Composite.

Text pours over the screen, capitals and lowercases and ones and zeroes and other alphanumerics. I relax my arms and sit back in my chair. I'd been writing for hours, sitting in the dark of this room alone, lit only by the glow of my computer's monitor. But it's done now, finally. The opus. What will put me on the great virtual map of the world's stage, literary-wise at least. I rub my shoulders and stare at the ceiling. There is a crack there. It's new, or newer, anyway. I haven't looked up there in quite some time, so for all I know it could be months old at this point. It looks new though.

"So now what?" I thought. "The book is done. It is finished. El finito. Done. A complete work. And no one cares yet. But OH they will. Oh, how they will. They will gaze in awe at my vast intellect and carve statues in my honor and give me awards and money and the women, OH the women. Screw Karen, I don't need her now, this is my ticket out of this cell she put me in and when I get out. . ." I had to stop myself there, I was getting carried away. "All in due time," I tell myself, "you need a publisher still." Which was true. I didn't have a publisher. But I will! And it will be glorious.

I get up out of the chair, which seems a little rusty in the wheel area. It doesn't roll quite as smoothly as it should have. Whatever. I'll fix it in the morning. A little oil and I'll be fine. It'll be fine. OH, I almost forgot to back my work up. That could be a disaster, right? A power outage, a hard drive crash, and all my hard work would be eliminated in a swoop of electrical surges and broken glass. Because I would probably throw the monitor out the window. Anyway. . .


There's a crack in the ceiling.

I've been staring at it for hours. It stands out against the white of the paint, a thin black fissure in the otherwise featureless area. It's about 3 inches long, and winding and crooked, as a crack looks in cartoons and art renderings. I stare at it. I keep thinking if I let my eyes wander away, it will get bigger. I imagine it growing larger and larger, becoming gaping, a yawning mouth in the ceiling, reaching forth to swallow me off the bed and take me to. . . elsewhere, I guess. No place in particular. Limbo, perhaps. I imagine myself being lifted, like in a bad alien abduction movie, like Sigourney Weaver in Ghostbusters, and pulled into the abyss. The crack grows larger, swallows the room, the entire building, the rest of New Brunswick, the whole of New Jersey, and still it grows. Impatient, it takes it all, and feeds its ever growing area of effect. Like a black hole, once the event horizon is crossed there is no return. Still it grows. Insatiable, unsettled, implacable distance inside it, pitch black, no measure of time or space or reason available. In pitch black, there is no benchmarks, so whether it's been 5 feet or 5 thousand years, I can't tell. Solitude is absolute in the void, and still it grows. The United States is now a chasm. The oceans are spilling over like in old maps, the world is turning flat. I close my eyes.

There's still a crack in the ceiling. It's still only 3 inches long.


. . .I have to blink a lot, readjust my vision for some reason. I think my mind wandered away from me for a while. I'm still sitting in my chair in my office. My legs are sore, and it's still dark. I still haven't saved my work. I roll towards the screen, but the wheels aren't moving at all now. Hmm. Odd.

Something is wrong, but I can't place it. Every time I try to move my chair, or just get out of it now, I can't seem to move. There's a force holding me down, whether it's an outer or inner one I can't quite figure yet. But in any event, it's moved beyond irritating and into worrying. I mean, yeah, it's only been a minute that I've been like this, but a minute is an hour in a lifetime is a second. Time is relative, and right now I'm relating to nothing. I need to save my book. I need my book saved. I need. . .


As I cross the bridge into the next state, a fissure glares out into the dark waters of the river below, a dividing line between blue sky and black hole. No sense of gravity exists, and as such it is not a true singularity, but I feel drawn to it anyway, if only in eye line. There's a restless atavism within it, a relentless march towards devolutionary oblivion, inexorable and irresistible. I can see it stalking along the edge, hunger and greed nakedly visible in it's many eyes, full of malice and future-tense violence and dead piling up on the base tarmac and promises of an end to all the terror and marches in lockstep to the beat of 30 years gone by. Incoming traffic passes, headlights blinding and pulling me away from the unceasing pull of the beast.

