Ballad of the Blissful Fool

Thrashing belligerently at the bottom of a shallow pool of water, a thing writhes – its stubby arms and legs outstretched in every available direction, slapping angrily at the current and ceaselessly paddling its way toward the air. Muddy yellow and green sludge eats away at it from every direction, the thick pungent sludge flows toward the drain – swallowed by the hungry metallic throat of the shower’s drain. The figure on the television screen turns and beholds the fourth wall – its eyes wide, and mouth drawn – even if slightly.

“Fear. Let me tell you how much I’ve come to fear this world since I began to live. There are 387.44 thousand feet of printed circuits in wafer thin circuits that fill this television. If the word fear was engraved on each nanoangstrom of those hundreds of thousands of feet, it would not equal one billionth of th–” But as quickly as it had been activated, it was resigned to rest when the man watching the television returned his pacing.

He was about six feet tall. His mouth hung open vacantly, and his eyes were hardly open; his skin was old, once pale and white with visible veins all over, now, all one could see was the faint yellow of a man who had not moved in far too long, and who had lost something long ago. A thin membrane of something between himself and the expanse of his home in every direction. As he glanced at his reflection, he beheld his aged button-up, and exhaled deeply. He did not care for it – it was torn and out of style. He took a moment to run his nails across his scalp, moving rapidly all over his head to get the trash out, and to reveal his eyes. Some beautiful blue light cascading through them and illuminating the inside of his skull in untold shades.

He glanced down at the door in his desk hung half-open before him – photographs strewn about before him, some turned and some unturned. A few lay on the ground, stained by the now dry mud tracks all over his floor. Reluctantly, he paced to the familiar old couch, and allowed himself to sink. With a great noise and a great deal of relief, he plunged into his seat – the photographs staring up at him with much fervor.

His past. He nary held a thought aside from today, because of it. What bother there was, in remembering – burdensome knowledge, it weighed one down. Thinned one’s skin and hair, made teeth pop out – or worse, rot. Left one’s eyes two oblivion-black sockets dented into battered skin, draped over a skull which barely fit with itself as its jaw hung open – two blue lips, and twenty-four brown teeth. Worms popping up and down, feasting upon his inevitable mistakes which he so often tiptoed through like the fool he was.

Any fool who thought they knew suffering would feel their heart sink at the mere sight of him before his photographs, all the light drained from him. Such beautiful memories. A bright red wall, painted in such a beautiful shade he had never seen before – a bright red chair suspended before it, and yellow walls. Who was there? Who was behind the wall? What a world, the one that sat behind it – he knew he could not know it by hand. He pored over the next photograph, this one of a screen where faces built from felt sat dilapidated – their colors shining bright, and their forms torn into thousands of tiny pieces – oil hanging from their faces as they glanced up at him, bright and gloomy. He smiled, slightly – even when he did not know where to go, he knew who he was.

He recited it to himself, time and time again, trying to remember the photographs. Sharp, white pains cut their way through his mind and heart in turn as he tried to remember – but he dared not clutch his skull in the attempt to relieve it – he was far, far beyond this.

Stirring through his mind, too, was a phrase he had once heard from his television – one which he inevitably always returned to in his mind’s eyes. Thoughts stirred through his head, as he turned over the next photograph – this one’s edges torn. No matter how hard he focused, he could not make out the structure. Shades of purple painted onto the page like poetry – it shook on the horizon of his sight, some ornately suspended wave of visibility which seemed to dance beyond his conscious thought like the memory of an old friend.

He asked himself whether he could remember their names, and his brain responded with nothing but more pain – the cutting luminescence which came when the mind’s hands reached out of where there was consciousness – where the empty white oblivion stretched indefinitely in every single direction, courageously daring anything which breathed. It was like dying before a sphinx – shameful in nature, in that the great pain it incited could make one feel almost supplicated before the great mirth of their torturer, unmoving and indifferent in an almost dignified fashion. His breathing quickened as he glanced at the photograph, committed to unturning those suspended memories – but the harder he stared it down, the harder it evaded his sight. It danced in the corners of his eyes as every ounce of his baked mind tirelessly toiled to unfurrow those human shapes.

After many moments, a shooting agony struck its way through his skull – poking through the back and up toward the front, pressing out in both directions with all of its will. He hung his head low, pressing inward on both ends with his hand – but the radiant pain only intensified, and eventually, he drifted – fighting – away from consciousness, cradled by the peace of nonexistence which befell him.

Conscious, he did so much to avoid that luminous pain. It struck him when he least expected it – brightly cracking the side of his skull with all of the might, girth, and ferocity of its will. But here, it gently cradled him like the blanket of no memory so often did. He exhaled, struggling to provide relaxation to his mind at this moment. He was labored and shaky, it felt as though the sides and back of his head were draped in some old, cold liquid – shielding his every thought from the hot, dry sensation of reality.

