"The White Veiled Girl"

#0133. Melancholy is the warden, here. The prison is a globe of crystal and glitter falls inside it, slowed by a solution of mercury and water and fluttering around the White Veiled Girl. It orbits around her, as do I. We are caught in a trajectory that cannot be salvaged. She is the heart of the storm and the axis of the world prison. She does not know. She is blissfully ignorant of her position as the mock sun.

"Tusks"

#0134. Always behind. Something never quite adapted. I am so foreign to them all. I mutter. Demand more of yourself. Get behind the wheel. Always sick. Lost little puppy. My eyes are wet with distaste. They do not trust me. I am the acolyte and the priest of a new order. I am the god of a new order. They do not want me in their circle. Demand more of yourselves. Always behind. Barely alive. They don't even notice my tusks.

"Athena Lush and Gorgeous"

#0135. The first coded message was this: ATHENA LUSH AND GORGEOUS. Twenty one letters. Seven multiplied by three. Seven is her number. I gave it to her. She doesn't need me to give anything to her. She is omnipotent. Alice doesn't think so. Alice does not think Athena is anything in the grand scheme. Alice believes she is just another dust mote. But that's just pride and envy. Athena is a goddess. The message appears everywhere. You cannot blink without seeing it painted across your eyelids.

"Control of My Lungs"

#0136. The archways crumble. The place crumbles. Quick breaths. I think of asphyxiation too much. I focus on my breathing. I relieve autopilot and take control of my lungs. Choking. Candy apple red nail polish. Bullet trains encircling the Earth. The Eye. I am so angry. I can just feel the blood in veins boil. I don't have a release. I am trapped.

"His Children"

#0137. He has no family. No children of his own. He watched his daughter dissipate into the aether. She ceased to be because she was the victim of his many lives unlived. His heartbreak was real even though she never was. He adopted dolls, then, as his surrogate family. Alone, before he was imprisoned for his crimes, alone in his hovel, he cared for many porcelain children. They could not answer his questions, so he spoke for each of them. They mourned for him after he was taken away.

"Stray Memories Float in Like the Dust Motes She Claims We Are"

#0138. The secret place is softly lit and cavernous and dreary and dark and I want to feel how I felt so long ago sitting in my car in the rain under the streetlamp waiting for the doors to open. The peacefulness and the anxiety. The dread. The monarchs. Her Venom just waiting silent for the footsteps. Murmured solitude. There is an altercation coming. In the past I can feel it. The peacefulness shattered. Inept and wandering. Grating. I want to feel how I felt so long ago listening to cassette tapes on a bus taking me to nowhere I knew.

"Venom Has Her Own Demons"

#0139. There is always Venom in her hollow fangs. She waits for his letters. She lays down with one eye open. Her own Devils cling to her and rattle her brain in her skull. He couldn't fix anything. His denials were his greatest act of treason. He shattered her and she threw her tiny fists into him. They were never meant to be. Alice whispers that nothing is ever meant to be. This is all just the accident of cosmic dust forming personalities. They won't even remember fax machines in the years to come. Magnetic tape was supposed to last forever.

"Fool's Secrets"

#0140. I had an ineffable experience once. I was sitting, silent, in church. There was a sudden rush of exposition. The secret place transferred its knowledge to me. I was aware of everything. The strain was too much. I was lit up on fire from the inside. The secret names and imperatives burned up in me and I was assaulted by thought. I tangled myself in a web. My soul screamed from overburden. I died for a brief moment. When I awoke, I realized that I had fabricated the whole event. The secrets unveiled to me were decoys. Fool's secrets.

"Of the Quest to Become a Sphinx"

#0141. To become a Sphinx, Itchy learns, is to pull yourself apart and rebuild yourself under the Watchful Eye. Itchy is overwhelmed by the Red Room. If Itchy has a soul, it doubtlessly on fire. He reaches within his core and pulls himself like saltwater taffy. His form is cast off like a hermit crab shell and he builds himself out of himself. When he completes this transaction, he will gain Sphinxhood, he believes. The secrets are never hidden from the Sphinxes. The Sphinxes can smell the content of every secret. More than anything, Itchy wants to KNOW.

