by and by,
what's one soul to the world?

Last night, I had a dream that I was on fire.

I was lying on my side with my face pressed into the mattress, half awake, medicated, sick, when I felt a figure sit next to me. I opened my eyes but there was nothing to see, yet I felt the weight of a body next to me, peering over me, turning my bones to solid steel and making me slip into sleep. I soon felt a hand on me, I don't remember where it had touched me, but with a small flicker of consciousness, I was out of the awake state of being and falling rapidly into sleep, literally. Flames blazed up from all around me, covering every inch of skin imaginable. Such powerful arms of fire rose up and flapped in the air, as my body became heavier, sinking, pulling me down, down, down into this abyss. It didn't burn nor hurt, but the sensation of breaking through mass at such force was alarming. I tried to wake myself up, but failed multiple times; wake up! I tried to twitch but my body was unresponsive, giving in to the rush of flames. Wake up! With an effort, I opened my eyes. Oh, heavy leaded eyes! -and it was gone. Everything. The rush, the being, the weight, and the flames. I looked around the room for something but my eyes only showed me what once was before I slept.

I sat up afraid to fall into sleep again, so soon. I did not want to feel that presence again. I did not want to burn, silently, again. So I kept myself awake lying on my back staring at the ceiling. Sleep crept up on me unaware and soon I was sprawled out like a running man, but this time he left me alone.

Darius Twin, www.dariustwin.com.

Hello. I've waited here for you.

Debbie Macey, 2003. "Between the Bars" Elliot Smith

An innocent smile barbed with razors protruding from swollen gums, dripping blood, falling from metal's end, erupting on soft, pink lips. Slivers of skin hang where metal and skin have met, momentarily, weeping with a pestilent pus.

Baby, you have the most beautiful smile.

We know now that in the early years of the 20th century this world was being watched closely by intelligences greater than man's and yet as mortal as his own. We know now that as human beings busied themselves about their various concerns they were scrutinized and studied, perhaps almost as narrowly as a man with a microscope might scrutinize the transient creatures that swarm and multiply in a drop of water. With infinite complacence people went to and fro over the earth about their little affairs, serene in the assurance of their dominion over this small spinning fragment of solar driftwood, which by chance or design man has inherited out of the dark mystery of Time and Space. Yet across an immense ethereal gulf, minds that to our minds as ours are to the beasts in the jungle, intellects vast, cool and unsympathetic, regarded this earth with envious eyes and slowly and surely drew their plans against us. In the thirty-ninth year of the twentieth century came the great disillusionment. - Orson Welles, War of The Worlds broadcast, 30 Oct 1938