F.K. Preston

Violence can read like poetry. You just have to describe the act as if you__e in love with the way your characters bleed.

Life's a circle. There are no lines we can cross.

What a selfish boy you are. You wished for the world but all you received were the skies.

The world didn't end with a whimper or a bang. Your life finished in complete silence. Gone in a blink. And then there was nothing.

I wanted to give you something that would last forever. Something that would surpass the world, that would still be alive and bright even after you passed away. Something beautiful. For your eyes and smile only. But I never found it. All I could give you is words. Words which were as fleeting as the heartbeats that shook my soul whenever you looked my way.

There is nothing to me but you. I know it__ pathetic but, oh darling, it__ true.

I keep dying and hoping you notice me. But you__e too busy living.

The truth is there isn__ anything to me at all. All I know is that I can__ sleep well, I can__ dream well and I__ quite in love with you. That__ all there is to me. My greatest feature is my admiration for you. I know it__ not healthy. Like my insomnia. Like my dreamless nights. You make living alright. My nightmares come when I think of a night without Valeria. That__ when I realise you__e dead. That__ when I remember you__e been gone for years. That__ when I remember I__ awake. And I wait for this dream called Life to leave me to my peace once and for all and forever.

Four years ago the clocks started turning back. I open my eyes and see nothing. I feel nothing below or above me. I feel the absence of things. The absence of my flesh, my bones, my body, my mind. All that is left is awareness. I see nothing but the absence of colour. It__ not a black darkness. It__ simply nothing. The interior of a black hole. I recall news of a black hole lingering along the edges of our solar system. All that time ago. Four years ago. When the clocks started turning back. I hear nothing. Until there is a something. A small thing. A voice. I listen. There are more voices. The sounds are human. How long has it been since I__e heard a human? The sounds scratch along my now present attention. They carve into my hearing. They are horrid, wretched things. Voices screaming. Growing loud and desperate. How many voices? Billions. This is the birth of our species. We are born screaming. It__ all we know to do. We have screamed for eternity. Within this empty space.

I recall my life every day. I recall my sins and my acts of purity. I remind myself I was never a religious man. I remind myself that I have been dead for half of forever. I remind myself of nothing. I move along to the next minute. Next day. Next year. The earth doesn__ change so much anymore. It doesn__ change so quickly. With humans, the earth had to keep changing. But you can only replace a dying thing so many times before someone notices. There haven__ been humans for years. Maybe a decade. Maybe more. I find myself loving their absence. The absence of humanity is the absence of violence. I love this peace. But then I remember my bones. My mind and my memories. I remember I__ human. I am the thing I detest. The creature that haunts my steps. It__ my shadow I see watching me. It__ my reflection in the water. I keep remembering. I live in fear. But still, I walk on.

I begin my life. I live again. I meet a young girl called Valeria. She smiles easily. She laughs tender sounds that pull at my heart. I__ too young to be profound but she makes me feel so safe. So cherished. I am thirty years old. I bump into a woman I knew when she was a girl. Valeria looks annoyed to see me. She lives in the future. Where the world is turning. I live within the past. Where the people are trapped and screaming and alone. I live within the past when Valeria and I were in love. She__ waiting for the cab to come, her foot tapping against the sidewalk. Her eyes glancing at her watch every few minutes. I__ eager to reunite our lives through some kind of friendship. I__ so eager to know her again, as she was when she was a child. But Valeria lives within the future. I live within the past. Have the two ever gotten along? Have they ever even met?

All that is required of you is an open mind and a little patience.

A death in reverse is the rewinding of life. I do not die of old age, in a bed surrounded by strangers my loved ones paid to take care of me. I die in reverse. I die falling backinto a younger age. From my forty-five years to twenty-five. To sixteen. When we were in love. To fourteen: when we first met. To five. To one. To the hospital my mother died at from the complications of my existence. A life for a life.

My creativity keeps me from starving. Humanity keeps my life mundane. Loving secures my love for life, but my imagination keeps me sane.

But I can__ control my dreams. I can__ even remember them. For all I know I__ having the time of my life when I sleep, but I just can__ remember. So I__ forced to live in a life I have no control over. A life where I__ either numb to everything or terrified of every thought that crosses my mind. If this is all just a dream, then it sure is a disappointing one.But I still have time to try and control my dreams. I have time to try and make my dreams a reality in this waking life as well. The one bloody thing I have is time. I__e got to remember that. I still have time. And despite everything, there is something reassuring about that.

The greatest happiness is a quiet kind. It__ the tender understanding that we__e living in a very strange place full of strange creatures. And there__ quite a bit of wonder in that.

Did I love her? No. I obsessed over her completely. And thank heavens I was obsessed. Obsession, infatuation, is something short-lived. A sweet fever dream that leaves you exhausted from the high. Love is perpetual. Love is an entire world compared to that other form of mania people mistake love for. If love is loving the reality of a person, obsession is idealising the fantasy of another. Did I love her? No. Never. But I was utterly obsessed.

I wish I could run into the world__ arms. Linger within the spaces between nothing. I wish I could filter out of existence. To live quietly without dying. I wish I could be cherished by life itself. To speak and sing volumes without lying to myself.