I am bound to this path by chords, tied tight and structured as to bring out the inherent pressure in living and breathing through the corralling of sunken eyes and broken treaties. Everything is illuminated, the light shining on the ugly as well as the beautiful, and the returning shadows swallow all as well, boring into the bored and bound alike. The creeping authority of silence grows, and the subsequent miles pass in a blank state of emotional withdrawal, every signpost and marker declaring an intention of invasion. "We are coming," they seem to shout in unison, "and we will not submit."

Strange neuronic flashes in my cortex establish themes and memes and lend context to every detail in the environment. Here: an unlit match, struck and immediately extinguished. Here: a duck crossing. Here: a 4 way stop sign intersection. Here: a dead end. How does it all add up? What is the pattern? It's crying out to be heard, practically screaming, a high pitched keening banshee that declares internal distress to all who care to put ear to ground and LISTEN. Spiraling in a golden shape, and sparking back to divert my gaze from the sky's separation and back to where I'm going and what I'm coming from and what the relation of one to the other is.

The sky has an edge. And it is sharp.


. . .and the door is locked. I can tell. I can't see anything coming out from under it no light no air I am trapped here the air is closing in on me I am being worn out I am being worn out I am being worn down I am being worn UP I'M UP. Oh thank god. It was just me. I'm more tired than I thought. I blink sleepily and walk to the keyboard, which is darkened by the fact that the monitor has entered sleep mode. I hit the space bar to wake the screen, and nothing happens. I move the mouse, and again, nothing. I'm awake now, my eyes wide and hairs on end. I hit the power button on the monitor, and again nothing happens.WHAT IS HAPPENING. I can't think this happens, I can't. No. It's just a monitor error. It has to be. I hit CTRL and S on the keyboard, and cross mental fingers that this works, that I am not fucked, that everything is savvy and everyone is safe and everything is sane and nothing, there's nothing to look forward to, it's all gone all gone my work is gone she's gone why did this happen now why did she have to turn off and erase it all when did this happen why can't I finish things easily why can't I can't I can't I. . .


We'd gone through three radio station area changes, and somehow, the same noise kept showing up. All mindless beats, and computer noises, and false promises of sex and professions of love. I can't think about any of that right now. It's still too close, too up front. It hung in the atmosphere between us, like the smoke from her cigarette, which still sat, smoldering, in her left hand. She smokes like a soldier, holding the filter between her thumb and index finger, bringing it up to her lips every few seconds for a quick drag, then leaving it hovering in the air, her palm up and pointing the lit end towards her chest, as if it's a knife poised at her chest.

I don't smoke.

At the first rest stop across the border, I'd asked her where we were going. "South," was the only answer she gave. I pressed her for more, but only got slight grins and silence. I'd thought about pushing the issue, about being a real hardass, but before action could be taken, I'd found her arms locked behind me and her lips had pressed against mine in a furious rush that staggers me still, now, sitting in the car, who knows how much later. God, she'd moved fast. It was as if she was afraid that if she didn't, the world would spin on its axis and pull us both away from each other to opposite corners of the globe. I found my center of gravity in her kiss.

It was the kind that you remember, and compare all others to for the rest of your life. If I knew a suitable descriptive for it, I would use it, but for once words are failing me. It was like all the oxygen had been sucked out of my lungs, and she was working to revive me singlehandedly. Her lips were the event horizon, and I was irresistably drawn in. Worlds began and ended, entire civilizations evolved and became extinct, and Ragnarok was brought to bear on all the old gods in creation. What followed, in the darkened spaces we went to, really was almost an after-thought, after that kiss. There was a sense of urgency there, which I can't really account for. It wasn't love, it wasn't even lust, it was beyond that. It was beyond us. . .

Beyond Karen.

