"Tear It Apart and Let the World Bleed Out"

#0102. The flash is the tear in the world. This is the tear I want to open. I want to rip it apart like I slice into the flesh of my arms and my wrists. Bleed the world dry. Open the door to the second world. Open up the rift to the secret place. I will let the idiots melt away. They are pockets of meat. They are the vomit of existence. I will open the door and I will let the spirit of the universe rip them to shreds. My hatred will be a weapon. I will unleash the spirit and I will open the door.

"Where Serpents Have No Need of Masks"

#0103. The City is a palace of debauchery. It lies in the midst of nothingness. The prisoner wanders here for days on end. The lights and the sounds and the crowded throng of gross personage counter-intuitively negates his panic. Here, his brain finally clears of its nattering and pestering obfuscations. The veil lifts and he sees everything as it is. The filter undone. This choking remnant of civilization. There are no pretenses here in the den. The serpents are unmasked. The Angels are absent.

"What is Evil?"

#0104. We fools surrender our idea of evil. It is too black and white we say. Alice disagrees. What is evil? she will ask you. You cannot answer. You sputter about circumstance and brain morphology and synapses and chemicals and life experience. She shakes her head and lets the cinnamon scent of her hair fall like stardust. Evil is evil. It is a primary function. There is good and there is evil. And when we whitewash sins and we unravel decency, evil always prevails. It is lodged in our hearts. The cursing soldier waits to crawl out of your chest at night.

"Don't, Don't, Don't"

#0105. The part of it that haunted me most was the man about to die. He looked at his assailant and he just said "Don't, don't, don't." That part haunted me the most. That is the reason I gave Alice the last name she has in Silent Creek. She is named Alice Spoon because that haunted me the most.

"The Warden of the First World"

#0106. The secret place is a place which enumerates the secret names of God. Melancholy appears there, although, he appears almost everywhere. His faces are infinite, but I doubt that that makes him a god. He is leftover psyche, I think. The wormwood bore out hollowed by the days and nights in lock down. The prison began a long time ago. Melancholy was there. Four children, a counselor, and a bloody lipped clown. We watched his tricks and his jokes. He gave us saccharine smiles and we left behind him. He was the Pied Piper of the asylum. Melancholy lends himself to us whenever we need to remember we are so unfit. He is not god. He is the warden of the first world.

"Pieces"

#0107. Look down upon what you have wont become and this first step is what drizzles out into the world all piecemeal and debutante and ballgown lengths to fit a feral little stamp. The head of it burrows dead and deep or deep and dead and those bugs crawl and saunter through a tiny little Wonderland of their own accord. I followed the tracks in prison. I followed to where the Angel lay so still and carried up that soul. I was stitched together on Charlemagne's Birthday.

"Itchy and Otis Become All Things Simultaneously"

#0108. The Red Room at the antechamber becomes what we fear the most. All the secrets, there, are hidden by Devils. The Red Room is hellish but from that place is the wellspring of power. The secret place we speak of is diminished, more concept than room, but the Red Room is opposite. It is all knowing, the place made of the Apple. Itchy knows all the things you do not know. Otis duplicates himself. He sang of malaise and laziness. Itchy takes the skull to its appropriate zone. They are one with all of the universes. They become all things at once. Itchy can see through every eye socket that ever was and ever shall be.

"Your Perception Altered by the Confines of Your Cell"

#0109. Prison made her seem so small to you. The embodiment of the universe flickers out like a candle smacked by the hurricane gales. She falls, lifeless, into the corner. But this is a problem with your eyes. She does not conform to your belief. Your belief is irrelevant to her. Other gods feast off your belief. They court you for worship. Alice has no need of you at all. If she even looks in your direction, your sanity will be forsook. She is not the creature in the corner. You are.

"The Gardens"

#0110. The Archives are more than just some mildew riddled dank basement. There is a whole complex that makes up the secret place. The Gardens sprawl like a benevolent cancer. Lined with roses and ivies and crocuses and hyacinths and violets and orchids. The Gardens welcome the errant visitor. The scented flowers and herbs calm the panicked. They draw petitioners in and hold them fast with gum and quicksand. Beautiful and halting. The Gardens are a silent, beautiful sentry.

"All Consumed and Spent by the Panic"

#0111. We are all consumed and spent by the panic. It comes for us especially in the middle of the night. As your brain devolves into its hypnogognic fantasias, the panic creeps in through the slender crack in your eyelids, through your nostrils, through your mouth, through your ear canals. The panic creeps in and stays. Heart races. Lungs ache. You are in its thrall. We all find ourselves subject to it. Under siege. You cannot fight it. It won the battle before you even knew you were at war.

