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Waiting for the world to end Weary of the night Praying for the light Prison of the lost--Xanadu Held within the Pleasure Dome Decreed by Kubla Khan To taste my bitter triumph As a mad immortal man Nevermore shall I return Escape these caves of ice For I have dined on honeydew And drunk the milk of Paradise -"Xanadu", Neil Peart October 3, 2006 He fought a bear in the Arden Forest in 1623. He made love to a Indian ranee in 1512. In 1780, he moved from Paris to London, anticipating the coming turmoil. 1972...he slept. 1698...he wept. 1901...he wandered the desert aimlessly. 1745...1520...1986...2001...1890...1914... Catatonia, they said of the drooling man wearing the straitjacket in the cell with the padded walls. A complete shutdown of mental activity. But they were wrong. If anything, his mind was working too well, flashing from time to time and place to place so rapidly as to be undetectable. He had been released by the Furies, his job done. That much was true. But the chronal energy would not release him. His mind couldn't focus for more than a millisecond at a time. He was unaware of his presence in the cell. He was unaware of his surroundings. But his mind raced and raced. He relived again and again the rape of his will, the manipulations and the sorrows, the few joys and many regrets. He would never be sane again. He hated the Furies for doing this to him. He wanted nothing more than death. But he knew the THINGS inside his body would never let him die, would keep repairing him and healing him until the planet exploded, and perhaps even after that. If he could just find something to latch onto...something to help him focus on the here and now. Anything. He was tired of being a puppet. Tired of being an amusing plaything... The ever present television mounted high on the wall responded with the squeaky voice of Joe Pesci... "So, I'm funny? I amuse you? What am I, a clown for you?" A...clown? A hideous grin broke out on the face of the patient. For the first time, but not the last, the abused tragic figure in the padded cell let out a sound that was more a howl of insanity than anything else, loudly ringing through the asylum, sending many patients into a frenzy... HAHAHAhahahaHAHAHAhahahaHAHAHA!9 The...end? |
| Part One | Part Two | Part Three | Part Four | Part Five | Acknowledgments |
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