Life in these winter birch woods. I suppose there should be a quiet serene quality about it, but instead a sublime sadness, a decadence, even an underlying maliciousness in the landscape. The snow-covered ground -- no longer pristine white -- is a dirty conglomerate of blanket and mud, a re-frozen slush. And the trees... the trees -- these parched white trees bare of any leafy overhang -- look more like skeletal hands reaching from the ground to claw at the sky than any quiet nature recluse.
An atmosphere of 'I don't belong here -- I should not be here' clings to me like a funeral shroud or death caul. Like a street poet in the Hamptons, this is a place not meant for my feet to trod, not meant to be spoiled by even a very human presence. Antagonist of the wild? Are these only dark thoughts echoing in my already distressed mind, or is this seed of malcontent very real, an underlying promise that 'something is gonna happen -- status quo is doomed'?



The pendulum swings, a slow clockword descending. Like Edgar Allen Poe, I'm strapped to the altar and time is passing me by, each second encroaching like a million years, each second an eternity too soon. Time is passing and I am getting colder. Colder. The pendulum swings. Heavy rope taut, taut, taut. These seeds of lethargy....



The ancient Rom, basking in the shadow of the strigoi, gives his thanks to God for teh joys he's seen thus far. The word 'God' stumbles off his lips like foreign slang, a concept he really cares nothing for, but finding peace in life all the same, just can't express what he doesn't know he means. God looks down and spits, "Gadje." The Rom burns in Hell.



A flurry of madcaps in the House of Reason...



Chains of a carnal knowledge are burrowing their way into this empty cranium. A haunting, a fleecing, things that are not meant to be known. A doctor of parapsychology called in on a case of classic cult killings, but a strange artifact of impossible geometry has taken everything classic away. Could it be? Could it be? Lovecraftian lore taken for granted for so long, nothing but silly rubbish, childish ethos imitated by clueless savants, but now a gleaming of something more.... Was Lovecraft truly dreamforging across the dimensions, writing tales of horror that are meant, as his characters' intent, to forewarn? Is the sheer force of belief enough to shatter the paradigm of reality and bring fiction to life? This is too horrific to ponder...



Josebelle in Hell. "I'm getting smaller!"



Glimpses of other days, her lying next to me, snoring sweetly -- lost in some pleasantries of dreams -- lost in my arms? I love watching her move -- wild and carefree -- she is the flame -- now lying dormant searing through some astral battlescapes inside (outside) her mind.



Stagnation -- apathy -- entropy -- this world is a paradox -- a fallacy come crashing down and I want out of the maelstrom before the last piece hits. Oh, dear, gaia -- come and rescue me.



Inexplicable desires -- strange dreamwroughts -- scapes limiting the horizon rather than the other way around. Insipid.




ACT I:
The thick voluptuous and velvet curtains are drawn back. The stage is dark -- a quick furtive shadow in the background as, presumably, a dressed-in-black stagehand tarries a moment too long before fleeing the set. Faint outlines in the dark -- indistinguishable barriers or walls of some sort, a canopy bed, desk and chair, and an easel and stool. A figure dressed in white is sitting at the desk, hunched over as if asleep.
From the pit and broadcast through the hall, an electronic genius akin to Moby or George Martin at his synths and computers emits the sounds of morning: birds, chirping, crickets, and music -- a light ambiance: strings supplying a slow and yawning bass, and a piccolo at first also slow and stretching, somber tones but slowly rising to a livelihood equal to and surpassing that of the birds. As the piccolo's inherent energy increases, backlights of dawn ease into the scene, the breaking of morning.




A garden of tears like some inexplicable pointillist plot -- a sacred jungle of lost sorrows -- condemnations of a long past and forgotten age. In this persuasion is a strange perversion of Do.




Catching time in the quietness, a calamity of solitude befalling. Darkness in the chamber, darkness 'round the altar pierced solely by a solitary pillar waxwork, it's flame dancing seductively to some primordial beat just outside the realms of perception. A fog of mist enshrouding the corners of the darkness and milking its way out, a haunting etherealness evoking visions of the Sumemrlands.



"You're really going, aren't you" Tanja asks. "You can't go..." She rubs her hip like a Siamese twin rubbing where they were once attached. Annan is a day less than a year younger than her sister, but it all still feels the same.



ACT I:
The artist is standing before his easel, painting between the lines. A dancer is pirouetting throughout the flat. It is this the artist is painting, pastel and... between the lines.



"It's all in your mind. Did you really expect to find escape in death?"
It's not real. It's not real.
"Ah, but neither are you."




Sit back... relax... Flame to the cigarette -- puff, puff.




previously published as the first half of the story 'Madness Insipid' at "Megaera"