A vast emptiness, so enormous it's very being brings tears
to your eyes, surrounds you.
In your one hand, a scalpel. in your other, your heart.
You are naked.
You don't remember how long you've been here, been walking,
been searching, or what for.
Your memory is comprised of a collection of eroded corrupted
pictures, barely legible, barely reliable at that.
Under the rot you can see snapshots of you in the emptiness,
with it's inhabitants.
Vague, murky sights to be seen, sights that you don't know
if you should believe or accept, sights that don't mean much
or matter either way.
Places and people that have all become one blur by now,
unified in their insignificance, and you among them.
Places and people whose hearts and daggers are hidden,
subtle, deceptive and treacherous and cowardly.
Places and people crippled by their apparent inability to be
in honesty for any period of time.
Vampires who cringe or bow before their own reflections.
Empty stolen shells on the run from the repo man.
Places and people whose only concern is making ends meet,
getting through another day, another night, another void.
Soulless beasts with mechanical plastic masks who chew the
legs of others off at the first sign of an obstacle in their
path.
A boring predictable catalogue you should know by heart by
now, but it seems to slip your mind at the first
opportunity.
And that's how it happens to you every time.
You find yourself, again, talking with one of them.
And again, you find yourself hoping, daydreaming.
And again, with your heart and your blade behind your back,
you follow.
Naked, hiding nothing.
More time, and some grimy snapshots for the collection
later, you find yourself back where you started, hands still
full, alone again, besieged.
Surrounded by nothingness.
It's been ages since your hands started giving you trouble.
The first, tired from carrying the heart - a good few pounds
of meat and blood - began trembling with exhaustion.
The other, curious and eager, trembles with expectation,
waiting with it's blade to be put to use.
All you've been doing all this time, is trying to find
someone to shoulder the one hand's burden, while keeping the
other at ready to protect yourself.
Involuntarily or otherwise, your body tires from eons of
searching.
And as the one hand threatens to drop your heart, to leave
it forgotten in the gutters, the other may strike out the
moment you let your guard down.
At who? At what? You don't know.
And here you stand, surrounded by a vast emptiness so
enormous it brings tears to your eyes.
Robot voices, squealing and pathetic, gibber and moan on all
sides.
It is you, naked and true, who is the freak.
You are ignored, forgotten, neglected and denied.
You have nothing but your heart and your scalpel.
Exhausted and frustrated, you raise your hands before your
eyes and contemplate the two objects, seeing them now in a
new way.
They are not parts of you, nor your masters, but tools.
Instruments.
Devices.
No more.
Barely supressing a howl of rebellious despair, you throw
your hands apart, and drive them together with all your
might.
A searing web of pain entangles your entire body, binding
you, blinding you as you collapse.
The beasts, seeing you as neither beneficial nor detrimental
to them and theirs, carry on oblivious.
You awaken after a while, drenched in sweat and shivering.
You sense a dull throb in your knife hand.
You get slowly, painfully to your feet, swaying gently in
the breeze, and examine the damage.
The ground, so wept and shat upon by the beasts that it's
color is changed, dirtier, deader than before, is awash with
your blood.
Fearing the worst, you raise your hand.
It is not, as you had feared, a mutilated mess, but
something different, strange.
Somehow, heart, knife and hand have melded, enmeshed
themselves one in the others, creating a large, pulsating,
veiny phallic thing whose end is deadly sharp.
You stare uncomprehendingly at this new appendage, turning
it this way and that, feeling it with your newly freed
hand.
Caressing it.
Accepting it.
Somewhere in the midst of this, you realize how much lighter
and more powerful your arms feel now that one is free and
the other is seemingly evolved, empowered.
It glistens with moisture in the dirty yellow light.
I'ts so much more economical this way.
You shiver again as the cold penetrates you so fast and
totally you barely notice.
You notice yourself standing differently now.
Straighter, Taller, more assured, more at home than before.
Suddenly chilly, you dissapear into the hordes to find
something to wear.