Oceans Ventured: September 2023

test2

conditions

You are in a squalid, square room with one door and no windows. There is a table in the middle of the room. On the table is a rusty machete. You do not have much time. * [[Punch the wall]] * [[Use the machete on the door]] * [[Open the door]] * [[Slice open your abdomen]] * [[Yell]]

By punching the wall you achieve nothing but pain to your knuckles. There is fear. You have less options. * [[Open the door]] * [[Scream in agony]] * [[Use the machete on the floor]]

The machete sings and you listen. There is nothing to hear. It whispers. You lean in. You understand now, but it took you so long to get to this point. Your realizations are pointless. By the time the world closes you have too much to lose, but you have nothing left to give. There is nothing you can do to evade the passage of time. The door weeps harder than god and from dust to dust, there becomes something you hardly even knew. What good was it, anyways?

The door opens with a gutteral creak. You can see outside. The world is cold. The night is young. There are trees. You see shadows between the leaves and they speak slowly. You have few options but no time. * [[Run]] * [[Cut trees with the machete]] * [[Watch the moon]]

By the time you feel the pain it is too late. In six years the soil reclaims your body. The worms will swallow your tongue and your essence will survive as part of the greater whole from whence you came. You are immortal. This is your eternity. (after:4s)[You can’t stay here forever.]

I hear you, and I feel you, and your skin and bones, they echo your name. It's beyond the imagination, I think it is, and there's little you can do to remove yourself from that reality. By the end, of course you have a chance to [[flee]]. But is it worth it?

Your screams mean nothing to the room. The room cannot understand you. It believes in you, regardless, and encourages you to try harder. You are running out of time. * [[Emerge from hiding]] * [[Defeat time]]

The floor is unfazed by your attacks and uses the power of Raglock to devour your guts. Your limp body crumples to the ground as your lifeless eyes flood with blood. Bones and skin. Bones and skin. Bones and skin. Bones and skin. Bones and skin. Bones and skin. Bones and skin.Bones and skin. Bone s and skin.Bo nes and sk in.Bones a. nd skin.Are you afraid?Bones and skin.[[Bones and skin]]Bo nes and skin .Bones and s kin. .kin and kin

And your soles take you far. You cross streams and rickety footbridges. You duck beneath logs and skip across boulders. You play hopscotch with frogs and laugh with wolves. You swat mosquitoes and play with the idea of home. Of the room. And when the forest ends you spell deserts on the horizon, blisters below the knees, a sigh on your lips, and there's less running than living because, as one might expect, the winds can only carry you so far. I want to * [[Keep running]] * [[Stay a while]] * [[Make friends with the bees]]

And the trees bleed blue, they sour at the lips and watch like stone sentinels as they tumble and fall, bearing the weight of your loving might. There is nothing for them to do except fall, and fall they do. By the time the forest is clean there are no birds to hear [[your voice]]

and the moon the sun the stars they flicker with a hostility you haven't felt since the day you were born, a love you haven't felt since the day you died, an emotion, one so strong now, stronger than [[skin and bone->Bones and skin]] and the brains that fill your skull, the organs in your body cry until the rise of the sun, and by the time you face the blue it dawns on you that there's nothing

Trapped in a moment, I think it is, and there’s movement, there’s thoughts, there’s talking and people and you, too, but in a frozen ocean I can only get so far. One day, I remind myself, my time will move again, my arms and legs and tongue, too, will find freedom in every breath we take, but for now, I think we will sit. Too brave to be true. I want to go sledding. We’ll have cotton candy and watch ambulances by the beach. The lights of Ferris wheels will remind me of sirens by the time we leave. Sand between my toes will shake over the doormat and I’ll have to clean it all up later. But I won’t. There’ll be pictures by the couch. I’ll watch TV and criss-cross my legs and imagine all the things I could be doing right now. But I won’t do anything. You’ll be smiling in the pictures I will frame. I’ll match the tempo with a laugh and kick them down from oldest to the new. My best life, I think. If I could blink I’d lose myself. If I could breathe I would drown. If I could water the plants and trim my hair and kick my clothes into a pile, I think, I think, I think, I think I will be more than I ever could. There will be [[pictures]], though.

