Can you imagine what it is like to live, every second, with your greatest fear? Ah.
What scares you most? Spiders? Heights? You’re trapped in a pit with hundreds of thousands of the ugliest, biggest, spiders. 24/7. No escape. You must co-exist with them, somehow. Or maybe you’re at the top of the world’s largest, tallest, building. At the very top. Alone. Balancing on a pin point in the sky. No way down.
I live with death, always. It is there. Is it who I am. Dead. It terrifies me. I am scared of myself. Of what I will become. Ground zero. Ashes.
Isn’t it funny how there are things, certain awful things, that we just cannot tolerate. Where an end is the answer. Let me go. Let me die. This is too much. Too much pain. Ah. Too much to bear. Give me death please. You in your pit, with the ugly spiders. How can you live? I’m sure after a little time you will want to, need to, die. Release me. Ah. I cannot live with the spiders, and I know that I cannot escape, except the ultimate escape, perhaps. Give me that. Please.
Yet for such as I? With this fear of mine? Where is my release, my escape? It’s funny, yes? Ha ha. Ah. Ground zero. The thing, let me make this clear, let me treat you like an imbecile for a moment, that frightens me the most, that I cannot bear, that I cannot live with….ah. No sweet pillow over the face to end my suffering.
Welcome back, you might say. Although I never left, of course. I am always here, until I die, creeping around in the corners of existence. Sifting through the rubble. Ah. Ground zero. Ivy wants to be beaten, punched and kicked. I tried to live in order to escape. I tried to kill myself in order to live. And yet all I found was rubble. Sifting through the ashes. Ah. Ground zero.
How can I keep her safe. How can I keep them all safe. I’m petrified. Like a kitten, pick her up and cradle her. Pick them all up and rub them against your face. Ah. There is no hope. I’m running out of gas. I came, I saw, I withered. I stuck my nose out of my hole and felt the cold air. Ah.
They come, without being called. An apocalypse of the soul. Fancy words. Meaningless. Sounds nice. Gives me a moment of pause, to think. I feel a weight bearing down upon my skull. It is death. Grinding me down. Until there comes a collapse. Ground zero. What was there is now open sky. Ah. And the poisoned birds that slice upwards through it, before they drop, out of view, and die.
Isabella wants to be my toy. Ah. Isn’t that lovely. Cute, perhaps. I lost Ivy. I tried to cradle her, to keep her safe, warm against my face. Life’s little endings. Life’s little deaths. I tried to live because I’m afraid to die. We’re coming back to the point here, don’t worry. We’re circling back. Like the birds before their death plummet. Ah. Ground zero.
So I tried. Good for me. Good for you, you might say. Sarcastically, furrow browed, or with some alarm. Are you alarmed? Don’t be. I’m stuck here. Ah. I’m stuck here against my will. Imprisoned. I used to think I was the most mad. Behind glass, of course, at a remove from you all. Behind unbreakable glass. Smug. Slightly baffled. Mad, I thought. Why can I not live, like they do. Like you. Ah. I’ll die some day without living.
I used to think, let me reiterate, that I was quite insane. And yet now I believe that I am the most sane. It’s funny, yes? Ha ha. Me. Sane. Ha. Ah. I am still behind glass, of course. Unbreakable. But not mad. It is them. Throwing their faeces at the surface, obscuring and distorting my view. I wish I were mad. Ah. Ground zero.
Lift up the corner of the carpet. Filth. Ashes. Ah. Ground zero. So I live, anyway, I am here, co-existing with the spiders, in a way.
books, yo. 