Late night became the retreat. When you run out of places to go and things to do, getting trapped by the night's lure becomes rather hard to avoid. You find yourself waking up in strange positions on the couch, holding on tightly to nothing and no one. You remember the high tone and emotion that was going into serious things that were talked about the night before, but you couldn't go back over the finer points right now, because the lack of emotion would make the points hard to get across. The topics talked about was not that of two people who might never see eachother again, but the kinds of things two eternal souls just running into eachother at a bus station could go on for decades talking about. The world is such a small thing and life is such a short thing to think about in terms of just one lifetime.

There are certain things about looking eye to eye with someone while making love to them. There was beautiful music playing in the backdrop, and a party three houses down could faintly be heard over the music, which was some sort of Spanish guitar playing ballads that were thousands of years old. Her hair fell onto my chest very softly, and for about three hours straight, I felt like I was no longer a simple man on this simple planet thinking about simple things on a daily basis concerning anything from survival that day to how that day will collectively and individually effect the rest of my life. I was an eternal soul once again, and every touch was of the most immaculate sensitivity. There were a million emotions and it was so overpowering that the emotions no longer were felt inside but they were tossed around outside of our bodies, and they flowed between our bodies like oil between two dragons as they mingled with eachother flying towards the moon. All of my thoughts just melted into the heat that was being generated between our souls as they danced together in the clouds of the most perfect blue sky. These were very fluffy clouds, I attest. And they made you feel as though you may never come back while Earth is still Earth, people are still people, animals are still animals . . . as if the feeling might last long enough to see the changes in things occur as they are dreamed about just after rolling over and holding her as if I was just collecting the rest of me from outside of my body . . . like a dream where the outer self is an actual character in the dream, and it's the most perfect person in the world, and we are bound in a way that every person dreams about because everything is perfect and everything going on around the love is good, and everyone else is happy.

The sunlight is no friend when the darkness was just your best friend. Love is made with a lot of assistance from the demons that only come out at night. These demons are the demons of love, but they are strong, and look just like dragons. They try to induce a trance on everyone who decides to stay awake after midnight. They fly around in strange hypnotic patterns that goes along with whatever music or noise is being made. As they do so, they form the shapes of beautiful women who are dancing naked with eachother and licking eachother's breasts, and rubbing eachother in a very erotic way that makes men want sex like a drug addict needing a fix. These demons have less control over women due to the nature of the beast. Some women have even learned how to make these moon dragons work for them the best, using their natural cunningness combined with their eyes which lock their souls and their scent. That is where the dragons sleep: in every scent of a woman, there is a dragon sleeping.

I was sticking my head into a grinder and watching as the giant ravens began to turn the crank. Ravens were meaner looking than the earlier birds that I seen in a vision. This time, I could clearly see them smoking my weed and drinking my whisky as they started cranking on the grinder. It ground me away, I felt the painful sensation for about five seconds before the powerful churning of the sharp threaded inner core crushed my skull, popping my eyeballs out and squashing my brain, which was immediately cut in half after it slithered out of my busted open skull. I felt the big veins in the back of my eye sort of go first . . . up against the grate. It didn't take long either . . . in fact, within seconds, both of my eyes were flattened against the grate, causing a splash which sent droplets of water sputtering out of the front of the grate. We will not watch as my body is turned into ground beef, which will later be turned into processed food, which could be eaten by any number of cafeteria patrons.

The crazier it seemed, the worse it would end up in dreams. I would lay there sweating and scratching at my face. I would be screaming loudly, but no one was there to hear any of it. I was more alone than alone could ever be. It was as if everyone I knew was suddenly vaporized before my eyes. Everything I ever done meant nothing for that moment. Everywhere I ever went felt like a dried up weigh station in a desert that was nothing but cracks on white hardpan. There was nothing left but this small glass of pure water that just seemed to always be a thousand feet from me. Sometimes I thought I was getting close, sometimes I thought I might catch up to it. The closer it became in reality, the further it got away in dreams. The more nightmares that live on as the other dreams get sucked into the pillow. Things that occur to me every now and then, but I think of them to avoid thinking of the nightmares of reality itself: life and its many lies, its mysteries, its dark side. The side that floats you across the River for free just to watch you get tormented by the moon dragons. They love a good deprivation buzz. They love the passion in which you masturbate when you're on a loneliness and desperation trip. They thrive on your rage when you drink their firewater. Many civilizations throughout history support the theories of the moon dragons, some have known about it for many centuries. Entire cultures shaped around the power that is involved with the moon dragons, women, and men.