Your sins have caught up to you. Visions of hate and abandoned friends spark before your eyes as would stars, stars and traumatic brain injuries. The table has leapt up and crashed into your skull. The table lunges for your face several times and you eventually stop breathing. There is nothing but [[Bones and skin<-skin and bone]]

Time is unstoppable and your emotions are too strong. You needd to calm down. Calm down. Calm down. You neeed to sett things straight. You n need to rememberr. You nneed to o o o see things right. right. right now. You need to grow up. You need to go to colelge. You need to gget a job. you need to smell tthe roses you need to water the gard enn. Yo u need to call your mother you need to coook the r ice,, you need t o vaccum mm the house you nee ed to say sorry to your brother your mother your si ster you need to go outs ide. .you need to finish your thesis. you need to sleep on time You need to Discover Salem . Y ou need to save money you need to go to Peru you need you Need to come to terms w ith the fact your degr ee won't go any where ., You nee d to crac kk the eggs you need to take out the trash .you need to do the laundry, you need to take down the christmas tree (after:10s)[Dyr bul shchyl ubesh shchur skum vy so bu r l èz]

god tastes [[sweet]]

talk to me(after:2s)[ (text-colour:grey)[as if I could taste that feeling]] if i could stop caring(after:6s)[ (text-colour:grey)[throwing my life to the wind]] bracing from reverberations(after:9s)[ (text-colour:grey)[talk to me]] i want to hear your voice(after:12s)[ [[your voice]]]

and it whispers and whispers and whispers and gets so cryptic I SCREAM and no one HEARS when I CLAW at the WALL and my NAILS DIG deeper than MACHETE BLADES and then and then there's the sound of the fog that roars like tomorrow and I feel it, I do, this time for real, are you forgetting something, I'm begging, not on my knees, not yet, I'm gripping at my skin my spine my scalp and seeing believing relieving myself of the creepy crawlies that my brain has done so well to extinguish from the likes of which I've never before seen and it's beautiful, so beautiful, it speaks my name and speaks in languages I can hear, I can see, I can trace words with my fingernails and drag laughter through the lines and and [[and]]

Losing the means to breathe, I tickle the surface of forever’s ocean from below. Shapes and signs and shivers shake at the wake of my fingertips, as if I could rule the world from the tip of my tongue. It’s beyond me, all of it, but I can imagine a world where this puddle is all my own. I'm not drowning. Head underwater, in too deep, past the knees and bubbling past my chest, it swells, the feeling, sinking inside my stomach up to the curve of my nose. It’s all me, all of it, setting up camp in the corners of my brain and the forefront of a childish imagination. I can’t stop believing. I can’t stop wondering and laughing and prying away the shadows in the mist, bubbles in chocolate milk, swishing and dancing with lattice lace to my mouth and eyes, vanilla ice cream melting on steamy pavement, mirages in the sky, illusions of guided bombs and fin stabilized nothing to whisk me to a country of abacuses. I’m everywhere, I tell myself. I’m everything, and because of the everynothing under my skin I burn under the sun and revel in the circus of a billion yesterdays. One hundred million minds crack at railroad tracks and billboards. One hundred million minds slam dunk basketballs into dumpster homes. Plastic bottles relinquish cents and sense makes none by the time my head hits pillow. It’s a little something, I think it is, before I decide to [[stop thinking]].

