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"The Children": The Tale Of A World Governed By Fate |
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My own personal creation, something I've been working on-and-off on for nearly a year now. (Maybe more, but as far as I remember it's been at least since last summer.) This is my one pride and joy as it's the only story I've ever written that I've managed to keep myself entertained with long enough to expand it. The story begins in a world similar to our own, differing only in a single event that brought forth a new race of beings to the Earth. These sentient beings, which bare a remarkable resemblance to the various dipictions of dragons from myth and legend, were released from beneath the crust of the Earth during a sureal world wide earthquake that shook loose the very foundations of the planet, leaving gapping fissures in the earth from which these dragons then escaped into the world. These beings of all shape, size, intelligence, and voice, made contact with human society following their escape from the Earth's core, for the purpose of seeking out a single human who would serve as their "Pupa". In latin the base for the feminine, first declension, noun; "Pupa" translates as both "doll", and "small ghost". The "Small ghost" translation being a reference to the ghastly color and translucency of bug larvae, which are pale white grub like maggots. Then of course the English term "Pupa" refers to the transitional state of an insect during metamorphosis. The crysalist or cacoon of a butterfly or moth is an example of a pupa. So to use the term "Pupa" for the humans has an implication of doll, ghost-like, and transitional symbolism. Something I thought was very appropriate for what the human race is in store for in my story.)
The sentient dragonic race calls themselves "The Children", though the children of what most will either cliam to have forgotten, or feign ignorance. The first arc of the story is the introductory phase. (In writing this I sought to format the plot much like an anime series. So as in most, the begining is a short string of filler episodes that have little to no connection and eventually end with the introduction of the initial plot line.) This short arc encompasses the introduction of the world, main characters, situation influencing the sotry, and multiple supporting cast that would likely return in the third arc.
The first arc is shortest and dullest, the second however is where things pick up. The second arc fills in details on just why the two main characters, Adien and Gabriel, are living on the road. It turns out that there's a certain person that they need to find, and their journey takes them all over as a outbreak of violence and crime sweeps the world. The man, as it turns out is their run away father, who left their mother still pregnant with Gabriel fourteen years ago. They track him down across several cities, encountering renegade kids and their "Children" who have fallen prey to the bloodlust epidemic. Among their encounters they meet a young girl, also searching for her runaway father, and in a shocking discovery it turns out that she is only several months younger than Gabriel, and as it turns out she is infact the boys' half-sister. With more determination than ever the three now set out to find their father.
Fending for their lives the three finally track their father down to a small city on another continent. Settling in the suburbs outside the city, the boys make periodic runs into the city to search for information, before the busy police force sweeps through to try and fend off the uprising gangs of kids and teens fallen to the epidemic. Finally the three are permitted into the local school they enrolled in to keep a low profile, upon entering the town. But as it turns out the principle is actually their father.
Having become frustrated with their ignorant focus on the city when he was living casually in the surburbs the whole time, Adrien beings to exhibit signs of mental break down. The three chidlren carry on their quest as they work their way into their father's office to confront him with the truth of why he left home 15 years ago. Confronting their father it is revealed that he has in fact been deceptively impregnating women over the past 15 years all in search of creating an offspring. As it turns out every human's elemental property is genetic, and so this man that calls himself their father has been trying desperatly to create a daughter balanced betwee light and dark in order to resurect an ancient deity. From here the main story cuts away to the father's explaination of the past.
In the past the universe was a void, but within it existed deital beings, each with unique elemental powers. As time grew so did the minds of these deities, like children. At first they only entertained themselves with wonderous creations of stars and planets, but of all the siblings two discovered love and gave birth to the universe's first life. These two were the deities of light and dark. They scattered the planets with lifeforms fit to live upon them, but their skills drew anger from their jealous siblings and soon the others were the first to discover anger. In fits of rage the other deities turned on those of light and dark, and while fleeing to the furthest edge of the universe, cloaked in shadow, where even their sibling could not reach them, the light deity was injured. For the first time the ageless dark deity realized the limitations of his, his siblings', and his lovers' lives. Filled with desperation he created a being that even the deities themselves could not contend against... He created "The Children".
Then healing his beloved light deity's wounds with the limbs of a dragon the two took revenge on their siblings, however the army of dragons were too powerful and the siblings, light, dark, and all others were pushed back, until they used their collective powers to seal the dragons' bodies away in a planet made from all their powers combined, and that planet was Earth. They poured their last energy into the planet inorder to make it strong enough to contain the dragons. However, there was more, to ensure that the dragons would never be resurected, the light and dark deties created new life forms, made to be less powerful and durable than the dragons. These were the humans, and within each human a dragon's spirit was locked away. And everytime a human dies that dragon's soul circulates into the next born life, forever ensuring that the dragons' souls would not make it back to their bodies. But alas, mankind was flawed. In their search of power and technology they withered away the natural elements that held the planet's minding together, and killed in numbers too vast to replace, until bit and pieces of the dragons' souls managed to get back to them, and the planet's seal grew weak enough that it could be broken.
As time goes on, prolonged exposure of a human to their "Child" will allow the child to absorb more and more fo their soul until they regain their godly strength. But as it turns out, among the many scattered souls, the deities also dwelled. And the father's ultimate goalwas to find, or create the one woman balanced between light and dark, capable of harnessing the powers of lightand dark to rebirth the dargon army. And as it turns out, a strong minded person can change the tide over the "Chidlren" and take the soul back in full, as well as take on the dragon's physical features, until the dragon itself ceases to exist. All in all, the fatehr turns out to be a half-dragon psycho path intent on ruling over all humanity by raising an army of souless dragons. In a gruelling fight Gabe is injured, and as it turns out he and Adrien are the direct reincarnations of the Light and Dark deities, (thus leading to alot of implied yaoi/incest...) Gabriel is healed by Adrien, at the cost of Gabe's "Child" Abel, and the two fuse to combat their father. As it turns out the two brothers can now fuse with their dragons.
However, there is more to the story that the fatehr didn't know, and that leads us to the 3rd arc, which involves a 2nd generation of deities that dictate the destinies of mankind. Also, this will reintroduce some older characters reincarnations of other 1st generation deities who also leanr to fuse with their "Children". At this point I've not gone into any serious detail, but the way it looks mankind is falling into chaos, most dragons are becoming more intelligent and leaving their human "Pupa" as couless shells, while smarter and often more devious humans are over powering their "Chidlren" and absorbing them to become much more powerful threats. The details on the first and second generation deities leads to the incorporation of fate, which turns out to look alot like the norse myth of Ragnarok in which the outcome of the battle of the gods is already foretold and everyone knows who kills who, it then just becomes a matter of fulfilling destiny or fighting vainly against it.
ye sand I'm crayz and I somehow doubt anyone will read this. but whatever, now I've got it down somewhere so I can marvel at it alone if I must.
