Part 1

I have a place. I call it a place and not a home because it isn't like that. It couldn't be. Not in any state of mind we're capable of. Not that I can imagine. Not that any of us can... You learn quickly to forego that suffering even though it may seem small at the beginning, towards the end it can send you into yourself for miles at a time. I know now, as does everyone here, that that's one of the most horrible places to be.1

I was dying when I came here. Everyone I talk to starts off their beginning with some variation of those same words. But none of us are dead, and we didn't die. We only arrived before life swallowed us up and digested our souls for recycling. Ever think people have old personalities, perspectives, ideals? Like a garbled mix of what was once new, but was never theirs. They're probably already eaten food packaged to look like new. I thought for a long time that life only gave us new labels and appearences to make things more appetizing. But really we're toilet bowl leftovers. I don't think like that anymore. I remember it, though, desperately. If I thought that way now I might find that sad or sick considering. Now I just remember the act of thinking as a vague fantastic memory. Even if it was about the equality of people and shit.2

But here... Here, when I first arrived and met the others, I mentioned that sardonic relationship and knew only their blank staring eyes. Maybe there was a nod in the bunch, but it was of a Vacant. It annoyed me, if you could imagine that... so shallow. It was annoying to me and I had made another attempt for a reaction that was blinked at and left laying flat and unsatisfactory. 3

I hadn't realised I was here yet. I thought I was still there. And these people were as unaffected by me as a sponge-painted second-hand lamp. They showed no attentive focusing, no deepening of dimples or agelines from a slight apologetic smile. No lifted bushy eyebrows, or penciled on thin ones like raised scars. Their eyelids didn't move, I remember that thinking back. No widening or narrowing. Then I only thought of the others like the mentally invalid. If you throw a lamp against the wall and spill its wired innards and brittle skin across the floor, the bulb doesn't glare at you, broken or not. It doesn't show anger. It doesn't even show interest. And these people were less than desktop lighting. I tossed back the rest of a stale beer in an irritation that flexed its muscles under my skin and left without another word. I didn't see the one set of dull eyes that was watching the door longer after I had gone away through it.4

I don't know if that irritation took over more or eased back when I realised every where is the same. I am the same. As expressionless as a lamp, as monotonous as a work routine you've had so long you're too defeated by it to consciously hate the continuity of it. Worse than the realisation that even that hatred has become a form of monotony that's drinking you up like a casual beverage to forget about as soon as your cup is in the bottom of the trash. There's a pain here, like a river running over us so powerful and deep that the rapids above aren't even visible. And it's pounded us smooth and the same and unmoving and embedded.5

by Jessie Cunningham6