No Stars Here | Alexander T. Damle

“Thin line between heaven and here.” - Bubbles

            Junkie strung out wanders between shadows down cast flat windows looking below light shone through empty night quiet night holy night and through the windows the kid sits eyes locked held in cornea stretched out neon dream fever death internet repeat empty arms inflated veins addict click click. Click hammer back addict brain pan de-mapped (quoting bible of addict writing, DFW south side Boston). Light cast glowing not just junkie but kid too screen light not night light entranced addict. Inside behind cornea there is passageway and its ceiling is gone and full instead of stars but down it is infinite and so many doors all locked so just forwards and down it at its end (white wallpaper grey carpet stainless) is a door marked “Janitorial Supplies” and the man his fingers half melted cleaning bleach hair gone grey though just 37 stress exhaustion pushes the broom down hallway of high school, empty corridors (night, night, goodnight) cleaning up shit fucking high schoolers wishes he was still them, different choices, going to go home and be alone and eat his microwave dinner (mac and cheese noodles stuck together, cheese congealed, Diet Coke, AA ten years now gone clean but still) addict to his own pain now, tearing up the walls, dry wall dry eyes screaming to God forgotten, and then back each day to the high school grind, passes kid in all black sitting back to the wall. And the kid sits on a tablet and it ran out of power in third period but he needs something in front of him can’t look out be out can’t talk or look or see or be seen and the blank screen before his eyes reflects his eyes, sepulchre, wishes to be an addict because he wants to know how it feels to love and to need and mostly to care for something be it even the addicted to object and he stares hard at the screen stares

            through

the screen black and reflective reflexive wishes he could vanish into the screen and then he sees bare legs walk above the screen and hears voice slightly smoked and it lilts and he thinks if only if only but the legs have a body and the body has a mind and a face and eyes that see and fall too into screens. And the mind is the body though the body is all that’s seen the mind ignored and she wishes she could see and she sees the boy in black and though the two think neither would dare enter the other’s world, in the other’s world is all that could exist. This not lust, lust too caring, too much emotion of the addict, but instead another world out of finding walls in own bare and all black and reflective and all blank screens and the mind attached to the body attached to the legs speaks the pretty words thought expected of it and giggles slightly and laughs gaily and the mind feels the body walking along next to it must surely lack a mind for the vapid words issued forth from body’s lips, no true thought, to simply exist, without reflection or pain, but the mind thinks at least though she is empty and all within is reflective, at least she has the gift of something within, even if it does lead all to simply Dostoevsky, adj. but even the body next to the mind has itself a mind, though its internal struggle different, thought process much the same.

            And the tragedy of it all is if only the mind was attached to the lips and the lips to the body and the truth to the thought to the soul to the posture to the short skirt to the combat boots to the black trenchcoat to the lip gloss to the football jersey to the torn jeans to the patched up jacket stunk of old nicotine and urine and the bathrobe if only if only all could see equal and level and each the mind separated not from lips and if only if only.

            Once upon a time in a kingdom far away across a distant sea a young man and a young woman met each other's eyes across a table and beers and warm summer night every night summer palm trees tropics,

            Demerol dreams summer nights cold nights no summer here just slate grey skies and inside room colder heater out junkie. Addict. Own pain self pain self hurt hospital release form notes left scattered around house for police, family, friends, have to find them all, toys in a cereal box, first day home from hospital house as empty as before made attempt to leave, razor left on floor, fucking cops in this town grey walls scratch out your eyes rip out your throat tear out your veins shoot up drop drink TV on 24/7 click click (hammer back) socially approved out but not the razor, this met with interment for life is precious life thrown away most of all. Live!

            Live from New York it’s! It’s! It’s... it’s... its... it... I... not another re-run. Click (Click click click click click click click click bam... click)

            Live from Mogadishu its real life! Death life flickering half-channel analog receiver life death grey white black snippet snicket of moving picture ending picture sounds from outer space and you hear a voice whisper through the static and through the haze “wake up” but you’re already awake aren’t you?

            Eyes crack open through that nasty stuff your eyes have to crack open through sleep too long is it dark out already or still or are you woken up at all because outside there are no stars but there are no stars here, too bright, too many clouds, buildings too tall, stars too far, hand scrambling spider for phone click on screen notifications dopamine bump parents landlord power company parents parents grandma parents landlord facebook! But no wait just another birthday.