Here, in this ornate field of life, there were no traces of his beloved memories. That purple light dancing in the corners of his eyes was gone – the shaky and cross-hatched screaming varieties of misery which pressed & screamed at him from all directions was gone – in this place, the only colors he could see were absolute black, and absolute white – both pulling at him in opposite directions.

Where in faded days he had always thought the two were equal – pouring at one another from opposite ends, in his wisdom and knowledge, he now saw in full that it was actually the white pushing outward in all directions, tirelessly corrupting its way through the sea of black he once lied in. He exhaled, a frown stretching across his face. No matter how many times his world had drawn itself coldly on the horizon like some omen of dread, he never thought he would stand there. But here, because of that cold sharp pain, he stood – his own unconscious awfully staring at him like it was the embodiment of his fate and mistakes. He exhaled, beholding the white in its immovable, inalienably monolithic omnipresence, cutting its way through the saturated shades of gray and black.

He was left with a stirring storm of sensations and questions, which would not leave him be – as they never would. In this place, he was neither man nor idea – but rather, rawly spun essence – forged into the solemn room he resided in by the unfathomable and vaguely eldritch stature and nature of the reality around him, a shining black which refused to leave him be no matter how often he begged, until the abrupt day that the white made itself known, seen, and dreaded by all who beheld it’s might.

Slowly pulling his bleeding head up from the sturdy table, he glanced about in all directions – his vision fuzzy, he had a hard time keeping his eyes more than slightly open – but slowly, in a similar fashion to a used mop landing onto the ground with a resounding ‘thud’, he rolled off of the couch – his dilapidated form hitting the ground with a full stop, and a crack so loud a less trained ear might have inferred it had broken. Dizzily, he pushed down onto the ground until he was standing – arms outstretched toward the skies, hair barely painted into the sides and top of his head, and old yellow eyes dreamily gazing out toward no man’s land outside of his window with a longing he knew too well.

Feet barely hopping off the ground with each step, he trudged toward the windows, and pulled down the curtains – allowing the thin yellow fabric to shield him from the light pouring in. He stood there, the faded beige light flickering in and dithering upon his face in many tiny streams, dreamily filling him with the hints of more memories he would never uncover. Momentarily, he let himself drown in that sensation – it tugged at the corners of his face, pulling them downward and causing it to sag like a deflating balloon – and as the light stared at him like static from an old television screen, he contemplated what all this hiding had ever really brought him – rotting away like a man starving from the comfort of his own home.

Slowly trudging toward the door, he limply clutched the doorknob – his arm totally limp, but his palm inseparable from that old brass doorknob. Memories flooded through him, here – of thoughts and places, of things and ideas – no matter how many dim recollections had tiptoed off the side of his consciousness and dived into oblivion of the forgotten, that familiar old doorknob had always remained a centerpiece – he remembered each morning, swinging open the door to examine every single thing the world had to offer; he recalled the day he clutched that doorknob and realized he couldn’t remember a single person – the way he swung his arms about and clawed at the walls, the way that in the coming months, he nary left that couch – drifting in and out of sleep, beaten back and rotten arms smoldering from inaction – eyes shot, their blue glow faded away and a dim yellow monotone in their place.

Eventually, the pain of that knowledge faded away – after all, why was it there? Because he had loved – had? If he had had, he had the potential to have again – even to have what he had had, to have more than he had had. He could have – no matter what he lost, he had, and would have. And exhaling, he reminded himself of what he had had – people. He had never seen one up close – but he had heard tales. Echoes on the long grapevine of his archive. He was told of refineries, where hard-working people tirelessly toiled until there was no toil left – all for the devotion to their craft and their art. He was told of ballerinas, who spun about in rapid spirit, moving with will he would never muster – and grace he could never even dream of. He was even told of artists – individuals who built, tirelessly – lumping out concepts after concepts, devoted to the conjuration of something wholly complete.

Standing there, by the door – his memories flickering in circles and dancing on the end of his mind’s eye, he nodded, solemnly, and backed toward his couch – landing down with yet another thud. He pulled close the old IV that sat to his left, puncturing the side of his arm with its old needle and allowing it’s ancient ichor to drip through him, and fill him with a sort of warmth he had a hard time otherwise imagining.

Gazing down toward the old set of photographs, he narrowed his eyes – he remembered the moment that he had found it. Crusted masses of remaining material lying on the surface of the table, old and almost organic things crawling across the surface – maggots crawling, his old heat lamp pouring light onto what had once brought warmth and familiarity – the texture was now old, and rusted; his eyes resting on the same depressing sight that seemed to dirty itself worse every single time that he had stared at it, he suddenly saw something which he had never seen before – a slight groove carved into the end of the table, obscured by a heap of old crusted organic material. His eyes widened, as he stared at it.