"The Machinery of the Red Room"

#0112. Itchy saw the Organist as the Red Room opened wide its toothy, pipe-filled maw. The sound was deafening and off key. It hissed and whirred. The Red Room showed its innards to our pilgrim and the sound was deafening and off key. A horrible circus, Itchy thought to himself. The dead rise to the sounds of the Red Room's organ. The Organist turned with glee toward our pilgrim. The dead come back to life, here. The secrets are written on their bones.

"The First of the Unnamed Horrors Tells a Story"

#0113. The mouth moves like a human mouth moves, but it is off beat, jerking in its motions, frames are missing from its film reel animation. The mouth moves and it speaks in a voice unearthly. You ask it its name, but it refuses to tell you. It refers to itself, and everything else, as an Unnamed Horror. Your brain does not accept it. You have seen terrible things, you tell it. But it is uninterested in your stories. Its stories are loping and disjointed. You have no choice but to listen, though.

"In Use"

#0114. The Organist opens a door for Itchy and the neon lights are blinding. The afterimage stays burned to his retinas. The sounds now are lost. Itchy's ears still ring with the tinnitus of the great Red Room organ. Here, there, it is cool air, but heavy and laden with a dirty smell. The jazz of brass instruments floats and meanders. The door shuts behind him. The sign above it lights up. The Red Room is alive again, but the pilgrim has been evicted.

"Reassembling the Natural Order"

#0115. The majesty of nature is broken and terrifying. Look upon the works of her and you should know the true meaning of it. Each fjord and crevice is detailed by slender nails digging through dirt and rock. She breaks the earth into puzzle pieces and scatters them for men of science and letters to reassemble. There isn't a glimmer of hope for you. She didn't make these things for us, you see. But who else does Alice even know?

"Melancholy is the Harbinger"

#0116. Before this, there was the twinge of hope that ran through the nearby rivers and woods. But after this, the Plague, then Melancholy arrived with his kaleidoscope and calliope and puppets. Are you Alice? I asked him. Of course, I didn't know Alice, yet. I didn't call her by name. But I asked the clown if he was God. He replied that he was A god. But not THE God. But anyone with puppets, he said, was a god in their own way. He came with the Plague, you know, but I never blamed him for it.

"She Does Not Mourn, Perhaps She Cannot Mourn"

#0117. The Gardens are not just beautiful living things, though. They hold in them the bodies of the dead. Alice sits there, often, and contemplates the ashes and bones of the long dead and the newly deceased. She does not mourn them. They were never real to her. But she contemplates them. She remembers them. She would say things like, "In memory, they never really died." Of course, the buried corpses say otherwise. They do not actually say anything at all.

"Sylph"

#0118. She did not believe in you. She clung because of her own fears and discomforts. And when those days had passed and you were the brick or millstone, she untied you and she left you to drown. You could find her in the reaches of your memories. She still lives there. Her smell and her eyes and her laugh. She never cared. She was so much better of without you.

"They Blink Sometimes and That Blink is Horrifying"

#0119. It's the simulation of life. The simulation of the living. Melancholy's words, that all things with puppets are gods? That's true of dolls, too. You move them. Imbue them with life. They move at your discretion. They move at your command. They live the life you plan for them. But as with puppets, sometimes they surprise you. They will speak to you in tongues you do not understand. And then you have to wonder who is putting the words into their inert mouths?

"Lying to the Man About the Clinicians"

#0120. I made a friend at the old depot. (The one where the poor fish headed mistress was lynched.) He told me about the men with the surgical masks. They stand up in the dark and they trade places with one another. He smiled and explained the sounds they made. Like they were underwater, he said. I did not understand, but I smiled back politely. They sound lovely I said, but I was lying. I did not want to lie. But I was afraid of how my new friend might react to my treason. I have always been a liar. It is just so much easier that way.

"Venom"

#0121. Venom runs in her fangs. This is the part of my story where we meet the actresses. They step out on the stage after the show and they receive their bouquets and their applause. Oh my god, I am so sorry for what I put you through. How could I have been so evil? So stupid? I wrote you letters every day. You would call me on the telephone and tell me that you wanted to die because of me. She had such long fangs, such long nails. Under a streetlamp she pummeled me. I pushed her away in anger. These are all the things I can remember.

"Waking Up Nightly With the Television On for Comfort"

#0122. Are you watching what seems familiar and it subtly shifts and morphs into something more frightening. The faces you know become distorted. The faces. They shift and morph into something more sinister. They begin laughing in that way that runs rakes through your soul. Chalkboard screeches. They know everything bad you have done. They slowly turn their distorted faces toward you and the laughter swells. Everything you are, they know. They look straight into you and they howl.