There was a unit of measure that was new to me. The Exile itself teaching me not only lessons of moral reasoning and lessons of fate, but actual things were learned through outside interaction and inside distractions. The measurement is that of a Windows side bar. It is one measurement of size and it shrinks as the overall size of the document grows to represent how much scrolling is available for that particular document. Eventually . . . does the bar just disappear? Is it possible to write that much in one document? It just keeps happening. There is also a way to measure how long you are working on something by candles. A one and a half candle session is not too shabby. Things are getting accomplished. The best way known by many artists to measure time spent creating is by the amount of erb that is consumed. In Exile, that becomes a good thing that is regarded with the utmost respect for the providers of it as well as the fact that such a thing even exists and can be easily converted into a way in which to measure creative time where things got worked on. Increments eventually can be added up and before you know it, the bag is gone and there is another level of normal every day sanity that has to somehow be disrupted and corrupted. Evils must be injected in increments that even out with each demon and every moon dragon. All of which can be multiplied by the depths in which the moonglow can become the puppetmaster of your emotions and passionate waves until you are virtually powerless against it. Yes, there are many things that were measured the same way as the Windows sidebar method, I really knew it all along. It took many hits of acid to figure out, so I guess sometimes we are looking deep within to trip on the things on the outside. Everytime the sentence reached the end of the line, and the cursor hopped down to the next line, a small slice comes off of the bar on the side of the Window. The down arrow button is like a grinder, slowly eating away at the sidebar. Will it ever be all used up? Like the many frontline solders in a war. As the lines are being written in the history books of their day to day massacres and brutal murders and exploding cities, the bar is being ground down on the side of the Window. The death toll is the only thing that is rising.

There are times when the Exile's dark face is hidden behind so many ravens, but they don't block out the sun. They all have the same look in their eyes, the look of desperation, fighting their own demons and dragons for their own �ons. Black is the face of the sinister thing that captures me from time to time. It leaves my eyes bloodshot and dark around the edges. It makes me look as though I just woke up even days after still being awake. It's a rub with death, but such a light brush that it only makes you look half dead, and for only a couple days after. There is life to be doubled too, but that is too rare to talk about. There is no afterlife in some mystical place where there is never Exile, either within or without. There is a mirror planet with no depression. People who live there all look exactly alike. There is no social difference in any way, and no discrimination period. This makes things like a whole different place from earth, for just that reason. Communication was mastered to the point where mental telepathy was perfected for centuries. It would be considered a dream utopian society. It is also the cycle support for the people on earth. They share souls with Earthlings, but these souls get corrupted sometimes, and have to be taken through the demon cleaner. No soul is ever in the netherworld for too long.

I've been to the birthplace of the Raven, and I have looked into the night forevermore. I have seen my reflection in darkness looking for Nevermore. There is no amount of funneling that can break down the flow of energy which is felt while the Ravens are flying over one shoulder and the moon dragons are mingling out of the corner of the left eye. All work is done at night. All work should be confined to normal people's sight, but why? I still see the two men walk up to me in the street at night. It's about three in the morning, and I am shitfaced after going to a bar I never been to prior to the night I can foresee . . . it's like I am there, so I must be sooner or later. I see the guy on the left, and I recognize him. He's a guy who ripped me off for thirty dollars worth of cash for weed. I seen him later that month and confronted him in a dark alley. I got my money back, but it wasn't without a price for him. I admit, he was really drunk, and probably didn't wake up the next day remembering everything that happened that night. He just knew that his money was spent wisely. I only took what was rightfully mine, and he did have a little more than that on him. The ass beating was just my way of saying, "don't let it happen again, not only from me, but for anybody who might fall victim to this petty street scraper." Street scrapers and demon cleaners. Everything just melts into itself and forms a river that is easy to flow down when in Exile. It is a trap, and a pit, which is plastered with images and motion pictures of the fuck ups in life and how they lead to bigger fuck ups. How one bad decision spawned five others. The man on the left was that mother fucker. The guy on the right . . . is all my brain could register because as soon as I focused in on him, he wound up and unleashed a mashing blow to me right in the face. This guy was bigger than the other guy, bigger than me even. He got another one off as I was going down from the first one. This one made me black out, but I could feel them rummaging through my pockets, taking everything they could find. Then I felt a few hard kicks to the sides. These didn't hurt being blanked out and all, but feeling them and realizing that there was bones being broken, just made my conscious awareness of what was going on more keen. I could hear every sound, but I was just head hung, my eyes wouldn't open, and even if they could, all I would be seeing would be stars. But I did manage to do it, and as the stars began to break up, I heard it first, the sound of a shell being slid into the revolver, then another one, and as I began to regain sight, the third bullet. The reservoir clicking closed, the man who ripped me off pulling back the hammer with his thumb. He aimed it at my face, and I felt the blow as it immediately went off. That knocked me back down for the death, which came rather rapidly. I think I was fading heavily when that third shot rang out kind of dull sounding. It didn't matter, it was over. An ambulance could have been on standby, and it wouldn't have made any difference. Three bullets to the head, one for every ten dollars I took back from a street scraper.

Demons that mingle with dragons . . .

