Cafe on a Cold Street (1999)

posted 1999.01.30 at 19:36 by solios

17 August 1999 - the last confirmed piece of LOC fiction. The project went into suspension shortly after this for what I can only call "obvious reasons." Written during The Lovecraft Phase, in an attempt to weld LOC into what will eventually become Modern Angel. The MA project was put into deep freeze around the same time LOC was put on hold.

This particular piece goes into more depth than "The Attic" on the gender identity conflict which raged from 1994 through its ultimately strange demise in 2000.

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A cafe on a cold street | Exploring the morbid duality of Self

There is no place with which to properly start this narrative, no concrete beginning nor end from which do draw the necessary facts that are required for Understanding, however vague or affected. My mind is blank, dull- a fissured mass of neuralgia and gangliatic fibre that has betrayed my ideals in a stupendously noteable fashion, noteworthy in its thoroughness. Perhaps a seperation of the lobes is in order, or possibly a lobotomy, administered with a hefty dose of whiskey and an icepick. Either outcome would be preferable to the present status of open war that the Twins of Gemini areforever locked within.

"Charges of murder have been accepted...."

What else would you do on this cold, iron day in the forgotten city? Deny that of which you are guilty, deny that which has caused you so much pain and internal conflict? Shrug off or flee from the event which has caused you to hate yourself more than the self-proclaimed public ever possibly could? Murder, yes.

Of another? Never. Fear not, for there was a crime committed in which, were there anything resembling the law of even a decade ago, charges would be filed and executed quickly, eficiently, and with no mercy expected or given. But those days are gone, and not even the Lust is of a fit mind to mete out electronic Justice in this bygone, deserted era of death and survival. The murder of which I speak is a much more heinous sort, the founding strike against the crumbling wall of my sanity; an event which has caused an unprecedented, undefinable set of emotions to take hold in the wake of the shock incurred from realization.

In this city of debris and corrupted ideals, there is nothing left for the spirit, no attraction for those seeking enlightenment or even a thing so simple and base as understanding or acceptance. That attraction has departed long ago, before the trade agreement, before the civil war: neither would have happened were there not reason and motivation for them to have done so. I believe that one day this city will see a rebirth of the spiritual ideal, that one day it will be a pleasure for those seeking things beyond the flesh and the torments of others to walk these grey, dust-clouded streets. But that day is symbolic of a future far distant, beyond the time I have allotted myself to remain. I am guilty of a most unique form of suicide, and in the wake of consequence, there is little reason to postpone my True Death.

The insanity of which I dance around so vaguely is of a sort that is incredibly difficult to accurately describe. The untrained mind may disbelieve out of a simple lack of the necessary background knowledge, while those with experience in this sort of self-torture may feel nothing if not the deepest revulsion. It is expected, and indeed, understandable.