These are not necessarily the things that have happened. These are the folded vestiges, the almost-reals, of who I was and still could be. Give me a break, OK? I am trying to love and exorcise these things at the same time. All I ask from you is silence, which is more than you have ever given me. These are the sharpened ridges. Curling up now, I try not to cry. Hold. Look back. The Lictor is close, holding his sword above the infinitesimal memorabilia that is my identity. I am trying to love and exorcise these things at the same time.I regret giving birth to him. The books, they were there. The corners, they were there. But The Lictor, I have birthed him from inside the outside of my mind, where my shadow sleeps and my skin is reversed and the cursed man with the sword hunts what is left of my self-loathing.
These are the demented. They live in a world which I attempt to describe but must fail to, time and again. Like the fucked up panda-books, they breed without stopping, without thought or will or appetite. I am nothing to them, nothing more than their creator, which is nothing much. There is a general outline to this world, as much as there can be an outline for a dictionary of the untold, the unspoken, the un-uttered. This is what it is: an ocean. People always say, oh the ocean is so blue! and I've always thought blue? this ocean is black, what is wrong with you. It's possible that this is the proto-ocean. Proto-black.
In any case, we stand now on an island. This is a safer place but not a safe place. There are no safe places in the Demented World. By decree of the King but we must not speak his name too often here. Why? I don't know. When I do, the flock of books in the distance cries loudly, shattering what is left of the air in this primal place, in this no-land and all-land, proto-land. I can see more islands in the distance, but the water is deep and black and there is much of it, planet-loads of it, universes-loads, mind-loads. We shall swim. We shall attempt the crossing. We will probably fail, as much as everything can fail in a place that's already failed to exist.
Much has been said of maps, in many places. There is a map for this place, in spite of what you might expect which is in itself the answer to this riddle. Proto-riddle. I lost the map. I seem to remember being born with the map but random chose, as far as random chooses, to inscribe it on the back of my shattered cornea. So, the map has been shattered and the Demented World has been shattered. Which first? Proto-shattering, the first shattering, was it the world or was it my cornea or was it something else, some glue and substance that is holding this soul-archipelago in place?
In the wake of this cicada-swarm, I fear the only thing left will be my sanity. I walk into the water. Proto-water.
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