fff #6 - Of Scourge(s)

Of Scourge(s)

I’m not sure why I didn’t notice it sooner. I had been told by others that it eventually becomes personal. “What is that supposed to mean?” It didn’t matter how many times I had heard it, I wasn’t able then to grasp the ultimate meaning of what they tried to tell me.

I assume that I was in denial at first, after all who wants to acknowledge head-on the coming of the end of it all? I mean it took me until the third one to recognize it wasn’t just coincidence, as if the blinders I was wearing were able to render the pachyderm standing by the window invisible. It took a while afterwards to get over the false feeling of consolation, of being hoodwinked, that it was pink instead of white. While battling for victory over the third one, I had much time to contemplate the technicalities of fate. In the end it was just a diversion of the mind exquisitely protracted by the sickness to keep me from addressing the underlying affliction.

Some lessons were hard learned, and who would have guessed that breeding was the one thing that would remain as the only advantageous function? If I remember correctly, it was during the ill conceived pregnancy ban around the time of the first one that I suffered a serious lapse of judgment. I was so attached to worldly things, a candy apple red jag to be more specific, when they began offering big beans for ovaries. It stung when the fuel stopped flowing, a useless pile of steel rubber and glass couldn’t even begin to make me whole again. Anyway I can’t imagine it would help my case to carry another doomed life in my belly, in any case it would just slow me down. Is it being materialistic to want a child? Try not to… Functional footwear would have been a worthwhile investment, or at least flatter shoes would have been best. To think I used to get upset when I stepped on a piece of gum on the sidewalk, now I can’t walk two meters without having a skull cave in under the metallic pressure of my stiletto. Although they are far from ideal, they have served in their purpose on occasion.

This business of the end sure does force one into a mode of extreme flexibility to enable rapid radical adaptation to the presented circumstances. Intuition is and always will be the greatest attribute of the greatest survivors. Following one’s instinctual impulses most of the time makes the narrow difference in either achieving a bittersweet victory or becoming like the rest that just couldn’t cut it. After witnessing such things that would make the average person go stark raving mad, I took lots of concentration just to not think about the carnal imagery, much less to be able clear the mind. I was taught early on that having an empty head is the best cerebral state to enable one to receive and purely interpret the impulse. Only then can one’s response be swiftly formulated and executed.

Communication amongst the survivors has become a harrowing ordeal ever since they figured out that thought energy concentration was a factor in the intensity. The sledge hammer of irony crushed the collective spirit when we found that exactly what we need are united masses, but get more than three people together and you may as well be standing beside the cold stone slab that proudly holds your name inscribed. True, it had become easier to keep separation limits in order, since we were in ever decreasing numbers. I have not yet been able to come by the information about how many were still about making trouble for inevitable void. Would it really help if I knew?

I was lucky to come by the information before all this that metaphysics was the groove. It was a bit of work, but I am tending to think that the practice has carried me this far. Imagine the disappointment in the fidels when the ancient texts of monotheism were proved beyond a doubt to be the insidious joke of a well educated roman scholar called the “panther”. There’s nothing like getting the berber pulled right out from under your feet to take the aggression out of fighting. They seemed to perish simultaneously as if they were all in the same fold. That was the fifth one, I think, try not to… The spontaneous loss of life in numbers made for a messy time indeed. They thought they had the copyright on Armageddon, fools, really.

It doesn’t seem to matter how much I suppress them, there are still the infantile queries that always seem to bubble to the surface at the absolute worst time. It is as if their buoyancy was infused by the briny aftertaste of the deep dread often accompanied by the proximity of the void. We came to call “it” the void for lack of adequate reliable data, and the rigormortified witnesses tend toward silence on the matter. No one is even sure if there is an end or how close you come at any given time. I have found it is best not to trifle myself with such useless thought, and it is better to keep moving. But it leaves me never totally. Which brings me round to the beginning.

It was the eighth deadly scourge, yes, indeed the eighth. I didn’t need that lull in between after the seventh, thanks. Let’s just move it right along, no it can’t be, that’s what those bastards meant? I imagined it would be something out of my nightmares, since they have free reign over it all it seems. C’mon… This one is going to be a cinch. How difficult can it be to spend an indefinite amount of time with a version of myself sitting across from me at the table? She is very inquisitive, how did they get my mind that empty? Maybe that intellectual copyright did prove fruitful? I have been trying for years without significant result. I am slowly realizing that every childhood story and every anecdote increases her knowledge of me, and consequently herself, or me? I feel like a cloud emptying my precious moisture onto her thirsty palate, with every gust I diminish ever further while she only grows stronger, furtively pressing on with the pestilent inquisition. I can no longer discern my smoke like core from her freshly ascertained charm. Try not to…

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I really enjoyed writing this one. Just let it carry me where it wanted to go. Think it may be too raw to post, but I don’t have sufficient time left to come back to it. I feel like I have removed that creative obstruction. Now on to sewing and making dinner.