looking for distractions? Or is it the fact that sleep is temporary death? And in the face of death, we realize who we really are. She strips us of our status, our wealth, our power, until all that’s left of us are the choices that we have made. And let’s be honest, aside from a few exceptions, they’re mostly bad choices.

Where is this really headed? I don’t really know. I’m just as lost as you. But hey, dawn is coming, that much is for sure. The distractions come back up online and we make more bad choices. My only solace is that maybe I will be a slightly better man come morning; just a little better. Hey, a guy can dream right? 

"The sadness will last forever." -Vincent Van Gogh