Parallax 1

He had been forced to face away from the light.

He winced as he strained his neck to glance through the bars and frosted glass of the window slit. He slumped in his chair; he gazed toward the wall. He was silent, but every cell in his body was loud... a deathly loud... like a ghost trapped in a fracturing glass bottle.

Beneath the fountain of brown hair that fell to his shoulders, a halo of clouded memories haunted him.

Flashes of men shouting "527! The number is 527! Hurry!" ... A fire, consuming a room that had a cracked computer with nothing snow on its monitor...the faces of townspeople panicking, the silhouettes of people lunging away as fast as they could muster without stumbling...soldiers with the markings of Atlantic Anarchists on their clothes fleeing for their lives.

His left arm flickered. Tongues of flames licked the edges of the muffs about his forearms, but these restraints were hooked up to liquid nitrogen pumps and made of tantalum hafnium carbide besides, heat proof for all intents and purposes.

Alas, there was a lot of waiting now. Useless, helpless waiting. A good book from Robert Louis Stevenson would have been nice to have there to help him pass the time... to distract his mind... to fill that vacuous silence. It would have been nice to have him there to cause the Other pause before the story's end...long before...before the shattering of the beautiful, beautiful forms of order and society.

Walls. Empty, dank, walls. There was nothing to gaze at except the gnarly shadow he cast on the uneven wall before him.

He tried to fix it. He attempted to shift his body in his seat so that the shadow wasn't on the uneven corner of the cement block that made up the wall. But he could not; there was no room in his seat, and the chair was bolted to the floor. It looked the least gnarly when he could at least hold his head at about 30 degrees from his left shoulder. But the sharp pang of a spasm in his strained neck rendered it impossible for him to hold it there steadily.

His truth, his nervous system was born of this dust, these walls, these wills, and pulled him ever again back towards it.

His forearms dimmed gently to nothing, and he lost that last spark of impatience left flickering in his cold pupils.

"Am I only ever a wave filled with a hope for the sky: reaching for the moon but never even escaping the sea?" He muttered, glowering at the crooked shadow on the wall.

"We will find them..."

His hands were secured to the steel table before him.

Even if he could have freed hands, there was only one door in and out of that cell. It was to his right and there was a guard right outside of it.

He yanked impotently on his binds and groaned.

"We will find them..."

An approaching rattling echoed all around the walls.

Three guards lumbered in. They all wore symbols for the Assembly of Elites marked on their uniforms. Red, Black, and Silver were the colors of the memebers of this security force. One of them was wearing a studded leather over-garment that wore that ended right below the knees. it was all black with silver looking studds and a band of red from the right shoulder down to the hem. The two others instead wore a bodysuit: a multilayered lava suit with metallic foil of titanium aluminum alloy sandwhiching areogel layers. All of their uniforms were completed with gloves, visors, a taser on their belt and a gun held across their chests... illuminated along every seam was a streak of microscopic red lights.

Adrian's face twisted and his head retracted reflexively. Nonetheless, they seized his head and restrained it to face the ceiling. His almond eyes didn't rest on the beauty of a sky, but only on the water stains of the leaky, mold-corrupted ceiling.

He winced. One of them slid a tube in through his nostril. He refused to open his mouth, but every cell in his body screeched at the foreign object invading his face.

A set of different clattering sounds echoed all around the walls.

The other guards were stacking the plates full of cold meat, cold starch, and wilted vegetables of faded colors that had collected on the floor next to the door, and throwing all of what remained of the substances in a grinder.

He winced, and gasped desperately. The puree nearly drowned him as it raced down his throat.

His inner hunger dissipated... his inner fire was reinvigorated...the flood of relaxation in every muscle of his body as the wretched stress subsided...the desperate restlessness in his muscles gave way to a sudden quiet.

A living quiet.

A poised quiet.

An energized quiet.

Even so, he pulled yet uselessly on his binds.

"We will inevitably find them, and when we do, we will not spare them." They said as they released his head. The one threatening him had a deviated septum, and the one to the left of him had a knotted ear, like that of a wrestler. "You could cooperate and maybe we could consider sparing them."

But he spat towards the wall. "You’re living proof it really is possible to live without a brain."

His prominent cheek bones glistened with sweat as he glowered at them.

The guard struck him.

But he spat out the fluids of pain from his mouth, and laughed.

"Is that all you got? Or are you afraid of knocking me out? What's your name, let's see, Morrison is it? Morrison! Morrison was the one that struck me! Remember Morisson!"

