Unsoundness of the Mind

Dogs hanging from the ceiling
Eyes glued to crooked, pointed teeth
Glistening finger nails blue with blood
Whales in skinny jeans
All together in a restaurant
The rum is purple
Purple as the skin
All over eyelids flutter madly
They watch
They watch
They watch
Body grows smaller and then disappears
Jumped in front of the speeding caterpillar
The waves rose to the sky
Hands around the neck
Bubbles escape overwhelmed breathing tube
Shark on the earth
The snapping, snapping of pain
A roar of desperation
Bury help
Ashes stream down the cheeks
Imperfections blaze
Sloth runs and runs but gets nowhere
Falling upwards
To reality
Splashing
Flailing
Crying
8-legged things
Crawling
Crawling
Crawling.
Stuck, fading.
Fade to rainbow.


-Mango

The Re-write

The morning was cool, the streets empty and a light fog had settled over night. The wind was essentially dead, hardly managing a whisper in even the most silent of moments. The birds were silent, which was unusual for this time, for this time of year.

Slipping out the back door, he tiptoed down the balcony stairs, careful to skip the one that made a horrible creaking noise when stepped on. Even an outside noise would've been sufficient to awake his paranoid mother. She would've come running down the stairs in some sort of daze and yelled at him to go back inside, back to where it was safe, where nothing could hurt him...

He tiptoed through the grass, even though he was well aware that this would not be enough to wake her. As he walked around the house, he thought about her and what she had told him only a few days ago.

"Last night, I had a vision that something horrible was going to happen to you."

She had been trembling so intensely when he reached her that night, he needed to hold her tightly for at least half an hour for her to calm down.

"You died."

With his guitar on his back, he crossed his lawn and walked down the street to the bus stop. Perfectly late as usual, the bus arrived 5 minutes later than it's supposed time of arrival. Of course, he was not offended or frustrated in any way. It was not in him to be in a foul mood of any kind. It was so rare in fact, that most of his friends believed it to be non-existent.

Only 15 minutes into the route, he stood and rang the bell, descending into an area that he knew all too well. The neighborhood was quiet, probably oddly so, but he hardly noticed. In his mind he was playing some new chords, making melodies and rhythms, letting the ideas flow freely. He walked down the street, staring at the sky as the fog cleared slightly. His breathing was slow, and he hardly noticed when he arrived at the edge of the wooded area.

For a short moment, he paused, thinking of his poor mother who would probably break down when she didn't find him in his room when she awoke, but then, shaking the thought away, he remembered that she now remembered that he had a cell phone she could call in such cases before breaking into a panic.

Reassured, he entered the forest and followed the narrow path that led to one of the places he cherished most in the world. A person that he held very dear and shown him this place only a few years ago, and ever since, it had become a favorite location for peace and calming guitar playing. He moved the branches of trees out of the way as he advanced, the excitement already growing inside.The sound of a guitar being played softly reached his ears, and he couldn't help but move a little quicker, less careful about the branches in his path.

He stopped for a moment. Something wasn't right. Suddenly, he felt a stabbing pain in his chest that made him extremely dizzy. He reached out for a tree to support himself, but as soon as the pain had arrived, it was gone. Still, he stayed motionless for a moment, weary that it might return. When 5 minutes later, still nothing had happened, he continued forward.

Arriving at the edge of the clearing, he couldn't keep his smile from widening. Sitting on a rock by the river was his best friend, the one who had shown him this place a short while ago.

"Don", he said, startling his friend with his deep, Russian accent. "Somehow I knew you would be here. I'm starting to think that my mother has past down her uncanny intuitions to me."

-Mango