La Vie comme une Chimère

La route vers nulle part, sans fin.

The past three months had seen perhaps some of the most dramatic and violent shifts in temperament that he had ever experienced.  Never before had he been carried to such great heights or sank so low in such a short amount of time.  The effect was numbing.  And as he slowly crawled back towards normalcy, the hourglass finally ran out.  And thus, he was ejected from the river and deposited into the sea, which effectively eliminated any sense of direction he had to begin with.  An electronic voice came on the PA, "Thank you and goodbye, tell us what you're doing but don't come again."

Evidently, a paradigm shift takes at least an entire month.  At least, that's how long it took to reach equilibrium.  And finally, things seem to be settling down as loose ends are tied up one by one.  Though the future is not nearly as intimidating as it was a month ago, the weight of reality still hangs heavy in the air, not to clear until long past the DMA.

* * *

The cityscape was rotting.  It didn't matter whether the moon was out or not since its rays would never reach the damp alleys.  And yet, the people managed to find a way to survive.

He found himself in a restaurant.  They say the dim lighting is supposed to create ambience.  In reality the hole-in-the-wall restaurant simply did not have the means to fix their lights, so instead they used candles.  He had been involved in grenade testing right before, and was frustrated that his grenades would not detonate either on time or impact.  With his hands, he fiddled with one under the table and in a moment of frustration and impulse, he flung it into the other room... right as a girl opened the glass door.  She was startled for a moment as she caught it, then started to run towards him with pleading eyes.  But she only took two steps before she realized that there was no time, so she ran the other direction and shut the door behind her.  Glass shards rained all around.

He sat there, overwhelmed by an intense guilt unlike any he had ever experienced in his life.  For him, the sun would never shine as bright again.