 The Man in the Gimp Suit · Fri Jun 23, 2006 @ 09:46pm · 0 Comments |
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Blood Red Dreamer's "Myth Of The Moment": April |
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The Fall Of The House Of Usher
By Edgar Allen Poe
"His heart a lute string tight;
As soon as one touches it, it resounds."
-"Le Refus", Jean de Beranger.
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Son coeur est un luth suspendu;
Sitot qu'on le touche il resonne.
During the whole of a dull, dark, and soundless day in the autumn of the year, when the clouds hung oppressively low in the heavens, had been passing alone, on horseback, through a singularly dreary tract of country; and at length found myself, as the shades of the evening drew on, within view of the melancholy House of Usher. I know not how it was --but, with the first glimpse of the building, a sense of insufferable gloom pervaded my spirit. I say insufferable; for the feeling was unrelieved by any of that half-pleasurable, because poetic, sentiment, with which the mind usually receives even the sternest natural images of the desolate or terrible. I looked upon the scene before me --upon the mere house, and the simple landscape features of the domain --upon the bleak walls --upon the vacant eye-like windows --upon a few rank sedges --and upon a few white trunks of decayed trees --with an utter depression of soul which I can compare to no earthly sensation more properly than to the after-dream of the reveller upon opium --the bitter lapse into everyday life-the hideous dropping off of the reveller upon opium --the bitter lapse into everyday life --the hideous dropping off of the veil. There was an iciness, a sinking, a sickening of the heart --an unredeemed dreariness of thought which no goading of the imagination could torture into aught of the sublime. What was it --I paused to think --what was it that so unnerved me in the contemplation of the House of Usher? It was a mystery all insoluble; nor could I grapple with the shadowy fancies that crowded upon me as I pondered. I was forced to fall back upon the unsatisfactory conclusion, that while, beyond doubt, there are combinations of very simple natural objects which have the power of thus affecting us, still the analysis of this power lies among considerations beyond our depth. It was possible, I reflected, that a mere different arrangement of the particulars of the scene, of the details of the picture, would be sufficient to modify, or perhaps to annihilate its capacity for sorrowful impression; and, acting upon this idea, I reined my horse to the precipitous brink of a black and lurid tarn that lay in unruffled lustre by the dwelling, and gazed down --but with a shudder even more thrilling than before --upon the remodelled and inverted images of the gray sedge, and the ghastly tree-stems, and the vacant and eye-like windows. Nevertheless, in this mansion of gloom I now proposed to myself a sojourn of some weeks. Its proprietor, Roderick Usher, had been one of my boon companions in boyhood; but many years had elapsed since our last meeting. A letter, however, had lately reached me in a distant part of the country --a letter from him --which, in its wildly importunate nature, had admitted of no other than a personal reply. The MS. gave evidence of nervous agitation. The writer spoke of acute bodily illness --of a mental disorder which oppressed him --and of an earnest desire to see me, as his best, and indeed his only personal friend, with a view of attempting, by the cheerfulness of my society, some alleviation of his malady. It was the manner in which all this, and much more, was said --it the apparent heart that went with his request --which allowed me no room for hesitation; and I accordingly obeyed forthwith what I still considered a very singular summons.
Although, as boys, we had been even intimate associates, yet really knew little of my friend. His reserve had been always excessive and habitual. I was aware, however, that his very ancient family had been noted, time out of mind, for a peculiar sensibility of temperament, displaying itself, through long ages, in many works of exalted art, and manifested, of late, in repeated deeds of munificent yet unobtrusive charity, as well as in a passionate devotion to the intricacies, perhaps even more than to the orthodox and easily recognisable beauties, of musical science. I had learned, too, the very remarkable fact, that the stem of the Usher race, all time-honoured as it was, had put forth, at no period, any enduring branch; in other words, that the entire family lay in the direct line of descent, and had always, with very trifling and very temporary variation, so lain. It was this deficiency, I considered, while running over in thought the perfect keeping of the character of the premises with the accredited character of the people, and while speculating upon the possible influence which the one, in the long lapse of centuries, might have exercised upon the other --it was this deficiency, perhaps, of collateral issue, and the consequent undeviating transmission, from sire to son, of the patrimony with the name, which had, at length, so identified the two as to merge the original title of the estate in the quaint and equivocal appellation of the "House of Usher" --an appellation which seemed to include, in the minds of the peasantry who used it, both the family and the family mansion.
I have said that the sole effect of my somewhat childish experiment --that of looking down within the tarn --had been to deepen the first singular impression. There can be no doubt that the consciousness of the rapid increase of my superstition --for why should I not so term it? --served mainly to accelerate the increase itself. Such, I have long known, is the paradoxical law of all sentiments having terror as a basis. And it might have been for this reason only, that, when I again uplifted my eyes to the house itself, from its image in the pool, there grew in my mind a strange fancy --a fancy so ridiculous, indeed, that I but mention it to show the vivid force of the sensations which oppressed me. I had so worked upon my imagination as really to believe that about the whole mansion and domain there hung an atmosphere peculiar to themselves and their immediate vicinity-an atmosphere which had no affinity with the air of heaven, but which had reeked up from the decayed trees, and the gray wall, and the silent tarn --a pestilent and mystic vapour, dull, sluggish, faintly discernible, and leaden-hued.
Shaking off from my spirit what must have been a dream, I scanned more narrowly the real aspect of the building. Its principal feature seemed to be that of an excessive antiquity. The discoloration of ages had been great. Minute fungi overspread the whole exterior, hanging in a fine tangled web-work from the eaves. Yet all this was apart from any extraordinary dilapidation. No portion of the masonry had fallen; and there appeared to be a wild inconsistency between its still perfect adaptation of parts, and the crumbling condition of the individual stones. In this there was much that reminded me of the specious totality of old wood-work which has rotted for long years in some neglected vault, with no disturbance from the breath of the external air. Beyond this indication of extensive decay, however, the fabric gave little token of instability. Perhaps the eye of a scrutinising observer might have discovered a barely perceptible fissure, which, extending from the roof of the building in front, made its way down the wall in a zigzag direction, until it became lost in the sullen waters of the tarn.
