~-~-~

This is one I wrote a long time ago to express both the feeling of being trapped and the feeling of emotional attraction that has for a long time been affecting my SI character (Lynne) in the RPG. She started out as me, since all of us in the RPG have SI characters that we play along with the others, but since then she has become wildly different, more emotionally ensnared, and more forcefully grounded by what she perceives to be her responsibilities to someone in particular. She's interesting to play, although her similiarity to myself makes her affect me more than the others sometimes. Nevertheless she is separate, and almost a headvoice of sorts. o.o This monologue is ALSO sort of a songfic, since Zim has always been into that Phantom-esque thing.

~-~-~ Lynne ~-~-~

I awoke in a sweat. Panting, struggling to get out of the confines of the winding sheets that bound me, fighting the panic that threatened to overtake me. I was being suffocated. The walls, the floors, the clothes, my own clumsy body, all of them shoved down and dragged on my soul, and I couldn't get away. From some of it, maybe, but it was a brief respite, and all the more painful in that I could never quite reach the sky again. Reach the stars, reach the earth, reach everything I'd had before and wanted again.

I managed to fight away from the bed, barely remembering to stop myself with my hands before I hit the floor with a jarring thump. Stumbling to my feet, I didn't even grab my robe before fleeing upstairs, my hands fumbling and tearing at the knob of the front door before I managed to escape into the night.

I ran. My breath burned in my lungs, and I narrowly missed hitting or tripping over many trees and bushes. There was nowhere to go. I could run in circles all I wanted, and could get nowhere.. what the hell tied me to this world besides this infernal filthy human body? I did trip, then, and went sprawling across the grass halfway into the woods. Trapped here, chained down, the exhausted ache of my shoulderblades from the strain I imposed on them while running.. unfulfilled strain of limbs that this body did not have.

What did I even have here? Emotion, clutter.. only more chains binding me, more strings jerking on my mind. But clutter serves a purpose. Cloud me, and I forget the awful pain of seeing what I once had and no longer have. Let it flood my soul and make me fly in its own way. It's not even comparable, but if I could forget... live in bliss, ignorance, and happy emotion, just for a little while.. I will remember when I have my wings again, and then the memory will be real once more. There is nothing to do but get through this life, and if I can get through it with both my clarity and things to distract from the pain, then I will have succeeded. We are puppets of our own design. And tonight I choose to be a puppet, choose to let the emotions and the music run free in my heart, make me forget who I am. Oh, the things we do to be rid of pain..

In sleep he sang to me
In dreams he came

It's much easier to sleep out here, isn't it? With the earth beneath you and the trees above you.. the entire vibration of life flowing steadily and carrying you along with it. Mixed with that is the music, as you drift off, your senses clouded as you succumb to the beauty and peace it instills in you. So much clouds me when I let it, and in sleep the subconscious takes over. My haze is here, and I let it come, to block the pain.

That voice which calls to me
And speaks my name

The music makes clouds, as well, luring my mind and senses. It melts into different forms; the sensual throb of a fiddle, the soft, enticing voice that, while not up to par with some I have heard, pulls those same strings on my heart that I let stay there. I never hear my name in that voice when I'm awake, but when I dream it's there as much as I want it to be.

And do I dream again
For now I find

I'm lost in slumber again, that fiddle still crooning in my mind, that voice still whispering my name, and there are shapes now.. colors. Where the dark of night once was there's a glow, almost like a candle, but warmer, brighter, and far away. I see him, too, standing confidently, the fiddle held under his chin as he caresses the strings with the bow, gloved fingers sliding across the neck to form the slow, alluring notes. It's a sight I will always love seeing.

The Phantom of the Opera is there
Inside my mind

This isn't usually a state I let myself sink into, but it's here now and I'm welcoming it. I let my emotions take over, I give the human reign, and my mind sinks into the ecstasy, drowning in the flowing notes and the figure standing in the light, a cape hanging from his shoulders and trailing elegantly around his form. The light traces his every contour, highlighting on the fiddle, glinting across the strings as the bow moves. His touch is so gentle, so artful, on that thing, and the notes are quickly wrapping my senses up, tightening around me with an irresistable pull. Like my entire mind could be satisfied with only him, neither seeing nor caring about anything beyond the cloud, which appears as nothing but a warm, soft glow now. All the claustrophobia of before is gone.. I no longer desire the sky, it's a distant memory.

The voice is there again, the pull of the music more intense, and he looks at me now, with those burning red eyes. His gaze was always something that alternately scared me and entranced me, and it does the latter now, and in my dream I raise my voice along with his, the fiddle singing along with us, the melodies twining together intimately, and I almost seem to fly again.

Things are becoming clearer now, within the haze. He's moved closer, the cape swirling around him, the bow still moving across the fiddle strings, faster now. My mind is listening, wanting to drown in the music and feeling, but the farther it gets, the more it starts to rebel. That tiny part of me that hates this dream, hates the dreamy cloud, hates the feelings caused that clutter me so much. I can't even tell where I am in this dream... there is only him. I am not here, this has nothing to do with me..

The cloud is suffocating.. I don't want to be here. As if sensing my resistance, he moves still closer, the edges of his cape brushing me, his gaze deep in mine. I want so badly just to lose myself in him and his music. The complacent assuredness in his entire demeanor almost has ME convinced, that I want nothing else, but I have never been anything if not as uncluttered as I possibly can be. The music is pressing against me now, pinning me down with a warm, somehow lurid comfort, but I'm fighting against it now. He's getting more aggressive now, in stance and gaze, but his fingers keep their rhythm on the instrument he holds, and the pull on my mind increases. Not without me battling it. Clutter and deception leads only to more pain, and ignorant bliss is not how I must find harmony. I'm lashing out at him now, only making him grow more violent. He appears almost like some kind of demon, the warm glow of light roiling red, the cape furling out behind him, a snarl on his face at my disobediance. It's another trick, another pull on those strings around my heart, but I don't let dreams order me around. It's sickening to lose yourself into a dream that much, when you realize what you are doing. My clarity has returned, and I am easily able to cast off his music and his influence, easily able to sweep away the cloud that keeps me in this haven. The harmony of clarity or the bliss of complete ignorance.. there is no happiness to be found in anything between them.

I open my eyes again to the dark woods only to find myself shivering. Why does one always feel so ashamedly evil after letting oneself do something like that? Is there really anything so terrible about it? No one's pain should ever be great enough to force them into delusionary dreams. But why does the reality I wake to have to be so terrible?