A/N: This has little relation to the plot…if any…just a rambling piece. So…yeah.
Bottles Of Dust
What he'd become.
Hunched over, surrounded by white. White, and sealed. His own mind? A far more effective cell. Not even a cell…
His mind was a bottle.
Cracked, grimy. But still firmly shut. The bottle opener, inside. Back, forth. Back, forth. It rocked, with him still in it. Staring, staring. At the distorted images through the concave glass. Convex to others, who stared; stared. At him. He merely saw things differently…
Merely. Dust caking over; he made no effort to brush it away. Falling, still falling. Like grey snow, obscuring his vision of sanity. Like butterflies, drifting down. False hope, of escape. Collecting, without his aid, at the bottom. Butterflies, butterflies. He was lying amongst butterflies, as the bottle rocked. Back, forth. Dead butterflies.
Where did they come from? Nowhere…Can particles be created, here, where there was nothing? A faint murmur, from one of the many bottles inside the larger one. Bottles, where he'd stored information. Hoping, hoping to keep it in his mind forever. Where he'd sealed sanity, too. And it'd worked, of sorts. Their contents crumbled, amid the falling butterflies. The bottles stayed, rocking in a mocking parody. The murmur persisted. Reason. Sense. Think. The voice…who's? His own? Faded into a mere echo. An echo of his reasoning, as it, too, slipped from his fingers, in a cloud of grey butterflies.
Sanity, all bottled up. Safe. Was it still there, even? He couldn't tell, through the dust. Made by his sanity, long since turned to ashes? Ashes to ashes, dust to dust.
Ashes to butterflies. They flitted around, questioning. An unanswered question. An unquestioned answer? The same, the same. All resulted in butterflies…Am I insane? Are you? Aren't we all? Does one insane consider themselves insane? Do they not think that they are the only sane amongst the masses of insane? What is sanity? An illusion to pacify? …am I insane, if there is none, really?
Questions. A whirling vortex of them…of dust. After all, that was how they settled. Onto the rows and rows of bottles. Dusty, outside and in.
Ten green bottles, sitting on the wall. (Back, forth.) Ten green bottles, sitting on the wall. And if one green bottle…
The stacks of bottles fell; crashed. And finally…finally…it dipped its neck, plummeting down, cracking open. To reveal its cache, once priceless, once enviable ..once brilliant, active.
Once.
The bottle cracked open, to reveal him lying in the dust. What he was. Could have, should have, would have been. Lying in emotions; grey, faded. Ling, uncomprehending.
His body sprawled amongst the white of his cell. His 40 seconds over, before starting.
Butterflies, butterflies.