Noticing these things, I rode over a short causeway to the house. A servant in waiting took my horse, and I entered the Gothic archway of the hall. A valet, of stealthy step, thence conducted me, in silence, through many dark and intricate passages in my progress to the studio of his master. Much that I encountered on the way contributed, I know not how, to heighten the vague sentiments of which I have already spoken. While the objects around me --while the carvings of the ceilings, the sombre tapestries of the walls, the ebon blackness of the floors, and the phantasmagoric armorial trophies which rattled as I strode, were but matters to which, or to such as which, I had been accustomed from my infancy --while I hesitated not to acknowledge how familiar was all this --I still wondered to find how unfamiliar were the fancies which ordinary images were stirring up. On one of the staircases, I met the physician of the family. His countenance, I thought, wore a mingled expression of low cunning and perplexity. He accosted me with trepidation and passed on. The valet now threw open a door and ushered me into the presence of his master. The room in which I found myself was very large and lofty. The windows were long, narrow, and pointed, and at so vast a distance from the black oaken floor as to be altogether inaccessible from within. Feeble gleams of encrimsoned light made their way through the trellised panes, and served to render sufficiently distinct the more prominent objects around the eye, however, struggled in vain to reach the remoter angles of the chamber, or the recesses of the vaulted and fretted ceiling. Dark draperies hung upon the walls. The general furniture was profuse, comfortless, antique, and tattered. Many books and musical instruments lay scattered about, but failed to give any vitality to the scene. I felt that I breathed an atmosphere of sorrow. An air of stern, deep, and irredeemable gloom hung over and pervaded all.
Upon my entrance, Usher arose from a sofa on which he had been lying at full length, and greeted me with a vivacious warmth which had much in it, I at first thought, of an overdone cordiality --of the constrained effort of the ennuye man of the world. A glance, however, at his countenance, convinced me of his perfect sincerity. We sat down; and for some moments, while he spoke not, I gazed upon him with a feeling half of pity, half of awe. Surely, man had never before so terribly altered, in so brief a period, as had Roderick Usher! It was with difficulty that I could bring myself to admit the identity of the wan being before me with the companion of my early boyhood. Yet the character of his face had been at all times remarkable. A cadaverousness of complexion; an eye large, liquid, and luminous beyond comparison; lips somewhat thin and very pallid, but of a surpassingly beautiful curve; a nose of a delicate Hebrew model, but with a breadth of nostril unusual in similar formations; a finely moulded chin, speaking, in its want of prominence, of a want of moral energy; hair of a more than web-like softness and tenuity; these features, with an inordinate expansion above the regions of the temple, made up altogether a countenance not easily to be forgotten. And now in the mere exaggeration of the prevailing character of these features, and of the expression they were wont to convey, lay so much of change that I doubted to whom I spoke. The now ghastly pallor of the skin, and the now miraculous lustre of the eve, above all things startled and even awed me. The silken hair, too, had been suffered to grow all unheeded, and as, in its wild gossamer texture, it floated rather than fell about the face, I could not, even with effort, connect its Arabesque expression with any idea of simple humanity.
In the manner of my friend I was at once struck with an incoherence --an inconsistency; and I soon found this to arise from a series of feeble and futile struggles to overcome an habitual trepidancy --an excessive nervous agitation. For something of this nature I had indeed been prepared, no less by his letter, than by reminiscences of certain boyish traits, and by conclusions deduced from his peculiar physical conformation and temperament. His action was alternately vivacious and sullen. His voice varied rapidly from a tremulous indecision (when the animal spirits seemed utterly in abeyance) to that species of energetic concision --that abrupt, weighty, unhurried, and hollow-sounding enunciation --that leaden, self-balanced and perfectly modulated guttural utterance, which may be observed in the lost drunkard, or the irreclaimable eater of opium, during the periods of his most intense excitement.
It was thus that he spoke of the object of my visit, of his earnest desire to see me, and of the solace he expected me to afford him. He entered, at some length, into what he conceived to be the nature of his malady. It was, he said, a constitutional and a family evil, and one for which he despaired to find a remedy --a mere nervous affection, he immediately added, which would undoubtedly soon pass off. It displayed itself in a host of unnatural sensations. Some of these, as he detailed them, interested and bewildered me; although, perhaps, the terms, and the general manner of the narration had their weight. He suffered much from a morbid acuteness of the senses; the most insipid food was alone endurable; he could wear only garments of certain texture; the odours of all flowers were oppressive; his eyes were tortured by even a faint light; and there were but peculiar sounds, and these from stringed instruments, which did not inspire him with horror.
To an anomalous species of terror I found him a bounden slave. "I shall perish," said he, "I must perish in this deplorable folly. Thus, thus, and not otherwise, shall I be lost. I dread the events of the future, not in themselves, but in their results. I shudder at the thought of any, even the most trivial, incident, which may operate upon this intolerable agitation of soul. I have, indeed, no abhorrence of danger, except in its absolute effect --in terror. In this unnerved-in this pitiable condition --I feel that the period will sooner or later arrive when I must abandon life and reason together, in some struggle with the grim phantasm, FEAR."
I learned, moreover, at intervals, and through broken and equivocal hints, another singular feature of his mental condition. He was enchained by certain superstitious impressions in regard to the dwelling which he tenanted, and whence, for many years, he had never ventured forth --in regard to an influence whose supposititious force was conveyed in terms too shadowy here to be re-stated --an influence which some peculiarities in the mere form and substance of his family mansion, had, by dint of long sufferance, he said, obtained over his spirit-an effect which the physique of the gray walls and turrets, and of the dim tarn into which they all looked down, had, at length, brought about upon the morale of his existence.
He admitted, however, although with hesitation, that much of the peculiar gloom which thus afflicted him could be traced to a more natural and far more palpable origin --to the severe and long-continued illness --indeed to the evidently approaching dissolution-of a tenderly beloved sister --his sole companion for long years --his last and only relative on earth. "Her decease," he said, with a bitterness which I can never forget, "would leave him (him the hopeless and the frail) the last of the ancient race of the Ushers." While he spoke, the lady Madeline (for so was she called) passed slowly through a remote portion of the apartment, and, without having noticed my presence, disappeared. I regarded her with an utter astonishment not unmingled with dread --and yet I found it impossible to account for such feelings. A sensation of stupor oppressed me, as my eyes followed her retreating steps. When a door, at length, closed upon her, my glance sought instinctively and eagerly the countenance of the brother --but he had buried his face in his hands, and I could only perceive that a far more than ordinary wanness had overspread the emaciated fingers through which trickled many passionate tears.
