Maybe it was the creeping feeling that was surely enveloping me; wrapping me in a cocoon like binding, forcing my arms to my sides while my hands could turn to and fro in a panic like motion. Maybe this was a foreboding warning of some doom to come for the horizon was stormy to say the least and I could see that I was not the only one thrust into a personal prison of benevolence and sarcastic charm.

Was it not the same day that the big commotion brought everyone out of their holes and once everyone was exposed, they were taken to the places where we are not to talk. For even to speak of such things is to open the doors that allow the bad things to come inside our homes, our lives and teeter around waiting for the opportune moment to spring the malevolent futures that wait locked in their pandora boxes as I felt that same feeling. That creeping feeling from the first paragraph...above.

Had I known then that with each step I was bringing myself closer and closer to something unimaginable...maybe I would have sat down. Or just gone to bed even. For sleep was something sacred that gave a different view to all things horrible. Sleep was the dream. Not what we think that dreaming is only when sleeping...No, No. I've been dreaming of sleep for quite a long time now.

And that only propels me forward to something even more uncertain than what I was already unprepared for. For how can we really set ourselves in a position of such dyer circumstance that we knowingly march until we throw ourselves like lemmings into the punishing fire? The heat that burns is only too quickly a flame that engulfs, leaving the ashes for the urn so thin and indistinguishable that not even the bones remain. Not even the bones.

This brings me again to the creeping feeling that even now ebbs through the joints in my fingers. Endless cracking can not exorcise the demon that slowly fills me from within. The age old quest falls to the same unsatisfying conclusion for all of us. For what is more than the lack of things? The void fills the spaces, empty in their dissatisfying despair that surmounts and takes control when we have no more energy left to fight it off. Our day that has turned to night risks not turning to day again. Not for want of other things but for other things of want.

I went to the fountain one last time and made the final wish. You looked back at me from the reflecting ripple after my coin had touched bottom. It disturbed me more than the inevitable answer that it brought a few short moments after. I could not turn away. Like a terrible accident, I crept closer and could not turn away my eyes. My eyes that have long since been burning with a need for something more. So much more. Someone told me the other day that thoughts like this were signs of insanity. I don't care. They could not know what causes these things that I see and hear.

They should not know. For if they knew, then that would mean that I could gain the answer by giving them a void of their own. And that is a practice still frowned upon, even in the most ludic of arenas. Someday, maybe I will distinguish between your reflection and my reality. But then again...maybe not.