Heuristic

The following is an excerpt from a piece of writing I’ve been working on…

Though I wasn’t able to sleep, I did fall into phases of unconscious semi-sleep on the barren concrete floor for times of half an hour every now and then. My dreams were only thin white noise that blocked the music-induced trance that had filled my bus ride. The buzzes and scratches of the melodies returned in ominously steady beeps. The music paraded fear and darkness like a Latin-infused tango that searched for a partner. The skies sang the words along with the rhythm in the language of synthesized melodies. In some way, too, it was all in my head. I had put myself through the song and dance, and my mind only tried to cope with it as best as it could. As I looked above, there were tints of rose and violet that danced around in the night sky. I would frequently see the dull images of prisoners stomped down by the world of security.

My dreams were a colorfully vivid atmosphere of coal and iron gray that only complemented the dangerous brown shade of my urine when I would use the toilet. I would frequently awaken due to my aching bones and churning stomach. Though I could never get sleep, I would still feel visions in my semi-sleep. On occasion, I would feel brief visions of bright hues, orange, lime, and magenta skies that were the only glimpse into the aesthetic realm that my subconscious would grant me. In the skies flashed pictures of faces, distorted laughing smiles and grins that shivered my spine. I looked left and right. There was nothing. Only shadows that took the form of demons that cackled with the wind. Their words smeared and washed the skies. The muddy, grimy consciousness engineered a landscape before me. These demons flashed with bright white and red, the palette-colors of this dark world. The laughter greyed into song and dance that left me tickled and deranged. I couldn’t make out a word of what the voices were saying, nor could I understand such a language and mind so disturbed. The only thing on me were shackles that kept my arms and legs to the ground.

When I realized I couldn’t move, I looked straight forward like a deer caught in headlights to the blackness of the night. But it was only to figure out that a metal mouthpiece strapped to my head kept me from making a sound from my mouth. My body was completely black, as well. I could feel my t-shirt and pants pressed against my body, but couldn’t see a thing beyond on or near me. Only skies above my head that flashed and shook with euphoric colors.

My shackles contained the fear that I had built inside of me my whole life. The skies would flash in and out of the shades while I stood at the foot of desolate, decrepit mountains. They taunted my soul as I struggled up the hills, while only falling upon myself in a Sisyphan fashion. The buzzing scratches of 8-bit melodies and robotic synthesized drums that resonated in my memory told me I was trapped in this world like a rat at the hands of a game-master, as though I were only being simulated in a world controlled by another being. Except in this world I could understand what was real and what wasn’t. I couldn’t feel a consciousness that could give me the grounds of control, responsibility, deliberation, emotion, or anything else that might have awoken me from a horrible nightmare.

Time passed by like eternity, and the melodies clicked and clanked like clockwork. I could feel no empathy, sorrow, nor pain. Man was dead. All that was left was the machine.