I drifted off into a different place, one of utter dissonance. The lights blurred onto everything and created a mass awry of different vibes - none of which anything I wanted to relate to. It was a small town with the confusion and density of a large city. The sirens didn't break everyone's conversation. The beer was cold, but it tasted dead, like bread from a waiting cell. The people were all nice, but they didn't offer any escape from the exile I was in. Like they were in their own exile, only they learned to live with it and even be content in knowing there was no escape from it.

There was no set standard of being, that's what I liked the most. Nobody cared that I was in the corner writing and staring. No one took interest. No one confronted my purpose with clear minded reasoning. I guess the police were there to shuffle out anyone who really stood out, I blended in. That wasn't what I came here for, but it was cool. I was only here to drink my beer, smoke my pack, and make a few random observations.

Everyone was watching as ambulances and cops surrounded a sidewalk scene across the street. The bar I was at had a patio on the sidewalk, and I had a good spot on the corner, overlooking the massive amounts of people as they walked by. A live band was doing a soundcheck with some Doors playing on the sound system inside. I could feel the innards of the bar, and even be in there, smell the smoke, hear the bits and pieces of multiple conversations, feel the stares, all of it - except the bathroom, which I hoped to avoid for a while.

I caught some every now and then . . . and had this strange power to purge any emotion a person felt as they made eye contact with me. The intensity of my gaze left people - both men and women - psychologically out of breath momentarily. I didn't gain anything by draining their psyche, but it felt cool.

I kept pealing back layers of the flesh of this town, as if it would reveal a new world full of the kind of people I once knew and loves. Each time, I fell back inside my own exile. I couldn't find the layer that had unbroken sidewalks, everything was always under construction. The only influence I had was the forces that repelled me from Neverleave. I couldn't share that force with anyone without spilling a couple thousand words onto a beertable. The voices were still there. The images burned into my eyeballs like a timestamp on a picture.

The street's colors kept getting higher in contrast and the actual details kept getting more and more distorted. I wasn't getting any more fucked up. The power in my stare was getting stronger and was happening more frequently. I learned how to lie when necessary in Neverleave, but couldn't do it here. The blood could dry into the pavement, but it couldn't hide the pits and grooves that still embedded themselves into everything - giving texture to objects that were meant to be bland, giving blandness to objects that should have been lively with detail.

A girl smiled as I made eye contact - sucking all of her demons out and blowing them back in like a supercell creates and retracts funnel clouds. I think she liked it, but did she see the rock in my eyes? If so, she'll have nightmares for months. I'll still sleep all day and rot all night - waiting for the beginning or the end, whichever sets me free from the pits and grooves.

"What good are words unless you know what one to put where and when," someone behind me said.

I had two or three more beers before changing gears and getting a shot of Jim. It was a true taste of home, without the flavor of the friends and fiends that would normally be consuming it with me. I think that is half of the appeal of the liquor itself: the people who are drinking it with you. Sometimes it's the calm collective soul that drinks themselves to love, other times it's the twisted and deranged lunatic that drinks himself to hate. Either way made it good money spent if considering how much entertainment costs. There were so many things that I had no part of here, so many people thatautomatically had walls to throw up. They were thin walls made out of breakable sandstone, but yet I didn't think I could break them with the lack of strength I was granted in this place. They were just high enough to not be able to reach the top so that one could hoist themselves over them. And again, these walls bore the same pits and the same grooves that I have begun to believe is just human.