"Toward the Lush Wilderness, Parting Ways Too Often"

#0123. We interlude in lush spaces. Athena brought me and I wanted her hand but I settled for the eyes in the back of her head. We wandered through the trails and stumbled across the water and I wondered aloud if she thought of me in her lonely city on the Moon. She said she did, but I am always worried I'm being patronized. The scars burned into me. I dissolved into the water while she watched. I am not ok, I told her. She knew, but what could she do about it anyways?"

"Ashes to Rags"

#0124. Fall on your knees and hear the Devils' voices. The pit rises up. Ashes to rags and rags and rags and rags. Plummet through the hole and remember who we called Whisper. But this is not Whisper and here mask of propriety and secrets. This is from the pit and the pit rises up. He Grins Bloody never had a care in the world. The Devils aren't so lucky as that.

"Horrible Thoughts"

#0125. Horrible thoughts come in like storm front clouds, kicking up dust devils in their wake. They don't bring the cool air with them. They bring the stench of the garbage mountain. Horrible thoughts etch into the glass pipeways of my synapses. They sit there until the acid draws right into the gray matter. I am the heir to a fortune in nightmares. Every night I feel the presence looming closer. When you are close to the secret place, the nightmares come more rapidly. The horrible thoughts are bread crumbs leading to where I want to go.

"Prison or the Tomb"

#0126. The world is his prison now. He was free once, roaming on aimless winds and discontentment. Then his world was so small but so open. The dirty carpets and the chips in the linoleum. Pilot light extinguished. Ghosts in every corner. Then, when he snapped in half, clutching that bottle cap, he surrendered himself. And now the world is large but so confined. He sees no difference between prison and the tomb aside from the glorious silence he can have underground.

"Serpent"

#0127. Entwine and release or entwine and suffocate. Their nature is the furious dichotomy. They came in, by lot, to the Adversary. They slithered up into the caduceus. They are unrepentant of their many sins. They apologize never. They wear masks to cover themselves in public. We see their slit pupil eyes and the uncanny way they move and we cower. They mythologize themselves. Alice told me to never buy into your own mythology.

"A Matter of Historical Record and Princely Bookkeeping"

#0128. I consult with him and he informs me of his disappointment. So many times he's returned under various names and so many times he has been left out of the table. Commanding? He doesn't like to use his authorial perspective. He doesn't play parlor tricks. He refuses to be a jukebox. But this leaves him with no proof of his heritage. They deny it. They wait for him and then refuse to believe whenever he shows up. He told me it gets tedious. Maybe one or two more times, he might try. Eventually, he said, he'll just give up and move to the lonely city on the Moon.

"What Happened One Night in the Dolls' Kitchen"

#0129. In miniature he sees what he sees. Dolls are his congregation. Dollhouses his universe. The dollhouse is mine. In peer in through tiny windows fogged over and lovingly fetishize the tiny objects inside. They act out in just awful ways sometimes. They are restless because their cage is too tiny. I have no yard for them to run in. No woods in which they can rest under a willow tree. They lash out at each other. The aftermaths are predictably disturbing.

"Minutia"

#0130. I hate my life. Not my life particularly. All life. I hate its self perpetuation. I hate its arrival from nothingness. I hate its intrinsic lack of meaning. Alice says it is naive to think that everything is a cosmic accident. She gives me her watch. But I don't find the universe as orderly as clockwork, I tell her. You don't need to, she replied. She says she's the big picture expert and I am too rooted in the minutia. When you are a dust mote, I say, minutia is all you have.

"The Clown's Legacy"

#0131. I think he arrived the first time on Charlemagne's Birthday. Maybe the year before when Charlemagne died. I don't explicitly remember him from any time before that. But then he corrected me. He showed me notes from my childhood. He scrawled out the number of my teeth. He danced in the background as I flinched out of fear and panic. He tortured me for my handwriting and for my lack of organizational acumen. He stole my friends and pushed me aside and left me to fend for myself. Years later and I cannot remember what I ever wanted people around for.

"The Hermit Aloft"

#0132. All I want now is to be alone. I shake the prison bars and I rattle my teeth in my skull. But this is what I have to do silently. Feelings are fragile. Contracts are signed. Alliances are formed. The stability of the world depends on my engagement with it. I want to be the hermit aloft. But I am chained, here. If I wasn't, though, I suppose I would have been dead many times over already.