The Tormented Mind – 2 – The Cracking Of Lies.

Okay, so what weirdo pulled the global pandemic from the hat of shitshows? I mean, for Christ’s sake, of all the things I see, I did not see this coming. Blackened goo eyes, strings controlling people, and cracks in the sky – I shall get to them later – but pandemic? Nah, didn’t see it. I had seen snippets in the news about what was happening in China, but I was distracted by other things, so I did not pay much attention. I have never looked at a bat and thought, yummy, but apparently, someone in China did just that. Or another animal ate the bat, and some dopey twonk ate that animal, and now we are all stuck at home. This causes me problems.

I had a thought about something as the homeless dude’s string snapped. I had hoped to be able to reveal my thinking and an answer to my question this month. The enforced lockdown has pissed all over my chips in regards to that. I sometimes hope the lurgy will get me before I do something stupid, but then, I think, where is the fun in that? Why should I let them all off so easily? So, my thought. What had wandered from the mind in the moments before the homeless dude’s death? I wanted to know what happens to the limbs and strings when healed.

I had planned to visit the local hospital and watch what happened in the A&E department. I wanted to watch and observe the strings as others came and went. Did the strings grow and reattach? Maybe they tangled and knotted themselves back together? I have no clue; I have many ideas and countless feelings on the matter but no real answers. Curiosity may have killed the cat; in this case, the lack of answers threatened to make me madder. Ignorance and cluelessness were my kryptonite; once I had an idea in my mind, I wanted to know the answers. No, I needed to have the answers. Would you need to know as well, my dear reader? Does the ignorance not itch inside your head? The idea of the unknown always bothers me.

I shall make the following observations about this pandemic. Firstly, I think they want me dead. Sounds extreme, doesn’t it, but that is how I see this. I will clarify a little. I do not mean me specifically. I am not that narcissistic. I am utterly unimportant in the grand scheme of things. No, I am sure they want people who are like me dead. You see, we are a drain upon the system. We are unwanted and unneeded. We are the scraps of humanity, the disabled and downtrodden. The poor and the ones they pass over and pay no mind to. I have felt this way before, but the pandemic has brought it home and invited it in for a nice cuppa.

The putrid poison that has infected and continues to eat away and kill the cells of our politics means that people like myself are worthless. It is always the same, the parties give themselves names that sound reasonable, but then they enact the exact opposite. They call themselves the Federation Of Unity (FoU); they are anything but. The Party for the workers (L2U) distances itself from the unions. The one that claims to protect and preserve (NTC) only wrecks and destroys. I learnt long ago to watch what they did and not listen to what they said. It is such an important thing, and dare I say it, obvious, yet so many don’t do it. Words are cheap; words are easy. Watch what they do! Do not listen to what they say!.

Their hand was forced; many will claim that The Party are doing what is best for the population, but they are not. They do not care about the vulnerable. They simply had no other choice. The poor, the needy, the ill and the infirm may be protected by the lockdowns and new laws, but that is just a side effect. They were spooked by high-profile friends of The Party falling ill and therefore bought in the measures. They did not bring them in to protect the common pleb, like myself. Masking, social distancing, and lockdowns may protect you and me, but make no mistake, it is not being done for you and me. We are just collateral savings. A lucky by-product of the laws and restrictions they have implemented.

One of the many voices of The Party appeared on TV and lied. They are known as Number Four and as nasty as the rest. The lying is in no way a surprise. Politics has long gone from being the art of the possible. Now, it is the dance of the deceivers, and don’t they reveal in it. “We have to worry about the mental wellbeing of the general population,” the automaton female voice of Number Four said. Listening to these lies was not doing my mental health any good, but what else was there to do when confined to your home? It was then that I heard the noise.

I did not think much of it at first. It sounded like a tree branch snapping. I am lucky to have some trees surrounding my home, and as such, the sound of vandals breaking branches was not typical but also not unheard (ha) of. “We care deeply about the population’s mental health,” the unmanned ventriloquist dummy said. Craaaaaaack, again. I then turned and looked out of the window.

“What did you see?” the shrink asked over the video conferencing software.

“Nothing.” For better or worse, I lied. I did not lie because I was afraid of the consequence of telling the truth. I have a clarity of thought and a perfect twenty-twenty vision of the world as it really is. I see the world as it truly is; I have pulled back the curtain and exposed the wizard; no, I lied because I do not want anything to hinder my plans. I am a blind man who walked away from an eye test with perfect vision. I am deaf, but now I hear. I feel I am turning into something more; I am becoming. “So, what caused the cracking noise?” she asked.

“No idea,” I answered, with a shrug of my shoulders. Why should I explain my becoming to this shrink? Why should I explain what I see? She is part of the system and a cog in the setup destroying this world. Why would she care? How did she vote? Did she vote for the vermin that infest the system? Did she vote for The Party? Is that her role in the game of life, to reapply the blindfold upon those who have seen the truth?

When I first looked out of the window, I saw nothing, that much was true. The world was just as it should have been. The trees swayed with the wind, bopping to the tune of mother nature. The bushes grew greener once more. The winter was somewhat forgotten, and an early spring approached. I could see nothing unfamiliar; it was quiet and tranquil. The world, at first, appeared as it should. “Public safety is our number one priority,” droned the emotionless empathy free clone speaking for The Party. I heard the next crack and realised they were coming from above. They were coming from the sky.