The other two guards held back the one that was getting mad.

Adrian just berated them

While they gathered all their gear.

He harried them

As they lumbered out of the room.

He cackled at them.

As they locked the door behind him.

"Let me out at once!" He said, in an artificially wretched voice.

"You sound just like him, Adrian." One of the metallic suited guards responded shakily with a blank gaze.

"I am not that wretch, Adrian! I am myself!"

The guard examined him through the door as though he were looking at a changeling.

"But you said we weren't to unchain you until after the last shift. You would fire us, sir."

"I will fire you if you don't let me out now!"

A series of rattling sounds commenced as the guard's unsteady hand impulsively obeyed.

"What the hell are you doing?"

The first guard jumped, startled by the third guard grasping his suit and yanking it back.

"That is not Chief Azazel! That's just his mirror, you idiot!"

The first began to turn away but still trembled.

"Surely you knew that wasn't Chief Azazel?"

The first did not respond.

"Hey!" The suited guard pulled him around to face him.

"What? It wasn't. Of course. Right?" The other said trembling even more as he straightened his back and the rest of his stance and form.

"Hummph! Who hires these guys?" The second suit shook his head.

While the guards retreated, Adrian's impersonated voice haunted them right up to the doors at the end of the hall...

But then he dry-coughed uncontrollably.

* * *

Thanks for reading this first chapter of Parallax.

I just wanted to share a few things about this creative project, my source of inspiration to write it, and what my goals are in the future.

As you may have noticed, I am also starting to get into making my own illustrations. However, I am a beginner when it comes to skill, and with my multiple jobs, I cannot afford to make large investments into my art regarding either materials or time. I promise that I am trying to put my best effort in to share the most value that I possibly can. It is abstract and almost minimalist in its style, I understand some people do not have taste for such art, but my intent is to pack as much meaning into as few "brushstrokes" as I can. I hope at least some of you can experience them in a positive and valuable way. If you have any creative tips or hacks for me to consider, please share in the comments.

I also hope that the prose itself gave a positive reading experience. Did it affect you or did you connect with the main character emotionally? I find right now in my writing projects that I do tend to sound a bit dry much of the time and when I reread my writing it feels like reading an engineering textbook sometimes. I think that is because I am very interested and feel a responsibility (right or wrong) to write about the Truth and to write about it with as much accuracy and precision as I can. I don't want to knowingly mislead anyone or inspire them by words that are not in line with The Reality and The Personal Realities that we all must face and survive together, regardless of our background. It is also a little frustrating if a written emotion sounds forced or pretentious. Still, I enjoy emotional, visceral, deliciously juicy storytelling when I encounter it in different forms of media, and I strive to deliver that in some small, albeit ameteurish and imperfect, ways.

As I have experienced everyday life with its adult responsibilities, I seem to have realized that while not everyone would claim to be a perfectionist, everyone is a perfectionist about their personal definition of order. When their environment falls short or doesn't match that definition, this causes pain and some people look for a person to blame for this pain, either others, or themselves, or both. People find it difficult to bear the reality of other's mistakes. Many find it even more difficult to accept their own.

This is just one of a list of reasons I had a burst of inspiration to dust off this six month old short story draft and finish it after I recently finished watching Bates Motel on The CW. Guys! What a heartwrenching story!!! I reached a new record for man-tears wept for a fictional story, tbh. I do not recommend if you do not have a tolerance for sad stories. Still! It was so psychologically deep and philospophically wise, and the acting was so, so good! I have fallen in love with the cast and I would like to see if the creators Carlton Cuse, Kerry Ehrin, and Anthony Cipriano of the TV show have other works!

I also recently came across an interesting youtube review discussing the original The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.

Adrian in this story is another character faced with an impossible task. How do you race toward order, when you already know that your greatest opponent is yourself?

There is the hard part of the truth, the sadness, the burden. But there is also the beautiful part of the truth, the happiness, the health.

Serotonin, connection, beauty, life... these still exist in this wonderful world.

I feel that many people bear burdens so long in their lives that they forget what Serotonin feels like, like Adrian, here, behind these bars as a prisoner of war.

I do not say that with insensitivity toward the miriad of conditions that are obstacles in the path back to the experience of a healthy serotonin balance. I say that because sometimes this is one of those obstacles.

Future chapters will explore Adrian navigating both physical survival and mental balance as he takes on his ill-willed opponent.

I wish you all well,

And I hope to meet you in the next chapter!