any of this make sense? i know i’m tangenting. but i sit here and wonder what set of paints i could wrap for you, what little drawing with “never give up” on it. i looked for you my entire life. and if i could apologize for the times i hurt you, i would, if i could erase the stupid fights we had over nothing, i would, but that was a part of us as well, and erasing any of us would be to alter something that was beautiful. so i say goodnight to you each night and i hold my pillow and pretend it’s you and i feel the pieces of glass grinding. i’m making a living on words and these words don’t even begin to approach what i feel. i don’t know. i don’t know how to write what my heart’s telling me. it’s been so difficult, and i know you know that, it’s just. i don’t know. i stood in the rain yesterday and replaced the broken clutch in my truck, just in case you wanted to get together this weekend. i hope we can, even if for a few hours. i know it’ll be difficult, and i don’t know how i’d be able to keep my eyes dry, but i miss you so much. life’s composed of moments. i think back, and it’s so overwhelming. “cover my feet” and the way you said NO, seeing you from across antique shops, holding hands walking up the hill at the grange. sitting on rocks with you and eating cheese by the water, washing dishes, washing the entire floor’s dishes while you cooked. running for buses and trains and standing in awe at paintings and just curled up together on my futon after you got to my apartment. the way you said my name. i’ve never felt closer, never felt safer. and it’s so hard to let go of that—i don’t want to let go of that, don’t want to experience you through memory, because i’ve almost forgotten the scent of your hair, something i realized nights ago, and i’m holding on so hard to what i have left, the feel of your cheeks on my lips, the taste of you, the size and squeeze of your hand, the way we fit together spooned, or with your arm around me from behind. half asleep and waking up to
i love you, […
[signal faded.]
[/display]
[run]: [read]:
author: [Hughes, Paul] title: publication:
[system interject]: [deepblack]: [ops: eyes-only]: DESTROY AFTER READING.
Paranoid: Very High Schizoid: Moderate Schizotypal: High Antisocial: High Borderline: Very High Histrionic: Very High Narcissistic: Very High Avoidant: Very High Dependent: Very High Obsessive-Compulsive: High
[recovery team notes signal shatter; text incomplete.] [
recovered excerpts:
…][I], Paul Evan Hughes, of sound body and questionable mind, do this sixteenth day of March, 2005 at 10:14AM, write this document in my own hand, which should be considered a holographic confession of my misdeeds and the wrongs for which I wish to repent. A fundamental confusion and misinterpretation of my intents this last decade has solidified my decision to subtract myself from this timeline and attempt to repair the damage that I have done. What follows is a brief account of the circumstances that effected this decision and the course of action I have undertaken to[…
…]was a desire to create a virtual space where kindred spirits could gather. Of course, the kindred spirits drawn to such a place were[…
…]transgressing the line between real and virtual spaces, hoping to validate that which I had created in a space that was not a space, a world outside of time and[…
…]and how much farther, how much further could we transgress? Maybe if I’d chosen a closer semblance of reality instead of that blurred[…
…]unrest appeared not long after the return to the digital world. Those drunken collisions of flesh, those muted penetrations and slicks of sweat[…
…]was complicit in that process. I am complicit in my own desolation. To surrender to temptation, to bridge the virtual and physical worlds, to give in to that desire to[…
…]giving in to loneliness. I knew then that it would all change, that[…
…][I] had birthed new notions of virtuality. Dissatisfied, I took it upon myself to destroy that world.
…]began the dissolution of the[…
…]before reaching the breaking point. It wasn’t long before[…
…]and yes, an ego the size of Sedna, an intense jealousy that at that gathering I hadn’t found the relationship that I suspected might arise from that breach of worlds. There are differences between electricity and flesh, heightened by observation from feet of air, not fiber. How many young men create and destroy empires of zeros and ones? How many young[…
…]speech almost a decade before, I had prophesied what would become the core of my unrest, urging my school to focus on the students, not on the then-new invention of the “information superhighway.” I sensed the impending societal shift from physicality to virtuality, and now, in these last days, I have seen the deadly results. Communicative technologies have created worlds that at first might appear to contain just as many inherent exceptions to truthfulness as reality, but I am now convinced that[…
…]asked me to define my concept of transgression. Is it my recurring practice of acquiring and exploiting others’ words and actions for my own purposes? Is it the desire to breach and destroy? Or is it perhaps the willingness to let strangers so far into my heavily-guarded, subjectively-constructed notion of history and “reality” that they can’t ever completely escape? I have no answers. I realize that I have lied, cheated, and stolen, as painter Jack Beal insisted I do in one of my first studio art classes in 1996, if I ever wanted to become anything in life.
…]virtual world that I began and ultimately killed was one of intricate deceits.
…]that I have maligned and fabricated my art from subjective memory filtered through a rapidly-dissembling mind. What memories have I constructed of my best friend? “Best” friend? Is that because he was truly my best friend or just because he’s dead now and can’t disagree? What shames have I subjected her to? I loved her, but was that love as strong during our relationship as recall would have an audience believe after she left me? How much of this is a lie? I can no longer tell the difference between past and dream, and I fear that as long as I invite viewers, readers, strangers into my soul, I’ll never be able to discern truth. So much of me is performance now that[…
…]stealing words, shattering memories, placing words into strangers’[…
I don’t know who I am anymore.
…]know what I have to do, what I’ve known for years. I will take this jihad to the[…
…]if I can only secure this reality, if I can only guarantee that this soul, these lives[…
So I confess these transgressions. I will reclaim reality. I will[…
It begins now.
[/read] [/run]
AUTUMN’S SCION
Alina screams. She sobs, throwing herself against the display until her tiny hands wilt. West hears flesh split, fingers crack. She keeps beating against the glass, keeps beating, keeps screaming, even as he pulls her away, the stubs of fingers smearing that image with bloody letters; hers is a language written in despair.
West holds her tightly, but she still struggles, her crumpled hands pressing against him only jarring loose more of that loss; she seeps through his shirt, and he feels warm copper run down through the hair on his chest, pause to circumvent his navel. She eventually relents, slumps into him, allows herself to bury her eyes under his jawbone,