            Candles chocolate ice cream cake lawn is green sky is blue sun is yellow balloons are red memories are but spectres of might have beens.

            (a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r s t u v w x y z hamster in a cage, tiny desks, teacher’s desk #1 Teacher coffee stains, mug tipped over, blood slick tile floor, memories but not your memories but memories made fragile click click [bang bang bangbangbang twenty seven dead] memories can’t be true and can’t be kind because images are, in our great Gibson-granted future supplantabled between the static and replaced and the ideal is lost and replaced with the truth)

            addict

            Homeless man, hair fallen out, hands cut shattered broken, ink just below left thumb and cop recognizes it from somewhere, lying cold piss frozen vomit shit stains no pulse, and people walk by and stare dead ahead, and last night pulse fading, clicking out, homeless man begs quietly for help 3am, on way home from club look down and grimace just keep on walking and one notes to another how pathetic, weak, pathetic, broken, and one girl pauses at cries for help and shivering quaking frail body but then sees tear in jacket far too thin for night this cold needle marks patinaed across deflated veins so she walks on, so he died to laughing voices and this morning one of those who laughed now walks past body and remembers night-cry for help and this one won’t sleep tonight even as girl caught in small of his arm sleeps soundly next to him, chest rising, falling gently and he thinks of telling her but he’s forgotten the word for death and he stays up alone staring out the window looking for stars but there are no stars here.

            At night lying in the gutter is a baby’s rattle and in the gutter there is washed up trash and collected refuse and half of a shattered bottle of Jack Daniels lies up the street from the gutter and it’s shattered perfectly halfway no jagged edges, perfect line, and it looks like it was intentional but it wasn’t and a dark trail reflects neon on the asphalt leading from the bottle towards the gutter and someone looks at the bottle and thinks of picking it up, so particular in its destruction, but then sees the other half of the bottle and loses interest in both halves and goes home and watches TV and eats dinner (home cooked, not great, but edible) then goes to bed alone and he falls asleep with a smile on his lips remembering something that he remembers wrong.

            Red eyes eyes down down beat beat off off key key coke. Red eyes.

            Bass strong vig light night heavy club empty chamber full.

            Then empty and body cavity full and eyes empty and head loaded (last trip, DMT not drug of choice but choice ain’t got nothing to do with it)

            Razor blade cyanide revolver barrel (once heard chest better than head more certainty though too more pain but that DMT trip never could score it might as well take it while he’s got it) heights, depths, didn’t leave a note, unless they searched the dumpster (crumpled up tossed off way out).

            When her heart stopped they brought her back but they didn’t bring her all the way back and now she’s here legs and body and brain, and now the brain really is cut off and the lips instead of “hey, like, what’s up” now go all “blip blip blip” and her mom cries and her dad left and he drinks now and used to never drink at all and now all he does is drink and the boy still sits in black in the hallway and he heard something about it but he doesn’t connect it to the legs because honestly he’s forgotten the legs and by the time the brain connected to the legs had its heart shut down it had forgotten about the boy in black too though now with only time to think and every thought to think and no words to speak the brain thinks of everything and she thinks of the boy and wonders if he can see the stars from wherever he is because her eyes still work and she can only see tile ceiling, every day for the rest of always. k.

The Good Fight | Theland E.Thomas

We find our young hero kneeling in the ashes of his smoldering home, desperately grasping for his father’s charred hand, causing it to disintegrate and scatter in the wind. That same wind lifts the tears from the boy’s cheeks and carries the boy’ screams through the remains of the ravaged village, over the bloodied bodies of his family and friends. Those screams, the cries of innocence shattered, dreams crushed, identity torn away. That day, heartbroken but resolute, our hero vows to seek out evil anywhere it may hide and to destroy it.

Cold and alone, he travels to a neighboring village. They take him in, treat him as their own. There, he learns and trains. He develops strength, speed, and ferocity. He holds anger and passion, but lacks wisdom and discernment. Heartstrong and headstrong, he presses on until his skill surpasses that of his master. And when the invaders come, he rises up to lead an army.

No longer a child, our hero and his men charges headlong into enemy forces though they are outnumbered ten-to-one. But the village has trained their men well, and each warrior fights with the strength of ten men. And our hero is the bravest of them all. He moves like a man possessed, spinning and splashing, anticipating the enemy’s every move. How courageous he is, how fearless, how gallant. Through the roars, blood, smoke, and clanging, our hero emerges victorious.

