smooth walls enclosed the space. clean, cool, safe. i had just come upon this room with its golden wooden floor. it wasnt special. just a room. but it was safe and clean and good. i walked around, absently caressing the wall. the paint wasnt new, but the integrity of it was palpable. the soft dryness of the wall registered as good as well. i turned to look at the entire room again...so pleasing and calm it was to my eyes when i noticed something on the farthest wall. a spot. black, wet-looking, tar-like. i wondered at this that i hadnt seen seconds before, so i wandered over to the spot. it seemed to be growing. oozing out of the wall, spreading...like a drop of black blood on clean white cotton. tendrils laced out and away from it, infecting more and more of the clean walls. backing away in my horror at the spread of the disease, i heard a noise behind me. the clean plaster of the walls was crumbling. sliding down to reveal a wall of, not lathing, but more blackness. it was not the one spot that was infected. the whole room was oozing with the evil blackness. sick and rotting the stench suffocated me. the once golden wood floor beneath my bare feet became suddenly rotting and sharp with splinters. i wanted to run but i knew i couldnt. i smiled through the tears that were streaming down my face. smiled at my naivete. smiled at the earlier estimation of goodness and integrity. and the evil began to fill the room.

chapter 1

"Damn," she thought as she rolled over in the sheets, listening to the unearthly scream of the alarm clock. It was that point in sleep where you haven't quite opened your eyes but are still horribly aware of the vulgar screech of the alarm pulsing away, deriding all that is good and holy in the morning time. Not that there is anything particularly good or holy about morning, she thought to herself. Those last few moments of blissful unawareness passed painfully quickly and the cloud of responsibilities that the day would bring loomed inches over her bed, waiting to crash down on her shoulders the instant a semblance of consciousness was regained. Reveling in her last few moments of ignorance, she savored the softness and warmpth of her pillow and idly entertained the possiblility that she may be able to sleep in today.

The alarm clock made sure that this was impossible, however. She sat up, immediately coming into painful contact with the cloud of her mental "to-do list" for the day, and groggily batted at the biggest button on the alarm clock. She could feel the bed pulling her back down, but she resisted today, seeing as she had given in to the warm softness too often before. Besides, today she needed a shower, and the will to smell good outweighed the will to attempt another two minutes of sleep. She'd just end up having to wake up all over again, and it really wasn't worth it. She slid out of bed and headed towards her door. Staggering enough to have to grab the door frame to keep from falling face first into the wall.

The bathroom was the same dingy white it had always been. It would have been painted by now...except that she never found the time to decide on the color she wanted. She felt blindly for the faucet; her eyes had not regained the ability to focus yet...almost, but not quite. She looked down into the sink and froze. It was there again. The deep red smear, bigger this time. Redder this time. She heard the blood rushing in her ears and she felt the quickened throb in her neck.

"Not again." She whipered. "No, it can't have come back."

She wanted to run, to scream, to faint, to suddenly be jolted awake again by the deafening blare of her alarm. It had to be a dream. It didn't really happen. No...no.

She quickly began wiping with the first dry cloth that she could reach. An old blue shirt of James' that he had left at her house weeks ago. She tried not to notice how much blood was seeping into the fabric as she continued her panicked smearing.

Turning, she froze. This time she did scream, though it was not a full scream. More like the sound one would make when one first feels the strong hands close around the throat. A high pitched exclaimation, cut short by the sudden constriction of the hands. There on the windowsill, was a crimson smear of blood...a five fingered smear. She lunged at the sill with the blue shirt, rubbing the erie smear beyond her initial recognition. Shaking violently, and breathing irradically, she kept frantically cleaning the scarlet stains off the sink and sill.

She spent the rest of the morning fighting the image of the ominously shaped smear on the sill, as it seemed to be the image that persisted in her mind.

view from my window

growling, the deep grey clouds fade away in the distance as the soft, white fluff drifts in between the blue mountain tops. cold breeze chases away the heat fo the summer sun hidden behind layers of grey cotton batting. crisp and clean the divide of clear air between the grey ceiling and the white expanse of cotton tucked softly in the valleys with islands of trees sticking out of the fallen clouds.

random thoughts

i would rather misjudge a person as greater in character than less.


"self-contemplation is a curse, that makes an old confusion worse"
~ Roethke

too much caffiene

small child running away far away from the music playing and the softness of sunday church fading into the past. grey dusty planks wooden floor dirty feet and splinters. muddy tendrils wash the pebbles in the stream of ice. green moss moist and soft cushion. bed of moss. cannot sleep here with the trees and silver slips of moon shining on the grey grasses. curved blade of the moon shines quietly violent in the nothingness the stars struggle against the suffocating deepness of the black clouds. bending in the silver streams cast shadows hide the tears watering the grasses. blackness all my own wraps me warmly stealing breath from the dewy air. blood seeps into the brown trunk reclining its way across the path winding as a thread of earth through the grey coated leaves. curled away from the eyes of the lesser light whose blades of misty brightness lacerate the darkness cloth wrapping tighter around my chest. heaving struggling rasping breath gags on the cold wetness chill on back and neck. stillness settles, stifling the sounds of the struggle within. slowing the steady rhythm of warmpth streaming through the numbing body. drifting away from the grass, the stream, the moonlight...drifting home.

you said...

you said you beat up the other guy. you explained every blow. you gave us the play-by-play. you make jokes and we laugh, you tell stories and we listen. you tell us how strong you are. how unfair the fight was. how unfairly you have been used. you tell us how she hurt you, and how strong you are for taking it. you tell us how you give her your strength. you tell us how you give us your strength.

we say...

you dont need to be strong for us. we already love you. you are already our friend. you do not need to prove your strength, capability, deservingness. you dont have to carry our burdens. we dont ask you to be something more. you dont have to be our entertainment. you rush to tell us your story..."here is my story and all that i am..." "now that you know me, you cant leave me." youve had to be strong. youve had to be enough. know that you dont have to be anything for us to continue to love you. thats it, youre in, sorry hon, you cant get out of it now. weve got you.

all im saying is that you neednt worry. we will listen, we will talk, we will be here when you need us. because...we are friends.