LOST IN SOCIETY

365 Days of Creativity

day fifty four

LOST IN SOCIETY

prologue

I am restless.

My soul is calm. My mind is calm. My body is exhausted, but still, everything runs. Constantly moving, ever roaming through the space that is my consciousness. What am I looking for?

part one

I'm lost.

In a forest, tall trees everywhere. Taller than the pyramids, and stronger, older. Dusk has come and gone, the nighttime firmly settled in. The woods are quiet. Dead. Nothing moves but me. And I race through the thick brush. Or maybe I don't move at all, perhaps the leaves are spinning around me. Either way I don't know where I'm going.

Everything seems hostile in it's lucidity. The cool air infiltrates my mind. The branches reach into the deepest part of me. Touching, fondling, violating my very soul. The essence of my life is lost. The trees have found it. With lonely and long stewed upon hunger, the forest has taken me. With viscous and quick bites, I am devoured.

part two

"More."

There is darkness all around. A pain, deep in my gut.

"More."

This voice, like a thousand voices joined together, pitches scattered all over, but speaking in perfect unison. I hear it, not through my ears but as a voice inside my head.

"More."

The ache again. In the very center of me. In the nerve of my nerves. It throbs, no, it wrenches. Wringing my innards into nothing more than ground beef. Like the leftovers collected from the factory floors, then compressed and shoved into the thin pig intestines and served as 'hot dogs'.

I gasp. But there is no air to breathe. Not suffocation, simply a lack of need. Like breathing is just an idea, not a reality. Like walking if you have no legs.

"Give.... Us..... More....."

I shake my head, but I cannot move. This striking pain, drilling my core. It's hard to think around. To think what it wants- what they want.

I don't- I don't have any more.

But they don't respond. I can't move. I can't blink, I have no eyes to open or close.

Who are they? What do they want? What have I become? Is this death? Have I fallen into a coma? But the PAIN. I cannot concentrate with it's stabbing presence. What is it? Why? Why? WHY?!

"Hunger."

part three

It's quiet.

Apart from the sound of silence, there is nothing to withhold. No sights, no sounds, no smells. No sense of touch, no sense of direction. Only a sense of self. And even that is fading.

Without a face, without a voice, without hands to hold things, without a body to feel things, what proof is there that I even exist? Do I exist? Or am I just a stray thought? Some half-formed character thought up by a bored man, doomed to roam the realm of the almost-created forever? Am I a conscience? Am I attached to a larger being? Simply stored and saved for a moment when my essence is needed? The smallest flicker light? Am I the last sparkle in a dying child's eyes? The last breathe of a drowning man? The only hopeful word for a suicidal woman? Was I born this way? The forest merely a mirage from my mind when it used to be strong and whole? Was I ever human? Am I human now?

Without a face, without a voice, without hands to hold things, without a body to feel things, what proof is there that I even exist? Do I exist? Or am I just a......

part four

"More."

What? What was that?

"Mooorrrre."

The words spark a memory, shake a cobweb from an old photograph.

"We... Want... More..."

With a sudden swoop the picture is clear. Stone pillars stand amidst a rolling fog. Weeds and bushes grow asunder through the unkempt temple.

And there! A person, infinitesimal beside the stones, but a person none the less. Picking it's way through the underbrush, scared. Resting a hand on one pillar, the man pants, panicked and petrified. And I feel it. I feel the hand on the stone. But no, it's not stone is it? No. A tree, as tall as the pyramids, but stronger and older. A soft warmth comes from the human, like a mother's hand cupped to a babes cheek.

The fear smells like melted sugar. Like silken butter in a hot pan. Nothing has ever had such an enticing aroma.

The life throbs, with every heartbeat I can see each vein lit up like lightning.

The pain in my center screams louder than ever. It needs this man. I need this man.

I reach out.

part five

We... want... more...