“Something wrong?” the shrink asked. I hesitated for just a moment, as something did not feel right. That tiny itch that tells you something is off, and you should be wary. An internal warning system tells you not to walk that way or not to believe something you are told. When the shrink next spoke, my somethingwrongy senses started to tingle. “You know you can trust me.” When she spoke, two things happened. Firstly, I felt a niggle in that sense of something being wrong, and secondly, I heard a quiet crack from outside. “I’m fine,” I replied and once again, I had lied.

I lied to her because she had lied to me. I will not lie in this text. I would only be lying to myself, and by proxy to you, it would be a waste of time. When the crack had happened outside, I had known she was insincere. If she was being untruthful, I could no longer trust her. How can I trust anyone who lied to me? It could be a lover, a politician, or a colleague; how can I trust them if they lie? Trust is straightforward to break and yet hard to make, and she had just broken what little trust we had. I think trust would have formed, but now it had no chance.

I value trust above all else, which is why I felt strongly about this betrayal. I had spoken to this woman and told her everything necessary to my health, and now she had stabbed me in the back. I detest this world of lies, this sewer of sophism that The Party has bought upon us. Only sophism is not the right word. These are not clever lies and falsehoods; they are clear to anyone who wants to look and quite apparent. They are the spoken simplicities of a child who had been caught with their hand in the cookie jar. The child vehemently denies all knowledge of the cookie and jar, yet you know they are lying. You punish and scold the child and hope that they learn their lesson. But, they continue with the lie. They repeat the fib so often that it becomes the recognised truth. The cookie jar was raided by someone else, an enemy perhaps, or a political rival, and that is the truth.

People repeat the lie as a fact, not because they believe it, but because it aligns with what they want to believe. Their friends then repeat the lie, and they amplify the deception. The lie becomes the known truth, and the absolute truth witters away and dies. The seed is planted with ease, and now the people spreading the lie have no idea. The seed has blossomed into the Japanese Knotweed of deception and now has its clutch on everything. The rate and growth are exponential; it grips and rips at the very foundation of the country and politics it infects. The truth is buried by the weeds of dishonesty; the truth becomes ancient history.

So what is the truth?

I am mad. That is the truth.

I see a blackness eating around the eyes of others. That is the truth.

Strings are attached to people’s limbs. That is the truth.

Cracks are appearing in the sky.

I am changing. I am becoming. And that, that is the truth.

Whenever someone lies and I hear, a crack appears in the sky. Eggshell-like cracks that join together to become something more. It was a clear day when I heard the first crack, and as I looked up toward the sky, I thought my eyes were deceiving me. I wondered if it were something in the vitreous body of my eye. Had those tiny black specs that appear with age morphed into cracks for my eyes only. I blinked and rolled my eyes, just to be sure, but the cracks didn’t budge. I turned the TV off and gawked out the window at the fractures in the sky. The light blue sky was the perfect palette for the strange black cracks. The smile-like shape they formed looked down upon me, a smile in my mind of misery. They were grinning at me alone as they hung like a limp washing line in the sky. They appeared benign, but I could feel a disaster emanating from them. I could sense the dread seeping from the cracks and contaminating the world.

Did they know? Did the filth that lied and caused the fracturing of the world know? As I looked from the window, the people who walked past seemed oblivious to the cracks. The blindness of the black tar, the strings pulling their directions. Were they unaware of it all or wilfully ignored it? The slime that covered and ate away at their eyes was the blindness to what was happening in the world. Ignoring the plight of others, as I had done, turning a blind eye to things that did not affect them. They trot off to the voting booth every five years and cross the box for The Party. Never once looking at what is happening to their fellow man and woman. They allow the distraction to take hold; like the lie, the truth withdraws, and they are blind to it.

The strings are the distraction; they pull a person in the direction of travel that is good for… for whom? The Party? Number One? That is what I need to figure out. It must be connected; I have been given this gift of sight and must use it. I must discover the puppet master or mistress and what they are planning. There must be a reason, right? Things like this just don’t happen; everything has a catalyst; there is always a spark. I was changing; the world is changing; there must be a reason! This is not chance. It is not a roll of the die, a card flick or a coin flipping and landing; there is no random element of chance here. There has to be a reason! I need there to be a reason!

I ran my finger along the dusty window and looked at the sky. I didn’t realise it at first, but I was drawing the exact shape of the crack I was looking at. I lifted my finger from the window and took a look at the tip. The black build-up of dirt and grime I had wiped with my finger clung to the tip. I had not noticed how dirty the window was, and now with the shape of one crack smeared into the dirt and dust, I would have to clean it. It does not matter; nothing matters, nothing apart from my visions. Those are all that matter.

Lockdown is a drag. I know, my dear reader, that this may not surprise you, but it did me. I would not describe myself as an extrovert, nor am I an introvert. I am pretty comfortable in my own company, so I had thought lockdown would be a breeze; it isn’t. I have found that I can read but not listen to or watch the news. I can watch with no sound, but If I hear a lie, new cracks either appear, or older ones become larger and more prominent. Do they realise that their lies are destroying the world? Do they care? I doubt it.

The cracks are a symptom, and they will get worse. I feel that as much as I have ever felt anything. The doom and destruction I feel deep in the base of my stomach that emanates from the cracks mean the end for us all. I understand that these cracks, if not stopped, will end us all. I know this; I know it in the same way that a prophet will understand the word of a god. I am no prophet; if anything, I am an oncoming storm. I am the rage and violence of the world, and through my actions, I will stop this.


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