by Derek Scefonas

I let out a subatomic whistle. The spyder awakens. It stretched out each leg. Each one the articulation of speculation and education. A sliver strand, like god-spun angel hair, and it lowers itself onto my face. Soft touch as it passes over my eye. It slides to my ear and enters. I begin to feel the web it weaves in my brain. Old connections restrung. New ones laced with laughter. The lattice works across my eyes. A mirror web wink and I'm gone...

A fuzzy haze and the smell of the lawn holocaust and I am outside. A group of orange clad monks walk not next to me, but inside my mind. They chant the morning call to prayer. They were brought by my spyder and housed in the gossamer temple of my occipital lobe. The dust rises from the dead grass field diminutive dust clouds called into being by the shuffling of my feet. I reach the crossroads where the shuttle picks up those of us with a low-band connection. Meanwhile the monks have uncovered a hidden tomb in the monastery and what lies within I can only guess, but it must be the pounding backbeat Buddha of compassion, cause I'm awake. High-speed busybodies in slick metallic shells whir by, an occasional watchdog watches. BIZARE cries a mind monk and then sets himself on fire while pointing at the approaching shuttle. I stand up, signaling my intention to hitch a ride on the low-band shuttle. Quiet now except for the 4/4 beat of my heart and the high hat of my mind. I reach in my pocket for the offering as the double doors of the shuttle swing open folding as the metallic wings of the angel of death. A creek, hiss and the scent of well-worn industrial rubber and flesh tell me I am on the right shuttle. I look through graffiti covered eyes onto the world. I see the cutting of the ground. The sound it makes is of a thunder crash and a looping, drowning wail of a wicked woman who lived near the watershed.

The Christian savior stares at me from the backwards-turned hat of a fellow passenger. Christos is swaying to the pounding of the rainforest drums. Arms eternally outstretched wanting to enfold you. Does he ever get tired standing on the brim of that baseball hat? A voice like Vlad the Impaler comes from the old man sitting next to me. "Twenty years ago O was banned from homeland, parted from my wife and son. Never to see them again. Cause I dared to use atom elements to producing super beings. Beings of untinkable strength and silence. I was branded a madman and a charlatan. Outlawed in the world of science, which previously honored me as a genius. Oh fear and desperate shame, I curse you all to hell. I have proven that I am almighty." I was going to say something. I wasn't sure what. I mean, what do you say to a megalomaniac biotech genius with a messianic complex. Then from within my ancient broken Chinese jade heart came the following, "wow, that must suck."

He nodded his translucent head and asked, "Vould you have a cigarette?"

I shook my head, "No, they don't work here."

"I know," his voice like a muddy paddle, "but it's fun to ask."

The sound of a whale farting through 15 layers of philosophical fog ended the conversation. The shuttle had reached my destination. I was ay Palomar. This is not a test. Is this reality? Worldwide and wide-awake I stride. Community College construct V.1.1.1.1.1. The sun burns down like a gravel sound. The Asian artists seem to surround with Manga hairdos and Bozuku driven frowns. Rabbits of forgotten fame pass by with frightened memories of native hunters buried in the genetic memory.

Yellow stripe to Red past a jungle of Green. To the clock tower, tick-tock, tick-tock, almost unseen, pump it up now with the nature. Low quarter circle walls of brick cry out, "Danger, all you have to do is be calm," or is it become? I'm not too sure 'cause a wide breeze blew that thought out of my head. I watched it go. It flew past a red and yellow flag and ended up in a Hello Kitty backpack that was lying on the steps of the student union. Soon to be picked up by a lost raver kid from 15 years ago whose teeth fell out forming a bracelet around his wrist that spelled his name.

Meanwhile a fellow student has sat down near me, she looks at me through blue tinted bangs and forgotten galaxies.

I say, " It's hard to survive in a world of destruction. Tough when you are young, needing assistance or justice. Open your eyes to the devastation that is this.

She replies, once I had a dream. We were young and once invincible: I lost focus.

Once I had a dream: I was young and full of arrogance

Once I had a dream: I was dragging your body somewhere.

It is tough at the top.

Tougher at the bottom.

It is hard to survive in a world of destruction.

Open your eyes to the devastation that is this.

I turned my head. Looking over my shoulder, checking out the dead people left behind. Doesn't everyone like the taste of gasoline? I got nowhere to go. Oh yea I do. I get up and with a nod to the once fellow Invincible I head over to the student union. Pass the people with no classes, bouncing bodies and cold, cold, cold thoughts to the side entrance. Up and to my left before I open the door I glance. Random lines and swirls draw me in. A psychogenetic trance-like piece of art hangs there. It is alone and random. I reach out and touch it to see if its there or just a glitch in the system. My index finger stretches out. It starts swirling, mixing becoming another swirl in the pattern. My feet are still firmly planted on concrete, but not for long. The rubber souls of my sneakers break free from gravity and I begin to melt. I become another swirl. I am liquid. I am viscous and viscous. I am the slayer of dreams and my biochemical structure has been designed to join in chemical conditioning my body has been trained since childhood to become excited by this. Now we can begin. The chemical configurations of this creation and myself must balance. The view is breathtaking. This is strange. I should feel a balance beginning. A voice. "I seem to feel something. Long have I hung here unnoticed and forgotten. Now you come. Come, come, come, come with me." Icy cold that streaks through what was once my body and my soul and I am transported and transformed into another universe. It is a universe of sound and liquid laughter. I watch with it. "We must join in chemical conditioning," it says. I watch as particles of life explode outward forming galaxies, nebulas, stars, planets, comets...life. It is so much more than static being. It is more than randomness. It is more than order, order, order, order, order...

An "Excuse me," and a tap on my shoulder. "Do you want to order?"

Corporeal being once more I reply, "Yes, one breakfast burrito."

She hands me a number -37. I wait till it is called, take the wrapped burrito and then I pour a cup of coffee. I pay and take my insignificant feast to the grassy area outside the library. I finish but hunger still remains. "Is it real?" I ask once more. A voice robotic and effected answers from some exotic realm of my mind.

"Deep Space...Abandoned. Any survivors?"

"No", I answer as I shoulder my backpack and climb into the cavern.

The scent of long dead authors and hidden cabbalist knowledge assaults my olfactory opening. I climb more stairs. In a back corner, hanging from the wall are the twin bloodshot eyes of god. They sit upon a pool of languid blue.

"What is happening?" A monk or is it the monkey of my mind asks.

"Something wonderful", is the countersign.

In the distant shack that lies abandoned in a forlorn field my brain, an ancient, sits down at a piano and begins to play 5 notes over and over. He weaves them into a tapestry, which he places upon my soul to keep it insulated from the cold grip of God's gaze.

I look deep into the twin pools of red. I am slipping and twisting once more drawn into something that is neither more nor less than myself. I remove the cloak and dive in. Harp string songs break the surface and in the next moment the lotus finds the strength to blossom. The river of time begins to flow backwards and I step into the same place...twice. Then again...and again. "It is all just an endless recurrence of a single thought played out in innumerable ways. Beware the trap of the soul that grows in the eyes... this time, time, time, Ime, I'm late for class.