Thus Spake the Zonbi - Alexander Dougal

What We Can't Have

It's an odd sensation forgetting one's past self. Sleep: a withdrawal from reality with no consequence, an inescapable escape into the familiar unfamiliarity of being in the passenger seat of your own tempestuous psyche... I need sleep.

I can recall when it first occurred to me. It was the gray skin that caught my eye. Then it was the absence of flesh where clearly there shouldn't have been. I suppose it should have shocked me, should have made me run, scream, panic. Instead, I shuffled toward the gray, splotchy, flesh-less figure in the mirror that replicated my actions with startling precision, head tilted and mouth ajar.

I pulled my lip to the side, revealing the remains of what used to be, I can only assume, a dazzling smile boasting infinite charisma, replaced now with jagged shards of varying shades of yellow and brown. What was likely, at one point, the face of a figurative lady-killer, now transformed into the face of a literal lady-killer. No, that's not entirely true. Flesh has never really been my thing. It's the texture.

I stared into the decayed creature that stood before me: lifeless face, sunken eye, forlorn stare, drained of any happiness, optimism, and empathy. Though, admittedly, I suppose that is what happens when you die. I want to sleep.

My existence closely resembles a dream, in many ways. A passenger, as I said, often compelled into action. Yet, regardless of the utter lack of sovereignty, one can feel more alive within a dream, the narrative more real than what is alive and real. Feelings can intensify to incomparable extremes within the dreamscape. Powerful feelings, yet somehow fleeting. A simple flutter of the eyelids removes the veil, and we lose all memory of the world we just inhabited. We forget those places, those stories, those feelings, what caused them. Thus is my current state. I wish I could sleep.