The Static of a Lost Mind

Sticks crunched underneath the tires as the car slowly lurched forward coming to a stop a few feet from the tree line. The soft static gently seeping out of the radio was strangled into silence as I killed the engine. The lights slowly dimmed, I could barely make out the giants that loomed in front of me through the dark.

The door squealed, slowly opening as I stepped out. The light breeze was unpleasant, bitter, and cold. I dropped my cigarette to the floor putting it out with my heel. I pulled my scarf up around my mouth, and shoved my cold hands into my pockets, cursing my negligence for not having a pair of mittens.

I carefully walked towards the trees, only the stars lighting the way. It always amazes me how many there are. The city lights bullied the sky with their presence, obscuring the bright fires that serve to remind us just how little we are.

"Just another way to run from their insecurities." A sharp annoying crooning cut through the blackness. "That's what you're thinking isn't it?"

I scanned the trees desperately trying to locate the owner of the voice.

"You're so poetic, so much better than those hapless, pathetic creatures." A ruffling came from the higher branches. "One who understands the great metaphors of life, or perhaps that is only in your head." A sharp screeching laugh erupted from the creature. "Yes, you're just another one of those hapless, pathetic creatures. One who truly understands nothing."

The creature jumped down to a lower branch revealing its ghost-white face, and deep dark eyes shrouded in the night. Its head swiveled upside down, while it clicked its beak.

Just a barn owl nothing to worry about. I ignored it and started walking toward the trees.

"Don't stray from the path child, you'll lose yourself. You're pretentious and stubborn, don't wear your pride so loudly the spirits don't take kindly to your sort."

I stepped over the roots of the tree and walked into their loose embrace. I could feel the owl's eyes follow me, its head rotating to keep me in its sights its laughter bouncing from tree to tree knocking leaves off their branches.

The leaves drifted around me falling to the dirt, the wind continued its subtle assault. Don't stray from the path, I shook my head. I know where I'm going and why I'm here, I don't need some owl to tell me how to get there.

Ghostly eyes surrounded me, blinking out almost as suddenly as they appeared. I stopped for a moment catching the gaze of a pair of pale blue almond-shaped eyes. I stood still staring at them for a moment, I knew them, I knew that look of utter disappointment. The floating eyes melded into a dark familiar figure.

The branches seemed to warp around the dark figure, the roots pulling back. Concrete pooled out where the roots once were. Hardening and cracking, covering the dirt to create a new path. The figure turned and started down the path, the wind pushed against my back urging me to follow. The leaves rolled down the newly paved walkway.

I stepped off the worn dirt road, and onto the level concrete, following the dark figure. I could hear the screeching laughter of the owl behind me, "Typical, hapless, pathetic, can't even follow basic instruction. So different than those he looks down on. A fantastic comedy of errors." His words became distant, the trees were bending to suffocate the sound, feeling sorry for my ears.

Her features became more visible with every step. Blond hair flowing midway down her back, she walked anxiously, with an unsure waddle. Her pale skin complimented her dull blue eyes. It was weird to see her this way. She was less radiant, less energetic, drained. It brought back the memories of too many late nights, with her on the closet floor screaming "Why is it always like this?" at the mirror. Throwing her belongings recklessly, waving her arms in frustration.

I never had a good answer for it, the drastic changes from one moment to the next. All the abandoned plans, thrown to the side because her eyeliner didn't quite look how she wanted. Nothing ever fit, nothing ever looked good, and nothing I said or thought mattered. It was a chaotic love that pulled me into a constant state of anxiety, it was cathartic and relaxing when it came to an end, I could finally return to a peaceful existence.

The trees opened into a clearing circling a bright pond reflecting the light of the moon. The trees lined up and faced the pond aggressively as if it weren't welcome in the dark woods. The leaves rolled around the edges of the pond, the wind created small gentle spiraling ripples across it. She stopped at the edge of the pond, I stood between her and the trees ready to make a run back to the path. I don't know why I even followed her, she has no answers for me.

"Why did you bring me here?" I could no longer take the uneasy silence.

"I didn't do anything, you just followed. It's normally the other way around isn't it?" she gave me her usual fake smile. "Why do you always look at me like that?" her smile dropped.

"Like what?"

