The Echoing Tunnels of Dreams (829 hits)
Category: Quotes & Stories -> PoetryLabels: ETS_Short_Stories
Rating: 1.9 on 23 reviews (Rate this item) (V)
Submitted by Brad <electrictoothsyndrome.at.msn.com> (View user info) at 2004-05-24 23:05:05 EDT
Let me take you to a place
where the ground is not the ground,
and the sky is not the sky, it seems,
but an imprisoned orb behind.
We stumble through the door.
We feel we've made this trip before,
knowing only there must be something
lurking 'round yonder corner,
and if our minds prove well enough
to weather our journey's storm,
we discover 'tis but us
who are locked in a prison'd orb.
We're locked in the wrinkles of a god's own brain,
who, himself, is only created
by our world's mirror-symmetrical handshake -
good and evil in solemn agreement.
We are nothing but a floating image
on the rippled surface of a pond
who's vastness says nothing of our existence,
yet, of whose body, we do belong.
Here there is no up or down,
nor back or forth, it seems -
but a one-dimensional concept deep
in the echoing tunnels of dreams.
All was quiet in the long, dim hallway. Sick, yellow lamp hung tiredly on both sides between every door and wavered and waxed, smearing their images about the wall that jumped in and out of perceptiveness, and bulged and sank like and anti-gravity piss liquid. He no longer saw, he no longer heard, he no longer tasted , or smelled, or felt; he was just there; experiencing the moment in all its bleeding purity, being gently tugged along, absorbing soft, colorful melodies which he could've never heard, forgetting that this hallway was horizontal and thinking it instead some soul-sucking pit, a violent vortex somewhere within emptiness itself. And as he thought, so it was. The dull yellow walls began turning and mixing and mingling with the red carpet of the floors, and now he was falling - falling down through sex of colors in hot, orgiastic ecstasy.
Suddenly, in the midst of all his pleasure, as if the conductor of his imaginary orchestra had died at his podium, the sweet tune collapsed and fell into disharmonic pandemonium, shrieking and shrilling and creeping and crawling through his being like a cold, scaly reptile. A thousand moaning, painful voices repeated his name, "you...you...you...", and their dragging, rhythmic echoes diving slowly away, as he fell-fell-fell leaving fragments of himself floating in an orange trail. This could go on forever.
He cried a dry tear, his bliss turning to horrible fear, "I've got to get out of here," he said to himself in silence. And as he thought, so it was.
He awoke in what seemed like and instant, but felt more like a slow century of blackened slumber, in a cool green garden. He stood up shaking the shiny Easter-basket grass from his hair like a forgotten dream, and looking about him to see what he could see, heard the noisy buzzing of a bumblebee, and felt a light, stinging breeze as if passed his head, swiftly flapping its little wings. And it landed hugging a pink plastic flower - drinking its sticky nectar so that its life-light might continue to burn. He thought not to wonder to where he had come. He felt only a deep rooted purpose, like the pole of a magnet tugging at his soul, like the undergrowth of wrapt winding vines, like a player in the same, sick, labyrinth game.
And this void gave unto him the gift of sadness, and it came over him like a thick, black cocoon. And in this sadness he found a strange comfort and wished not to move from its radiant warmth. He sat back down, curling up on the shiny grass and watched the little bee with its purpose, sucking away at that pink plastic flower, and he began to cry; his tears trickled down his face and fell to the ground below his arched legs, and, as they landed, sizzled and steamed up little white smoke clouds. They rose to his face level and then rose no more; stopping before his eyes, they all come together as one, and began to take on the form of a little snowy angel no bigger than his hand. By this time he had forgotten his sadness, and now marveled at his strange new company, taking even some joy in its slow beginnings as it fell to the ground at his feet, leaving a stream of glittery stardust.
"What are you?!" he asked still in awe. "Are you alive?"
"I don't know, do you?" the angel replied in a motherly softness.
"Well, you must be alive, you speak...Do I...what?"
"Do you know what you are, and are you alive?"