There is one thing I had to let die. Sometimes you have to let down your guards and become totally dominated by something else for just long enough to change your life forever. The bar on the side gets smaller and the time in the hourglass keeps spilling like blood dripping into an IV. Youth slips out from under our skins and to try to hold onto it, we indulge. We greet the demons of Excess at the door and invite them in for tea. They tell us stories of sinners ten years or ten lifetimes ago. But none of them are stories I have not heard before. It's like the moves in a chess game as applied to moves in the game of life. Sins are as old as the deck of cards and the hands that are shuffling them. I never thought it dripped as slowly as it really does . . . become saturated more and more is a better way to describe it. And it was truly the best lubrication for the next job I had planned. She was just as into it and it was her first time ever getting it like that. She was more into it than me to the point where she was leading the motions and making the appropriate moans and deep breaths. She started breathing deeper and heavier, misting me with her canine prowess. I was surrounded by so many moon dragons that I couldn't tell which ones were asleep and which ones had the look of pure ecstasy on their crazy thorny looking faces. There is only one moment when all things just drop and there is total confirmation that life is about pleasure and being involved with pleasure on a regular basis. Even the most beautiful woman in the world has a bit of a problem when seducing someone with real emotions and heart that is of the purest blood. And during that one moment, total annihilation sweeps through like a witch's brittle old broom. All beauty bleeds away like slowly melting ice sculptures. Not so slow that the beauty doesn't melt away in minutes. The rest just blobbed together. The people that talked about how life could change and how things were already doomed for change real soon. They didn't realize that there would be a war where the soldies are eating next to and sleeping under the same roof as the enemy. Instead of sides being taken, it would be a war fought with representation from every nation where every soldier just got grinded away like that little bar on the side of the Window. One day, with a multinational force in place with representation from every country, someone decides to draw sides and decide who's side they want to be on in some room about a thousand miles from where all the soldiers are. Then, in the final hours, people identify who their sides with, but just in time for about half of each force to get taken out by eachother. The bloodiest war ever planned, and it took the cooperation of every country that has a military. Together, they planned a war that would curve population explosions for all countries in major need of it. In the end, it was just one giant grinder like the little arrow that the bar sits on, slowly grinding away generations of people that might be a part of the next millennia. Ravens that whisper in the powerful men's ears at cocktail parties, where all the wives are at home sleeping and all the whores are free that night. Two guys sitting in a bathroom doing lines of cocaine during "bathroom brakes" at work, where they decide weather or not to unleash the next virus of epidemic magnitude on a day to day basis. Should it really be up to them to decide? Well, I guess they are really just an amplification of us. If they need a war to make things work out better in the long run, at least they're not hiding the fact that they wanted each country represented properly in soldiers. They changed the rules so that women could fight on the front lines without even trying. The peacekeeping forces had to do their true job that day. And that is put on your cavlar, pick up an M-16 or a shotgun, and start shooting everyone around you who is wearing this kind of hat or those kind of kakhis. All of these things were taught during the peaceful stages of the conflict. No the stage was set, a war that didn't declare a winner or a loser, just a lot of people dead in a very short period of time. Like a chaotic game on line with twenty people in a Quake 2 level, all low ping bastards. Hearing gunshots and headshots alike, and not being able to tell the difference between them. War like nothing ever fought before. But in the background, a huge boom is heard. The unthinkable happens, a skyfull of fire fills the major US City as a nuclear explosion stops everything in its tracks. What city will it be? New York City? D.C.? Los Angeles? Won't really matter, just the point that it will happen is enough to make you wonder, and without too much to wonder about, we see that there is two guys walking up to me in a backstreet where I kind of got lost after getting shitfaced at the bar shitfaced at the bar at the shitfaced at the faced bar shit fucked up man, I was staggering all over, and I had fuckin puke dribbling onto my shirt, my cigarettes were crushed and I remember I dropped it just before noticing the approaching figures. That should be enough for the pintsman to loll over, as I spank monks with the midnight pervert and find the nympho lioness that scratched my soul through my back. I gathered them all up in a split second moment of sobriety that caused me to feel an unbelievable headrush as I crashed back into my drunken state. He managed to get me good AS I was falling to the ground like a bag of dirt. Every thing was just known as it was happening. That is the only way I can describe, other than to say these guys smelled like fucking can's of paint thinner. Then the sound that I never wanted to hear like that. Totally defenseless against the process of three bullets being slid into their slots. No stopping the guy from stepping a couple of steps back and just unloading that cannon on my skull splitting me into pieces and making my brain split into halves like the guts of a cantaloupe accommodating the crack by letting it go it's true direction and depth. I felt the wetness of the blood from the first shot as it soaked my shirt in fractions of a second, then felt the next shot bounce me head back so as to snap my neck. The bullet was lodged in my neck there, by the way, but the third one finished me for sure, but I was already gone when it hit me. Crack!

Docile Exile
Brandon Strong
�1999 The Clinic