MOSAIC

Chapter 15: Hunt

The weather is growing cold, my mood along with it. While I've become more taciturn on the exterior, what's been happening inside my head is an entirely new beast. Wasn't too far back in the past when I was in a shimmering twilight, mind stolen over by long thoughts, drifting me around every which way, but never enough to get me anywhere. I can't say I feel any better than I did then, but I feel different; corrupted and stained into something harsher and less likeable, but in an enhanced sort of way.

I haven't been going in to work much recently, some days I don't even call in ahead at all. Only reason they haven't canned my ass is because I got hurt on the job a little while back; fucked up my chest and shoulder real good while working the heavy tools. I can hardly take a damn breath without my whole right side knotting, throbbing, and grinding. They still expect me to come in and help out in what ways I can, but I'm not willing to. On first glance, you'd think it's on account of being in pain and discomfort, or being all pissy and downtrodden about having such a piece of shit job, but it isn't any of that. Yes, my bills are piling up, and my apartment is constantly barren of food as my car is of fuel. You'd think that would spur me to take some form of action—to keep good relations with my employer or perhaps find a new one, but it doesn't. Upon analysis you might categorize me then as a demoralized, depressed, and dejectedly forlorn loser who has abandoned hope and any sense of willpower, but that's not the case either.

​In fact every single one of my waking moments is set ablaze by a riotously out of control ambition which torrents like a forest fire both through me and out from me. I can't lock myself up in concentrating upon ridiculous, mundane shit anymore; it should come secondary. While in the past I've aspired and aimed myself towards major ambitions, my methods were simplistic. Senseless even, due to their constantly being overshadowed by the easily consumable platters of ordinary life. I'd enclosed myself in a framework established by gods who are merely part of a bubble. It's nice inside that bubble, especially if you can do well for yourself. The problem is when you wrap yourself up inside that bubble too much— whether you're swimming in its gold or being drowned in its reeking sewage, you lose the ability to even witness anything beyond it. You start to believe that its rules are the ultimate form of dictation.

There's so much that goes beyond the silly little procedures of human life, all formidably vast, a part of something even vaster and greater. It renders all forms of wealth and misery practically insignificant if you're able to stretch your eyes that far. I think a person has to be able to move inside our little bubble and play its rules and games while still looking out beyond it, understanding that at the end of the day, the bubble of human-made existence is really just an inconsequential piece of shit; too small and petty in relation to the galaxies and stars for a person to be afraid of it or constrict themselves too tightly by its ideologies.

​My phone buzzed angrily atop my nightstand, likely my foreman to see if I would be making it in to work today, or the doctor calling me for a follow-up appointment regarding my injury. Let them hound me. I'd get to them when I felt like it, with a response that was in my own interests. If I deemed it an optimal course of action for myself, I'd even stomp right back onto that construction site fully geared, pain sinking down through my shoulder into my chest like a hot dousing of coal oil being set on fire and scraped at by long, rusty teeth. But right now I didn't deem going to work as obligatory, nor did I consider following up with my doctor regarding my injury at this particular moment as a necessity. I had already preoccupied myself with different items on the agenda for the day, some of a rather analytical nature. I wouldn't allow myself to waste energy in doing what other people requested or demanded of me, at least not right now. Perhaps another time, but not right now.