Article: 288705 of talk.bizarre
From: shava@netprophets.net (Shava Nerad)
Newsgroups: talk.bizarre
Subject: best things denied
Message-ID: <32a22900.0@r2d2.continet.com>
Date: 2 Dec 96 00:55:28 GMT
Lines: 118

That's how it starts, you know.  You say it.  You
say it one too many times, like you mean it.  You
say, "I wish I were dead, oh, god" and you feel
like, that moment, it is true.  And you think your
heart will break, but it won't, and it won't end. 
And you think it won't break, but what breaks is a
little chain of life somewhere in the heart of a
cell of your being.  *It* believed you.

	And the cancer starts.

		And you get your wish.

And the death that is coming for you is coming out
of the wild country on a train.  You can't hear it
coming, but by the time you do, the whistle's
blowing full steam scream and it just gets louder
and louder till it's right on top of you and fils
everything.

				And then it stops.

(Toward the end you start to value silence, even if
you don't know what it is anymore.)

The whistle is screaming, but it's you screaming,
and no one around you realizes.  They think it's
your disease screaming.  And you admit, in every
small and ordinary thing you do, you are perfectly
fine.  They can't hear the screaming.

Sometimes, you scream to blot out the noise, and
they silence you.  But you know it isn't time
for silence yet.  They can't hear, so you must
seem terribly terribly loud to them.

				Time for silence, silence soon enough.

And the whistle is screaming and you feel like
there is no solid ground beneath you, that the
earth is moving and shaking and opening beneath
you to swallow you up.

The wind is flaying tears from your eyes and they
run like blood down your face.  Each time you
forget how hot tears can be, then how cold left
untouched, gone chill, behind your ears, on the
pillow cold, again.

Sometimes the room turns in and inside out as you
lie curled on your bed and you can fall for yours
till your sense of time has rubbed away.

Sometimes the air goes away and is never replaced,
no sob in, no cry out, but bands of rusty iron
tight around.

	The minister's wife stops by and says how
	inspired the auxiliary is by your brave example.

		Shall I poison her tea?

				Pass it by.

Then the day you wake up and the whistle has
stopped.  Underwater, the brass gongs are finging.
 Faces you think you know are speaking to you,
lips moving slow, and the underwaterer gongs are
bleching and erupting words you'll never
understand, like some oriental chant (song song
song).  

And it's hard to see in the water when the
tears have drowned the whole world twice and
damned.  So you sit and watch the gong voiced
people kneel in frfont of you, like they care,
like they didn't know their clangorous voices made
no sense of the madness.

And they take you on the old familiar walks
that someone you knew once knew, and feed you
fresh peaches and soft cheese.  And in your waking
dreams sometimes they make you remember her and
she remembers you.

	And the whistle is back again.

So you laugh until they leave you, leave you
alone, alone again.  You, and the stars and abyss
above the ceiling, and the unquenchable train,
rubbed away your sense of time.

					Forever.

But worst of ever all the time they bring the
child, who tears your guts to shred and makes you
freeze.  You know the child is a blown glass fiber
thin bubble, and if you move or speak or breathe
he'll break and then you'd never deserve silence
again.  And the whistle is screaming glass to
flinders yet he smiles with hollow eyes she knew.

So you never breathe and never move and watch the
goldfish bowl gong voiced faces lead him to where
you turn away, and turn away, until you know
you've made them orbit away.

And then you curl inside until the crosshand
fingernails on the other sides of your knees spout
blood.

	And sometimes, you just sleep.

	Doesn't that seem like the best thing, 
	just sleep?

Shava Nerad
shava@netprophets.net