I no longer recognize myself in the cracked mirror up here in my attic retreat. I've got The Who on repeat on my iPod, now that I was able to steal it back. I've got my lap-top. And the Resonator. I've become something of a thief I guess. Not how I expected it to end, but there it is, whether I like it or not.
Stress is the accumulation of force impeded by a blockage. Something has to give, eventually. Something, or someone, breaks. A board, a brick a human mind; they all have weak-points and vulnerabilities that can be exploited to break them. You just have to know where to look, how to apply the requisite force, and voila the damn thing snaps as if on cue.
Except when you get it wrong.
Not every board, not every brick, and not every mind is exactly the same. What might have broken one may only deform another. That leads to tension. Pressure. Energy pent-up and confined looking for some sort of release. By definition that's a volatile situation. Explosive.
It's cold, dreary, raining and soon we'll have snow. My breath billows out like little clouds of desperation in the dimness here just below the eaves. I fell asleep earlier dreaming about running through crisp brown-gold fields of tall grasses. I never made it to the tree-line. Maybe I should care about that. But I don't. Not any more.
I don't care anymore. I don't believe anymore. The flickering purple haze of the Resonator washes over me and fills this place like ectoplasmic Jell-O and I watch it all unfold before me.
You can only put your hand in the fire for so long. You only get to fall so far, for so long, then you either turn it around or crash into a bloody mess. I've been falling for a long, long time now. It's time to break on through to the otherside. Crash and burn, slash and burn, smash smash smash -- I'd play the Cure's Burn, but I lost that CD.
I've lost a lot.
They say you have to hit rock-bottom before you can really turn it all around. The rocks are close now. Closer than they've ever been and I'm moving fast.
I'm cold. So cold. My fingers are slipping on the keyboard as though they have a life of their own. Cold, pale spider-things at the ends of my arms.
They shouldn't have hurt me, not like they did. But they did.
Maybe I shouldn't have broken the mirror with my fists. But I did.
They shouldn't have lied to me, manipulated me, deceived me and misled me. But they did.
Maybe I shouldn't have gone digging in the dirt for things better left buried. But I did.
They shouldn't have started all this thinking that I'd just cave-in and collapse, that I'd give up and get out. But they did.
They don't know anything. But I do.
Terrible things become terribly banal with prolonged exposure. Terror corrodes ones nerves too quickly, too deeply to be sustained. Successive shocks break down barriers, clear the channels, allow for the re-programming of what once was into something otherwise unattainable, unreachable, unimaginable.
I'm not afraid anymore.
Here, in the chill dark loneliness of this last hiding place I watch the slow trickle of purple-tinted red, the curling vapor of my breath, and I pay the price for what it is that I must now do.
I'm going to war.
