Never

Never

Posted by: Richard Johnson

Never – By Anonymous

I`m working towards being able to express some of the things that have happened to me and shaped what I became today. Concentrating on expressing my visualisation in words held back the meltdown. This is an expression of what the years between a visit to a child psychologist and puberty, when I discovered anger and defiance could keep me alive & moving, were like.

I`m standing in my mind. Small, insignificant, a part of the endless firmament surrounding, above and below me.

A tearing sound and a great light come, an invasion, a machine materialises. It is vast, its caterpillar tracks taller by far than my own presence, its yellow paint too bright against the penumbra of my thoughts, its flashing light sending my space awry with swirling nauseous shadow, its arm, leading to a toothed bucket, of a vastness unimaginable to who I was then.

I am seized by an invisible hand, held by the scruff of the neck, hoisted above the ground that has appeared to support the machine, a ground not of my making but part of the invasion, the intrusion. Something alien that has imposed on my landscape that is not a landscape. I struggle, but not for long, the hand shakes me, rattles me, causing fear for my existence and frightening me into terrified stillness as I am held and forced to see, to watch as the machine crawls, belching poison, and goes to work.

As the bucket bites, my centre screams, my outside becomes rigid with the resistance I try to mount against the agony that consumes me from within, and I become smaller and smaller within myself, dwindling until in the firmament of my mind the things that are not of me are bigger, stronger, more important than me.

Roaring, belching out smoke blacker than darkness, the machine cuts into me, digs, cuts and lifts. Moves, cuts and lifts. As it works I am forced to watch the violation, the despoiling of the place that was mine. It cuts trenches, long and deep, separate, connected, parallel and at angles to one another. Cuts them into me, makes them something that I could not hide from or ignore, try as I might, when I am outside. I am too young to know what they are. Too young to appreciate what I am seeing as the trenches cut deep enough for the searing magma of shame, pain and fear fill them, the level rising to the brim before stopping, rippling, the flames hurting my non-existent eyes in my non-existent place, the hand still holding me harshly, fingers directing my gaze so I cannot look away, shakes me, hard. A voice, angry, demanding, frightening, from so many directions around me that it pierces me and sears my centre like a lash, bellows “LEARN”, before casting me into my own oblivion, heedless of my terror and confusion. I run from that place, I resolve never to return to the site of the rape of my spirit, I lock the knowledge of its location away from myself and run, run.

Decades later I am drawn slowly, inexorably. I started somewhere that was green, penumbra now a glow that illuminates the dome of sky that surrounds the planet my thoughts and feelings have become. Principles, stand like mountains, immovable and lofty. Concepts roam in the distance and nearby, heedless of my presence until I beckon them closer that I may see them more clearly, and explore their existence. Thoughts flow in rivulets that meander and border fields of memories, some brightly coloured, nodding their fragrant heads in the breeze of time and some darker, corrupt and stinking and bound by fences made of loathing and fear, standing dark and harsh, impenetrable and poisonous.

A meander in the river has undercut the bank of one of the fences, leaving a gap into the field.

Compulsion floats me on the river closer to the gap and feeling strong, I step through. Though I am not here, and this place doesn`t exist, my bare feet are made uncomfortable by the texture of the memories I wade through. I have always been naked here, what need does a body that doesn`t exist have for clothes? Slime and thorns coat my calves as I stride across the field to the horizon beyond the fence I have crossed.

I walk for an age. Fears and anxieties buzz around me, the drone of their wings and the poison of their stings making my soul shudder with unease as crowded undergrowth gives way to clearer, stonier, darker ground. In going forward I find I am heading backward, the ground on either side gradually falls away and I find myself walking on a ridge, a promontory that rises  beyond the distance I can see from the other side of the fences, and runs parallel to the path I have spent my life carving through this world as my experience terraforms it. Past and above the impenetrable seeming landscape of my adolescence, beyond the barriers built long ago to lands I had forgotten.

Further and further, higher and higher, what surrounds me becomes steadily darker until, scared of losing my footing I am forced to raise myself and move through space detached from any anchor, following the smell of brimstone to the end of the ridge, where I hover, stationary and extend my senses around me.

Laid out before me is a barrenness I could not imagine in this place that should be colour and light and life and love. The ground as black as pitch and the sky darker, lit only by the fires in the letters that I see clearly, carved impossibly large into what is of me and yet not of me. Letters made of lines and curves, connecting and separate, parallel and at angles to one another.

YOU WILL DO AS YOU ARE TOLD. SIT DOWN. SIT UP. SIT STILL. STAND STRAIGHT. STOP THAT. LOOK AT ME. TAKE THAT LOOK OFF YOUR FACE. BE QUIET. PICK YOUR FEET UP. STOP TALKING THROUGH YOUR NOSE. STOP BITING YOUR NAILS. STOP THAT. DON`T DO THAT. STUPID. WORTHLESS. UNWANTED. MONGOLOID. RESENTED. HATED. IT IS YOUR FAULT. DON`T ANSWER BACK. DO YOU WANT ANOTHER ONE. PLEASE MAY I. EFFORT. BEHAVIOUR. ATTITUDE. EFFORT. BEHAVIOUR. ATTITUDE. YOU. YOUR FAULT. YOUR FAULT. YOUR FAULT.YOUR FAULT. YOUR FAULT. YOUR FAULT.YOUR FAULT. YOUR FAULT.

The heart I do not have in this place stops. The control I do not need in this place deserts me. The ground that does not exist hurtles towards me as I topple from the ridge that is no longer there towards the ground of my torn spirit and land hard between the letters, where I see the small scratches, made with tiny, quick-bitten fingers in hardened mud made of spirit and tears so many years ago.

please. i can`t. please. i`m afraid. please. i don`t understand. please. i don`t know how. please. i can`t see. please. i can`t hear. please. i can`t speak. please. it hurts. please. why. please. you said to. please. i don`t know what you want. please. i`m sorry. please. i won`t. please. i`m small. please.it hurts. please. i`m alone. please.

it`s not long before the small words give way to meaningless scratches, the scrabbling of a frightened animal, stinking of piss and fear and despair and pain.

The lungs I don`t have, heave. The throat that doesn`t exist closes in sobs that I cannot hear. Tears of fire roll down my non-existent cheeks as I cry for the memory that didn`t exist because I didn`t want it to. the strength that has taken decades to build barely enough to take me away from this place to another place in my mind.

In the real world my body calms slowly as the chemical unfurls in my bloodstream. control returns as I step out of the place, through the door into the hall of stillness, and I close it behind me, noting that now the lock is broken.