The disease of the lady Madeline had long baffled the skill of her physicians. A settled apathy, a gradual wasting away of the person, and frequent although transient affections of a partially cataleptical character, were the unusual diagnosis. Hitherto she had steadily borne up against the pressure of her malady, and had not betaken herself finally to bed; but, on the closing in of the evening of my arrival at the house, she succumbed (as her brother told me at night with inexpressible agitation) to the prostrating power of the destroyer; and I learned that the glimpse I had obtained of her person would thus probably be the last I should obtain --that the lady, at least while living, would be seen by me no more.
For several days ensuing, her name was unmentioned by either Usher or myself: and during this period I was busied in earnest endeavours to alleviate the melancholy of my friend. We painted and read together; or I listened, as if in a dream, to the wild improvisations of his speaking guitar. And thus, as a closer and still intimacy admitted me more unreservedly into the recesses of his spirit, the more bitterly did I perceive the futility of all attempt at cheering a mind from which darkness, as if an inherent positive quality, poured forth upon all objects of the moral and physical universe, in one unceasing radiation of gloom.
I shall ever bear about me a memory of the many solemn hours I thus spent alone with the master of the House of Usher. Yet I should fail in any attempt to convey an idea of the exact character of the studies, or of the occupations, in which he involved me, or led me the way. An excited and highly distempered ideality threw a sulphureous lustre over all. His long improvised dirges will ring forever in my cars. Among other things, I hold painfully in mind a certain singular perversion and amplification of the wild air of the last waltz of Von Weber. From the paintings over which his elaborate fancy brooded, and which grew, touch by touch, into vaguenesses at which I shuddered the more thrillingly, because I shuddered knowing not why; --from these paintings (vivid as their images now are before me) I would in vain endeavour to educe more than a small portion which should lie within the compass of merely written words. By the utter simplicity, by the nakedness of his designs, he arrested and overawed attention. If ever mortal painted an idea, that mortal was Roderick Usher. For me at least --in the circumstances then surrounding me --there arose out of the pure abstractions which the hypochondriac contrived to throw upon his canvas, an intensity of intolerable awe, no shadow of which felt I ever yet in the contemplation of the certainly glowing yet too concrete reveries of Fuseli.
One of the phantasmagoric conceptions of my friend, partaking not so rigidly of the spirit of abstraction, may be shadowed forth, although feebly, in words. A small picture presented the interior of an immensely long and rectangular vault or tunnel, with low walls, smooth, white, and without interruption or device. Certain accessory points of the design served well to convey the idea that this excavation lay at an exceeding depth below the surface of the earth. No outlet was observed in any portion of its vast extent, and no torch, or other artificial source of light was discernible; yet a flood of intense rays rolled throughout, and bathed the whole in a ghastly and inappropriate splendour.
I have just spoken of that morbid condition of the auditory nerve which rendered all music intolerable to the sufferer, with the exception of certain effects of stringed instruments. It was, perhaps, the narrow limits to which he thus confined himself upon the guitar, which gave birth, in great measure, to the fantastic character of his performances. But the fervid facility of his impromptus could not be so accounted for. They must have been, and were, in the notes, as well as in the words of his wild fantasias (for he not unfrequently accompanied himself with rhymed verbal improvisations), the result of that intense mental collectedness and concentration to which I have previously alluded as observable only in particular moments of the highest artificial excitement. The words of one of these rhapsodies I have easily remembered. I was, perhaps, the more forcibly impressed with it, as he gave it, because, in the under or mystic current of its meaning, I fancied that I perceived, and for the first time, a full consciousness on the part of Usher, of the tottering of his lofty reason upon her throne. The verses, which were entitled "The Haunted Palace," ran very nearly, if not accurately, thus:
I.
In the greenest of our valleys,
By good angels tenanted,
Once fair and stately palace --
Radiant palace --reared its head.
In the monarch Thought's dominion --
It stood there!
Never seraph spread a pinion
Over fabric half so fair.
II.
Banners yellow, glorious, golden,
On its roof did float and flow;
(This --all this --was in the olden
Time long ago)
And every gentle air that dallied,
In that sweet day,
Along the ramparts plumed and pallid,
A winged odour went away.
III.
Wanderers in that happy valley
Through two luminous windows saw
Spirits moving musically
To a lute's well-tuned law,
Round about a throne, where sitting
(Porphyrogene!)
In state his glory well befitting,
The ruler of the realm was seen.
IV.
And all with pearl and ruby glowing
Was the fair palace door,
Through which came flowing, flowing, flowing
And sparkling evermore,
A troop of Echoes whose sweet duty
Was but to sing,
In voices of surpassing beauty,
The wit and wisdom of their king.
V.
But evil things, in robes of sorrow,
Assailed the monarch's high estate;
(Ah, let us mourn, for never morrow
Shall dawn upon him, desolate!)
And, round about his home, the glory
That blushed and bloomed
Is but a dim-remembered story
Of the old time entombed.
VI.
And travellers now within that valley,
Through the red-litten windows, see
Vast forms that move fantastically
To a discordant melody;
While, like a rapid ghastly river,
Through the pale door,
A hideous throng rush out forever,
And laugh --but smile no more.
I well remember that suggestions arising from this ballad led us into a train of thought wherein there became manifest an opinion of Usher's which I mention not so much on account of its novelty, (for other men have thought thus,) as on account of the pertinacity with which he maintained it. This opinion, in its general form, was that of the sentience of all vegetable things. But, in his disordered fancy, the idea had assumed a more daring character, and trespassed, under certain conditions, upon the kingdom of inorganization. I lack words to express the full extent, or the earnest abandon of his persuasion. The belief, however, was connected (as I have previously hinted) with the gray stones of the home of his forefathers. The conditions of the sentience had been here, he imagined, fulfilled in the method of collocation of these stones --in the order of their arrangement, as well as in that of the many fungi which overspread them, and of the decayed trees which stood around --above all, in the long undisturbed endurance of this arrangement, and in its reduplication in the still waters of the tarn. Its evidence --the evidence of the sentience --was to be seen, he said, (and I here started as he spoke,) in the gradual yet certain condensation of an atmosphere of their own about the waters and the walls. The result was discoverable, he added, in that silent, yet importunate and terrible influence which for centuries had moulded the destinies of his family, and which made him what I now saw him --what he was. Such opinions need no comment, and I will make none.
