Breath

Cities breathe. We lie in the dark. We wait for the dawn, then toil on machines of oil and dust. At dusk, the new day is over. Dusty children play hopscotch in the soot and ash of yet another sunset. Our sun setting, the muted light filters gently through our selfish maze of exhaust and rebar. Stars vanish under the low, yellow hum of sodium. We lie still; waiting for ourselves to be made right by the progress of yet another gadget. The robots will save us, we proclaim. Yet, our rising sun will never break.

Upon a faint and distant dawn, the solemn bells of our forefathers, peel. It awakens some to another day washed in the incense of putrescence. Others lie in bed waiting for life to consume, them, us. We still light our ways with metal and ash. Their acids digest and seep and bother no one in our immediate future; until, skin melts. Our brown wastes stretching autumn leaves into summer. Out of sight out of mind. We can't know, refuse to think, what our ancestors would think of our machines of gloom.

One day our children will condemn us to our fate. Our scales always balanced in our sight. Yet, distance proves our eyes askew.

“But,” we say in unison, “we recycled.”

How fucking noble?

Some sorta post-post-modern-ancient-future tale of changing and things.

I lie awake at night and think about the spore that created me.

How did it come to pass this transformation into otherness?

Why am I under this Voodoo?

Who will know the things I have seen, feel, smell, when all is done?

What is the nature of consciousness; will mine become lost?

When it is done, will the pain end?

---

One day I awoke a bit stuffy and pale. It was approximately noon, a bit early for me to rise. Jumping out of bed, I noticed the tile floor under my feet was a bit squishier than usual. Having gone drinking the night before, I at first chalked it up to yet another hangover. I climbed the stairs to the bathroom across from the basement door. Every step was curiously, softer.

I relieved myself, and started the descent towards the solace of my bed. Then something clicked in my brain. I rushed back to the bathroom mirror I had passed. I looked. I stared. I tried to slap myself in the face. It didn't have the same impact as usual. I went back to gazing.

I was a mushroom.

Well, an anthropomorphic mushroom. I still had features of a human: legs, eyes, arm, mouth, all in the right places. Everything seemed intact. Yet, I now had gills growing in my neck and was puffy.

My thoughts instantly raced back to the night before. Did someone slip Acid in a drink? Am I still drunk? What the fuck?

I decided to return to sleep, as this had to be a hallucination.

I returned to the basement in which I dwell, to the room below the parental units.

I fall asleep.

---

I have slept so much recently.

Nobody will wake me. The parents are gone on vacation. No one's home, except me. If someone does come by, I ignore them.

Eventually, everyone goes away.

My roots are growing deep into the mattress, on which I lay.

The puddle of piss and shit grows. It hurts too much now to uproot myself. Fortunately, I no longer eat or drink, get hungry or thirsty. But the smell is terrible. That's the worst part.

My sight is almost gone and hearing is dampened. Though I still feel, it has changed. Unfortunately, scent will not abandon me. I smell perfectly the sewer which, what I hope, is my deathbed.

Let me slip away.

4:34AM

There is no time like the present to do anything, except when my time has past and I am left standing in rain.

Sometimes water runs dry. Mostly it flows, following, no, creating it own landscape leaving its slow wave of mutilation as scars on our parents.

Were you a child left standing in class, in school, at times when you should have been playing at fool? Did you became dependent on the thoughts of others?

I am glad I found my fool, for it took a far too long.

<ian::meep>