standing at the interior opening of a two-hundred meter passageway, the vision of freedom available as a feast for the eyes only. a glance cast behind reveals deformed cast shadows caught in eternal distorted perspective. the sounds of arrested mutation, stunted growth leaving the monstrous forms writhing in between full-fleshed aliveness and the repose of mercifully accelerating decay.

two options. fight a constant grinding battle against the gravitational inevitability of rusted chains encircling ankles and wrists, or stay in place and be slowly twisted into the permanent deformation that has entombed the self-perceptions of so many others. their dreams, experiments in the use of pure psychological force, invariably ended in failure: unable to generate an impetus strong enough to upend the inconspicuous fallibilities of everyday perception, even the most valiant efforts succumbed to an accumulation of small errors repeated over time.

grim resolve. wounds, loss. pain and suffering. the tunnel could be a lifetime long, described in units whose standards of measurement are entirely arbitrary.

shadows roiling along the frigid uneven ground, reaching endless toward a collapsed paradise, mouth a silent warning for the already-weary prisoner: do not take our path. among them, many are tainted by corrosive elements that defy the pure intensity of dreams.

how can the prisoner, preparing to trudge forward as so many others have done, avoid their fate? to ignore them as failed and therefore useless would surely lead to becoming one of them, at best a variant on their disastrous theme. to listen too closely to their cries, however, would quickly create an indoctrinative echo that would as much ingrain the past as enable the present. to struggle heedleesly within the field of malformed options and unseen obstacles would allow the pitfalls of emotional attachment to become the energetic accelerators of self-destruction.

what then, truly separates this prisoner from the congealed mass of predecessors, those others who also sought escape but instead found the torturous nothingness of empty striving? how to release their impossible attachments, attachments so strong that they themselves became the attachment rather than attaining possession of the thing that they so terribly craved?

perhaps all dreams that prognosticate new worlds and bright futures end in garish nightmares of unfulfillment. what, then, is the opposite of a dream? what lies between the two opposites? and what of the path between the two extremes? can such a thing exist?

audio: saafi brothers . supernatural part II