See me walking towards the hills

To find a place to die

To find a spot beneath a tree

To stare out at the sky

To find a sense of calm

That never found me on this plane

To find a sense of peace

That never thought to learn my name

The end is what we make of it

And what I've made is done

So lord I pray that when I wake

This race I've been running is won

The world is a never-ending descent down into a well with no bottom towards a destination that changes based on your mood at any given moment. It is constantly in flux and unpredictable. It has no conscience. It cares not for your dreams and inclinations. It is fickle.

On its face, this sounds awful. But once you accept the chaos, and that literally nothing matters in the grand scheme of things, it can provide a sense of calm. It might not be the calm someone experiences once they’ve decided to kill themselves, but it’s something. At the end of the day, something is better than no thing. It’s the little things that keep us going, and boy oh boy, I am grasping at the littlest of things with this one.

Were I to die tomorrow, nothing would change. The world would keep spinning. The stock markets would open. The sun would rise. Sure, there would be people sad about me being wherever dead people go. But ultimately, undeniably, nothing would change. Understanding how unconsequential I am in the grand scheme of things is a relief. It’s one less thing to worry about in a world that breeds worry like a middle-aged woman in Connecticut picking out the best Pekingnese of the litter to show at Westminster.

Routine, if nothing else, keeps me going when nothing else will. I really enjoy the taste of coffee. Music is fantastic. A bottle of wine after a long day is joyous. The laughter of my friends. The purr of my cat. Life finds a way. It’s all meaningless in the scope of the universe. But that’s okay, because it’s all we have. This is all we’ll likely ever know. That’s fine.

Life is nothing but a slow walk towards an inevitable fate. I’ve been told it’s inevitable, but my gut tells me I’ll live until the sun explodes. Science and common sense might tell you that’s insane, but you literally can’t disprove it. That’s gotta drive some people crazy. Maybe I’m the guy who lives to tell the story of humanity to the 23rd century. Spite keeps me alive if this is true.

Sometimes I think I've lived too long

Some days it feels too short

Then days show up that seem too narrow

A half-pint shy of a quart

@famewriter

It happened in the library

A book fell on my head

I fell and never rose again

Because it struck me dead

Teachers always told me

Reading helped to fill my brain

But what's the good of learning

When you're reading leaves you slain?

A house stands upon a shady hill

I can hear her muted laughter still

It follows as I walk from room to room

As though she's trapped inside this Tudor tomb

She lived a life more difficult than most

In death, it seems, she's still not found repose

Caught between the heavens and the earth

She's never truly felt a sense of mirth

Desperately, she prays the darkness comes

And renders all this tortured searching done

Time no longer binds her to this place

Can no longer age her youthful face

That sense of peace always will elude her

Trapped forever inside this spacious Tudor

He exploded out of his dream, sweating, the hairs on his arm standing on end. Jack's had nightmares before, and this wasn't much different that the rest. Chased by faceless men, backed onto a cliff, falling... falling... falling... awake. He's always awake before the collision with the earth. Maybe it's the force of the fall that brings him back to the waking world.

He collects his breath. Focusing on the ceiling, he slowly brings his mind to the present. "I'm safe... I'm in bed, I'm fine, I'm fine," he thinks with urgency. It doesn't help. It's all part of a process that lasts an hour or so and usually serves to exhaust him back to sleep more than anything else.

Unfortunately, this dream seemed to end just minutes before his alarm. Terrible luck. "This is going to be a long, long day," he thought again to himself, sighing as he heaved his legs over the side of his bed. Staring at his feet, a dull pain sets in behind his right eye. "Not enough water... I never drink enough water," he tortures himself. Self-flagellation. It's another part of the daily ritual. As the sun rises, so must he remind himself to drink more goddamn water.

Jack lives alone in a house his great-grandfather built by himself in the early 1900's. None of the family is quite sure when he finished it, seeing as how nobody thought to document such things. It's a couple of bedrooms, a sitting room, kitchen, bathroom and shed sitting against a lake that hasn't changed at all in one hundred years. The house, which looks more like a cabin you'd rent on a weekend ski trip, also remains unchanged. A willow tree washes over it, stretching over the lake several feet. It's the only thing that would stand out to his great-grandfather as different.

