William Rose - The Seven Habits

Infective people are everywhere, man. They pass you on the street, rub up against you at the bus stop and walk out of bathrooms without washin their hands. They sneeze, they cough, they fuckin breathe the same air you and I gulp down to fuel our energy starved cells. Were just lucky it aint airborne, ya know?

But God forbid ya put the moves on that cute brunette with the nice ass whos been giving ya the hungry eye all damn night. Next thing ya know, shes got her tongue shoved down your throat and these microscopic terrorists are waging molecular jihad all up and down your circulatory system.

Sad part is that sexy little bitch doesnt even realize shes a carrier. None of em do. They go about their business like theres no tomorrow: workin, partyin, tuckin their precious little incubators in for the night so they can slip off into the shadows and exchange infection with some unsuspecting host. Kissin and fuckin, suckin and swappin juicesits the perfect recipe for contagion. See, thats the places these toxic little bastards just love to congregate. Warm, moist, and dark may as well be walking around with a friggin petri dish surgically implanted in your crotch.

But me? I know things, man and I make damn sure to keep my fluids to myself. You wont catch ol Bosley Coughlin stickin his prick into a full-blown hot zone. Not after the shit Ive seen.

See, Ive become what you might call dimensionally unstable. I pass through time and space like smoke through a screen, man. Sometimes the Eye of Aeons just opens up in front of me and I see all those disembodied hands squirmin and writhin, clawin at that smoke-like fire theyre trapped in; they grab onto the edges and start pullin them back, forming a dark hole in the center no bigger round than a roll of toilet paper. They just keep yankin and tuggin and that pupil just keeps gettin larger and largera dinner plate, a manhole cover, the front tire of an eighteen wheelereventually all those things look like tiny polka dots compared to that circular void, man. The reds and blues and oranges pulse out from it, wavering in the air like heat above the sidewalk, all flickering and pretty and hypnotic. Before long, you cant look away from this aurora pupillae any more than you could turn your face from God.

And thats when the wind starts suckin at ya. It rustles your clothes and hair and somehow blows both hot and cold all at once, beads of sweat leak out from pores even as chillbumps tingle your skin, you get this flutterin in your belly, like you might want to toss your cookies right then and there but at the same time you feel ravenous, like you could eat for days and never fill the hollow pit thats become your stomach.

Before long that breeze is like a flippin twister. It pushes at your back with the invisible hands and pulls at ya from the front, makin ya stumble and stagger as youre pulled closer and closer to that unblinking Eye.

If you try to scream, your voice is devoured by the darkness before its even had a chance to rattle your vocal chords, and you can struggle to hang onto reality with all ya got but within seconds the gravity from that pupil is so immense that your molecules seep right through your fuckin skin, man. Oh yeah, it hurts like Hell, you better believe it. It burns, it throbs, it aches, it feels like millions of tiny fangs ripping and shredding the nerve endings exposed after your skins done been peeled back layer by layer with a paring knife.

Next thing ya know, youre fallin and flyin and all these sounds swirl around you. Cries, laughter, whispers, the lull of forgotten languages, the hiss and crackle of cosmic radiation burnin through the cosmos. Its probably what God hears when Hes wrapped up in the middle of all those prayers being hurled at him. And theres this smell dude, that is literally everywhere. Its a scent like a new beach ball, fresh from the package, so thick you can taste that shit.

And then poof just like that youre freed from this prison of flesh.

See, Ive seen planets our scientists dont even know about, man. Lifeforms that make you teeter on the chasm of madness cause you just cant wrap your thoughts around how something like that could defy all known natural laws and still exist. Methane oceans, mountains of diamond and rust, skies that look more like thin, veiny membranes its all out there, as oblivious to us as most of us are to it.

Ive also shifted back and forth through that illusion we call Time. In the Eye of Aeons theres no such thing as past, present, and future, dig? Theres just this endless state of Now with all these so-called linear points overlappin and co-existing. The closest I can come to doin it justice and making you idiots understand, is to compare it to those Russian matryoshka dolls. You know the ones, right? Kinda shaped like a peanut, all brightly colored with rosy cheeks and painted kerchiefs around perfectly circular faces?

You open up one and theres another, a smaller doll, nested inside. So you open that one too and be damned if theres not another one of those fuckers inside it. Before long youve got all these matryoshkas clustered around ya like a pack of rabid grannies and they just keep getting smaller and smaller and smaller. Thats what Time is, man, only size doesnt come into play since thats an entirely different set of dimensions. But you get the general idea, right? Maybe not. But it doesnt really fuckin matter now, does it?

The point is, I know how the pyramids were built because I was there when the slaves were haulin those giant slabs through the blistering sun. Ive seen the muck and mire bubbling like pools of hot tar as singlecelled organisms subdivided with the dream of someday pullin themselves outta that ooze. Ive floated in the vast nothingness that was before all things. Ive witnessed the beginning, man.

On the flip side of this metaphysical coin, Ive also been through Omega. Not the end of everything, mind you, not yet. Just the death of this inconsequential little species that inhabits a tiny speck of dust on a display case in the mansion of the universe. A speck of dust we call Earth, man. And let me tell ya, brother we aint got much time left.

Oh yeah, thats it. Roll your eyes. Trade your snide little glances and your smug half-grins. I can hear your thoughts, you know. Once youve been through the Eye of Aeons, everything is possible and nothings prohibited. See, youve got this little carnival barker in your head shouting into his megaphone at the milling crowd: thats right folks, step right up and prepare to be amazed at the depths of depravity and insanity that can haunt a once healthy mind. See the twisted synapses and shattered receptors with your own two eyes and I can hear it all, mother fucker. So laugh if it makes you feel better, if it makes you feel safer. Yuck it up, goofster. Your opinion doesnt mean jack to me, man, cause I look around and all I see are corpses who dont realize theyre dead yet

But, anyway where were we? Oh yeah, we were startin at the end, right? Let this blow your mind, man: tufts of grass sprout through cracked concrete and ivy clambers over rusted hulks of metal that vaguely look like cars. And all these buildings surrounding us? These gleaming monuments of steel and glass that strive like Icarus to touch the sun? Nothin but mounds of rubble and mountains of debris that roll across the landscape like droppings from The Thing That Eats Worlds. Smaller structures, theyve fared a little better. Some of em still defy gravity with their crumbled walls and timbers turned to cinder by a fire that raged so long ago even the smell has faded.

And its so fuckin quiet, man. More quiet than this planet has ever known. Not even the birds are singin because they know somethings out there. Their instincts tell them to stay still, to hide in the cracks and crevices of our fallen society, to pretend theyre nothing but shadows clustered in ruin.