"Undone Time is Being or Disarray"

#0142. When this is world and what world is ending all things begin time with the measuring of. Like math time math is static and discovered to be likewise time found or began arbitrarily smooth sectors all time is measurement on the axis it acts when is to other's where. Jumbled without and there nothing in motion built stasis to be. Nexus where space in space where in all things jumbled without.

"Broken Babydoll"

#0143. Broken Babydoll, you ain't got no friends at all. You just sit around the corner waiting, silent, for the alligator footsteps to walk by. You just sit around the corner waiting, silent, for the alligator footsteps to walk by.

"Demarcating the Point of No Return"

#0144. There is a great waterfall and I walk on the bank of the river feeding into it, desperately conscious to not hurtle myself into the water. Every few yards I wonder if I'm still far enough away that, were I to fall in, that I could swim against the pull of the falls. I feel like some internal force is going to drive me into the water against my waking will. I want to die, but not like that.

"A Gathering Up of All Your Previous Selves"

#0145. Too many distinct bodies. Too much corporeal form. Too much thought as psychic adhesive. Too much light spilling from wounds. Become the light. Be the light. You are taken apart, limb by limb, cell by cell, atom by atom, and you are rearranged. Gather your many selves and compile them. You have been scattered by the winds. You have been cast across the universe in some great diaspora. Too much stardust. Too many questions.

"Lies With the Kindest of Intentions"

#0146. Do you want to know the secret of your existence? she asks. Of course I do, I respond. There is no secret, she says. There is nothing special about you. There is nothing special about your life. You are born, you live, you will die, she says. In between, you can try to make the most of the time you have. But there is no secret, she says. I appreciate what she is trying to do. She is lying to me. She wants me to feel the release of abandonment. She is lying with the kindest of intentions. But I cannot turn my back on what I know is true. I am ready to die, but I do not tell her. I know what is waiting for me on the opposite side.

"Amusements"

#0147. Do not allow yourself to be distracted. There is a divine presence just beneath the clouded surface. You cannot afford distraction. There is something intangible and sacred just beneath the plastic surface. Do not look up. Do not look upon the neon lights nor listen to the wildness and joy that startles up from the flaming ravine. You are distance running lost harbor night gone losing the trail that you had worked so hard to hangman's terrible noose and there it is, so shimmery, like the scales of a dying silver carp. What? You scare so easily. The intangible is gone. The surface now is all there is.

"Locked in a Cage With You, Locked in a Cage Forever"

#0148. From one day beyond the predatory stalwart thing, the king of them, drill sergeant, worrisome little beast you worrisome little beast you never gave up the world did you? You held fast to the old ways the old ways from the old world and you look upon me with your stark raving red eyes and you feast on me you feast on my bones like you would have before you abdicated your throne. Your kind never surrenders for long.

"Befuddled"

#0149. The secret place befuddles us because it is such an alien endeavor. I feel like such an alien every day. Foreign and displaced and lost among the skipping and frolicking masses all lemming lined to the nearest port of oblivion. The secret place merges our features and speaks to us from the outside in. No, from the middle out and the middle in. Somewhere in between our dreams and our conscious thoughts. It is a tangle of nightmare faces shouting mundane words. You feel muddied and deafened by it. It slips through your fingers and leaves a sour metal taste in your eyes.

"The Cacophony of Abraxa"

#0150. Oh! This cacophony shouts from beyond your words and lessons. What did she say to you last night? Nothing anymore she says nothing anymore. You clung too tightly and the butterfly escaped into the second world. So then you tried so desperately to follow. But you lacked her courage. She never forgave you, did she? Oh! Arrogant little beast. You are foolish to think you mattered enough to warrant her ire much less deserve her forgiveness.