The village celebrates with a feast in his honor. To commemorate his valiance, they dub him, the Righteous Warrior, prophesying that he will wield Justice in his hands and leave Peace and Prosperity in his wake.

The next day, our hero begins his Righteous campaign. With a band of brothers in arms, he goes out to destroy the enemies where they lay. They traverse the mountains and the plains tirelessly until they reach the City. Oh, the magnificent City, that bastion of evil, that malignant sore upon the earth. Cursed by God and man, the ulcer cowers behind sky high walls, spewing forth gold-adorned wretchedness from the bowels of Hell. All night, the City revels for they have nothing to fear.

The Righteous Army strikes then, shooting down the watchers, blasting through the walls. They set fire to the dwellings and ransack the mercantile streets. They strike down the messengers and advance upon the castle where the drunken soldiers scramble for their weapons. Our Righteous Warrior searches the castle until he finds the dastardly emperor and brings down Justice for every one of his villagers slaughtered.

From then on, our Righteous hero rules the empire with Justice by his side. He brings Peace and Prosperity to the land. No longer bowed under the burden of oppression, the empire flourishes and expands. What marvelous Peace, what joyful Prosperity Justice brings! All doers of evil and workers of inequity tremble in Fear at the mention of Righteous Justice.

But our Righteous hero stirs in his sleep and awakens from nightmares at the thought of evil gathering in the shadows and corruption festering within. He seeks to eradicate evil where it may be found and to excise corruption from humankind. And thus, he wages war upon evil itself. Oh, how singing turns to mourning, how laughing turns to weeping, how dancing turns to marching. Peace dies and Prosperity withers when Justice becomes Perversion.

Our hero fights his Righteous battle, but the evil multiplies everywhere he looks. It eludes him, vanishing in one place and appearing in another. It shapeshifts and transmutes. Here, a foreigner, there a friend. Here, a fugitive, there a family. All sought out, all destroyed, all eradicated, all brought to justice in blood, blood, blood, blood.

Still our hero is troubled. Still he cannot sleep for he knows that some pocket of evil still remains. After scouring the ends of the earth, our hero realizes that the ultimate Evil, the ultimate, Corruption, lies within himself. His looks to see his hands dripping blood down his throne, and he realizes he reigns with Perversion by his side.

Solemnly, our Righteous hero wields Justice one last time.

People Don't Fall in Love Like they do in the Movies | Alexander T. Damle

Encounter

            Though thy soul speaks loud into the deep empty night to those stars around immediate you lie usually silent for want of words somehow fitting, they shine bright and yet you’re all burnt out, used up, tossed off, crumpled fast food wrapper.

            Late at night having an emotional break down and you can’t sleep because you don’t sleep so you scream at the walls and blast sad music whose singers you fall in love with because the voices you can talk to because you don’t have to worry about them talking back and they say the voices are all in your head but that doesn’t mean they don’t scream too and sometimes you have to tell the voices to fuck off and you know that’s a bad sign but all you have now is bad signs.

            And yet her you’re talking to and it’s easy, and she’s not like the voices, she doesn’t make you want to curl up into a ball in the corner and pound your head against the wall and take a long knife and cut your arms and you’re talking to her and it’s easy.

            On that first night the voices for some reason lay silent, and you used to think and sometimes still think that the voices are your voice too, and without them never would you have anything to say, and yet that night you spoke loud and you had something to say without having to think what you’re supposed to say.

            And she was so beautiful but you didn’t notice, you didn’t notice she was laughing at your jokes, that she seemed to actually take an interest and it was good and that was the last time it was easy but not the last time it was good.

            A galleon is pitched heavy long across the waves as above stars shine bright for want of lights to drown them out, and the moon hangs in gentle crescent, and somewhere below deck the captain sits, feather to page, his words stretched out and hung all lackadaisical, and he spent as much time making the woman’s name look beautiful at page’s top as he did in crafting all the words lain below.

            Worthless, your words are worthless, you type like it matters, like it will be read, all is nought but cliche, and that goes for the world too.

            Gas fires light the Texas night.

            A girl sketches out on Oxy on backstreet of Tangiers.

            Could use a drink.

            After you talked to her you went home and when you did the voices came back and this time you couldn’t block them out and they screamed and screamed and screamed, and you begged and you pleaded and they didn’t listen.

            Keep on.

            Persevere.

