Dead World - Prologue

I awakened that afternoon drenched in blood and sweat. My eyes stinging as the blood slowly dripped into them from the holes in the bridge of my nose. Clumsily sliding out of my bed, I made my way for the mirror hanging on the wall of the one room studio apartment. Wiping the half-dried blood from my eyes, I gazed into an image that I would have never recognized only a few months ago. My face was a scattered mess of metal and ink on a pale background. A symbol of Free Will tattooed on my left cheek, representing an idealism that I use to detest; rods of metal pierced my flesh wherever possible, forming the shape of a deranged heart.

I was once normal, you know; I really was. I went to work every day, I came home every day, and I kissed my wife goodbye every day. I worked for a semiconductor company, I did VLSI chip design. It wasn't the most glamorous job, but it paid the bills and let the wife and I take those two week exotic vacations every year. I had a nice 29th floor furnished flat, indoor hot tub, balcony - I was the personification of the average successful American. I conformed and was rewarded by success.

My relationship with my wife was great. We were married at 24 and believed that our love was strong enough to carry us into our old age together. We would always sit and talk about how it would be when we were older, how we only wanted each other, that there could be nothing strong enough to break us apart. But there was something much stronger than either of us knew.

About what seems to be two months ago I woke up in the morning to go to work. I went through all the routines, I did all the motions, but I wasn't there. My mind was somewhere else. I don't know what it was, I guess you could call it temporal enlightenment. I just sort of realized the faults in everything I did. I realized the way I moved my hand and followed it. I realized the subtle wind streaming under the bathroom door, ever so gently swaying the curtains of the shower. I realized that there were six billion other people on this earth that were possibly having this exact same revelation, unbeknownst to me. Six billion people that I have never met or even set eyes upon. And I walked out the door of my flat that morning without giving my wife a kiss goodbye, and I never returned.

It's all a daze now. I remember walking, walking on and on. Searching for something, but I didn't know what I was searching for, I just knew that I had to find something, anything. I walked through the downtown area, peering into small establishments that lined the streets. I looked at the people as they passed me, and all I saw were more questions. I was in a sea of piranhas, all wanting to feed on me, suck me dry of everything that made me who I am, and all I could do was swim faster; hoping that the shore would eventually surface.

And the shore did surface. I woke up laying in front of a long alleyway with a door at the end of it that I could barely make out. I picked myself up and walked down that alleyway, without an ounce of fear in my body, I walked to the door which I would have never opened before that day and I found that it was not locked, so I twisted the handle and pushed it open a bit. I walked through the door and found myself in the middle of a hallway, spanning endlessly to my left and right – I could see no end on either side.

So I turned right and began walking. Before I knew it I was in front of a door that I should have seen peering in through the alleyway entrance. As I opened the plain vanilla white door the bass booms of industrial music and flashing lights greeted me. I walked through the doorway and turned around and saw that the door was no longer there. So I ventured into this new age nirvana – a den of sugar coated sin and vice. Pushing through the hordes of people painted in black and slashing their limbs as though their lives depended on that alone, I found a small table tucked away in the corner and sat down. A waitress quickly arrived at my table with the words of, “What's your sin?” I wanted to say 'you', but I told her that I would like a dry vodka instead.

Quickly scanning the room, I noticed another person, alone, tucked in the other corner of the dance floor. Dressed in black knee-high boots and a red leather trench coat, she gave off a strange aura of carelessness. I couldn't see her face clearly, but every time the strobe crossed it there was a strange metallic sparkle that radiated from it. Just as I was lifting myself from the chair to approach her, the waitress returned to my table and slammed down a glass, “One Dry Vodka, Hun.” With that she walked away and I sat back in my chair and sipped on my newfound sin.

I sat in the corner for what seemed to me to be weeks, time passed as though it no longer existed; yet the bodies still continued to move and that girl across the room just sat there staring back at me as though there was nobody else in this world but her and I. And then she stood up, walked across the room, and sat in a chair across from me at the small table in the corner of the club. After staring at me for what seemed like another eternity with what I could now make out as glazed over dull green eyes, she queried me for a name. I didn't know what to say; my name was gone. It was at this point that I started to realize that I didn't remember anything about myself; who I was, where I came from, where I was going. So I told her everything, which was nothing at all.

And we sat at that corner table and spoke of nothing at all for days on end, nothing affecting our flow of communications; and when all was said and done, I had agreed to go with her out of the club, into a world that I knew nothing about. We got up from our corner table and moved together through the herd of flailing bodies and through a door which I had never passed through before. My new escort; a woman that I did not know to go along with a self that I no longer knew. I couldn't tell if I was dreaming or not; it felt like a dream, but I wasn't waking up – everything was surreal, it was as though I was no longer living my life.

As we moved through the frame of the door we passed from one darkness into a much different darkness, one that could be felt in the depth of my soul. The cityscape that stood before us was completely foreign to me; I knew that this was not where I had entered that club from. Enormously tall decayed-brick housing complexes lined both sides of the street, business establishments, or at least ghosts of them, haunted the lower floors of the buildings; no lights were present save a few sparsely placed red-shaded gas lamps lining the boulevard. The cold chilled me to the bone; Hobbling people.. Creatures.. dressed in rags, some completely naked, huddled around metal barrels with fires raging in them. Massive cracks filled the pavement and asphalt that separated the two rows of buildings; at this point I didn't know if I was delirious or not, but I swore that I could see faint glows of green radiating from some of the larger cracks in the asphalt. I looked up to the sky and only saw emptiness – no stars, no moon – just an empty darkness with blackened clouds shaping it. It seemed as though I was in a world of nightmares, yet I wasn't asleep.

Walking down this street with my escort while surrounded by the denizens of this gloom-filled metropolis, I began to feel feeble to the world around me; and in that weakness, I found a strange kind of peace. This was a kind peace that I had never experienced before, a calmness that I could only imagine to associate with death at the time, but I was not dead; at least I didn't believe I was. As we approached a rather awkwardly shaped alleyway entrance my escort motioned for me to follow her into it. I couldn't figure out whether the walls of the alleyway were constructed with a fairly severe slant to them or if the buildings that they supported gave them that slant over the years; either way, it amazed me that they still stood and supported what they did. We entered the second dingey door on the left side of this alleyway and we were greeted by the rather extravagant lobby interior that reminded me of a New York hotel where I once roomed. Passing motionless figures sitting at round tables strewn about, we proceeded up a massive staircase for what must have been forty floors before arriving at our destination.

“You're Here”, she said to me with a very passive tone while swinging a door open before me. I walked into what I would soon find to be my new home and peered around at the crude figures and literature painted on the walls. A small bed with clean sheets folded nicely on top sat in the corner of this room, a rather large mirror adorned the wall opposite the bed, open cans of paint decorated the floor. Quickly turning around as I heard the door slamming, I saw that my escort had departed. I ran out of the room, down the hallway, down the stairs, out of that alleyway – she was gone. I was alone again, I had no clue if I was suppose to be where I was or not; I became paralyzed by fear. I pulled myself together and made my way back up to my room, doing my best not to be seen by haunting figures of the skewed world around me. I collapsed on the bed and drifted into a deep slumber.

These are sites which I like:
  • 27b/6 by David Thorne
  • Not Always Right

About the Author:

   The Author of this site is a man living in denial about the notion that there is anyone intelligent enough to have a conversation with anymore, so he writes to his computer instead.

   To summarize, he writes and rants and makes shit up.