"Like you're so much better than me. I can't stand the constant condescension and judgment in your eyes. As if I were a disappointing child. They are so beautiful and alluring, but at the same time they're so cold, grotesques, and spiteful. I just want to rip them out and spit in your eye sockets." Her face briefly twisted into something demonic as she spoke before. her words becoming more and more guttural before returning to her bored expression. "And don't feed me that bullshit about it just being how you look. We both know you just don't know how to love or be kind. You only help people because you see them as less than you and incapable of helping themselves. You're fucking full of shit."

"I don't need to explain myself to you. You just see everything as an attack on your person. You don't know anything."

"Then why did you come out here if I know so little?" she sneered at me. "Why not just look forward and keep following the path? Instead, you chose to chase after something you supposedly decided you don't want back. Where did your peace go that you ended up back here?"

This was pointless I started to turn around. "Wait. Don't you want to see it?" she piqued my curiosity, maybe she did bring me out here for a reason. I looked back at her to see her hand beckoning me to the edge of the water.

I started walking toward her and could see a perfect replication of the silver moon on the surface of the water. "It's the same as it was that night in December, you know the one." She smiled softly at me.

I stared into the clear pool and could make out a dark figure slowly coming to the surface. It looked like a reflection of me dipped in black ink. There were no discernable features besides its eyes and an unnerving grin.

"I wish you had done it. I wish you didn't text me and ask for help and just did it. I regret helping you, it would have solved so many problems had I just let you go into the silver moon that night." her face had become demonic again, and wasn't reverting itself this time.

The figure burst out of the water grabbing me by my neck. The woman pushed me from behind and started bursting with laughter. As I fell, I stared into the monster's face and could make out a large Cheshire grin on the dark figure and its bright green eyes sneering at me. They were just how she had described them cold, grotesques, and spiteful.

The water pulled me under without a splash, inviting me into its depths. I struggled to grab and pull at the hand around my neck as water rushed into my lungs. I kicked desperately hoping to swim to the surface or hit the dark figure off of me but it was unfazed by anything I did. Bubbles flooded out of his mouth as he laughed hysterically, his grip getting tighter. I could feel myself starting to pass out from the lack of oxygen.

I could see broken clocks and empty pill bottles floating around me shining like stars. Empty beer bottles decorated the bottom of the pool. The muffled sound of distorted guitar feedback and drums playing a simple groove in halftime filled the water.

I struggled to keep my eyes from closing, everything was becoming dark, the music slowing down. Feathers were floating around me as angels danced above. Hand in hand switching from one to the next ever so gracefully. The feathers mimicked their every movement matching the beat of the drums. A final performance as they all paired off and took their leave.

Blackness engulfed me, it was strangely warm and comforting. The idea of oblivion is much easier to swallow once you've found it. No more empty bottles, or broken clocks, only the inner cosmos of one's thoughts. Maybe I'm just reaching again, trying too hard to be something I'm not. Even in death, I can't accept the face in the mirror. I can only hate those bright green eyes, and Cheshire grin.

I felt a stinging pain across my face and body as I slammed into something hard. Opening my eyes I could see the flames of candles birthing themselves into existence. Empty pill bottles and broken glass littered the floor I was lying face down on.

There was an arrhythmic clacking echoing through the walls. "Can you stop that fucking noise?" I yelled trying to pick myself off the cold wooden floor. I could feel a migraine increasing in intensity, the pain set just behind my left eye. I took a few steps forward before stumbling into the wall, rattling the shelves decorated with empty whiskey bottles.

A familiar screeching laugh broke out behind me. I sighed turning around to face the barn owl. "Don't stray from the path, is a pretty simple instruction isn't it. You sure showed me didn't you." His laugh got louder, my forehead was throbbing ready to explode.

"Where are we?" I asked as the clacking increased its irregular tempo.

"Why ask a question you know the answer to. You've been in the arms of oblivion so many times before. Your favorite place, the bottom of the bottle." The owl hooted with laughter, its head spinning with pleasure.

I walked forward through the dusty air, following the dimly lit candles leading the way towards an empty doorframe, just the top hinge held in by a single screw. The clacking got louder and my migraine got more intense.

I found myself in a room with a boarded-up door, two dirty windows sat on either side of it. An open fridge containing nothing lay across the middle of the floor acting as a home for a few lonely insects. The shadowy figure from the lake sat at a desk. He was violently typing on an old dusty typewriter. The keys were coated in dried blood. His grin was as wide as his face and his eyes set on his work.

