times like this world becomes fake and plastic firmly separated with a thick layer of cling wrap an impenetrable implacable unbearable membrane of dispossession that makes an exclusion zone out of everything around every little thing is senseless and alien and i'm freezing in this 95? heat in the middle of a deserted street with seldom cars grumbling by on its worn pebble pavement so temptingly that it prompts me to leave shove myself into the intricate labyrinth of old alleys backyards but it's hard to cease even harder to stop calculating as it grins in response from every high edge of a construction building every transformer vault hums with potential and the desire to get out and away is freezing my bones eating away at my skin so callous and ominous it's a bodybag demon that eats me alive isolating from sanity warps and twists all my thoughts to make them convenient generate perfect reasons for following this urge to the point when i start feeling like it's the only way just a matter of time like i got no choice like it's been the best decision lying obviously in the palm of my hand all the while and i know myself with this cursed impulsivity impassivity that reduces the meaning of it to a mere routine act no big deal just another thing to get over with that same thing has pushed me in the back on the side of the road that day long time ago it's the same thing that has failed me so many times so
that is how i end up stalking Rider every time because his is the first presence i've met beyond that cling wrap since he's been roaming these vast barren lands endless ashen fields outside of the impenetrable bubble of belonging and relating from the beginning he's been dying and dead for so many times just to wake up locked within again he's been mouthless and screaming for way longer than me he has learned to cope and escape discreetly enough to never get noticed he has patience i lack and presence that evaporates me immediately and it's not a revelation that sometimes being a ghost he turns me into is still better than a trapped beast too eager to start gnawing at its own limb to break free that i turn myself into on days like this
there's a part of me that will always remain belonging and as much as i hate him for it whenever i'm able to it's obvious enough to exclude the element of surprise from the fact that he always knows when i'm in his vicinity so whenever i prefer stalking keeping my distance to avoid confrontation and make do with the presence it's more like weird walks with no talks and a broad gap between the two participants but this time i risk it seeing as he sits there on the train station remote and secluded rarely crowded so it's peaceful all these tracks overgrown with tall grass gentle bloodclots of poppies scattered between wooden ties soft wind from the fields and a graveyard nearby he sits there for a while roasting slowly in the withering gaze of the sun and i can't help but come out automatically sooner or later it has nothing to do with me being tired from sitting there in the grass behind his back like a guerrilla pro i just know all too well times when Rider gets really quiet lost so deeply in thought it's hard to attract his attention almost contemplating perhaps
so he may be stuck there watching freight trains flash by just for fun or he may be not even though he is known for his despise towards those methods of suicide which involve other people totally unrelated and unaware like drivers i know that better than anyone else after all given how much i was criticized dissed and bullied at the time for that very sin of choosing the car well i failed after all and can't say i ever had the time or energy to choose as well had a fucking brand new gap in my skull by the time i've met the car so can't really call it a decision even but a gap in the skull can't justify you when you're dealing with the intelligent boy Rider who makes no difference between conscious and unconscious motives and there has always been so much stuff i failed to put into words that hasn't lost its meaning since then like the fact that it makes no difference which iteration i'm dealing with or how i can't cease and desist because his input is irreplaceable it will always have its special place in the very foundation of my whole pyramid but the usual piercing stare of his dead sea-green eyes clear and transparent wipes me away immediately bringing back that empty shell of a person that no longer exists as soon as i circle him to approach from the side rather than from the back and the look on his flawless face is unreadable it's my personal classic his face oriental and sharp it avoids mortal traits like gender and age it's so perfectly balanced it is truly the face of god and not just a god all the more not a deity that ultimate equilibrium which defines harmony he is riveted from it head to toe but his face makes it most obvious and that's probably why there's nothing he hates more than his face
