This whole town is so fucking depressing.

It really is. There's nobody to have a goddamn decent conversation with. I mean, sure, people are talking, but they're never really saying anything. Not to you, anyways, they're just talking to themselves about themselves and using you as a goddamn medium.

The last time I had an actual conversation was with Abby a few days ago, when we talked about intellegent design and creationism and how bitter I am about all of that and how even though we disagreed, we could UNDERSTAND each other. I can't meet anyone who understands me half the time. It made me feel pretty damn good for a few hours, that conversation did.

Before that, it was with that guy I met at the party. I was pretty drunk for most of it, but damn, that was a hell of a talk. I'm sure he was a shitty guy and all, but he called me the next day and was real sweet about how drunk I was and all. Gentlemanly, I guess. Didn't really change that he was a shitty guy, but that coversation made me feel damn good, too.

And before that was the night I took shrooms and it was wasted because half the time I was crying my eyes out and the rest of the time I couldn't even speak but that was a fucking good time regardless and I was happy and warm even if I felt so fucking alone in my big old room with the lights all pink and everything looking really rosy and soft.

I'm not saying every conversation has to have a point, no. I love just fucking talking about shit with people I care about. Just talking. Texting. Whatever. But god, it gets damn lonely in my head, with all these ideas and needs and fuck I don't know. I don't know.

All I know, this town is bumming me out. I just need to stop smoking so many cigarettes and reading so much because these books are all written by people I could have a good ass conversation with and it's really fucking lonely.

Katzenklavier

Things I have done lately:

1.

It was a cold September and I’d wasted away the day chasing fairies through woods,
but they had all packed up before the winter came and blew it’s vicious wind to chill their hands
and stop their fluttering hearts mid-beat.

The night was calm but cool and I stood on my driveway,
shrouded in darkness
my feet
and teeth
and skin trembling in time to a song I couldn’t hear,
the way they did when you pulled me close and held me tight as I’d cried over a world
so unforgiving and
so complicated and
so hard.

I could never understand why you loved me.

You were so good, with your eyes so big with lashes dark and full and skin so soft,
it pained me to touch it with my own
flawed and dry and rough.

I had to leave before I broke you, too.




2.

I once met a man
or should I say, I once saw him,

terrified to move as he walked the streets at night.

Confident in his two feet
he seemed so large .

And
I so fragile with porcelain bones and paper skin and lead feet rooted to the ground,
trapping me in his gaze.

I could feel his eyes on my flesh like cold linoleum on bare feet
though in the cover of darkness hidden between cars in the driveway my insignificant form could barely be noticed.

In that moment, I became an unmoving, breathless spectre, my trembling soul caught by those eyes.

He may have seen me and known his effect, but he moved on as he had, his pace never changing,
and was gone,
leaving nothing behind.

I have never cried so hard and understood so little.



3.

Barbara could tell from where she was standing that this man was dirty, scared, and probably on some sort of illegal substance. Since they’d been in the elevator, he’d pounded on the metal doors, sobbed in the corner, paced back and forth, and talked to his dog. She was grateful for the size of the elevator, that it was a bit larger than usually as hospital elevators tend to be, because to call the brown dog large would be an understatement. It was massive.

When they’d ran in here, they didn’t know that in a state of panic the elevators locked down. They didn’t know that in an asylum such as this, the elevators were industrial heavy-strength massive things. Nobody gets in or out unless the system wants you to. She’d tried everything, almost every tool in her utility belt she’d thought would work. But people who work amongst the people who are locked in these places know more than Barbara did about the strength of the mentally insane. One could argue they knew more than Bruce, but he’d been doing this far longer than Barbara. He’d dealt with a lot more. And he was the one that usually handled the clown she was sent here about.

Just after the first hour mark, when none of her tools had let to any improvement on the situation, Barbara had began questioning the man in the elevator. He hadn’t complied at first, just crying and holding his dog, but once he’d realize she wasn’t just a delusion in his stoned and panicked mind, he started answering. He’d come there with his friends. They heard the place was haunted and strange occurrences were common in the area. They were some kind of mystery team, this addict, some feminist with daddy issues, an aging prom queen and a man with severe control issues.

And the dog.

By now, having been sitting for a few hours, it was starting to smell. Rigor mortis had come and gone. This man didn’t seem to notice the state of his animal. He’d practically dragged it in, talking to it, laughing nervously, eyes darting from it’s lifeless form to Barbara’s hidden face. To the man’s credit, he couldn’t have known who was working here. He couldn’t have known how fast things would have gone down. He couldn’t have known how, over the last few months, after the death of Bruce Wayne and the disappearance of Batman, how bad Gotham had gotten.

And now this.. Shaggy, he’d said his name was, was stuck in an elevator with Barbara Gordon. It had been almost three hours. Nothing had noticeably changed. The air had gotten heavier somehow. Thirty minutes ago, Shaggy had calmed down to the point of just petting his dog and making small talk with Barbara about the places he’d been. Barbara had relaxed, too, sitting and leaning against the cool metal walls. By the time she realized they were being gassed, it was too late. The last thing she heard before she passed out was the doors sliding open and that clown’s horrible laugh.

The first thing she heard when she woke up was that same laugh coming from her.



4.

We were all pretty confused when the commercials started changing. At first, it was kind of funny. We’d chalked it up to advertising and the push in recent years to be quirkier, more memorable, more bizarre. But when the companies started coming out, suing the stations, swearing they’d never changed anything.. That’s when people started to get a little frightened. When the commercials kept changing, when it started slipping into the television shows, people started to really panic. Especially the children’s shows. A few months ago, watching Dora cry out his name would have been funny. A real fucking gas. Now? Not so much. Not when scripted shows came on in a language nobody could understand and the actors could never be expected to speak. Not when their voices came out in some alien sounding garbled tongue, deep and chanting the same lines over and over. Not when the newspapers suddenly switched to these ancient, I don’t know what. Tomes, symbols, scriptures.

I could recognize it. Of course I could, I’d read about Him on the internet all that time ago. I was a big fan. Hell, I’m so fucking out of it right now on anything, everything I could grab off the streets and out of the pharmacies and out of the liquor stores I’d probably look Him right in the face and tell him, “Hey man, I’m a big fan. You do great work.” See, the thing is, as I was learning about Him on the internet, so were They. That’s the funny bit about the internet. The exact people who shouldn’t ever, under any circumstances, get that information.. well, they usually do.

Way back when it first began, we laughed at the religious nuts who fled to underground shelters to inbreed for a few generations until they felt it safe to come back up. We laughed because we thought they were overreacting. They laughed because we’d finally all be gone. Too bad that whatever it is that comes back up, if it even gets the chance, had only just prolonged it’s fate. They’re just going to be eaten last. Right now, I can hear the people screaming. I can hear gunshots and windows being smashed. I can hear people struggling with the knowledge that shortly, He comes. I’d like to think I was smart. I have enough drugs and alcohol here to last me.. oh, a week at least. I’d like to think that I was pretty smart because, goddamn, it’s the end of the world as we know it, and I feel fine.

I flick on the television.

“Hi! Billy Mayes here with OxiClean and Ph'nglui mglw'nafh Cthulhu R'lyeh wgah'nagl fhtagn..”