“At this time, however, he was concerned with personal, not collective, retribution.”
- Daniel Burton-Rose ‘Guerrilla USA’
it’s the small lights like fireflies that wake you into the nightmare, it being one of those types, a perception like that of microscopy slides mounting an implicit thing, you know you’ll be taking a look, the small lights, like pinpricks in the darkness, you’re sitting on a bed, your bed? the small lights bring you to alert, so you watch them, and then worry that they are on your eyes, or they are in your eyes, but when the gaze shifts from one side to the other, the small lights, so many of them, continue to float about independently. and you’re up, fast and slow as far as things go, the surroundings rush forward while cognition is somehow smeared, residue left behind like a smudgy stain, the small lights hang back at the inoculation point, and in a flash you’re in the hall.
it’s a ridiculously long hall, a manipulation that entertainment has endlessly repeated, like the hall itself, comically cliché and also terrifying, you’re in it! it being one of those types, there’s always a nag, although it’s a difficult indifference to feign when one is confronted with a real and true vastness. remember the darkness, the stairs to the right, the door to the left now closed, parallel rows of doors ahead, mirrored and vertiginous, absurd and chilling. the hall ends behind, so move forward past closed doors on either side, leaving the descending staircase on the right, deeper into the dark hall full of closed doors on both sides, try one, they’re also locked and it’s dark. move forward, leave the staircase leading down, advance into the hall whose far end is only the vanishing point, the hall lined with locked doors until you find one of them unlocked on the left, but before entering, glance back and acknowledge that no distance has been traveled at all, the opposite of the vanishing point is right there and so are the stairs.
the room is like the hall, hackneyed and dreadful, bathed in red light, sweltering, moisture seeping from the walls. the space is unfurnished, filled with boxes and cases covered with trite signifiers indicating explosives, skulls and crossbones, illustrations of detonations contained within red diamonds, stenciled cylinders clustered and bound by a fuse, it being one of those types the sleeping mind wanders to thoughts of black powder, nitroglycerin, hexogens, it being one of those types the sleeping mind wanders to a backwards movement, one you’d like to make, reversing an exit back to the hall, but it being one of those types the sleeping mind wanders to the typology of the symbolism, does the malaise of the space indicate a broader decrepitude? someone else rises up from behind a stack of crates, the room, unlike the hall, is no longer empty of others, they ascend in a standing position as if on a lift, apathetic and listless, clammy and dripping, they momentarily waver with eyes lowered, they raise their head to meet your eyes with their own, red rimmed and rheumy, a gaze worthy of disengagement but impossible to accomplish. the stare is locked and the mouth is in the periphery, impossible to ignore, it opens, It’s hot, the words gurgle out as if rising from a clogged drain, the sleeping mind says No. the stare is locked and the mouth is in the periphery, impossible to ignore, it opens again, It’s so hot, leaks out. the sleeping mind says something that is obscured by a flash, an explosion! your mouth says No but it is too late, another place is the setting, below is the floor, a carpet?
crouched on all fours in another dark room, the stairs behind, curtained windows and two overturned chairs and a couch that is pulled away from the wall in a chaotic position, a carpet underneath, light streaks through gaps in the curtain, more stale iconography carrying a startling shade of dread. it being one of those types there is no doubt that the upper level remains intact, there is no fire, the walls are free of soot, the structure endures. through the window, viewed from this position, dark sky, generic rooftops, the light streaming in, so rise up! and just then as if on cue the sounds, the reports of gunfire, too far in the distance to identify direction, also commotion and also distant, and horses? galloping horses? to the couch, it’s just a thought and then it is, stairs in front across from a door, an exit? more reverberant gunfire, the light shifts, unnerving on the couch, exposed, to the right another room, open, a large wooden table, some chairs, a boarded up window, a sliver of an open doorway on the facing wall, figures move beyond it, within it, backlit by a flicker most likely candles, back and forth. a third volley of shots, in the silence that follows wafts the sound of talking, the moving figures are speaking and moving back and forth, not frozen on the couch, moving chaotically, speaking wafting words, more shots and then it stops. it all stops, a head pokes out of the doorway, shrouded and therefore featureless and why so ominous? it being one of those types these are unknown figures, so it’s a surprise when the head speaks in a voice that is every voice in your memory all at once, What was that sound? to which there is obviously no answer, and so why does your stomach sink at the loss? the head recedes. there is a strong compulsion to rise from the couch and a failure to resist it, up and forward again, now toward the doorway, just short of it, turn around and sit down, back against the partition wall, more speaking unintelligible words, hushed or in a different language or simply a byproduct of the circumstance, it being one of those types, speaking for a moment, for hours, who knows? the head reappears, backlit, a voice like all voices, What was that sound? there’s nothing to it but not to answer, no matter, a declaration follows, the voice of all voices says, From over there, and the head nods to its right before receding again. now there are no voices, there is no gunfire, and now you are through the doorway, around the partition wall, the new room, a sparse kitchen, is empty of the moving figures, just you and a swinging door.
it being one of those types there’s no obligation to experience pushing through the door or descending the dark stairwell to arrive in the concrete floored basement, as is evidenced by simply being there. what startles instead is the makeup of the space, filled from top to bottom with water, the floating-within kind, and it being one of those types there’s no fear of drowning, this is not the cause for concern. the cause for concern is the cardinal boundaries, that there are none, or if there are they are too far away and out of sight, deep in the undulating shadows and like the hall on the upper level it is a tired sight to see but you are there! there’s no need to imagine feeling so small, weighless, bereft of speedy movement, seeing not the solid walls in every direction but an abyssal fade of questionable depth and width, treading, treading, treading to stay in place, to gain some bearings, when you first become aware of it. more of sensation, at first, of movement somewhere in the dark water, but then the shadow is seen and it’s no wonder that it was initially felt, it is giant, and it is fast, it moves naturally through the water, circling around the treading spot, immense and unrecognizable, too large, you don’t have to imagine feeling so small. up where the water laps endlessly at the damp drop paneled ceiling, each fiberglass square unmovable and impenetrable, the mammoth phantom circling, in the dark recesses, around and around, panic inducing for fear of drawing closer, the panels are fixed, stuck, solid, around and around, are there two of them? out there swimming, this panel jammed, that panel wedged, around and around and around, immense shapes, and this panel loose, forced up, loud and frothy, everything ascends, passing through in a gravity defiant sucking rush.
you find yourself dry, it being one of those types, back in the original room sitting on the bed, there are no longer any small lights, the door is open, the top of the stairs is visible beyond the door. there are sounds from below that carry up the stairwell, the squeals of machinery or vibrating gut strings, percussion like hammers on sheet metal, rumbles and a grinding like stone on wood, murmurings. it is dark in the room, you turn to find a window, it is dark outside of the window but a large, barren, banal tree manages to superimpose it’s murky shape against the bleak empty sky, the stairwell is dark. there is movement on the dark stairwell, ambiguous in the gloom above the edge of the landing, something heavy and large, grating against the walls, crushing the steps beneath, a figure behind, visible from an impossible perspective enabled by the circumstance, a pushing, heaving figure struggling to raise the heavy oblong slab, end over end or straight on, grinding, tearing, crushing its way up the stairwell, the sweaty, grunting figure behind the mass visible from an impossible perspective, it becomes known that the large object must not reach the top, it can never reach the top, it is imperative that it does not reach the top, and you shut your eyes.