there is nothing i miss more than looking at it and there isn't a shade of surprise at the sight of my appearance and the freight train kicking in in the back rids me of the necessity to squeeze out a nominal greeting so i just sit down on the ground next to the bench cos don't wanna get too close as being in the vicinity is enough to make my blood boil physically inside and he casually proceeds to promise me that the nuclear winter is already on the way knowing how poorly i manage summer heat it consists of migraines nosebleeds and seizures for me and i can't help but respond that i'm the harbinger of it as i prefer to keep the fact that his underworld friends have worked wonders on the frozen corpse of his apprentice to myself and he grins and says nah you're too hot for that which appeals to the layer i'd rather not bother
so i tread carefully trying not to think or remember too much and focus on luring him away back into the old downtown with its squabby dark buildings blessed shadows from ancient trees which inhabit vast gardens and bendy back alleys into the newer part continuously renovated by rat occupants in that glassy fancy brutalist fashion of theirs which may kill the old capital slowly like cancer but still never fails to impress especially on the stage of construction all these massive beams steel ribs of huge alien carcasses & skeleton jumbos of cranes feeding on them that's one other thing i keep to myself about Rider the landscapes he generates completely unaware that they just pop from the ground around him like mushrooms since for him they're a natural part of the environment all those sights and sounds and smells cause me phantom pains whenever i'm away the way the sunset gets caught reflected in a mammoth monolith of solid dark glass that is some shitty business center erected right in the middle of the historical district or the tracery pattern of smoke coming from the suction pipes of a smelter in the distance ghostly clouds of steam bellowing from the cooling towers of a nuclear station far away on the horizon
that kind of shit ringing all my bells at once overwhelming and deafening blissful
there's plenty of stuff i have learned to keep to myself i bet he'd be proud if he knew like how much i'd prefer him to be my brother instead if there only was a way to swap the two cos he knows oh he knows considering it was him who mused aloud once about the fun fact that you can't grow an armor against your own blood no matter how much reasoning you put into it while alone the fuckers still reach beyond cos those reactions are embroidered in basic reflexes and the way my sweet brother blames me for his own inability to manage his life sounds ridiculous yet still manages to push me into that state one step away from suicide as an ultimate deliverance from the evil i have represented since birth from the burden that i'm so scared of becoming that it ruins my very ability to bond well it was always just that a lifetime sacrifice for the sake of the burden our mother has abandoned him and Rosie with it's a very convenient way to escape the guilt so why revise if it works as it is so whenever i actually try to address it we end up in a bloodshed or just a scandal over the phone that i usually break driven into fits of dissociative rage by my own yelling and whenever it passes i can't understand how come i started yelling in the first place was it an attempt to get through and make him finally hear what i say or just a mere conditional reflex triggered by the sound of his voice anyway Randy is content he has neither desire nor need to hear anything aside from himself
or the fact how much i actually value the freedom of choice that i've just recently been introduced to & it would hurt if i wanted to hurt Rider on purpose which is hardly possible in the foreseeable future since despite all the freedom of being a spark on his orbit a ghost in his presence a shadow on his wall he never bothered to ask if i wanted to become a part of it at all just assumed i'd let him know if i didn't but oh well missed the fact that i hadn't the means to decide at the time and right now it's precious enough to make me afraid of losing it and it gets me down underhand it's the reason i've never slept over in the lair of 4-eyes no matter how much wicked scatology i allow too afraid to wake up and find out that i've been bound to the place the same way you can do with the dead and won't be able to leave anymore until he gets tired and decides to dispossess me the same way Rider did even though i suppose it might end in a much more gruesome way were i to let him completely
we don't talk much since i keep an eye on myself trying hard not to roll back into that blissful state of ceding control completely not to turn into that loud idiotic brat chatty clumsy edgy sorry half of a halfwit he intuited me as initially and without the brat he doesn't talk much these days face angelic and firm contemplating or lying in wait we don't laugh much because there's too much to be kept to ourselves watching me lazily out of the corner of his godly eye that goes on for some time and it does help banish the bodybag demon but the substitute ain't much better