"Sure I know what I am," he answered confidently, a little surprised at the absurdity of the question, "I am human...and of course I am alive, otherwise I would be unable to carry on this conversation with you."
"Just because you speak doesn't mean that you are alive, and just because you were told that you are human doesn't mean that that's what you are."
"Well, what am I then?"
"I don't know, do you?"
"Now I'm confused; first you tell me that I'm not human, and then you say you don't know what I am."
"I didn't say you were not human. If that's what you believe yourself to be, then so be it."
"Now I'm really confused." Said the boy shaking his head, rattling his brain.
"Oh," sighed the angel looking upward, throwing it's wings outward, "I should've known better. Never mind, let's take a fl...umm...a walk."
They walked through the pink flowered field, and over the crooked stream, and through the dark swampy morass, and into another pink flowered field not unlike the first.
"Hey, we've been waling in a straight line, I know, for an hour, and we're back to where we started." He stopped and rested on a convenient stump just at the edge of the wood.
"What do you mean, 'an hour'?"
"That's what I mean. I've been looking at my watch and it says we've been walking for and hour."
"And you trust that watch?"
"Well, I never have to reset it. I keep new batteries in it. It works perfectly...yea, I trust it...why?"
The angel paused for a moment, looking for the right words. "You must stop looking at life through the veil of your knowledge if you ever expect to find it." It said with a grave seriousness.
"Find what?"
"What it is you're looking for."
The boy couldn't describe with words how what the angel had said made him feel. He did feel he was looking for something, but didn't know what it was. He felt a staticy mixture of helplessness and hopefulness that made him dizzy as his mind flashed for him familiar, but strange, images of crawling out of dirt and climbing a black, jagged pyramid toward a white, blinding light. And he now understood he was just afraid.
"Where does this path lead?" asked the boy, pointing to a narrow, winding path back into the woods.
"Anywhere and nowhere," answered the little angel reclining in the soft petals of a flower.
The reply, although contradictory in itself, reached the boy's ear and whispered vague meaning as he struggled to make it fit into reason. The more he struggled, the more the meaning staggered away until soon he had forgotten what it was he was struggling with.
"It's all impossible, isn't it?" whispered a gruff, reverbial voice that shivered up his spine and struck his mind with a jumping flash of surprise. This was not the soft, motherly voice of the angel, whose company he had come to respect. This was the voice of a little red-horned devil who now reclined on the flower where the angel had before. Without any reply from the boy, the devil continued.
"Don't you see it? Your quest is hopeless. There is nowhere for you to go; there is nothing for you to do. Why do you walk round and round like an insect on the rim of a soda-pop can? Why do you look for escape when you know there is none? There is nothing at the top of that pyramid that there is not at the bottom."
All the while the devil spoke, the boy sank into a shallow trance, seeing visions of a downward spiral and hearing the ancient moan of lethargic souls, in a fluctuating stream of consciousness, where the beginning or the end never was, and the centre was impossible to find. He now knew he was in a higher palace, a slave to the cruel truth, and he did not like what it was he saw, and he was still not satisfied in his quest despite the devil's words.
"Where am I?" he asked. No reply. "Where am I?" he screamed at the starless sky, not expecting any sort of reply, just crying for the sake of crying. The more he asked this question, the more he saw himself climbing the great, black pyramid until at last when he had come near its apex, the point where all sides converged into one, he turned to the flower where the devil and the angel had sat. The two were in the same place at the same time, their images overlapping, their forms no longer distinguishable from one another. They were now one, and in their oneness, their pale image faded slowly away.
"Wait!" he screamed out in desperation. "What should I do when I get there?"
The image said unto him, its flanged voice in chorus, "Don't you know? You're already there. You have been all along."
In their final, parting words, he took his one last step up across the threshold of this strange land, and felt dirty in his dark ascent...
He awoke in a cool green garden, standing up to shake the shiny Easter-basket grass from his hair like a forgotten dream...
