Intro to Part 8: A fucked Up Spree (Fiction by Daniel Smallegange)

A fucked up spree. More fucked up than most. We dance and sing and cry and run and laugh with the water streaming down our face 'til we run out of tears, and then keep going dry eyed, just for the fucking hell of it. We tell people along the way how we would cry if only we could, but are fresh out, a little short of wet and long on dry. And then fall blissfully into even dryer martinis.

Running along, stumbling along, mumbling along, grinning, grinding, groping, sighing. Salutary and salubrious, us warriors of night, decked out in skulls and war paint, us fighters for what cause we can and will no longer recall. We used to have a cause, but it's slipped our minds, along with our sense of perception, along with our sense of self, space and time, sense of proportion also. Along with hope. Hope is gone too, abandoned since we entered through them gates, as the sign Dante mentioned did advise. But we fight on as it's the only way we know how. And also we revel. Revel in fear and joy and lust and love and run, run, run, always running, to get away from the pain and the consequence, bitter foes alarmingly speedy in their pursuit.

We fight pitched running battles in the streets of our minds, knee deep in blood and bile and mucous. Love and war and fear and lust, a mixed bag of those we love and those we hate. Chemically enveloped by occupation forces, by invading armies, our souls, slowly changing, adapting to new environs, transforming, growing thick hides, club-like tails, scales and segments, antennae and mandibles dripping with venoms.

Last few days of little sleep and hardly a moment to take a breath between rounds in the ring, highs and lows and moments of cold unfeeling. And oh, the bruises are beginning to show, cracks along our exoskeletons too, damage to our carapace. We begin to seep and leak, leaving trails wherever we go and slow. Armour too heavy anyways, time to slough it off and run once more, with speed, for they near, those that hunt us. Hot breaths now at our backs, we must run and we must hide.

Hanging by the finger tips on the last rung the ladder. Hanging also out in the bottom of wells, becoming acquainted with molluscs and snails and cephalopoda. Multi-tentacled horrors multi-tasking, manacled to the walls. Slime and ooze and the muck of former living things between our fingers and toes. Scraping at the walls with fingernails until they crack and break. Getting over it. Making friends with the denizens who embrace the lower floors, bottom feeders in hell. Getting over it and playing some poker with them tentacled, carp-faced things. We use bits of our bodies for currency in our wagers. I grow fat on fish eggs and calamari.

Evil and retching and coming at you from all sides, the pleasure and the pain intensifying and the dreams and the truth something lost and far away. So very far away.

By: Daniel Smallegange