            The ship captain now guides his ship cutting through waves threaten to engulf even the stars, and yet he does not bow and he does not break and somewhere below deck, a bottle of ink is overturned onto a stack of papers and all is obscured.

            After much consternation on the subject, you ask her to an old movie and you regret it immediately.

Motion Picture

            Don’t you have a different record to freak out to? Another record to sit with your eyes hanging all Basset Hound, fingers missing keystrokes, tired but cannot sleep, bowed but never breaking? Somehow you believe that having old voices sympathetic, carried on from a you you thought you ended makes it easier.

            Nothing makes it easier, bullet worming between ear and temple excepted.

            The movie was a disaster because of course it was a disaster. Not for her, and not for us, but for me, because, well, that’s how I tend to make these things.

            Rival gangs/spy agencies/pick your trope line up across a bridge, snipers waiting in the rafters, right hands under leather jackets/peacoats, old Springsteen number beats out, then right at mid-bridge, kid drops the briefcase and everyone starts shooting everyone.

            Can’t scream because of sleeping bodies separated by cheap drywall, can hear everything, nothing for him to hear, not but shuddering gasping body singular at rest but restless, want to cry so bad but can’t cry, so hard to cry anymore.

            Into the cave the gondolier paddles, leaving night sky behind, world now enlightened only by single torch (oil burning) hung from front of gondola, cave walls, dappled with imperfections, hung with moss, can’t see into the water, too dark, going forwards the sky behind disappears too now and it’s just the gondolier and his gondola and the walls of the cave and inwards he keeps on because it has narrowed too tight to turn and he doesn’t like paddling backwards, too much work, so on he goes and around each pipe bend of cave walls he expects to find but never does and on and on the walls curve, minutes hours days weeks months years life till death, waking moment and sleep, always the cave.

            Used to be an artist, but now he just jerks off and rubs his jizzm onto the page, calls it art. No one can really tell much of a difference between the artist before and the husk now.

            Want to hurt like want to be high, want to pound fist into wall until blood flows liberally in vaguely tragic patterns reminiscent of 700 year old glass running down its own pane, want to shoot up, not as addiction, but affectation, all an affectation.

            Movie was David Lean’s Doctor Zhivago, shown with intermission as intended by artist (without jizzm stains), used the toilet three times. Thought somehow this would be a deal breaker in her book. Afterwards rather than drinks she said she had to go home to do a secret santa with her flatmates and you walked home together and you didn’t even hug and she made some casual remark about getting drinks and you figured it was all just a line and you figured that was that, another first date without a second and

            I wish I could just set off across the American waste on the back of a motorcycle and maybe curve south, go through the other Americas, jungle and desert and mountain and plains and beaches and small towns and cities and all that out there and yet you’re here and maybe that’s good and things are good but they’re probably not.

            Evidence A. you’re listening to the record you listen to when things aren’t good, it itself a suicide note. You’ve never written a suicide note.

            Writing from the story’s middle, doesn’t work with true stories any better than it does with fiction but you have to write something you just have to write something because if you don’t write anything then you’re not a writer, isn’t that what you always say?

Boozing

            And yet despite previously told prophecies that was not the end, for drinks did happen, with time, and you drank and you talked, you both, long into the night, closing your favorite bar (only time you’ve ever done that) and that was also a good night but not a great night and so much you fucked up, opportunities lost, a woman like her, not going to wait around.

            Make your bets and make them well, poker face on.

            Trying to cry. Trying your best to cry but can’t cry. Need a dead lover to picture, some great personal tragedy to regret.

            Bourgeois self obsession made manifest on page and in mirror, more masturbation, pushups and pullups and sets and routines and protein shakes and health foods and calorie counts and carefully assembled outfits, and no one gives a shit but the one staring back forlornly in the mirror, all that preening and yet it’s never enough, face in the magazine stares up at you and it’s not your face because faces don’t work that way.

            And then she says she has something kind of awkward to tell you and this is the moment you were all kinds of braced for, yet just those words a part of you fractures a little and then she says she has a long distance open relationship and this you weren’t expecting, and it’s not the relationship, that doesn’t bother you, not really, you have enough potential deal breakers yourself that you have to accept whatever you get with any potential partners, after all, aren’t the years long self-hate that is the running conversations with the voices in your head close enough to an open relationship? What does bother you is even talking about a relationship, not ready for this, not even close, so used to girls going on first dates with you that they assume are just friendly meet-ups, then never talking to you again. You can’t even deal with the idea that a girl might be into you. Breaks you.