Our books --the books which, for years, had formed no small portion of the mental existence of the invalid --were, as might be supposed, in strict keeping with this character of phantasm. We pored together over such works as the Ververt et Chartreuse of Gresset; the Belphegor of Machiavelli; the Heaven and Hell of Swedenborg; the Subterranean Voyage of Nicholas Klimm by Holberg; the Chiromancy of Robert Flud, of Jean D'Indagine, and of De la Chambre; the Journey into the Blue Distance of Tieck; and the City of the Sun of Campanella. One favourite volume was a small octavo edition of the Directorium Inquisitorum, by the Dominican Eymeric de Gironne; and there were passages in Pomponius Mela, about the old African Satyrs and OEgipans, over which Usher would sit dreaming for hours. His chief delight, however, was found in the perusal of an exceedingly rare and curious book in quarto Gothic --the manual of a forgotten church --the Vigilae Mortuorum secundum Chorum Ecclesiae Maguntinae.
I could not help thinking of the wild ritual of this work, and of its probable influence upon the hypochondriac, when, one evening, having informed me abruptly that the lady Madeline was no more, he stated his intention of preserving her corpse for a fortnight, (previously to its final interment,) in one of the numerous vaults within the main walls of the building. The worldly reason, however, assigned for this singular proceeding, was one which I did not feel at liberty to dispute. The brother had been led to his resolution (so he told me) by consideration of the unusual character of the malady of the deceased, of certain obtrusive and eager inquiries on the part of her medical men, and of the remote and exposed situation of the burial-ground of the family. I will not deny that when I called to mind the sinister countenance of the person whom I met upon the stair case, on the day of my arrival at the house, I had no desire to oppose what I regarded as at best but a harmless, and by no means an unnatural, precaution.
At the request of Usher, I personally aided him in the arrangements for the temporary entombment. The body having been encoffined, we two alone bore it to its rest. The vault in which we placed it (and which had been so long unopened that our torches, half smothered in its oppressive atmosphere, gave us little opportunity for investigation) was small, damp, and entirely without means of admission for light; lying, at great depth, immediately beneath that portion of the building in which was my own sleeping apartment. It had been used, apparently, in remote feudal times, for the worst purposes of a donjon-keep, and, in later days, as a place of deposit for powder, or some other highly combustible substance, as a portion of its floor, and the whole interior of a long archway through which we reached it, were carefully sheathed with copper. The door, of massive iron, had been, also, similarly protected. Its immense weight caused an unusually sharp grating sound, as it moved upon its hinges.
Having deposited our mournful burden upon tressels within this region of horror, we partially turned aside the yet unscrewed lid of the coffin, and looked upon the face of the tenant. A striking similitude between the brother and sister now first arrested my attention; and Usher, divining, perhaps, my thoughts, murmured out some few words from which I learned that the deceased and himself had been twins, and that sympathies of a scarcely intelligible nature had always existed between them. Our glances, however, rested not long upon the dead --for we could not regard her unawed. The disease which had thus entombed the lady in the maturity of youth, had left, as usual in all maladies of a strictly cataleptical character, the mockery of a faint blush upon the bosom and the face, and that suspiciously lingering smile upon the lip which is so terrible in death. We replaced and screwed down the lid, and, having secured the door of iron, made our way, with toll, into the scarcely less gloomy apartments of the upper portion of the house.
And now, some days of bitter grief having elapsed, an observable change came over the features of the mental disorder of my friend. His ordinary manner had vanished. His ordinary occupations were neglected or forgotten. He roamed from chamber to chamber with hurried, unequal, and objectless step. The pallor of his countenance had assumed, if possible, a more ghastly hue --but the luminousness of his eye had utterly gone out. The once occasional huskiness of his tone was heard no more; and a tremulous quaver, as if of extreme terror, habitually characterized his utterance. There were times, indeed, when I thought his unceasingly agitated mind was labouring with some oppressive secret, to divulge which he struggled for the necessary courage. At times, again, I was obliged to resolve all into the mere inexplicable vagaries of madness, for I beheld him gazing upon vacancy for long hours, in an attitude of the profoundest attention, as if listening to some imaginary sound. It was no wonder that his condition terrified-that it infected me. I felt creeping upon me, by slow yet certain degrees, the wild influences of his own fantastic yet impressive superstitions.
It was, especially, upon retiring to bed late in the night of the seventh or eighth day after the placing of the lady Madeline within the donjon, that I experienced the full power of such feelings. Sleep came not near my couch --while the hours waned and waned away. I struggled to reason off the nervousness which had dominion over me. I endeavoured to believe that much, if not all of what I felt, was due to the bewildering influence of the gloomy furniture of the room --of the dark and tattered draperies, which, tortured into motion by the breath of a rising tempest, swayed fitfully to and fro upon the walls, and rustled uneasily about the decorations of the bed. But my efforts were fruitless. An irrepressible tremour gradually pervaded my frame; and, at length, there sat upon my very heart an incubus of utterly causeless alarm. Shaking this off with a gasp and a struggle, I uplifted myself upon the pillows, and, peering earnestly within the intense darkness of the chamber, hearkened --I know not why, except that an instinctive spirit prompted me --to certain low and indefinite sounds which came, through the pauses of the storm, at long intervals, I knew not whence. Overpowered by an intense sentiment of horror, unaccountable yet unendurable, I threw on my clothes with haste (for I felt that I should sleep no more during the night), and endeavoured to arouse myself from the pitiable condition into which I had fallen, by pacing rapidly to and fro through the apartment.
I had taken but few turns in this manner, when a light step on an adjoining staircase arrested my attention. I presently recognised it as that of Usher. In an instant afterward he rapped, with a gentle touch, at my door, and entered, bearing a lamp. His countenance was, as usual, cadaverously wan --but, moreover, there was a species of mad hilarity in his eyes --an evidently restrained hysteria in his whole demeanour. His air appalled me --but anything was preferable to the solitude which I had so long endured, and I even welcomed his presence as a relief.
"And you have not seen it?" he said abruptly, after having stared about him for some moments in silence --"you have not then seen it? --but, stay! you shall." Thus speaking, and having carefully shaded his lamp, he hurried to one of the casements, and threw it freely open to the storm.
The impetuous fury of the entering gust nearly lifted us from our feet. It was, indeed, a tempestuous yet sternly beautiful night, and one wildly singular in its terror and its beauty. A whirlwind had apparently collected its force in our vicinity; for there were frequent and violent alterations in the direction of the wind; and the exceeding density of the clouds (which hung so low as to press upon the turrets of the house) did not prevent our perceiving the life-like velocity with which they flew careering from all points against each other, without passing away into the distance. I say that even their exceeding density did not prevent our perceiving this --yet we had no glimpse of the moon or stars --nor was there any flashing forth of the lightning. But the under surfaces of the huge masses of agitated vapour, as well as all terrestrial objects immediately around us, were glowing in the unnatural light of a faintly luminous and distinctly visible gaseous exhalation which hung about and enshrouded the mansion.
