The Spirals of Oz (unillustrated ver.)

Track 2 - Mr. Self Destruct

 Sam stood frozen, fascinated.

He leaned in, almost touching the glass, doubting himself. It had always been there. It wasn't spreading. It was all in his head. It was the alcohol.

He held up his thumb, comparing the length of the break to his nail, and felt a wave of nausea when the fissure grew past his first knuckle.

His body screamed at him to walk away. Pretend this wasn't happening. Crack open another beer. Put another record on.

But he just couldn't help himself.

He watched as it picked up steam, branching like lightning, each new arm skating across the surface of the mirror, carelessly splitting the glass. Splitting his face.

Then all movement stopped.

And the mirror shattered.

Sam reeled backwards, nearly tripping over the side of the tub, but caught himself on the edge of the sink. There were shards of glass in the sink and all over the floor, yet he hardly noticed the crunch beneath his feet or his fragmented reflections framed in ceramic, because the missing mirror had revealed a hidden recess in the wall. Inside, laying upon a slat of wood, was a knife.

Sam tensed up and leaned forward to get a closer look. The handle of the weapon was blackened wood carved to look like a grinning skeleton with two red gemstone eyes. It was beautifully crafted, but there was something decidedly ominous about it. The tilt of the skull's head and the strange smile it wore seemed like an invitation. Or a challenge.

Though the room had fallen silent, there was a buzzing in Sam's ears. The skeleton's red eyes looked deeply into Sam's blue. A sick feeling of repulsion had begun to sink into his throat and chest the longer he looked at the thing, but he couldn't tear his eyes away. Possessed by either some supernatural magnetism of the blade or nothing more than simple curiosity, Sam reached out for the knife and took it.

{{FIG. 7: THE KNIFE WITHIN THE HOLE}}

The weapon was cool in his hands. For a single, blessed moment, the fear, hesitation, and revulsion left him. He thought that he had found some sort of treasure. That he was safe.

But he was not.

There was a whirring sound as two small pins snapped out of the base of the handle, unspooling serrated metal wires behind them, cutting his palm. Sam tried to drop the knife, but the wires wrapped around his wrist and tightened, fastening the handle back to his hand before it had even reached the ground.

He tried to wriggle the fingers of his other hand beneath the wire to free himself, but their nasty little teeth tore up his skin, coating his hands in his own slippery blood.

He desperately grabbed the ends of the wire, hoping to control them and unwind himself, but they burrowed through the back of his clenched fist and came out the other side, now controlling both his arms with their strings, twisting him up like some tangled macabre marionette.

No longer able to grab at them, Sam could only watch helplessly as they turned on him again, this time striking like venomous snakes. Each tunneled deep into one of his wrists.

Though no one was around to hear it, Sam found his voice.

He screamed in agony as they wriggled their way into his radial veins.

He could feel them there, just beneath his skin, twisting, clawing their way through him, leaving a trail of searing, blinding pain in their wake. He screamed again. He could see the slight bulge of the wires under his skin, and it was that sight, the visceral wrongness of seeing them in there, pushing up against his skin from the inside, that made him keel over and begin vomiting violently all over his chest and feet.

Sam fell to his knees, sending another shockwave of pain through his body. From within him, the wires snaked through him, traveling each and every well-worn trail his blood had ever blazed.

He heard the wet, wheezing moans but didn't register that they were coming from him as he expelled every shaky shallow breath almost as soon as it reached his lungs.

The wires, completing their internal journey, expelled themselves from his body through his chest. They began to whirl in circles around him, faster and faster, too fast for his blurred vision to track. The sound of all that unspooled nightmare clicking and clanging sharply against itself as it spun rang in his ears, making him gag again, and though his stomach was empty, he coughed up alarming amounts of blood and bile. Some was spat to the floor. The rest convened at the corners of his mouth and dribbled down his chin.

At some point, he tipped over without realizing it. He knew he should have been dead. But somehow, in some incredible cosmic unkindness, he didn't even lose consciousness.

{{FIG. 8: SAM, ARMS TANGLED BY WIRE, TIPPED OVER, HAIR A MESS AND A POOL OF BLOOD/VOM BENEATH HIM.}}

The impossibilities continued.

Sam felt a lifting sensation, at first believing consciousness was finally leaving him, but he would have no such blessing. The wires had spun themselves into a frenzy, forming a flaying, cyclone of ecstatic edges and whipping wires. It began to rise into the air, taking him with it. He was caught in the middle, his battered body serving as the heart of the thing, or, more accurately, the eye. His head lolled backwards just in time to see the nightmarish mass cut its way into the ceiling, raining splinters, plaster, and asbestos down upon him.

It continued to lift, transcending the house.

The evening sky was bright with stars. The moon was only a sliver, its wicked curve inspiring another wave of sickness. His chin fell back to his chest, and in blips and blurs he caught glimpses of his little existence. It too was lit by a million stars, the shimmering lights of the modern world. The brightest star in that sky was the little light from his bathroom, shining through the exit wound of his shitty little apartment down there. There were two gaping holes in its ceiling now, he thought to himself. The landlord probably wouldn't fix that one either.

Higher and higher it went.

Far in the distance, he spotted the lights of a radio tower. It was the one at the school he'd attended. As they twinkled, he felt a sad nostalgia. He'd always thought of himself as a bad student up until college. Then just when he figured out what sorts of things he liked to learn and how he liked to learn them, his time was up. He was turned over to the workforce without the required degrees or connections to do anything with his newfound passion. He knew it wasn't fair, and he also knew that nothing ever was.

By now, the pain had ceased to register.

To his right, he identified the glowing sign of the pizza joint where he'd worked. He wasn't sure what was happening to him, but he was pretty damn sure he wasn't going back to work there anytime soon. The thought made him giddy. No more long walks to and from in the rain or snow. No more selling his days for minimum wage. No more goddamn pizza.

He saw the park that he and his girlfriend used to cut through. It was a shortcut to the grocery store downtown. Its paths were lit up with bluish streetlights. The two had spent a lot of time there together. They'd laid out blankets and listened to rock shows they couldn't afford to attend on the nearby waterfront. They'd smoked weed and watched the fourth of July fireworks away from all the crowds. Neither were patriotic, she just thought they were pretty, and that was good enough for him. They had stopped doing anything like that a long time ago. Absently, he wished she was there with him now. She would have loved the view.

And as he continued to rise further and further into the sky, each landmark became little more than another pretty little star in the skyscape below him. He closed his eyes, and finally, mercifully, blissfully, lost consciousness.

{{FIG. 9: SAM IN THE EYE OF THE CYCLONE, A MILLION STARS ABOVE AND BELOW.}}