Welcome to Gaia! ::

Blue sky to forever
Green grass blows in the wind, dancing
It would be a much better sight
With you, with me
If you hadn't met me, I'd be fine on my own, baby
Never felt so lonely till you, came along
So now what should I do?
I'm strung out, addicted to you
My body aches, now that you're gone
My supply fell through
Gladly gave me everything you had and more
You craved my happiness
When you made me feel joy it made you smile
But now, I feel your stress
Love was never meant to be such a crazy affair, no
And who has time for tears?
I never thought I'd sit around and cry for your love
Till now

- Akira Yamaoka, "You're not Here" *

* * * * * *

Moonlight filters through the open carriage door, piercing the dank air of my stolen abode with a crisp chill. At least it takes my too-familiar stench of dried blood away. The regular rhythm of the train, the racket of the wheels following their fated tracks, pricks at my consciousness, poking me awake. The noise sounds familiar, this scene, reminiscent. I'm tired, and cold, but even these won't distract me from what I know is coming. I need sleep, but I daren't.

I hate sleeping. The cold silence of the night reminds me. Of everything. My mind defended itself fairly well against the barrage of flashbacks, blasting many of them back into repression, omitting the painful details so that only blurry nightmares remained. I no longer suffer flashbacks, only triggered regressions. But the nightmares, they never stop. They will never leave me alone.

I am alone.

Somewhere, preceeding my fractured memory, it was never like this. There were others, like me, taken and changed. Turned. Fallen. We would gather in the shadows of our masters, or creators, and huddle together for warmth and comfort.

No, thats not right, we were killers, savages. We required no such trivialities. Comfort was a trapping that was shaved from our fragile psyches. We craved nothing but victory, because victory kept us alive. That was how we operated. Either the survivors came back victorious, or there were no survivors.

I was alone. I came back alone. I survived. I was victorious.

Now I am lost in memory. In countless battles, retold as one, scenes patched together by a mind barely cooperating with me. Flames bite at my limbs, muzzle flashes bite my face, making me jerk and wince. Yet there was no pain. The others died, bloodily, chewed apart by the maddening infinity of machinegun chatter, slowing into a sickening mockery of a heartbeat. A mechanical pulse, forcing our lives away from this world, clogging with our corpses. With their corpses. Explosions growl, like spoiled children sidelined by a more urgent matter, asked to wait their turn. But they didn't. They just mixed the bodies into one another, separated them, confusing reality in a shower of gore and dirt.

They were killed. All killed. They were just like me, could have been me. Why weren't they me? Why weren't any of them me? I felt nothing as I attacked, tearing mere men limb from limb, twisting guns aside and parrying sword strikes. Biting their necks, and rending the windpipes from their gurgling throats. Squashing their eyes with my thumbs, feeling for the brain, and discarding the lifeless bodies in search of more prey. Being shot, and stabbed, and bitten, and never noticing. There was merely a rose-tinted blur of supersonic activity, an endless stream of drawn-out noise, and blood. Lots and lots of blood. How did I live?

Everybody died. Except me. I don't know why. I was so enraged, frenzied, a scary berserker imperative driving me onwards. Somehow their point-blank shots did nothing to me. Their swords broke before they could touch me. Their bodies ruptured easily, as though my merest touch were overpowering. I felt like a God. A vile god, a god of slaying and blood and murder. A god with no saints, no angels, only rage and violence. I forget who we were fighting, and why.

Farthest from my memory, was the one I had called an Angel. I recall nothing of her, only her wings. Her pure, white, soft wings. Her broken, charred, bloody wings. We would laugh at the cliche. She looked like an angel, and I looked like a devil. She adopted the name I gave her, but I didn't want to be the devil. I kept my name. She said it was good that I didn't embrace the title, that it was a sign that their control wasn't absolute. That I hadn't forgotten that I am still human, no matter what changes they made to us. We could, at least amongst ourselves, choose our names.

I don't want to remember why I'm crying at the thought of her. Somewhere inside, I know why, but I deny my own mind any more space to focus. So I weep, pathetically, until I am swept once again into war and the night. In the morning, my hatred tries to encompass the glare of the sun through my carriage door. The conflict in my soul makes me retch.

I feel the tears drying on my face, vanquished once again. The battles in my mind, the warring chemical implants in my body, the opposing forces in my spirit, they are all images of war. Echoes. Mirror reflections. And whenever I look in the mirror, I see each battle playing out inside me, just behind my eyes, inside my mouth, in my laboured breaths and the scars in my flesh.

I am at war. If I ever fail, its over. I must be victorious to survive, to find a meaning in this shattered existence. The train begins to slow down, and I leap, rolling into dusty plantations on the outskirts of the next big city. Overhead, starships rumble in the sky, rising and descending like the blobs of a lava lamp, a series of columns leading to and from the heavens.

The sign at the station reads; WELCOME TO ANGELICA CITY.

If that isn't her talking to me, shouting down from wherever she was taken to when she died, I'll chase my own tail.

* * * * * * * * * *

* obviously, "You're not here" is a song by Akira Yamaoka and not at all my work. The lyrics fit the piece pretty well though. Originally, like all my work so far, I wrote this in a blog, so I was pretty much at liberty to add such tidbits to supplement the mood of the piece. I hope this doesn't break any copyrighting regulations.

Yup, couldn't sleep, so its that psycho mutant boy again. Hope I'm not boring anyone with these posts...

pirate

*Dances a merry jig around his uni room. Realises there isn't much space. Hurts self on chair leg. Blubs.

Thanks for the support. I've been away over easter cos my internet connection sucks at home (unlike the mega-fast one at uni), but I'm back now. There will be more, eventually!

Cheers 3nodding