"You must not --you shall not behold this!" said I, shudderingly, to Usher, as I led him, with a gentle violence, from the window to a seat. "These appearances, which bewilder you, are merely electrical phenomena not uncommon --or it may be that they have their ghastly origin in the rank miasma of the tarn. Let us close this casement; --the air is chilling and dangerous to your frame. Here is one of your favourite romances. I will read, and you shall listen; --and so we will pass away this terrible night together."
The antique volume which I had taken up was the "Mad Trist" of Sir Launcelot Canning; but I had called it a favourite of Usher's more in sad jest than in earnest; for, in truth, there is little in its uncouth and unimaginative prolixity which could have had interest for the lofty and spiritual ideality of my friend. It was, however, the only book immediately at hand; and I indulged a vague hope that the excitement which now agitated the hypochondriac, might find relief (for the history of mental disorder is full of similar anomalies) even in the extremeness of the folly which I should read. Could I have judged, indeed, by the wild over-strained air of vivacity with which he hearkened, or apparently hearkened, to the words of the tale, I might well have congratulated myself upon the success of my design.
I had arrived at that well-known portion of the story where Ethelred, the hero of the Trist, having sought in vain for peaceable admission into the dwelling of the hermit, proceeds to make good an entrance by force. Here, it will be remembered, the words of the narrative run thus:
"And Ethelred, who was by nature of a doughty heart, and who was now mighty withal, on account of the powerfulness of the wine which he had drunken, waited no longer to hold parley with the hermit, who, in sooth, was of an obstinate and maliceful turn, but, feeling the rain upon his shoulders, and fearing the rising of the tempest, uplifted his mace outright, and, with blows, made quickly room in the plankings of the door for his gauntleted hand; and now pulling there-with sturdily, he so cracked, and ripped, and tore all asunder, that the noise of the dry and hollow-sounding wood alarumed and reverberated throughout the forest."
At the termination of this sentence I started, and for a moment, paused; for it appeared to me (although I at once concluded that my excited fancy had deceived me) --it appeared to me that, from some very remote portion of the mansion, there came, indistinctly, to my ears, what might have been, in its exact similarity of character, the echo (but a stifled and dull one certainly) of the very cracking and ripping sound which Sir Launcelot had so particularly described. It was, beyond doubt, the coincidence alone which had arrested my attention; for, amid the rattling of the sashes of the casements, and the ordinary commingled noises of the still increasing storm, the sound, in itself, had nothing, surely, which should have interested or disturbed me. I continued the story:
"But the good champion Ethelred, now entering within the door, was sore enraged and amazed to perceive no signal of the maliceful hermit; but, in the stead thereof, a dragon of a scaly and prodigious demeanour, and of a fiery tongue, which sate in guard before a palace of gold, with a floor of silver; and upon the wall there hung a shield of shining brass with this legend enwritten;
Who entereth herein, a conqueror hath bin;
Who slayeth the dragon, the shield he shall win;
And Ethelred uplifted his mace, and struck upon the head of the dragon, which fell before him, and gave up his pesty breath, with a shriek so horrid and harsh, and withal so piercing, that Ethelred had fain to close his ears with his hands against the dreadful noise of it, the like whereof was never before heard."
Here again I paused abruptly, and now with a feeling of wild amazement --for there could be no doubt whatever that, in this instance, I did actually hear (although from what direction it proceeded I found it impossible to say) a low and apparently distant, but harsh, protracted, and most unusual screaming or grating sound --the exact counterpart of what my fancy had already conjured up for the dragon's unnatural shriek as described by the romancer.
Oppressed, as I certainly was, upon the occurrence of the second and most extraordinary coincidence, by a thousand conflicting sensations, in which wonder and extreme terror were predominant, I still retained sufficient presence of mind to avoid exciting, by any observation, the sensitive nervousness of my companion. I was by no means certain that he had noticed the sounds in question; although, assuredly, a strange alteration had, during the last few minutes, taken place in his demeanour. From a position fronting my own, he had gradually brought round his chair, so as to sit with his face to the door of the chamber; and thus I could but partially perceive his features, although I saw that his lips trembled as if he were murmuring inaudibly. His head had dropped upon his breast --yet I knew that he was not asleep, from the wide and rigid opening of the eye as I caught a glance of it in profile. The motion of his body, too, was at variance with this idea --for he rocked from side to side with a gentle yet constant and uniform sway. Having rapidly taken notice of all this, I resumed the narrative of Sir Launcelot, which thus proceeded:
"And now, the champion, having escaped from the terrible fury of the dragon, bethinking himself of the brazen shield, and of the breaking up of the enchantment which was upon it, removed the carcass from out of the way before him, and approached valorously over the silver pavement of the castle to where the shield was upon the wall; which in sooth tarried not for his full coming, but fell down at his feet upon the silver floor, with a mighty great and terrible ringing sound."
No sooner had these syllables passed my lips, than --as if a shield of brass had indeed, at the moment, fallen heavily upon a floor of silver became aware of a distinct, hollow, metallic, and clangorous, yet apparently muffled reverberation. Completely unnerved, I leaped to my feet; but the measured rocking movement of Usher was undisturbed. I rushed to the chair in which he sat. His eyes were bent fixedly before him, and throughout his whole countenance there reigned a stony rigidity. But, as I placed my hand upon his shoulder, there came a strong shudder over his whole person; a sickly smile quivered about his lips; and I saw that he spoke in a low, hurried, and gibbering murmur, as if unconscious of my presence. Bending closely over him, I at length drank in the hideous import of his words.
"Not hear it? --yes, I hear it, and have heard it. Long --long --long --many minutes, many hours, many days, have I heard it --yet I dared not --oh, pity me, miserable wretch that I am! --I dared not --I dared not speak! We have put her living in the tomb! Said I not that my senses were acute? I now tell you that I heard her first feeble movements in the hollow coffin. I heard them --many, many days ago --yet I dared not --I dared not speak! And now --to-night --Ethelred --ha! ha! --the breaking of the hermit's door, and the death-cry of the dragon, and the clangour of the shield! --say, rather, the rending of her coffin, and the grating of the iron hinges of her prison, and her struggles within the coppered archway of the vault! Oh whither shall I fly? Will she not be here anon? Is she not hurrying to upbraid me for my haste? Have I not heard her footstep on the stair? Do I not distinguish that heavy and horrible beating of her heart? MADMAN!" here he sprang furiously to his feet, and shrieked out his syllables, as if in the effort he were giving up his soul --"MADMAN! I TELL YOU THAT SHE NOW STANDS WITHOUT THE DOOR!"