You awake with a deathly gasp. You want to remember it. The way things made sense. The pieces Desperately need me to find the truth I can feel it! Finally! At long last, bearing my own weight, my own skin, my monumental fervor, I’m born with more than just a feeling, but a momentum, one I’ll never lose, not until I die for real, this time, this time I’ll do it, do it and peel past the depths of platitudes that tear me to pieces. These fleshy bones grant wisdom. I’ll smother you with more than fear, more than I, me, you, the pieces that make me whole, and I’ll swallow your gasp with a titanic breath. My lungs will capture more than just my anticipation, but yours, too. So awfully bitter. You want to remember it, clawing at your justification, washing your cheeks in moonlight, sunlight, starlight, scraping over the indifference, the rush from the way you talked, abusing all of your senses, the touch, taste, tension, terrified and self conscious like the rest of us, breathing through the cracks, waking up and remembering why you came here. Isn’t it time you grew up? I will kill you one memory at a time, piece by piece, letting your fingernails tell a story around my neck. I will sink deeper than teeth and draw blood, hot, putrid, reverberating love, as if I could taste that feeling, that thing you express in word and song, in skin and bone, this unbridled hope, this hope you can hardly bring to bear, weapons at the ready, defending what is real, or so you’ll say, because there’s nothing worse than to be lost to reality. Talk to me. This shared pain you treasure so much, throwing your life to the wind - just make me stop caring. Breathless, steal my soul and turn me to ashes, to ashes, melting eyeballs and making me so. You will smother yourself in down and inadequacy and the world’s best s’mores. You will sneeze at an allergy you didn’t know you had. You’ll whisper in the night and watch your breath take up space among stars. You’ll wear fur and think nothing of the people who cried wolf. We will hijack language and make war through the only brutality you deem necessary, the slaughter of the lambs, the people, the you, the person who brought this upon you, the me you’ve grown to love so much. Drop your rules of science. Uncover the history I dare to share. It’s more than a question of facts. We will have a good time.

And your laughter builds mountains builds cities builds a monument to all you believed you stood for, your hopes and dreams, your worst dreams and best nightmares, the little things like fruit salad and blue raspberry, and it'll end in silence you won't run you won't cry you won't be anything but the you that you dreamed you'd never become and it'll be wonderful, won't it? It'll be fantastic, it'll be something else, something ethereal, something so utterly incomprehensible it might as well be born atop the tower of babel, lost to history, dead to [[Charon->pictures]] and we will have Gorbachev pick up your corpse before you sink into the caramel that defines the soul you've worked so hard to save are you afraid to hear it? are you forgetting something? are you forgetting someone?

we will build a temple (link-reveal:"here")[= we will smile at forgotten gods and wallow at the things we didn't (link-reveal:"do")[= we will drown ourselves in teixobactin and scoff at famine and (link-reveal:"war")[= this is a shameless, desperate grab for (link-reveal:"immortality")[= i will rot with (link-reveal:"you")[= and i will laugh every second of the (link-reveal:"way")[= for in (link-reveal:"you")[= i know we will have lived f

the bees buzz and the yellow speaks like twinkling little stars you sit and let them teach you their language, the way they celebrate birthday parties, how little lives can be so absolutely big and they will ask can you (t8n:"blur")+(link-reveal:"keep a secret?")[= they want to die they want to die they want to shrivel up and join the grass the leaves the fall the bark the bread they want to forget and be forgotten and lose track of (text-style:"subscript")[time of place of worries and fears and friends and family and] futures never seen sought or stolen they want you to to they want you to escape redescription to acknowledge are you forgetting something to tell time cannot take us to (text-style:"superscript")[speak with your flesh your bones your sweet] silliness the god of my world my heart my imagination swallowed by bees by damn, damn bees, and they want nothing more nothing more nothing nothing and you recognize (seq-link:"nothing","something","everything") (link:"at all")[= please don't [[leave me->pictures]]

(force-input-box:"=XX=","Are you afraid? You can’t stay here forever. All of this white noise. Aren’t you forgetting someone? Isn’t this what you wanted? Do you remember why you came here? Can you hear me? You know how this will end, don’t you? Haven’t you done this before? Have you noticed I’ve been gone? Can you see it? Were we in love? Was it real? Isn’t that beautiful? Do you cry? How many must die? Will they know your name? Was that me? Will it be good enough? Do you want to live? What are you doing with your life? Who do you want to be? Isn’t it time you grew up?") (align:"==>")+(box:"====X")[(after:20s)[i will remember the [[pictures]]]]