User Reviews
Submitted by BLITZKREIG_BOB (user info) at 2007-03-06 14:52:06 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
Gay.
Submitted by Axolotl (user info) at 2007-02-28 23:41:34 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
No Comment
Submitted by Foolproof (user info) at 2006-08-11 15:51:26 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
See, you weren't always insane.
What happened to writing poetry and fiction?
Bring him back...
...or did the CIA lock this "Brad" away?
Submitted by jgreening (user info) at 2006-07-30 06:47:13 EDT (#)
Ranking: -2
A lot of -2's have been wiped from this post.
It's a shame.
Submitted by electrictoothsyndrome (user info) at 2005-02-11 01:40:31 EST (#)
Ranking: 0
No Comment
Submitted by KoolMung (user info) at 2004-12-06 14:43:50 EST (#)
Ranking: -2
No Comment
Submitted by eIectrictoothsyndrome (user info) at 2004-10-23 07:03:15 EDT (#)
Ranking: -2
When I look into your eyes, I see straight through to the back of your head.
Submitted by equaIizer (user info) at 2004-10-20 23:20:17 EDT (#)
Ranking: -2
I will not show off.
Submitted by electrictoothsyndrome (user info) at 2004-10-18 15:10:27 EDT (#)
Ranking: 0
Recalc
Submitted by SilvrWolf (user info) at 2004-10-14 20:25:45 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
<Compliments of Bad cock contest>
Submitted by equalizer (user info) at 2004-09-14 03:28:22 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
Equalized.
Submitted by fake_bargled (user info) at 2004-09-07 19:04:10 EDT (#)
Ranking: -2
polyamorousguyaj: If there were no punishments around, do you think we would all be good?
Submitted by vengeance (user info) at 2004-08-13 22:42:33 EDT (#)
Ranking: -2
No Comment
Submitted by FetishII (user info) at 2004-08-12 19:52:36 EDT (#)
Ranking: -2
Submitted by electrictoothsyndrome (user info) at 2004-08-12 19:38:34 (#)
Ranking: -2
Hope this is what you wanted!
---
Mr. Spam man, bring some spam. My nane is electrictoothsyndrome, and I'm like the 20th to spam Fetish this month, ain't I cool?
Submitted by I_Have_a_Kristen_Fetish (user info) at 2004-08-12 19:45:44 EDT (#)
Ranking: -2
Submitted by electrictoothsyndrome (user info) at 2004-08-12 19:38:34 (#)
Ranking: -2
Hope this is what you wanted!
---
Better make sure you spam them all, I'm not missing a one, bitch!
Submitted by electrictoothsyndrome (user info) at 2004-07-13 18:59:56 EDT (#)
Ranking: 0
"step into my office, baby! Wanna give you the job." - B&S
Submitted by electrictoothsyndrome (user info) at 2004-07-13 18:57:54 EDT (#)
Ranking: 0
Oh My Godhead! FilthyAssistant, the object of my deepest desires has favorably reviwed one of my posts.
Submitted by FilthyAssistant (user info) at 2004-07-10 21:58:37 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
Nicely done, I enjoyed this.
Submitted by Ainkara (user info) at 2004-05-25 05:30:21 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
Me likey...
Submitted by mystiamoon (user info) at 2004-05-25 05:24:00 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
I liked it.
Submitted by AlwaysAnEagle (user info) at 2004-05-25 00:14:59 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
Great first post.
I inexplicably cried a little over this. Although it is an exceptionally emotional day, this was a very good piece.
Submitted by youarsoghey (user info) at 2004-05-24 23:48:37 EDT (#)
Ranking: 1
This was pretty good, but work on it a little. Keep posting.
Submitted by SoxSexSax (user info) at 2004-05-24 23:12:11 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
I thought the prose was overly wordy in places, but I generally enjoyed it. I especially like the way you construct dialogue, in an almost Tolkien fashion. I'd have preferred the starting verse to have a consistent rhyme scheme however. But it was good, good enough to get a +2.