“Normalcy does not exist. Specifically, there is no reason for things to exist in set patterns. Everything is, at its most base level, chaotic. The only order to the universe is invented. Pure wishful thinking. The sky.”

Talking to one’s self felt complete. Especially when no one else could bring themselves to listen. To see the thoughts that lingered beyond the words.

Reflections. A blink. The reflection may have blinked, but it could not be seen. Because. Because the eyes were closed. The impossibility of the movement. Another blink, and when the eyes opened, so did the reflection’s.

Fingertips glided against the smooth surface of the dirty mirror. The fingerprints appeared. Dirty. A smudge. A smudge that perforated and distorted the reflection. Fingers smudged ground dirt all along the mirror, and the reflection became someone else.

The reflection was someone completely different. An interloper. At the edge of his reality, something lingered and stared. A grinning, gibbering madness. But, it was only madness because the mind chose to comprehend it as such. Only something mad could attempt to steal the life from him. The reflection grinned back. The eyes were dull and brown. The skin was sallow and sickly and pale. Sweat poured down a thin, frail, sickly body. Naked to the chest. Thin. Rattling breath. The strange eyes stared. The hair was greasy and stringy and black. Too long. Forehead was pockmarked with little whiteheads. Just a few, but enough. The neck and face were covered with a ratty beard. Mere fuzz. Dirty, unclean. Thin and ugly. Weeks worth of growth on a face that should not have hair. The interloper stared out through the mirror, pointing out an index finger. The pointing finger challenged.

Right fist slammed forward and hit the mirror.

It shattered, and the hand bled. The interloper was shattered, and eyes could only stare out at the place on the wall where the mirror had previously hung. The hand was bleeding. The unwounded hand turned on the faucet and put the bleeding hand underneath it.

Pink ribbons.

The interloper was gone. For now.

Everything was quick to become orderly. Things fell in their allotted spaces. The world moved. As it always did. Not stopping for anyone. Reality rarely stopped for anyone or anything.

The clothing was too tight, for one. The sky spun above in its silken blue shade. A bowl overturned and placed atop the world. Like a dome. The heavens were a dome. Planes that went too far up hit it. There was never anyone in space. They just hit the dome.

There was an order.

There always had to be.

Crisscrossing. Throughout the bits and pieces of reality. It always had to be that way, because it was the easiest way to go.

The shoes made nice noises. A sharp click. The boots were black, and they were comforting. The scent of old leather, broken down to something as soft as silk. The heels raised his height just a little bit.

“Late, Elohim.” Thoughtlessly quiet, behind the counter. Fingers against the mica. Formica. Maybe it was that, but it could have been anything else. Anything else at all.

“My alarm clock didn’t go off.”

“Fifth time this month. Should get the thing fixed.”

“Yeah.” Behind the counter already. The apron over the too tight tee- shirt. “Yeah.”

“You know I gotta fire ya next time, right?”

“Yeah.”

“You don’t care, do you?”

“Yeah.”

“Fuck you, El.”

“Sure.”

“Where’d you the bandages?”

“Yeah.”

“Fuck off.”

A cough, and the slim body leaned against the counter. Another cough, and the ends of the apron needed to be smoothed down, fixing the little name-plate that read ELOHIM in oddly flourished handwriting. The body next to him had a faceplate that read TRICIA in block script pinned to pink fabric.

“You really don’t give a shit about this, do ya?” Gesturing at the walls, the building, the store. The job. Nicotine stained fingers looped through the hoops on torn jeans. The coffee shop was deserted like it always was in the afternoon, but it was useless to be sad or concerned about it, since the two of them were paid either way. TRICIA. The nameplate flickered in the bad lighting.

“No. I don’t.”

“You’re just completely fucking devoid of anything, aren’t ya?” A voice that spoke through a mass of pink bubblegum. A wet sound of constant slapping. No cigarettes meant a lot of bubblegum. No bubbles, because they were too hard to learn how to make. “You’re a fuckin’ shell, El.”

“Like a Taoist.”

“Fuck’s that?”

“A follower of the Tao.”

“Fuck’s the Tao?”

“Can’t talk about it.”

“Why the fuck not?”

“’Cause then I wouldn’t know anything about it.”

“You’re a fuckin faggot, El.”

“Sure.”

Shake of the head. Old camisole top was frayed and pink and a tad dirty at the ends with a long-sleeved white shirt underneath, covering long, frail arms. A thin body that desperately needed food. Sharp eyes rimmed with blood. Colorless irises that seemed more red than anything else.

“Why the fuck you got those bandages on your hand?”

“Yeah.”

“El, I dunno why I even try to fuckin talk to you.”

“Neither do I.”

A sigh, and the bells twinkled. The body of someone that was to be a customer slipped through the opened door.

Sliding from the counter and walking to the back.
ELOHIM shining beautifully. The long legs carried the sickly, frail body to the back, in preparation to the customer’s order. The machines stood in a row on another little counter, still a bit dirty from the morning rush. Drying bits of coffee and sugar and espresso.

“I’ll take a large coffee. Black. No frills. Regular coffee.” Eyes narrowed. The pupils shrank. An obvious attempt to look at the nonexistent chest while pretending to read the nametag. “Please, Tricia.”

“You heard ‘im, El.”

Black liquid spat out from one of the cylindrical liquid-heaters. From a little spigot. The streaming blackness poured. Dull eyes stared down at it, watching it pour. The black liquid filled up a Styrofoam cup. A large one. His bandaged hand poked against the level that released the hot, black abyss.

And it fell through. Fingers became slickened. Like a liquid. The styrofoam cup fell through now slick fingers and crashed against the tiled floor. Staring dumbly through slit eyes. A tilt of the head.

