Shards of Moonlight || A Short-story Collection

My Mind - Exc

I do not want to take a shower.

But they force me to. They call it necessary, even normal.

Feel.

I never pondered before that gravity and pressure could create a force as strong as this. The continuous pull, waterfall-like, dragging more than skin and bones down. It drags down all that defines me. It breaks me. Every time they break me.

Think.

How? My imagination lies buried in the grave they dug for us years ago. It lays unbothered by my struggle of thoughts under the showerhead bathing my back in ice-cold cascades that spread like spiders webs down the flawless skin. The skin they preserve as they whip our minds, not the bodies. The essential bodies; and dangerous minds that needed to be pruned. Light as white as a dove's feathers, fast as the crushing wheels of a carriage in full motion unbothered by dirty lumps to its feet, the resulting death screams of something alive. Those short-tempered, full blood, black horses tilling and scraping the ground with their stamping hooves leaving imprints in the muddy, quagmire-like underground. My mind shakes in step with their agitated galumph, something needs to be reining them, just like me. It used to be human, just like them. It never stops and it only leaves a small old stump greenish shovel stuck halfway in the ground.

Hope and mind, strong words never to be combined again. Any of you could claim that losing hope could be nothing more than my fault, so listen up: this could happen to any of you. It chose to happen to us, to me. You could be next. Listen closely to the part it all went downhill:

A road to hell does not exist as hell lacks railings and paths. Imagine a mountain pass. Feel the rocky, crumbly boulders fragile against your left hand and follow the small tortuous trail winding and crumbling under your feet. Hear. The clicking of small pebbles trickling under your feet down into the abyss next to your feet. Trickling. Dripping. Small drops knocking onto my back. Not only hearing this but more. Their laughter. No. Not this kind of laughter. Imagine it deeper and obscure. The laughter of serial killers in horror films, a mere child walking along a dark alleyway to where you are standing. The light is catching in their eyes, big and honest. Your gaze drops down to their hands hidden in their pockets. "Hey, what do you do here at night? All alone? Did you lose your parents?", you could ask all this before the child reaches you and reveals the object hidden in their palm: a kitchen knife glistening crimson red in the nearby streetlight.

It ceased to be frightening to me, living with beings worse than serial killers made you think of them as gigantic pains in the ass at some point. The discreet prickling of anger under my skin flared consistently, the only thing keeping me warm now. My remedy.

I wonder why people bother to shower every day. They cannot do this on purpose for themselves more in order to create an image for the world to see. The gray color they paint on their surface to blend in. To not be excluded. What do pictures mean to the blind though? They took our sight. Left us in darkness and dirt. We cannot see. A shared burden being half as heavy, a shared fury being twice as deadly, I wish I had someone to share it with. I can feel the others being close, but they keep us separate.

With the lingering smell of disinfectant in my nose, I will tell you a story meanwhile. The mind blunting most of the sharp edges of our memories. It chooses the good ones like a bird picking out seeds from a freshly sown field and deading negative emotions. Making the knifes dull, pain blunt while wiping away past tears. Girls though can have a knife-sharp memory, conservating pain. I should know.

*****

Curious how it continues? Is it worth a whole story? What may have happened to him or is it a girl? :p