Jack shuffles to the kitchen to make coffee. As it drips with an agonizing deliberateness, he stares out the window at the tree. His expression is blank. There's nobody there. There's no reason to put on the mask of the friendly neighbor. They can't judge him for looking unhappy or pained, and he can't be judged by them. "My god, my head... I'm dying. This is how I die."

The coffee isn't finished brewing, but there's enough to pour a cup. Jack does this and walks out to the front porch. He has a cheap folding chair waiting there for him. Ritual. The sun is just high enough in the sky to warm his skin, but the chill of the night hasn't been snuffed out yet. It's the perfect time of day. As he takes the first sip, Jack's brain registers that the troops have been deployed to claim victory over pain. They're happy soldiers, and he's glad to host them.

"Maybe it's time to tear that tree down," he offers, knowing he'll never do something so ridiculous.

"Maybe you should," comes a reply from an altogether new participant.

Jack stands straight up, staring out across the water. He stares back at the chair, wondering if it has an answer to who just said that. Nobody said that; nobody is there. He's alone, which means it's impossible to have gotten a response. It's impossible to have gotten a response from a thought in the first place. The pain behind his right eye has returned with a fury.

As the malevolent godlike ruler of this world, I'm easily bored. Fortunately for me I have the world's leading developer of new inventions at my beck and call. It only took the threat of his family and anyone he's ever known being violently tortured to death on national television to get him to play along. He's a good sport. For the sake of his life he's a good sport.

One of my first demands is for this easily manipulated man to design me a machine to clone human beings. That on its own is too simple, so I've added a twist: this machine is going to be solely to populate my personal fighting league. Because of this very specific purpose, the clones are going to be required to each have skills that perfectly offset the others'. It'll do me no good to have two identical participants anticipating the other's moves. That, my friends, is a recipe for a boring point-fighting style that my audience will reject with alacrity!

As the commissioner of this fighting league, it'll be my duty to dispose of the bodies of the losers. The losers are the ones who die in this league. This seems like a task I could easily delegate to some underling, but I'm a man who likes to be involved in every step of the process. It's good for morale, and it allows me to keep an eye on everyone at the same time.

Therefore, the second task for this pitiful but brilliant fool is to design me a machine that will recycle the clones in a way that allows their bodies to be used for other more practical purposes. I'm talking about garbage cans built using clone and plastic blends. Coffee filters. Bicycle chains. The sky's the limit, but my patience most assuredly has a plateau. His deadline is two months after the first fights take place in my palace's courtyard.

There are many more things I'll demand of this brilliant prisoner. I've achieved immunity from death as a bonus for becoming the malevolent godlike ruler of this world, which is nice. It allows me to be creative with my time and with my demands of people. Freed from the restraints of moral decency, the world is my oyster... and it's always dinner time.

The Catamahat is the life of the party

He's always a sight to behold

He'll jump through the ceiling

To get a cheap laugh

And repeat it until it gets old

The Catamahat is a danger to all

He's a threat to himself and the world

He can't draw the line

But he surely will snort it

Then climb up a tree like a squirrel

The Catamahat is enabled too often

Because he is desperate for friends

He'll chop off his arm

So he won't be forgotten

Like dreams or the last summer's trends

The Catamahat is a fool, he's an oaf

But his heart beats honest and true

If given a chance

And a therapist's couch

He could be as admired as you!

Happy trees cover the canvas

They're happier when you add friends

A bush over here

And a stream cutting through

And a mountain range blocking the wind

Maybe we'll add a nice sunset

You're in charge of this all, don't you know

There are no mistakes

No, they're just happy accidents

So maybe we'll add in some snow

Now something appears to be missing

Let's add a nice tree over here...

A couple of shadows

Some leaves on these branches

And now we're all finished, oh dear!