As if in the superhuman energy of his utterance there had been found the potency of a spell --the huge antique panels to which the speaker pointed, threw slowly back, upon the instant, ponderous and ebony jaws. It was the work of the rushing gust --but then without those doors there DID stand the lofty and enshrouded figure of the lady Madeline of Usher. There was blood upon her white robes, and the evidence of some bitter struggle upon every portion of her emaciated frame. For a moment she remained trembling and reeling to and fro upon the threshold, then, with a low moaning cry, fell heavily inward upon the person of her brother, and in her violent and now final death-agonies, bore him to the floor a corpse, and a victim to the terrors he had anticipated.
From that chamber, and from that mansion, I fled aghast. The storm was still abroad in all its wrath as I found myself crossing the old causeway. Suddenly there shot along the path a wild light, and I turned to see whence a gleam so unusual could wi have issued; for the vast house and its shadows were alone behind me. The radiance was that of the full, setting, and blood-red moon which now shone vividly through that once barely-discernible fissure of which I have before spoken as extending from the roof of the building, in a zigzag direction, to the base. While I gazed, this fissure rapidly widened --there came a fierce breath of the whirlwind --the entire orb of the satellite burst at once upon my sight --my brain reeled as I saw the mighty walls rushing asunder --there was a long tumultuous shouting sound like the voice of a thousand waters --and the deep and dank tarn at my feet closed sullenly and silently over the fragments of the "House of Usher."
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END
The Man in the Gimp Suit · Mon Apr 24, 2006 @ 05:24am · 2 Comments |
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Blood Red Dreamer's "Myth Of The Moment": March |
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11:30 on a thursday night and the sixth consecutive night of an odd insomnia that I some how stumbled upon. Last week I simply wasn't tired by the time I usually went ot bed and so I figured I'd lay and wait, come 5:00am, 1 hour before I had to get up for school, I was still awake and not a bit tired. I've used the extra timet o do homework, finish projects and essays, I've managed to finish two weeks of homework in nearly all my classes. Along with this insomnia I've not eaten, need to eat, nor had any desire to eat since the same time. I have no idea what caused this, when it might stop, or what effects it may have once it wears off. I've found myself tracking down any and nearlly all people whom I had otherwise forgotten about and starting random conversation with whatever thoughts pop into my head. Mid-terms start next week so I'm hoping that if this string of sleepless nights doesn't effect my performance of the exams and- I just lost my train of thought. Oh well, I guess I'll do something else, I'm running out of stuff to type. Just thought I'd type up something since I haven't done anything in this dumb journal since my dog died. Oh, and speaking of which I've somehow been present for the death of 3 people in the past week. One was a person I saw get hit by a car who later showed up in the obituary as having been killed on impact, I saw a friend of mine collapse in her home and get picked up by an ambulance, she was unconcious teh whole time and died shortly after reaching the hosptial. And the last was a person I don't know very well who lives a few blocks down the street who fell from his roof onto a rock that severed his spine. Oh, that and last weekend I got into a fight with some jerk in the foodcourt of a nearby mall. In all honesty it was kinda fun since I've been a bit edgy and jumpy since the first night I couldn't sleep. Since the fight I've been less jittery and I've had alot less spare energy. Ok, this time I really am out of stuff to say and I really am going to go do something else cause I'm getting alot more bored now. I'd break this block of text into more reasonable chuncks but that'd be annoying and I don't feel like it. I might come to edit it later, but likey not. Ok now I really am going to shut up and do something else. Good day to you sir or madam.
The Man in the Gimp Suit · Fri Feb 24, 2006 @ 04:39am · 0 Comments |
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No, I'm not here to rant about MLK Day, I respect the holiday for it's resistance to comercialism and for the works of Dr.Martin Luther King Jr. However, what I am here to say is that my dog died today. I know it sounds childish, but he died today and I cried for him, and I still do. Hear me out, I feel I've learned something from this experience and I hope it might show you something about the value of life.
I'd had this dog since I was two years old and I first moved into the house I live in now. He was perfectly fine this morning, but then he began to gag, like he was trying to throw something up. Nothing happened, but out of concern I tried to get him to drink some water. He refused. I led him outside, thinking, perhaps he'd need to use the bathroom, but as I watched in a short sleeve tee-shirt and jeans from my back deck I realized he was not only making the gagging noises again but he was couching up an especially sticky saliva. I went to make sure he was ok, but as I got close he looked up at me with terribly sad looking eyes. I hesitated just long enough for him to start moving again. His legs, I noticed, would cross and shake as he walked, as if it were taking all his energy just to do so. I folowed him and he led me through the front and back yards, circling the house. He stopped when we'd reached the point we started at and looked at me again. He walked up to me and rested his head against my leg as I rubbed his ears. His breathing was rather heavy and his stomach seemed bloated. I was hesitant to leave him alone but I quickly ran into my house and called my mother at work, she told me to watch him and hope nothing bad happened.
As I left the house again I grabbed a hoodie and gloves to cover my now blue and purple arms and hands. With my nose running I made it outside to find my dog slowly trudging up a small mound in my neighbor's yard, just across the property line. I went over to him and helped him up. he thanked me with another of his depressing gazes as his trembling legs gave way under him and he sloppily laid himself down. He got back up almost imediatly, but only on his front legs and dragged his body under a nearby miniture willow. He stopped to rest and then got up on his forelegs again and turned to face the sun. That was around 9:30am this morning. I did want to disturb him, fearing that trying to mvoe him back into the house would serve to further worsen his tired and painful condition, so I stood leaning against my neighbor's house and watched over him.
I stood there in the cold for over two hours before my dog turned himself, with much struggle and painful whimpering, towards me and looked at me for a moment before turning to the house. At first I thought he ment try and head back into the house, but he did nothing more. I slwoly walked in teh direction of the house, putting my self in his line of sight as I got farther away. He seemed to nod his head for a second but then rested it down on his paws. I rushed inside and grabbed a wireless phone, which I brought back out into the front yard, where I could keep and eye on the dog. I called my mother and confirmed the severity of his condition. She in turn called a vet and in twenty minutes she'd pulled into the driveway. We got him in the car and to the vet. We concluded with the vet that the best course of action would be to put him down, concidering that after the neccessary corrective surgery for his condition he'd be in poorer conditions and as an older dog he'd be living only on borrowed time. And so he was given an injection that put him to sleep in a few seconds, and approximatly a minute later his heart ceased function.
