push becomes shove, days become months

01.02.45
It whispers to me. I hear it behind every thought, feel it breathing on the back of my neck as it chases me through these nightmares. No fleetness of foot, no alacrity of thought will save me this time; no matter how fast I run, no matter where I flee, it will catch me, will whisper its promises and laugh when I deny it, when I so feebly deny it...I tell it that I am above its madness, that I am not one of its base creatures to so blithely set aside moral and credo, natural law and love of life, and allow it move me.
It never listens. Never. It speaks again its bloody promises, after a brief respite to allow me waste my breath, waste my strength in tangling it in a web of half-truth and oratory, as I have so many others. It refuses to close its hundred eyes, to give in, give up, leave me be. It waits in the abyss of sleep, lurks around every corner, ambushes me, forces me to hear its seductive words.
Nothing will make it leave. Nothing will drown it out. Clawing out my own eyes to stop the insanity, to bring pain sweet enough to swallow the whispering voice, to tempt my captors into torture enough to make welcome the sound of my own fruitless screaming...none of these, none of these bring me surcease, none even the briefest moment to breath free...I would that I could live free, die the same way, that I would on that death cease to exist, be expunged from existence so never to face the One who judges for these crimes I commit, for this sedition with the worm eating...eating...eating at my heart, gnawing holes in my memory, tearing me apart from within...


Contents of this document are © 2002 Kim Kondratieff.