The Utopia Trials

Heaven is here inside this black hole.

Not a hand to wave in front of my face, not bone ebbed to sinew to roll on the joints, to relax, to tighten the insulating muscle around, the warmest thing in the world-- is my body, sagged against the crooked wall of the cave. Now the darkness is my sanctuary. I can breathe, the cool air circles through me. My clothes were too heavy. I allow just this one thing to touch me: this necklace, and its light push against my pulse. It’s heart shaped, some times I trace my finger around its cool edges. Some times I play with the chain, push the locket like a moonsliver, up and down. I focus on this, the swathe of the dark around my form, the holy quiet I have found down here. Not a body to see, not a body to hurt. The darkness is all that there is.

It hurts, it hurts, it hurts. (1)

I breathe in, run my hands over the crest of my nose, the knoll cheeks, the odd abrasions I've had since middle school. That kid Rory Baker with his hair cut so short, I remember it. I never, ever fought with him, I never fought with anyone. Let it go, I said, you’re an idiot, and he took my arm and twisted it hard. Something loose in the eyes, I will never forget them. All the sudden it wasn’t about whose ball it was,

and my forehead let out on the dirt road. The barbs of his pupils drug over me--he looked like a monster--he looked like he wanted to twist me until my body popped and limped a vessel for warm viral goo. I carried it with me ever since, the divide. The fear. And one day it burst open.(2)

The pain waxes. Wanes when I think of other things: how the stalactites echo in fractals: how the quiet between breaths stretches safely, into forever. Now I am empty. I can be a vessel for so many things. Can be beautiful things. I have always wanted to learn meditation. Perfect time as ever. Have always wanted a cabin nestled cozily into the hearth of a mountain. A minute's walk away from the kind of quiet that pinches your senses to wake you up from the terrible dream of yourself being all that there is. Laying on your back on the grass. Willow trees. Arching skies. Starting fires. Tobacco sprites. The kind of freedom that the wolves let go when they cry.

Summertime is ripe for the swill of ice cream, and this year I have so many dreams to dream. The place by Baxter creek is a small one ribboned in neon lights. I get a chocolate cone. My friends are waiting for me, and Andy’s got this funny smile, like my fly is down. They are waving and laughing under the warm light, and Andy is asking me what the hell is wrong with me. What the hell is wrong with me? What the hell is wrong with me? It’s so cold. (3)

Oh hell. I can feel that I’m dying. A tepid slop seeps from my head. There is, so scathingly, a prolapsed chunk where my thoughts should be. Suddenly I remember everything. It happened so fast, like missing a step down the stairs. The world whorled out from under me. Mass hysteria. Helicopters over the houses, so many of them at once, such an alien sound, I have to get out, I have to get this out of my head. I have to eradicate the painful dissonance droning a vast gridwork of spectral judging eyes droning droning. People ragdolled on the streets, the last one I saw his eyes were thick with angel dust and puke from his mouth like slick moss. And he looked euphoric, in awe, the smoke from his car jabbed the sky with dark spires. I remember his face, his exaltation in death, my jealousy at his freedom. Every one started dying. Every one killed themselves. To the babies, what happened? To my momma, what happened?

It hurts, it hurts, it hurts, it hurts, it hurts!

I will myself limp. I slip back into the wholeness of the dark. I breathe in and out the knowing (the dread) and the pain (the divide) and let the gush of impulses erode my memory. I feel with raw fingers the tresses of calcite that flow up from the ground. Probe the air so a droplet might reach me. So often, so often back then, I thought I was miserable. My world was so small. I thought I knew pain. I thought fuck all. (4)

Even if you can't sleep, it's worth it just to close your eyes and pretend. The body is a baby and the mind feeds on that dark firmament between dreams. The body wants to sleep. It wants to let go. It hovers over you, making sure you're safe when you leave. You remember that feeling as a child? That all-encompassing fuzziness, soft and unknowingly vast? It hugs you as you drift off. When you untangle from that terrible mass of this-or-that's and fizzle through. That big soft feeling when you float up in the black, like an embryo. Forget your name, and when you wake up, you’ll be safe. And you’ll remember who you are.

It hurts,

It hurts,

It hurts.

(1)After three weeks of exposure to the wavelength, subject exhibits antisocial behaviors and psychosis characteristic of MPI-201.

(2) Wavelengths present only in artificial light sources are connected with the awakening of latent gene. Those in isolated areas remain unaffected unless exposed to contagions via same species contact.

(3) Subject exhibits the fragmented speech, catatonia and self-mutilative behaviors of the somnambulist group C. Marked by fleeting periods of lucidity and awareness.

(4) Death caused by self-inflicted head injury. Subject repeatedly slammed into the wall of a cave, where they had spent three days in isolation. Found around the neck of the corpse: metal locket with abnormally active EMF properties; suspected to have interfered with wavelength’s effect on the subject. Thusly, subject’s mortality was significantly delayed (seven days), and further research upon elemental interference with the wavelength is required.