Don Mann: Focusing on my Craft

Monday, Nov. 03, 2003 - 3:32 a.m.

I am standing in a room. There is a door here, it is wide open and extends north to another room much like this one. I try to reach out my arm to grab its handle when I realize that I am not alone here. I turn abruptly, a fading shadow still lingers on the wall, a phantasm slipping quickly out of sight. Fear and apprehension dawns on me like a wave crashing over skeletal shells on a black beach.

They taught me about the devil in my younger years so that my fears would have some sort of form to take in my nightmares. If this was true, I knew my devil was here, someplace in this mass of honeycomb hallways leading to empty chambers like a massive unloaded revolver, he was the one bullet and every step I took was a twist in this game of russian roulette. I don't know how I came to be here, or if there is a way out, I only know that I am in fact here...and I am not alone.

The room is as empty and lifeless with me standing in it, feeling out of place like a spectre in a photgraph, and I hasten my pace into the next. I realize then how much better it would be that my devil be in every room, or no room, rather than lying in wait for me in just one of hundreds. I'm beginning to question moving on or lingering here, the prospect of an exit seeming impossible, an encounter with the antagonizer imminent. I fall to my knees and scream, not for help, not for outrage, but for the sheer comfort of knowing that I could. I clench my fists and grit my teeth. I am ready to accept the encounter. I am ready to best the minotaur of this hideous labyrinth, ready to tear out his horns and gouge out his eyes.

I stomp into the next room, and see what I have been waiting for all along, his eyes aglow and strangely serene. I choke back emotion, my body tenses, and he speaks.

"You are not where you belong. Go now, you have survived this night and must fear me no longer."

His voice is a roar, a chorus of all the people I've ever known and trusted, a choir composed entirely of those who've hurt me, those who've damaged my spirit. I close my eyes for a moment to pick out the individual voices as he speaks but cannot reopen them. His last word spoken, I open my eyes.

I am staring at my ceiling, comforting classical music a gentle purr from my laptop nearby, the buzz and hum of the outdoors ringing in my head. I let out a sigh, accepting how my mind chooses to torment me, how my subconscious submits me to surreal torture. The nightmare is over and the proof of my past lies scattered throughout the room in the form of my various sheets and pillows, strewn haphazardly in all directions about my room like a bizzare ritual had been performed. I vow never to sleep again.

Delve Into The Past - Onward Into The Future