"Slung Deep in the Recesses of a Nervous Little Brain"

#0151. I have found nervousness in the most innocent of faces. I have found nervousness in the most innocent of faces. I have looked up things created with benevolence and I have cowered. I lived my life in such terror. It is amazing my heart kept beating. But can you not feel the malice steaming up from the innocent faces? It lingers behind the sweetness. A stabbing pain in your chest. A stabbing pain in your chest.

"A World of My Own"

#0152. Now it is over. You fumble in. There is detriment to everything. I want a world of my own. But this world does not bear a faker. The second world does not bear a fraud. Was I a fraud? Was the image burned in my retina a fraud? I disbelieve these little notations. I give in to a separate entity and I lay solid down and burn up in the atmosphere. Where are secret codes now? I want to build a new world from my own heartbeat.

"Telegrams"

#0153. The secret place is found in the places in between. The telegrams at night are cabled to your brain as you try in futility to sleep. Each misstep is filed away, there. Each horrific action magnified and in stark contrast. You receive the messages when you want to drift away. They keep you anchored in the stinking first world. All of your misdeeds are numbered for you, there. You hurt so many people. You ruined so many things.

"The Title Earned and the Title Claimed"

#0154. The lion wants to claim the title from the rabbit, but the rabbit does not trust the lion. The rabbit trusts the tiger. The tiger, the rabbit claims, is more regal. The lion pouts but knows that the rabbit is correct. The throne abdicated for the ounce of fear. The tiger takes the mantle. She wears the crown covertly. The lion claims himself the king while the tiger knows she is the queen.

"The Toxicity of a Moment"

#0155. I will not treasure a single moment. There is a toxicity to every moment. As the clock winds down the poison races in your veins. Moments are to be feared. Eventually, one moment will kill you.

"The Memories of the Dead"

#0156. We dislike reminders of our mortality but dislike the prospect of forgetting our fellow mortals even more. Our memorials are to keep the subject in our thoughts, because our brains are constructed to expunge the knowledge that we will end. The secret place is encircled by countless memorials. Each life lives again there, but wholly unaware. I asked Alice if the dead have memories. She did not answer. She never ever answers.

"Do Not Admit That God is Weeping"

#0157. Alice, before the first world was manufactured, was lonely in the darkness. For ages left without demarcation, Alice sat in absolute darkness and she wept in isolation. This is the story they leave out. They do not want to admit that God cries or that God can be lonesome. God created the stars and from them, the angels. The angels were her first companions. But eventually, like all of her works, the angels would disappoint her.

"I Loved Her More and More Each Day"

#0158. Hours in and hours out. My eyes focused on the ceiling. I inverted it. Fixtures turned upright. The vault of the ceiling become the gully in the floor. I traced my steps through the alien terrain. Droning matters. Haunted pipes. One day the crackle came over the speaker. The voice was ancient and it was defeated. "I loved her more and more each day." We thought so, at least. It was so quiet and it was unexpected.

"Uncomfortable"

#0159. The tiny horrors are the worst horrors. They dig in under fingernails. They split the skin between your index and middle fingers. They burrow under flesh and into blood. Aliens are among us. I am one. Did the aliens even know what they were? The picture moved of its own accord. There are vermin staring at me. They look up with bewildered eyes and I cannot share my task with them. I am no Cinderella. I am no Snow White.

"The Machineries"

#0160. I feel like the machineries are devolving, you know? Like from the ace and then there was an indistinct piece of it? The spindle burns and glows. What is that light? Did you find what you were looking for? The future doesn't mourn in the same way the past does. I will slink through this automaton. I will feel what it feels for you.

"The Failures of the Origins"

#0161. Among us are the origins. I sometimes stare into the primordial soup and I wonder about the different outcomes that could have been. Now I am a being of reason and light, but there would have been a better path without our ancestors. Each successive mistake is replicated a thousand million times in my genes. I am the end result of their failures.

"Each Window is an Eye on Us"

#0162. Stare upward. The threat is looming. Each window is an eye on us. Stare upward. The threat is looming. Each window is an eye on us. I support the decisions of the council, whoever they may be. I give a signal to my superiors. The bullets rain down and I will find my peace on the bloodied sidewalk.