Visemett, the elderly fellow I was visiting, found himself in a deep stage of fetid decomposition. His remains sat placidly stretched over an uncomfortable wooden chair of substandard make. My boots battered the black wooden flooring with a somber reverberation as I approached the silent dead man, in a silent dead room. His concave and dry facade bore little resemblance to his previous sanguine aspect. From his left eye socket drooled a white custard-like lump of what used to be an eye fused with oozing pus. The other eye, intact and strangely inviting, kept watch with its paling pupil. It was at this profoundly intimate moment when I realized I was bending down to level our gazes involuntarily. I felt an eerie sensation of dissolvement of self as my hands, guided by a force external, rested on the old man’s coarse and cool temples. My stare, or rather, my entire consciousness took a daring plunge into the abyss of the mortal eye. Leaving all sense of me behind I became a beast of the skies, gliding weightlessly over a vast expanse of pallid water that extended far past horizons all. In the midst of the scenery a round dingy island poked out from an infinite pool of mute ocean like an empty rotting shell of a gargantuan turtle whose flesh must have fed and sustained innumerable quantities of hungry life. Swooping down for closer inspection I noticed the isle was latticed with bulging systems of underground tubes that branched out and writhed in a chaotic manner. The tunnels spat dark blood here and there in a geyser-like fashion, feeding the many slender and slithering vile rivers that escaped out into the sea. While drifting over the estuaries and beaches of foam-like rock that seemed so frail as if a single flake of dust from a moth’s wing could shatter it into ash I came upon an unsettling revelation that I was not altogether alone in this dreamy hushed region. Above me fluttered on calmly and lazily a flock of unfathomably gigantic birds, of utterly unpleasant appearance and resembling ibises or vultures on behalf of their heads being bald, red, bruised and deformed as if having been beaten violently as of late. I could not hear the abominable fowl directly but the beating of their great wings stirred the pale waters around the island leaving it frothed long after they had dissolved into the blur of the incalculably distant horizon. It was after they were gone when my uneasy attention took notice of the imperishable dim night sky that gleamed with many a deep hue of black and amaranthine. Between me and the unobtainable firmament there hung rows upon rows of colossal beams of an unknown origin or purpose. From them sagged and swung chandeliers of cryptic algaelike vegetation. Being able to bear no more these illogical structures I plummeted back nearer to the island. I studied meticulously the bizarre hueless flora of the place and came upon the discovery that it must use an entirely different, chlorophyll free method of power management to thrive in these sunless lands. The plants, with their fantastical forms and oily emissions, soon began to disgust my sense of aesthetic, thus I decided to venture towards the elevated and mysterious center of the isle, woven with timeless mists. It was only after a few moments of watchful flight that I took notice of strange lean columns sprouting from the ground that seemed to circumvent the belly of the island in regular intervals. Once closer, they resembled man-made street lanterns, only that they did not radiate light but rather functioned as sort of outlets for the blood that had flowed through the subterranean tubes, gargling out subsequent loads of the abhorrent scarlet liquid in rhythmic fashion. I left the unwelcoming guard of blood-beacons and continued my exploration. Soon the red rivers began to rarefy and the soils started displaying more vibrant colors. Tints of dark green and deep blue wrestled with many a hue of rusty brown. I started taking notice of peculiar and vast lumps of what appeared to be slimy skin or leather of some immense being. With my gaze carelessly fixated on the perplexing patches of membranous material I was introduced to an immense fright out of a sudden. In front of me, there strolled and grunted lowly magnificent and humongous black cat-like beasts with many eyes and tails of enormous length trailing after them. Half of the judgemental feline demons cruised in a clockwise habit and the other half the opposite way, passing each other by in an almost mechanical, clockwork way. As I rapidly gained some altitude to distance myself from these terrible sentinels there unfolded a visage of the incredible structure they were guarding, the heart of the isle. It was a building of colossal properties. ‘A castle’ was my initial guess. The edifice invited me closer. I floated over the regiment of watchful cat-beasts in hope to find some cherished peace within the confines of this fine establishment. The closer to it I got the more thoroughly convinced I was that the nonporous, softly glimmering rock it was erected with must have been eons old. Older than anything fathomable and explainable. Older than time and movement itself. An idea planted itself into my consciousness that it must have stood here forever. Quickly after completing a full circle around the unbreakable rampart walls adorned with towers looming in the six corners of the hexagonal structure I came to realize there were no windows, doors, gates or openings of any kind to be seen. There never had been. Suddenly I felt a pulse disturb my entire cognition. A beating pulsation that seemed to affect not only me but the entire outlandish island itself. The blood geysers and lanterns vomited their hideous cargo in the same despicable rhythm as my scattered senses throbbed. The castle began pulling me in and no measure of hectic struggle to free myself from it seemed to come into service. I stopped my pointless battle and breathed the last serene portion of air that was assigned to me. The fort had won. It always had. The sepulcher-citadel that was never meant to be entered or departed from by natural means. The remnants of my mind dispersed into total weightlessness which got increasingly more cloudy until I got absorbed into a placid blur of nothing.

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