            After the date you know you should kiss her, but you don’t and you don’t even really consider it. Too drunk to think, too tired, too broken, used up, tired, this whole dating thing has fucked up too many times for you to even consider it going right this time.

A Return to the Land of Oz

            Then Christmas comes and you two go your parting ways, and you talk sporadically for those couple of weeks, and it eats you up inside and she mentions in your talk, just to clarify, that she is indeed single, and you say you’re single too and it takes her a couple days to get back to you, and in those couple of days everything hurts and you want to throw up and you can barely eat and you can’t sleep and you know it’s absurd, it’s just a few dates, you’re doing exactly what you shouldn’t do and you’re building it up way beyond anything reasonable, and you wish you’d get in a potentially lethal car crash.

            Icy roads, traded paint, twisted metal, smell of burnt breaks, flaming gasoline, snow coming down hard, half light, blood.

            You get back and you get drinks again, somewhere different, and it all feels wrong this time, and when you use the bathroom you stare at yourself and you ask yourself what you’re doing, and whether you actually care for this girl, if you aren’t just looking for something to fall in love with because you’re so fucking lonely, another excuse to not kill yourself for a couple more months.

            You walk home together again and you stand staring each other caught in the light of Edinburgh streetlamps, as a faint rain beats down, and you stare at each other, and she smiles, and you lean in then stop and it would be so easy but you don’t kiss her, and eventually she breaks the moment and kisses you on the cheek, then gives a little wave as she walks off, and that kiss and that wave melt your heart a little bit and you feel the moisture from her lips on your cheek as you walk up to your apartment.

            Then the kiss dries and all you can think about is that you didn’t kiss her and she’s going to lose interest, got to take a chance, too scared she’ll pull away and then you’ll wake up in hospital bed, all the events of the past few weeks just another overly hopeful pipe dream, an excuse to believe you can make yourself better.

            Mental patient howl. Beat the walls, bloody cement, bloody foam, bloody straightjacket, no drug strong enough to fix you quiet.

Late Late Nights

            You’re not a jealous person, and yet all you feel is jealous, when she so much as talks to another guy and you’ve only gone on a few dates.

You’re an absolute joke, you thought you’d changed? You thought you were ready for a relationship with this cool, funny, smart, outgoing, beautiful woman? You’re going to shatter her like China, like everything that ever makes the mistake of getting close to you by choice rather than circumstance.

            And yet you’re going out with her again tomorrow. Some people never learn.

To be continued.

The Parable of the Cogwheels | Alexander T. Damle

            One day Francis Grant McDonald woke up, though memory of going to asleep escaped him, and all about him he could hear a great low roar. When his eyes opened it was dark, black as pitch though not so black as that time he was locked in a windowless basement by his stepfather for three days, but too dark to see much, just the sound of that low roar, metallic, steel, glimmering steel against steel turning churning plates of steel against plates of steel, car crash nightblood.

            So he waited for his eyes to adjust to the light and he shifted around a bit because whatever he was lying on was cold and it hurt his back, bad back, football injury childhood cheerleaders lonely thought with the uniform he could fuck a cheerleader but then he realized he didn’t want to fuck a cheerleader and that was an awkward locker room conversation and then that day his own teammate ran him down on the field and it was just an accident (coach said, teammate said, saw eyes turn to him, body shift) but his back has been screwed up since then and now it’s giving him trouble then his eyes adjust.

            Above him the sound explains itself in giant gears the size of big men or small trees turning over and over about points of centre axis connected to seeming nothings, dripping occasionally with engine oil color of night soil, and then he looks down and it looks like a steel girder maybe as wide across as he is and then he looks over the edge of girder. More gears pounding away into nothing and he thinks what would happen if he had shifted in the darkness and he had fallen into the gears, they not far below the girder, not more than six feet, how would pain have felt in that perfect dark? (belt buckle), (doesn’t love him anymore), (car crashes again, life theme).

            Before him though is the biggest gear, at least his height times five, and behind him much the same, and these gears turn upwards with motion gentle and lumbering like high school football captain plus twenty years, brain damage, quiet, weight gain, wife beating, dead end job, meatloaf for dinner again? But above it is another gear this one up too and above it another gear pattern much the same and he looks down and he looks up and he recognizes down is not an option and sides too far to reach and they but more cogwheels, these not so perfectly situated for virtiguous climb.

