In which I lose my manuscript, and have to rewrite it all from scratch.
_______
I spent a long time on this chunk, revising and re-revising across pages and pages and pages of hand scrawled writing.
I was finally beginning to grow happy with it.
And then...
I LOST MY MANUSCRIPT.
I have no idea how a large three ring binder full of hand scrawled insanity vanishes from the face of the earth. There are only a handful of places where it ever was. It is in none of them.
Reality simply devoured it.
After a few weeks of fruitless searching, I finally came to the harsh realization that if I wanted to continue this story, I was going to have to give up on what I had lost and start anew from the last public post.
With a great sigh, I finally set pen to paper…
AND IT WAS IMMEDIATELY BETTER THAN EVERYTHING THAT I HAD LOST.
For example, I now know what the story is about!
Also, I learned an important lesson about the impermanence of physical objects which has spurred me to begin dictating up the years of other, unrelated handwritten stories which are currently sitting in dozens of three ring binders in my closet, taunting the slavering, ink-stained fangs of ravenous reality. (Keep an eye out – some LUNACY is on the way.)
Anyways, for the moment, I have a fresh batch of Vim with much more on the way.
Let's take a peek…
(Oh, and if you have no idea what this is, you can find previous chapters of Vim here .)
I have found the place where I will die.
Honest did not stop my leaving, though it may be that he slept despite his turn at watch. For myself, I hope such was the case, but for the others' sake, I must pray he be a keen and callous watchman. Let no danger find them under his tearless eye.
I thought Stave glanced at me from where he lay beneath young Slightly's arm, but no voice was raised when I stepped out from below our overhang and into the dark beyond.
My-grave-to-be is not so far – I can manage little in my state. There were times along the mountain trail that brought me here when I thought with certainty that I would pitch headlong into the void and find my death upon the rocks a league or more below. Yet, always, my feet found their marks – drunk as they are with this feverish disease – as if they had senses of their own distinct from my burning, muddled mind.
I am here, where my body will betray us to no pursuer, but may still be found by a companion, should one wonder where the gelding vanished off to. Perhaps, that was my secret wish that chose this trail and held me to the cliff when the shadowed rocks called me from below.
I am wicked to the end. I dream still of Paradise's tears.
___
There is a welcome warmth to this place, the stone walls leaning in to eat the trail and hold me back from the hungry edge. I have, I think, dreamed of it.
I can remember, as a child, wondering in which season my death would fall, and wishing hard for spring, when golden moths would dance about the freshly bursting sprouts. Perhaps, I saw this place then.
Perhaps, the fire of disease remolds my sensorium to match my ancient fantasy.
Perhaps, my burning mind creates memories that never were to suit where I now lay.
Even well, I am quite mad.
___
Death is slow to find his way, it seems, or at the least, possesses far greater patience than I hold, dying as I am.
The feet that barely brought me here now ache to move.
Well, so be it. I shall explore this tiny cleft of rock that is my final resting place and record such wonders I may find as I step into whatever land might lay beyond the bounds of my short and foolish life.
I can remember now – seemingly spurred by this place – the words that the enemy spoke to me as I sat on the shore of bones.
"Let me be your power."
Perhaps, that is what drives me now, corpse that I am, to pace these stones – some lingering magnetism humming in my mind, some implanted impetus, trying to end a life that is already lost.
Well, I decide to whom my mind belongs.
Neorxenawanga, my last thoughts shall be of you, free and wild and bloody-daggered as the day you claimed my soul, as the moment my eyes looked out from their fractured skull and saw your savage face, the only person who ever bled for me in all my life, and while I was a stranger, laying broken bodied, broken minded, beneath the robbers' clubs.
I run my hands across the scar and weep.
To have lived such a moment.
It is enough.
___
Let
me
be
.
your
..
power
_
_
_
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