Shattered Respite

Primi: The Mystery

Three things to write about. Waking myself up thinking about hell and the terror of being trapped. Mourei telling the soldier who shoots her to run. The Al Bhed telling Mourei about the board and how to get off of it. What is the point? To play. Why are we playing? To get off the board.

Secondi: Meandering

Very early in the morning. Feels weird to date the journal entry, but here we are. The rain should be soothing. There’s so much of it and it sounds delightful. It’s delightful not to be trapped out in it. It’s delightful to hear it striking the house that protects me from the wet and the cold. But I’m not assuaged by nature this night. The mundane troubles of a blessed life tug at my mind. I know that my wife’s left a lot of things outside. The moldy remains of two lives. Parents that loved her and couldn’t quite wrap their heads around her choice of husband. So much of what we cling to is meaningless when examined free of the context that is us. I was supposed to sort some of it. A vast pile of paperwork that must have made some bureaucrat somewhere smile to the inverse of how much I dread having to paw through it. I know it’s converting into a heavy paste. I will be the one frowning as I heft it into a trash bag, striving not to let its disintegrating form come apart on my hands or pants. My inaction has, one could have predicted, made things worse.

Such thoughts might have kept me awake for a quarter of an hour. But I’m at odds with myself, and instead of being able to relax past the guilt and annoyance, something probes further. I seek for an experience I know will unsettle me. Something about getting closer to death perhaps? I wonder about the time I have left. What will I do if the film runs out and then another reel, a terrible reel, gets set into the projector? For a second, I let the secret Lord of Death win. There’s nothing. There’s nothing and that’s why you shouldn’t fear. I reply with an answer practiced by so many teenagers of the past: if there are no rules, if there aren’t even consequences, then why should I do anything other than what I wish? Fine fine. But there’s no time for sleep, old man. Probe further. Do you think you deserve to be tortured?

Let me count the ways. Blood. Hooks. Intestines. Offal. These do not delight me. To the same degree that movies have explored the granularity of gore to uncanny levels of detail, my expectations of true suffering lie outside the realm of simple mutilation. What if the veneer of freedom you have now was removed? What if you were trapped, immortal, under a planet crust’s worth of rubble, unable to move, unable to die. Knowing that there was the smallest chance that, somewhere in the billions of years ahead of you, some sentient race might excavate you by accident some day. The horror. I feel it in my liver. My solar plexus tightens with a sickness that is subtle, but effective. I know I will not sleep for hours now. Yes. Here. In this place of disgust and adrenaline do I place my self. What would you do then, I ask, ragged blade to my own throat.

If I were being generous I would say I was trying to remind myself to live a meaningful life. To enjoy the comfort and liberty in which I wallow, unconscious. But I’ve made it clear to myself that I can’t work. That I’m unwilling to press through the ghost wall that I built in some act of pre-vengeance against those that said I could do anything. That encouraged me. That stated I had talent or skill. When I die the death of a wild dog, tumbled from some dusty cliff, that’ll show ‘em. I do reflect for a moment on the fact that I should probably learn to meditate. With emphasis and urgency. But I also think about the fact that what I want to do right now is play my video games and escape everything. Let my concentration sink into a fantasy where I am in control and have achievable goals. While my eyes still work. While the floaters still take up less than fifty percent of my vision.

Dolce: All is Resolved

Or maybe I should have not taken that magnesium pill minutes before bed on an empty stomach. If I ever do manage to get back to sleep, I’m sure I will be fine in the morning. That I will forget all the meaningful reflection I almost undertook. I will turn away from any alternatives, real or imaginary, and shuffle towards hell.