Normally I have little respect for sentimentallity, and as bad as I felt I honestly didn't think I'd cry. In the begining I didn't, but after watching him for those two hours under the willow I started to tear up. By the time he'd fallen asleep from the injection I had progressivly reached a state where I was bawling my eyes out. Now as irrelivant as this is to anyone reading this I've come to a strangely backstep of a conclusion in my view of the world. Having witnessed the death of two of the most beloved people in my life when I was seven I felt confident in my ideas because they were seemingly written in stone. To watch a person to love die is a terrible thing, and something that no person should ever whitness. For some time I stuck with that idea, however I realized that with all the things that come with mourning a person's loss, people are often tempted and rawn into using that tradgedy as a cheap excuse to avoid responsiblity. I agreed with myself that sentimentality and emotions concerning such circumstances is a thing that should be beared on the inside, without the opportunity to effect the outside world. To manipulate a person or any valued life is a disguisting crime of morality for which there can never be repentance for. And for a long time I also felt that that was a reasonable conclusion. However having seen the companion of my consious life suffer and die before me I've come to yet another conclusion. While abusive mourning is unforgivably brainless, to leave a fading life without so much as a sentiment or show of emotion is unforgivably heartless. For the first time today I've cried. Tearing up and watery eyes aside, today was the first time in nearly 8 years that I really truely cried. And I did so over an animal. Some might find that to be stupid or pointless, weak or fragile, but I'm glad I could be with himin his final moments and in all honesty I value his life more than those of most people I know.
A life is only as valuable as the person who views that life is stingy, but when a human being refuses to take responsiblity for their own life they loose their place in the world. This however makes them no less valuable, simply less impressive. To value life may be the weak sentiment of a bleeding heart, but to see life as worthless is the thought of an arrogant fledgling who boasts of a clouds ugliness beofre leaving its nest. Life is precious in all forms and I believe that the worst thing a living being could suffer is to die alone, with the last vision of nothing but the air in front of them.
Thinking back I failed to mention that in an odd feeling of ill fortune, when I first felt that this day would be the last time I'd see him, I removed his collar. I say it was strange, because my arms seemed to reach for the collar before th thought even rose into my conciousness. I removed the collar with an urgancy as if I was afraid to see him die with it on. Even now, I can't honestly disern what reasoning could have driven me to so desperatly remove the collar when I did. In fact, at this moment, everything seems as if it were a terrible dream, but it wasn't. I think that perhaps my reason for taking off the collar was out of poetic justice. That maybe I thought that by removing the collar, that should he die then and there he'd not have been bound in his final moments by something as trivial as ranks of master and pet, because not once in my life had I ever viewed him as anything less than a friend. Speaking of ill fortune, I had another strange need for poetic drama and just retrieved soemthing from my bedroom trashcan. It's a fortune that I'd gotten from a fortune-cookie I'd eaten just before I let the dog out for the last time. It reads:
Quote: Nothing is impossible
to a willing heart.
Lucky Numbers 3, 14, 18, 33, 34, 37
Now as stupid as it seems, I feel like there ought to be some meaning to this. At this moment; 6:06pm GMT I'm about topen another forutne-cookie. Call me stupid or superstitious if you will, but I feel like there should be relivance to what is said in these, not because I believe in fortune-cookies, but because I believe in preordinance, and divine irony. That for soem reason or another, something will come out of everything that has happened today. And the second fortune-cookie reads;
Quote: A sound mind and healthy body bring
many happy events to your family.
Lucky Numbers 23, 26, 29, 33, 36, 38
Funny, my belief in divine irony has rewarded me with a rather ironic fortune. Should that be a true statment, then it's converse may also prove correct in saying that for a lack of sound mind and/or healthy body this event ever took place. A oddly fitting concept, seeing as while the reason for his suffering was clearly identified, we could never find out exactly what had prompted it. A theory I'd actully offered for explaination was that he'd over exerted himself. For you see, when my family leaves my dog alone in the house we lock him in the basement, so that in his old age, he doesn't make any mess in the house. However it's a nice basement, and there's nothing particularly wrong about it, but he dreads loneliness. He hates being put into the basement and that morning just before all this had happened I'd had a dentist's apointment. In his old age and in an anxious fit of panic I thought maybe he'd injured himself. However the idea was farfetched, and still is.
We'll, I've wasted enough time and I've homework to do for tomorrow's classes, so I'll end this here. I thank anyone who sat down to read through all of this unorganized mess, and I apologize for any spelling or gramitical mistakes, I've not stopped my typing nor re read anything sicne I began typing this nearly an hour ago. Again, I thank you for your time and I hope you've found some kind of leason to be learned in here, and I hope that you can continue to, or learn to value life, even if only a little bit more than before, having read this. Thank you.
The Man in the Gimp Suit · Mon Jan 16, 2006 @ 11:15pm · 0 Comments |
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Great... my annual winter cold, just what I've been waiting for. This same damn cold I get every year in December is the only thing I trust to tell me that Christmas is really coming and frankly it pisses me off. The last thing I need is to go to school for the next two weeks hearing nothing but s**t about what mommy and daddy are getting their spoiled little brats for Christmas. And the carols are getting on my nerves already. If I had a penny for every time I cringed at the word Christmas I'd be living ona yacht miles off the coast of Boston, totally secluded from the rest of this stupid country and it's sorry heap of meat that it calls a populace. Then I'd only have to deal with people while refueling and docking for provisions. But we all have our unatainable dreams, don't we? I guess global genocide is just one of mine. Well, if you've actually read this thanks for the time, now go do something meaningful with your life, cause sure as hell not enough people do.
The Man in the Gimp Suit · Thu Dec 08, 2005 @ 06:17pm · 0 Comments |
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Great, just great... From one meaningless comertialized holiday right on to the next. Honestly, this is one of the main reasons I hate late-autumn/winter. Halloween annoys the crap out of me, thanksgiving is just plain disguisting that people have the nerve to gourge themselves on more food than they could possibly need, and don't even get me strated on Christmas anytime before december 20th. Thanksgiving, the most disturbingly holiday summing up American ethics. Spend time and money on food, nothing but food. Comeup with some s**t to "give thanks" only to return to a normal American hyperconsumerist lifestyle the next day. Do the Americans really need another reason to waste otherwise potentially well spent money? I won't rant as much as I'm often tempted to out of impatience and to spare anyone actually reading this from having to listen to my babble. But in the name of being a good person and a fair sport I'll wish you all a happy thanksgiving.
The Man in the Gimp Suit · Thu Nov 17, 2005 @ 12:21am · 0 Comments |
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