The owl flew in landing on a shelf above the typewriter. "The midnight scribblings of a madman. Recording your descent into insanity, the quickening tempo, the wall of sound wrapping you in a veil of darkness. The only way to create art is to tear your soul into pieces and embed it in every single creation. Too bad it only ends up in the bin as you rehash and recycle the same uninteresting ideas. Rewrite the same words over and over, you're a walking cliché child." He roared with laughter his beak opening so wide it looked like his head might turn inside-out.

As I walked toward the door I took a glance at the paper being violated by the typewriter. There was nothing but gibberish written on it, letters overlapping, the paper was loaded crooked one of the support arms was bent. When he reached the end of the overused paper, he reloaded it and continued, his grin getting wider as he grew more impressed and absorbed by his monstrosity.

I looked out the window, the broken clocks swam around like fish. The water spiraled around the house waiting patiently. There was a leak where the window met the frame, the glass had cracked a little. One of the clocks started sounding the time, the hands both stuck on the number three.

The clacking of the typewriter stopped as the shadow threw a handful of pills down his throat and chased it with half a bottle of dark brown whiskey. He laid back in his chair, his neck resting on the top as he stared at the ceiling. A leak sprouted, murky water dripped into his left eye.

"You going out there without a rain jacket?" Hooted the owl jokingly.

The door had three wooden boards nailed across it. The boards were worn, rotting, and old. The nails were halfway sticking out, rusted, and crooked. I pulled on the middle board, it gave easy and fell to the floor with a loud bang. The other boards fell just as easily.

"There's always an easy way isn't there. You could never step out of what you already know though, this is where you belong." The owl's voice had grown bored. "An easier way to find your perfect oblivion."

I looked at my wrist, a thin white string sat at the base of my palm. I pulled it hard, fire shot through my arm the house shook violently as the water smashed into it full force, more water pouring in from the cracking walls and foundation. The more I pulled the more I came undone the string spiraled up my arm, through my shoulder, and was tugging on my heart.

The water filled the house, the shadow sat still ignoring the walls as they collapsed around them. The owl had disappeared, trees and grass crashed through the floorboards. They towered above my head, the angels made nests in their branches.

"Scum!" One of the angles had yelled down to me.

"Worthless!" Another jumped in.

"Pathetic! Evil! Disgusting!" I was being bombarded with insults. I noticed my body shrinking the more they jeered at me. I started running forward all the treetops were filled with a jury of angles, their judgmental, piercing eyes were set on me.

I kept getting smaller, and the voices fainter, until the mushrooms around me stood like grand oak trees, and the roots were like rolling hills, and the rocks looked like boulders. I could no longer see or hear the plague living in the trees.

There was a large wooden door in the stem of one of the mushrooms in front of me. A crooked sign hung above it. A Familiar Place, there was nothing familiar about it. I drudged across the dark red-brown dirt road toward the door.

The door was heavy and creaked loudly as it swung open. I stepped over the threshold into what looked like a bar. A few tables were strewn around the place, chairs upside down sitting on the tabletops. At the bar stood a stout bearded man jotting down inventory on a clipboard.

"You're here earlier than normal kid. Don't tell me you're getting jaded with your self-destructive cycle and are just rushing it now." The man said with a gruff chuckle, not looking up from what he was doing.

"I don't know you or this place." I knew that wasn't true there was something familiar about this place. The smell, the way the dust settled, the way the light bounced around the room. I felt safe, I felt at home like I had spent most of my life here.

"So what will it be?" the bartender grabbed a clean glass and approached the tap. "The usual I'm going to assume."

"What's the usual?" I gave him a puzzled look as I walked up to the bar.

He slammed the cold foamy mug of beer down, along with a couple of oblong blue pills.

"Is it safe to take these together?" I picked up the pills looking them over in my hand.

"Why would I know? I'm not a doctor and we both know you don't care. If you wanted a healthy outlet you would've stayed on the path and not have come down here."

I threw the pills down the back of my throat chasing them quickly with the beer. "Are you with that stupid owl?"