            So onto cogwheel edge he grips, moist, oily, slick, can just hold on, scraping off metal with fingernail tips, good thing he didn’t trim them, and he feels his body pulled upwards and sick sinking feeling in his stomach and his arms aren’t strong anymore, used to be like ropes, toned them, Robert liked that it was what got them talking and who would have guessed rope arms could be start of something like that and it's over now but it sure was something before it was nothing.

            And up and up the cogwheel climbs, Francis clinging to its face sheer, fingernails skittering but holding death to life and backwards again, opposition to inevitable, climb up, then next cogwheel and he knows he has to move before he gets dragged between the cogwheels, body popping like overripe melon, not enough light here for that shattered watermelon colour, and just before final moment, life now before death, he grabs onto wheel above him, and this one grip is harder, negative grip he thinks its called or maybe that’s something else, either way vertical part ways towards him and he’s slipping but wheel seems to be rising faster and before he can fall he is high enough to lock feet (remembered to remove feet from last cogwheel at just last minute, right minute, could have been finality) and clarify grip, and upwards on second cogwheel now he climbs.

            Up and up and up and he glances down to see the girder and it seems not so far as it should seem and he still can’t remember falling asleep and can’t know how he woke up here and just knows he did wake up and the oil on the wheels is gumming up his hands, sticking together but sliding off the metal, and everything hurts and he wishes he’d bothered to use that pull up bar he got God knows why, would’ve helped now, but he’s moving and he looks up and he thinks he sees light or maybe it's an illusion but

            Very suggestion, notion, idea, theory, light at end of tunnel, point of hope against the darkness, star singular on cloud socked night, spurs onwards new strength in arms and two more cogwheels he rides and he thinks maybe he can do this and though the light seems not closer and in fact seems fainter he knows in his heart he is approaching fast and that the light shall soon be with him and he shall be free of this Hell and all shall thenceforth be good.

            Maybe call back that guy from that bar, he seemed nice and maybe go visit his mom at the retirement home, no wait, dead, keeps forgetting, not callous, just hard thing to force self to remember, can’t just sink in like into water, hard thing to believe, death, especially one so close. Should have called that guy back. Visited more.

            But his arms are giving out and his fingers are slipping more and more and his shoes what tread once had is now coated thick with oil and all is slipping and falling and all burns and then he looses his grip and he meant not to loose his grip but he loses his grip.

            As he falls through the darkness the light seems but a dream of fresh baked bread cooked with cinnamon and apples on Autumn night long gone, kid again, happy again, never happy, but the bread was there and his mom was too and it was good and it was warm and the night was beautiful and the stars all above called to him and were there and maybe the light and the stars and the bread were all made of the same stuff and he’s falling and he feels air rushing under him, air tastes sour and wrong, and he’s falling.

            And then he hits hard, feels right ankle snap immediately, screams but no one can hear him so he doesn’t scream and just opens lips and rushes air through lungs, tongue forms pattern of tongues, and he feels leg being pulled under but immediate moment before impact, pain, fingers grabbed something, looks up, girder, and his leg is being pulled under and there is no word for the pain because pain is an easy word and this isn’t easy and he reminds himself he can’t pass out, must free his leg, shock will save him from the pain, just has to stay awake, and he pulls and his arms strain and pop and pull and that word again pain said too easy, wrong, and but still he pulls loose somehow his leg, and onto the girder he pulls his body and lets it fall there discarded behind 7-11 on county highway fast food wrapper used condom homeless man.

            He looks now at his leg in front of him and below the knee it exists not but bleeding seems minimal by grace of God and he pulls off his shirt, tears it into bandage, staunches the blood flow, then lays back, pain subsiding.

            And he lays there for a long time he doesn’t know how long because now the light seems practically non-existent and even if it had stayed with him it was unchanging so time was unchanging too, but it doesn’t matter because the light is gone, and he tries to measure time by the sounds of the gears, but every time he thinks he has some scheme reliable to his purposes, they seem to speed up or slow down.

            And eventually his leg stops screaming at him and his arms feel rested, grown stronger even maybe for the stress and pain of his first attempt at a climb, so he pulls himself, half crawl, one leg now, to the cogwheel in front of him, and he grabs on with his two hands (a blessing) and begins once again his ascent.