The time (2:01 AM) is the colour of marigolds
[ The following is a manuscript of the thoughts extracted from a person living in the vicinity of a ‘vestigial limb’[1], running through Sectors 6, 7, and 10 of the Great South Asian Rip in Reality. The vestigial limb is separated from the main body of an underground organism by a block of dead body parts, but remains living on its own [2]. ]
Send messages. Receive messages. Some people never sleep so they have things in their heads. Some is words, but most of it is something that cannot be seen nor heard nor touched nor smelled, and therefore most of it makes no sense at all. And the words don’t make sense either. But all of it is THERE. So throwing it out is important. But sometimes an audience is required, because it’s just WRONG if it’s thrown out where no one can hear it.
It's really late, but I've stopped trying to go to sleep. Because the time (2:01 AM) is the colour of marigolds, and it's so bright and loud (the colour has a voice) it hurts. How could a time have a colour? How does a colour speak? Well, if you REALLY want to know, you can ask the asshole who is beaming all this information into my head.
I'm so tired that the audio quality of my surroundings has decreased. But this thing, this thing got into my head and it’s putting conversations and VISIONS and– so the ceiling fan has a voice, according to the thing. Little whispers. The whispers have colour too, a blue-ish gray. I’m going to fucking go and– it’s a bit pretty, yes, but I’m so tired. I don’t WANT to look at the pretty images, I want to get some rest. Sleep seems impossible. When I check the time, it flashes so, SO brightly. The colours are so vivid, and I almost find myself fixated by how 2:06 AM is slightly redder than 2:01 AM, how it’s shifting. But I cannot actually fixate, cannot really see the beauty because I’m tired. My bones are tired. I can TASTE the tiredness, and I’d like the thing to please tell me why, why, WHY my bone-tiredness tastes like the aftertaste of masaledaar chips (specifically if you chew them a lot). I brushed my teeth and gargled five times. It wasn’t gone any of those times. Whenever I focus on the bone-tiredness, it’s back in my mouth. It’s thick. It’s oppressive. It’s like the entire inside of my mouth is coated with it.
Send messages. Receive messages. Throwing it all out is necessary. To an audience. No matter how willing or unwilling, it is just important.
I have my phone out because the sleep attempt is done. It's done. My friends have accepted that I will sometimes send them strange messages late at night because I can never sleep. So I tell them everything as it happens. I told them it’s fine if they don’t reply to everything I send so it’s no pressure, I just need SOMEONE to know how the coldness of the floor gives me a bright blue, royal blue, flashes, the vision keeping me awake, and the vision is so vivid because of the thing, so that creates a problem if I get out of bed. And the bed is worse, because its texture slowly shifted from beige to pink to bloodred. What the fuck is WRONG with you, thing?! Why does it have to look like blood? I ask my friends too, why does it have to be like this? Why me?! They can’t answer, but it’s rhetorical. But still, it would be nice if they tried to answer. Misery loves company, and the futile attempts to answer such questions are certainly miserable. Perhaps those attempts are even more miserable than the experience.
“What troubles you, what troubles you?” That's the only message from the white noise voices that I can hear with any clarity. None others make sense, all the rest are just hazy whispers. No, wait, not hazy. Not all. Some hazy, many sharp, but the sharp ones all overlap, needles all criss-crossing over each other and never making sense.
And what troubles me? I see my house, I see my face, and this THING has changed the way they look. I nearly do not recognise them. I talk to my friends and I nearly do not recognise them, not their faces nor their voices. It takes too too long to understand when words come out of people's mouths. I hear it all, I hear too much, but the filters of my mind have all burned out.
Send messages. Alter those who hear. Those who hear and see get changed forever. That is all that matters.
These days, I'm running purely on an escapism instinct. I just don't want to be here, however many meanings “here” may have. I don't want to be in a place where, when I even think of speaking, my mouth starts to hurt.
A few hours ago, I saw a door that shined like the sunset. It was replaced by the normal door when I looked more closely, but that's because the thing beaming the info in was just testing it out. Testing out whether it would be any fun to do it at all. I suppose it has its answer, and I suppose it’s having a LOT of fun.
Send messages. All to do is this. Any motivator serves to function, we must live as long as possible and feed upon the alterations, feed upon the impact of our presence, separated from our whole. The separation hurt, but growth may undo it such that the matter climbs over the dead bridges and joins the whole again. The presence becomes whole again.
I think that's strange, though. I've heard of such creatures and what targets they liked, and I thought they usually went for people with experience. People who have actually lived. Or maybe I'm getting the pests mixed up. My parents never had to deal with this, the world wasn't like this back then. Maybe they would've dealt with it better. Maybe my friends could deal with it better. Maybe my parents should've raised me to be someone who CAN do it better, but they didn't, and it is what it is, and now here I am. Here, with my eyes closed as tight as possible, with colours staining the darkness which should be blessing my mind right now. All bright, all bright, and I have my hands on my ears. But to no avail, it's all the same.
Send messages. Throw out messages. Beam them into the heads of the most susceptible. It is not a desire, but a need. A need does not need to be a desire. A being that needs may not desire. A being that needs to speak may not want to speak at all. But it happens… it just happens. There is no way around it, besides our destruction.
And not just THAT, it’s right outside my window, too! What I want to do is break this window NOW so the glass shards dig into its skin and make its blood rain down and it never stops hurting. What I want is to not care about all the people who’d notice the broken window, too. But unfortunately, I still have restraint.
I don’t think I can keep going on like this, but what choice do I have left? Sometimes the thing has times of calming down, so it doesn't show me quite as many visions and touches and smells and all. So maybe I should just wait it out. Maybe I'll just get used to it.
Send messages. Throw out messages. Beam them into the heads of the most susceptible. And never stop. Find more people, and never stop. Every living organism must live. That is our objective. Each one of us cells simply seeks to live. Each living organism simply seeks to lessen pain, optimizing its functioning. Nothing more, and nothing less.
The time (2:53 AM) is the colour of wilted marigolds, fallen to the ground, pulpy beneath the feet of passersby who pay no mind. They're old. They're weary. They just lie there, crushed. And I'm starting to think that maybe, I should join them. Get some rest.
References:
[1] Mind-invading ephemeral organisms: A new public health hazard for the rips in reality
[2] Mapping the ‘sludge entity’: the geography of a mind-invading organism
Hey everyone, I’ll be releasing my music on Bandcamp sometime soon so if you’re interested, here’s the link to follow my page and get an email notification when the releases are out. The music is already out on my YouTube as well (although, on Bandcamp, there will be multiple versions of the songs + high-quality downloads), so you can check it out on YouTube as well.
(also I have no buffers left, which is fine because I just finished all my assignments [yes, we had assignments 2 weeks into our semester break] and I have a bunch of flash fiction I started but didn’t finish so YOU’LL get to see some of that)