The bartender laughed at me as he picked his clipboard back up resuming what he was doing. "You would do well to listen to that stupid owl, you already know that. You're afraid of change though, scared of happiness. There's a bluebird in my heart that wants to get out, but I'm too tough for him."

"He's an owl, not a bluebird. Besides, you didn't pour me a whiskey and I'm not Bukowski." I finished off the mug dropping it heavily on the bar top. I started to shrug over the bar my head was feeling light and my shoulders had become heavy. The room appeared to be tilting as my eyelids fought against the increasing gravity.

"And the air isn't filled with cigarette smoke I know. You know whatever you think this does for your creativity doesn't matter when you can't pick yourself off my freshly mopped floor to create."

The room had started spinning, I could feel everything hurling through space. I was struggling to stay awake as my head crashed down onto the bar. The glass mugs were rattling in their shelves. The bartender seemed to not notice at all, or he just didn't care. The light in the windows was violently flashing. A few of the chairs had fallen to the ground.

"There is no peace in the direction you are going, kid." the bartender faded into nothingness.

An ear-piercing screech tore through the walls shattering the windows. The broken glass started to orbit the mushroom bar like tiny glistening stars reflecting light in every direction. A shard rotating in place caught my eye, the owl was flying in its reflection.

"Not you again." I sighed my words were slurring together and barely comprehensible. I turned away to see the owl's face in the reflection of another piece of broken glass. "What do you want?" I threw the empty mug next to me at the shard. It shattered, each piece reflected his laughing face.

"What could I possibly want with a washed-up husk that can't listen to basic directions?" The owl scoffed ruffling his wings. "Glued to a bar top, you can't even lift your head. You used to show so much promise, you've become consumed by your ego, stuck in the past and afraid of your thoughts."

"Look where I am." I smiled brightly. "I've ascended to the stars, flying through the cosmos around the sun like a planet. You're nothing but a murky reflection in a broken piece of glass. I've reached an infinite ascension, the home of chaos." A shard of glass flew in front of me, reflecting the madness that had set in. I had become nearly identical to the monster from the lake.

The floorboards had begun to rip out of the foundation, the walls, chairs, and remaining mugs and bottles from the shelves had been ground into dust forming a ring around me. The alcohol had frozen into large spheres of ice, becoming small moons.

"Can't you see, owl? I've finally seen past the veil of humanity. All of the ignorance and muddied understandings have fallen away. I can see all the colors of this kaleidoscope called life. I don't need your path, I don't need your help. I will tear through the heavens and become all."

I felt the floorboards fly into the back of my head. I felt a sharp stinging pain as an ocean started to fill around my head. I dipped my fingertips into the warm sticky red sea that was wrapping itself around the mountains of my mind. "A new life will breathe into this sea, and when its time comes it will find land."

The owl soared gracefully overhead, his hunting eyes locked on mine. I could see the displeasure and hate he had boiling over. "I thought owls were supposed to be wise, not jealous. It's not very becoming of your cinnamon feathers." I started laughing, I could barely recognize my voice or laughter.

Everything was going dark. "I'll see you again soon, maybe next time you'll be ready to break out of this cycle." The owl flew off, his voice trailing away in disappointment.

"That's right, just run off to your barn." The stars above me were blindingly bright in all of the darkness around me. I reached into my pocket and pulled out a cigarette, and put it in between my crackling lips. I shivered as I lit it dropping the lighter to the floor. The smoke comforted my lungs filling them with warmth.

My eyes finally closed under the weight as smoke poured out of my mouth like a rain cloud. I felt like I was drifting through time. Days, weeks, maybe even months had passed while I held my eyes shut

I reached out my fingers found something to grip. It was smooth and felt like leather. I gripped it tightly with one hand my other was preoccupied with my cigarette.

A soothing static started playing. It vibrated and shook the air around me, I couldn't place where the melody was coming from. I could feel the hair on my arm stand up as it shook down my spine.

A sharp cracking sound caused my eyes to shoot open. I could see the dark giants looming in front of me once again through my murky windshield. The static died with the engine as I stepped out of the squeaky car door into the wind's cold embrace. I put out the cigarette with my shoe, pulling up my scarf with my now freezing hands. I stepped forward toward the trees, the stars tried their hardest to light my way.

"So glad to see you again so soon." A sarcastic, bodiless sigh came from the shadows of the trees.