"You people...

You're totally disconnected with reality."

-quote from the ⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛ Manifesto

"My days numbered/ I'm focused heavy on making the most of 'em..."

Marko's lungs were burning with cold, his erratic deep breaths spilling condensation in the air.

"Yeah, I think I spent most of my life depressed/ Only thing on my mind was death..."

There were sounds echoing through the air all around him, like a fine tune in the background of a friend gathering or family reunion. The sky seemed milky, and viscous. Yet it was all empty and cold.

It was just the usual, walking aimlessly through the city at night, no music this time though. The air was all Marko needed. This is unusual for him. Down the same bridges, the same streets he's all so familiar with, the ones he's walked his entire life. One of the best parts of talking walks deep in the night was that there were no crowds around, or cars, so he could even just slowly push through the middle of a wide street. He took his time. He had nowhere to go.

"Tryna refine this shit, I redefined myself/ First I had to find it..."

The music was ever present. It was loud, and sounded distant, as if large speakers crept up from under the earth and were booming throughout the city.

The warm, orange lights of the street lamps where the only thing to guide or comfort him. They made up a clear path, since all the other ones were not working for some reason. He was approaching the large Debal bridge. Past it was his world, old and new. To the left, his neighbourhood and apartment building. To the right, his old home. The lamps path was going to the right.

That scared Marko for some reason.

He looked to this right, the stairs spilling below the bridge, at the dark and desolate park, and the streets and the houses which appeared abandoned. It all appeared abandoned. This is what life is like in the late hours, the world in the dark...

Marko abruptly broke his walk and took went this way.

"His body on a road where his mind flailed, funeral weightless..."

The scent of the air quickly changed. The sweet, smoky aroma of dry winter air was all behind. Now fumes and smell of death were invading his nostrils.

He took a last look at the lamps on the other side of the river, their warm orange light reflecting in the water. He longed for them.

Terrifying things were occurring before his eyes, and hidden from them, but making themselves known from behind his ears. He saw animals turned inside out, and a thick blue smoke rising from the grass pricks in the park. He would hear the wailing of old women, and the grunting of otherworldly beings.

He was running now. As he looked in the distance he couldn't make out the lights anymore. They were hidden behind grotesque plants, growing wild and with violence. They looked as if they were strangling themselves and the air around them, and they were reaching to strangle him too. He backed off and fell into a hole, and had visions of famine. He lived an entire life where he was in a world finished by war, in a camp on a hill. Large gardens, he had a loved girl too... people were with burned and chewed skin, splinters and open wounds all around their bodies. His vision ended with seeing his loved one chewing on a chicken drumstick, though they said it was her leg.

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Marko woke up and he was running, his breaths ever burning at his lungs and throat. He felt crackling lightning bolts follow him.

There were ghostly humans with large and thin patches of skin extending from all throughout their bodies, like scars of silk. They were ugly and loud and dancing in the mud. There were giant slugs with a thousand legs like tendrils, and he saw his friend with his entire arm cut off, just a tiny piece of flesh sticking out from his shoulder like an apendice.

He saw a dark skinned man, naked. His arms were up in a cross position, with chains of gold and shiny jewels in his head. His eyes were burning and crying blood, and in his chest was a bottomless pit.

After another corner he saw a beautiful girl, pale as plaster, covered in a dress of fire. She was crying mud. There was a sword stuck in her shoulder.

Some time later, Marko saw a human figure, calm and admiring the world around them, with skin like sea grass and hair flickering violently in the air with the smelt of lava.

A man made entirely of blood, a girl with a diadem of diamonds that copulates with creatures of shadow, an old man with a book and a scythe that spreads toxin around him, a giant behemoth and a phoenix dancing around a mountain of corpses...

"Crescent moon winked, when I blinked it was gone..."

The music was getting ever louder. He found solace in this, maybe he was approaching a safe haven. At the same angst was starting to find itself boiling slowly and deep within him.

He kept having terrifying visions as he ran, and heard strange sounds and unnerving music. He looked up and saw someone looking at him. There were viscous and dense clouds of grey and platinum crashing into each other like waves during a storm. From out of them a giant neck rose like a snake, and attached to it a man's face. It was rough, yet chiseled, like a 60s movie actor or an old Japanese painting. He was looking melancholic, focused yet uninterested. Like a giant, and most competent hunter, looking down at a rat. There were faint drawings on his forehead. His right eye barely open, it oozed with warmth and sadness, though the left was barely visibly deep within a circle of darkness, and his skinned seemed peeled off, or it was disappearing into shadows. The man's hair was long with curls, tar black and dense, and it was flowing in the air like vapor and smoke.

"Asking God for favors, guess he isn't home/ Prolly 'cause of that fucking faith I didn't show..."

After what felt like days of running and the most horrifying experiences known to man, Marko finally found the end of a street, after passing another bridge, and behind the buildings on the corner he spotted some traces of light. It's warmth filled his spirit as he entered a street fully illuminated with that same orange. This felt like home. And it was.

As he was walking down the street he could feel his heart and spirits start to stir with anticipation. The music was booming through the air louder than any thunder Marko has ever heard, and little droplets started to cry from the sky.

He approached the gate and that's when all that bubbling inside finally spilt over, and he burst with emotion as he entered it. This was the yard, ever so familiar and comforting, and in the back his childhood home. There was no light here, and no light from the street managed to peek inside.

There was someone in the middle, a person covered in no clothes, just the beauty of a perfectly sculpted human body in all it's glory. There was no need for light here, this person was all there needed to be in this yard. It was a source of light and warmth in itself, even though there was no light radiating from the body.

The music was almost deafening.

"In the middle of the marsh where mosquitos chomp ankles/ Swamp marching on on the quest for my lost halo, God..."

The crackles of the vinyl and the pour of the rain were indistinguishable.

Marko wanted to speak but he couldn't. He was choking with awe, and his eyes felt heavy. It was as if he was taking at something he shouldn't see, something no human should see.

The figure before him was just looking up at the sky, arms raised embracing the rain.

Reality felt suffocation for Marko. The one before him just...

Laughs.

*

Later as Marko wakes up, he will forget all about this dream, and not know about it for months, perhaps years... but a day will come when Marko shall recollect it. And when that day comes, a great catastrophy will befall Marko, and perhaps the entire world...