Colors burst through his eyes. Colors that were strange and alien and new. Colors that had never been seen before. Things of a wavelength undetectable by anything.

Sickly.

Body

Fell.

Into.

The.

Abyss.

a cold world of naught but the screeching winds a cold world that exists between the worlds and a bright light that opens and another could be felt but it slams outwards and inwards the shouts of another fill the mind and explode the synapses before another bullet of color shoots into the distance and a sound and feeling not unlike being thrown into a pool ice overcomes all the senses the cold surrounds and feeds and it fills and it runs over the cup and it pushes back and it pushes out and leaves the cold world not going all of the way into the beyond

The.

World.

Came.

Back.

Into.

View.

The body was on the floor and had been lying on the dark coffee. It burnt the skin, and the clothing was soaked through.

“Jesus fuck, El. Fuck you do that for?” Whipped away from the counter, a thin, bony hand exploded against the back of the dark-haired head. Confusion. Backed away. Head shook.

The customer shifted uncomfortably. A man in a suit with a briefcase out on his break.

“I don’t know.” A mop. That. A mop to clean it. Moving farther back, the hand slid clumsily around a mop. The end of it pushed over the spilled hot liquid.

“Jesus, I’m sorry, mister. He’s goin’ through a lot and all…” A new cup brought under the spigot. Cheap plastic top placed on top, and the cup placed on the countertop. “I’m real sorry.”

The customer smirked and dug in his pocket, dropping a fifty on the countertop. A head shake. Dark hair, dabbled with bits of gray, did not move an inch. “Keep the change.”

“Thanks so much. I’m real sorry, mister.”

“Good deed for the day, huh?”

The bell rang, and the customer was out.

Dull, broken eyes stared down at the remnants of the black liquid, now spread across the floor as much as cleaned.

“Fuckin Christ, El? Fuck you do that for, fuckin asshole?”

“I don’t know.”

Staring down at the spot. Wet. Trailing bits of the remnants shined the tile to a strange glow under the soft lights. The smell of coffee. The smell of that hot black liquid.

“You fuckin on those fuckin freaky drugs?”

“At least mine don’t need to be paid with money I get by blowing guys on street-corners.”

“Fuck you, faggot. Least I don’t get guys with fuckin AIDS. Least I don’t do shit that gets me in trouble at work.” Bony, frail hand knocked against an equally frail and thin chest. Repeatedly. Anger coursed through eyes scribbled over with red. Red veins that threatened to burst. “Fuckin queer! Fuckin asshole! Get the fuck outta here and don’t fuckin come here again. Fuckin comin to work fuckin high and fuckin tellin me about my fuckin problems?!”

Head tilt. The hits against the thin, frail chest did nothing but dim those eyes further. There was a thought, in a musty cobwebbed brain.

A singular thought.

“Bad trip.” A mutter, ignorant to the fact that its carrier was being beaten.

The bony arm pushed against the body of the girl beating on him, and the apron dropped to the ground, nameplate and all. Hopping over the countertop, the black shoes hit against the tile with a squeak that almost caused a bit of uncomfortable sliding.

The bell rang, and the door closed.

A crimson symphony. A smell of colors and sounds. Tinkling beyond the edge of reason and perforating the nature of all things that could possibly, and did, exist. The music played on and its beat was the sound of everything, an inner feeling of vibration, the very notion of creation. It was the Om. Om, that one great unifying syllable. A sort of a beat in the chest that went beyond everything else there ever could be.

There was something, but then again, there was nothing at all. Something like simple atman, a piece of a broken impersonal god whose existence holds no real motives for us to be anything resembling good.. A fragile word against brittle lips, the scent and color of clear glass shielding from the cold, just barely but enough to sustain a bit of life from the elements.

There were four base elements, plus another. Wind. Water. Earth. Fire. Plus something else. An infusion of white light and chemicals that made that little bit of sentient life available upon a molten planet. Oxygen is a waste byproduct, and it killed more than it allowed to be born.

The eyes were closed, and they were not made up with any of the pretty-colored paints from the special stores. It was far too much effort to buy the special paints for the eyes, especially in a place that was so dark and with such odd-colored lights. No one would notice, could possibly even come close to noticing.

Multicolored lights hung from the ceiling, set to a paralyzing strobe. The blasts blinded those with inferior retinas, with malfunctioning optic nerves. And the slim thin gaunt boney body sat upon the seat, the swivel seat that looked like a fruit with the front part cut out, a sort of grotto to sit in, to see the world from an enclosed space. The seat was warm, and the insides were of a cushioned material. Bright shades of pink that gouged through the eyes and left a horrible scar, a scar that would last forever and imprint itself onto everything seen afterwards.

The pills were blue. The pills had been blue, and they were small with a hieroglyphic eye placed upon one side. The other side had a number. The number did not matter, but there was a number, and the number was a number that insinuated that things could be put into order, that things were that simple.

The pills had been blue.

The pills were no longer blue, as they made their way through the acids of the digestion system, if they even got that far. Broken down by the saliva. The bits and pieces, the chemicals that made the world show its true color, the chemicals that reduced the brain to a pitiful whipping boy. The force that existed beyond everything came from the chemicals and the force that was everything that could be and could not be.

The pills were blue.

Blue.

The pills had never been blue.

The pills were not blue.

Blue is a concept, a concept that cannot be accepted. The only way to verify it is to use the senses, and the senses are not a verifiable source. They lie. The senses are filled with deceit, and they lie. Blue is a concept based upon them. One man’s blue may not be another’s blue.

Blue.

The color that is said to be the color that is the sky, which is said to be in opposition to the one which is the color that is said to be the color of the grass. The grass is green, and the sky is blue, but how possible is it that the sky, which is supposedly blue, can be the green which is supposedly the shade of the grass that grows and makes the land its domain.