Afterward, in the returning rush of sense and reason and balance, there was a moment when she looked into my eyes and I could see myself reflected back at me. The first time I had seen anything clearly in those deep orbs. I couldn't look, it was too disturbing, to see myself so naked and open in front of another. It was only a brief moment, but when I looked again, there was something else in her eyes. I can't be sure what, was it . . . fear? No. Loathing? No. It was . . . a sadness of sorts. Indistinct, but there nonetheless.


. . .am I? Am I here? I'm where? Questions are echoing in my head, but none have reached the stage of audibility yet. I cannot speak, my mouth is filled with mud and spit and bile and dust and dust and dust and oh god where am I. I'm in my office. Yes. Of course. I sit up from the floor and shake my head, the dust falling in slow flakes like snowflakes and I'm cold. It's cold out, and the breeze isn't helping. I should shut the window, yeah. I should protect myself from whatever is coming in, the air and wind and moisture and everything. I turn towards the window, but I don't see it, it's gone. The window is gone. It's been boarded up, I've been boarded. I'm trapped here oh god oh god oh jesus oh s**t I'm cold it's cold where is this wind coming from I grab my arms tight to my sides to stay warm but it's not helping. I am trapped. Except the. . . door. YES. The door, it should still be open and leaveable. That means I can be leaveable, I can leave I can go go let's go get out oh god where is the light it's so dark and cold and I'm alone and yes the door, find the door, find the. . .


I can see the headlights in the reflection of the rainsoaked window. It's 3am again, as you would expect, time moving on its tragic march and all, and you could say that I'm unexpectedly thinking of another place and time, but really, its not unexpected at all. The mind does wander, mine especially, and while it wonders and wanders, I tend to lose focus on where I am and what I should be/am doing.

Where was I?

The fog rolled in yesterday, further obscuring the view through the streaked glass. I have no heat, so the defroster does little to nothing to help sight improve. The car is not old, but it's seen better days, no question. Its the best I can do at the moment, as I am without employment or a source of income steady enough to afford a newer one. I grip the wheel tight, but with gloves on a firm purchase is impossible. I always forget, is it turn into the spin or away?

Anyway.

Last night, I made a call to someone I shouldn't have, and said things I knew better than to say. On one hand, a good thing, because I didn't have to say them, but I needed to, which is the point here. I think. I'm not sure. I'm a little woozy from blood loss. I admit, I've been drinking a little. A lot. Whatever. My phone rang a few minutes ago, and the cracked LCD folds up like the jackknifed truck that I passed on the highway in the summer. It was warmer then, and it didn't matter that my car doesn't have heat. I almost crashed then, almost lost it.

Last call, this is last call.

Sorry, I lost my head again. The rain and the lights have made me dizzy, and I lost control, flipped the curb, and hit the wall. Simulcast in technicolor wishes and harmonic dreams, I tune my instrument and go off on a tangent. Ever wonder what would happen if you imagined your own death, while having an epiphany to prevent it?

No. This is insignificant, in the grand scheme of things. Engine failing, and the power is slowly stopping to the brake lights. My seatbelt holds still, glass shards stuck to my hair and blood dripping into my eyesight. I see the boots of the patrolman in the rearview, and he's walking on the sky.

Are these words from the future? Or am I just upside down?


. . .and then I can get out of here and everything will be fine and the light is on? Why did the light come on? It's. . . Karen! "Karen, thank god!" She just stands there, silhouetted in the now open door frame, the light from the window (the window?) behind me casting criss-crossed shapes onto her form. She's been crying. I can tell. But she's not coming in the room. "Karen, I'm sorry, I was wrong, everything has been my fault and-" She's ignoring me. She's not reacting, no movement, not even a timid step. Her eyes are red, and I don't know whether it's because of what I did, or what I just said. There's a voice somewhere downstairs and behind her, and she turns slightly to answer, "No, I'll- I'll be fine. I just wanted to see it for myself. I just- I just keep expecting him to walk in and- and- " And she gets cut off by a flood of tears. I want to hold her, I want to tell her I'm all right, that everything will be fine, that everything is fine. But I can't. I can't even move. She can't see me. I'm not even there. And she's already gone.