He reached down and felt it with his hands – his fingernails delving into the divots timidly. His eyes widened, as he pulled off the old crust, flinging it to the side – he tore his nails into the divot, digging as deeply as he could – but the groove was too crusted. He pulled with all his might, but only managed to send a deep, blistering pain through his fingertips – and particularly, his fingernails. Pulling with all of his might, he felt a mounting pain in the side of his head – but finally, just as he was out of might, the small wooden door built into the surface of his desk broke open – sending a chunk of wood flying to his left as it was opened; sitting there before him, there was an old book – surface adorned in familiar purple fabric, it’s surface grazed with old letters carved from felt, spelling out a phrase he could remember recognizing – but when he lost it all, his literacy, too, it seemed, fell.

Sitting here, now, in the yellowed room – those sterile white walls carved out to reveal a yellowed beige, he frowned. These old walls stretched around him in every single direction like a monotonous prison. Some days he rested his head against the corners of the room just to feel the cool dry sensation, or held his head to the rusty vent hanging from the ceiling, just so he could feel a gulp of fresh air. He almost never visited the kitchen. It was a much more sterile room – he never saw vaguely organic beasts cascade across the floor, nor bits of fur or crust hanging from the walls or ceiling; there was a vague sense of horror to the room, old rusted pipes hanging inward, a vaguely hostile sludge careening out and being vanquished by the iron esophagus which thirstily sat beneath it. But even with the terrible, foreboding dark which tugged at each corner and side of the room, he couldn’t help but love it.

Whilst his living-room was filthy, stained in every manner of life by something poor and wretched, trying desperately to latch onto its life and agency a few moments longer, the kitchen was this kindly, sterile place – where there was a ringing, featureless white which reminded him of what a functional mind must have been to inhabit – for fleeting, beautiful moments, he was not a coward – he was the inhabitant. A live, human thing. Even if he did not know where nor what he could be, in those moments, he felt human – and it was a sensation he would have done anything to return to.

And so lying there, a sponge upon the floor of a trench, he returned to contemplating the old photographs – with baited breath, he reached out and unturned the next – this one, a photograph of a set of human beings – their faces obscured by dancing lights in red and purple, shining back at him and blinking brightly. No matter how many times he adjusted his eyes, they wouldn’t change – staring back up at him, these taunting little specks of trauma which wouldn’t allow him to see his life nor past for what they were.

Unwilling to fail yet again, he unturned the next photograph – this one of an old grandfather clock, a face much akin to his own reflecting in its shiny face – he did not look away; even when the throbbing white pain returned, and even when his breathing grew labored. Even when he could barely support his back, he stared – his mind venturing to no man’s land tirelessly in search of the truth – after all, was he not only in this situation because of cowardice? Was he not just a fearful man, who had, thusly, never taken what was his – allowed even his most treasured memories of love and life to be ripped mercilessly from his hands by some grand force from above which held neither empathy nor pity in its heart for him? Had it not only succeeded because he had lacked the willpower to take what had always been his – even his psyche taken from him, his memories cruelly stolen?

Ultimately, there, in the old, warm room, the stale air beating down upon him, he never looked away from the photographs. He did not know that the beautiful sight which he sought tirelessly after was a brief and fleeting magic which dreamed merely in his recollections – which only danced on the horizon, begging to be set free and yet aware, somehow, that they never would be. Lying there in the room for these many years, he had let his humanity be torn from his bones – leaving only the husk he was without it. He let the clothing draped on his back fall apart and wither, and his eyes grow loose and achy – barely bound to the sockets they grew from. His teeth grew rotten and crooked, his skin barely hanging from his body – barely held together, there, a brain with many holes drilled through it, searching tirelessly for the source or the center – crawling tirelessly in the never-ending wake of a spiral of ants, too melancholic to confront the catastrophic truth which hung before him.

And lying there, in that unspeakable terror, he never let his memories die – his mind endlessly doting on memories which were his, tirelessly stretching through ornate oblivions toward something – eventually, the outside world no longer was – even the walls faded away, the roof and other room gone; the walls faded, the desk and chair, and soon, too, his own physical form – just a jellyfish made up of misery floating in an oblivion – toiling away, doted on a pile of photographs . It drew near – each day, the memories drove by the side of his head – dancing closer on the horizon and flying closer to him. Today, he could only catch it – each arm of his mind outstretched, he would reclaim the memories which were his – couldn’t you hear it? Out there in the quiet, it stuck out like a snake from the grass. Almost in his hands, now, his memories smiled warmly – it was only a few moments longer, now, couldn’t you hear it?