He peered through the glass sitting on the desk, amused by the refraction and distortion of the screen. "maybe the world should always look like this." he thought as he sat up and looked once again at the image on the screen, this time unfiltered through empty glass. "we fucked like gods in our time." our time... It echoed through his head. This was nothing more than an image of her, not perverse in any way, just a frozen moment in time. He took this one just to remember always how beautiful she was that night. The air became electric and the stars smiled down on them, if but for a fleeting night, the rest of the world had melted away. "fuck this", he growled as he slammed the laptop shut, and prepared to adjourn for the evening.
A cigar clutched in his lips had long since extinguished itself, he tilted his head back, and that familiar rush set in, glazed and spinning, the room mocked him with it's refusal to sit still. He wasn't concerned with the state of his mind, afterall he was trying to erase it, to forget is a mercy shown on the weak.
"memories", a simingly bizarre utterance for the still-life company surrounding him. It only made sense when paired with the unspoken visions racing through his head.
Even the greatest memory has bittersweet twinge to it, because it is past, and even the most powerful recall can't bring back the actual experience, just some skewed version, like looking through a glass. All good things pass, and so too do the ties that merged and formed those blissful nights.
He stood, half balancing on the chair, as he adjusted to the gravity, and the motion of the room. "too much... Or not enough." he grinned, it seemed he could only speak in half-thought, incomplete sentences, not that it mattered as the words range off the walls and fell forgotten as quickly as they were uttered. Henturned and began his path to the hallway, and as he walked his mind once again traveled to distant lands of yesterday, sure there were bad moments too, like when she said she hated him, he knew it wasn't genuine, but in that moment the white-hot flame inside her believed it with every syllable that escaped her lips. It was followed by several syllables, all of which hushed under the ringing sound that permeated from everything. "I hate you." that was all that was left of that memory, the rest just flashes by with a churning ball of shame that swells in his stomache everytime he recalls it. Sure, time patched up wounds, settled things in the passage of days, but they were never the same after that. A slow painful demise, anchipping away at a tiny crack in the perfection of what once was. It's never fast, always a slow denial of the hearts true intent.
As he walked he made a purposeful choice to will his soul back to the present. The room swirled into existence once more, he could smell the cigar still wedged between his lips. The dull aroma of burnt tabacco, suddenly became so familiar, strange how it seemed unpresent all these minutes as he walked, because his body was on auto pilot, while his mind was immersed in the waves of life. Life, none of us see it, except in the rearview. It's wasting us away, and we can't appreciate it, until it's written, can't be altered. "wait! Fucking wait..." he looked back at the chair he occupied several minutes ago. "minutes? What the fuck?" turning the hallway was every bit as far from him as it was before his mind drifted, yet even in his state he knew he could multi-task enough to think and walk at the same time. Indeed he knew he'd been walking, but had managed to barely move an inch in his feeble attempts to walk to bed, to retire this evening and make it but a memory. The whole room mocked him once again, with it's refusal to sit still, yet nothing in it was living, except for him. "god, is this some nightmare? Have I fallen asleep already? Maybe I'm still sitting at that desk, slumped and snoring."
It was common in dream to try for a goal that froze him, something not to be accomplished. It usually meant he'd fallen asleep with his eyes open. And his soul couldn't manage to travel far past the trapped bodies physical range of sight. A prisoner that wants nothing more than to awake and escape the surroundings.
This felt different though, dark and ominous, while paralasys is usually dark, it comes with an understanding that with time it will pass, no matter what demon may be sitting on your chest, you focus on the tangible and wish for wakefulness, though each second an eternity spent in hell. But no, this had no such purpose, no creatures or shadows lurking, just a stillness that couldn't be changed.
He'd spent so much time dwelling on the past, had he somehow become a moment frozen in time? It didn't matter if his life progressed from here, because he knew the best had passed, this stillness brought with it a sick calm. "who cares if I ever reach that door? I don't even care, so why should anyone else?" it'd pass as another forgotten moment, just like the words he spoke, that had fallen off existence.
A perpetual photograph, not even a good one... Stuck walking, he did struggle at first, in his head his arms were waving violently, he was running, he could even see the illusion of movement his brain was projecting to make sense of the synapse refusal to fire and propel him forward. He knew he wasn't really moving though, if anything he felt a calling to return back to the chair, to sit a dwell on the image, the more he became aware of it, the more insistent it was, it was painful to do anything that would consist of forward momentum, and now this beckoning to reverse? Would it stop at the chair? Would it matter? Maybe he'd feel pulled backwards until he was undone, dwelling on the past so much, maybe he'd have to witness all the pain and joy reconstructed, happy beginnings at the ending of each chapter, yet he knew even if he could re-experience everything, it'd still pass, it would end, even if it ended at the start.
He peered through the glass sitting on the desk, amused by the refraction and distortion of the screen.
