"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.