Are you who I think you are? I am . . . And in walks the devil without remorse for the fire.

The guards told me to be on the lookout. They said you could appear at any moment. They tell me you feel at home here.

Well . . . Here I am. I can see that.

And in he comes – just like that.

The tiny lights in your darkness are blinding, of course. At least, we can say this is true in some regards. I see those weary candles and how they act like an intentional sign to the dead soldiers in your bloodstream, who somehow remain alive. Their warnings come as a means to prepare the bodies for another purge of soft explosions. Each shell bombs the soul with a gentle stream of calm hostility. I believe they call this “euphoria.” Or something like that . . .

Each purge is set to detonate and trigger the alarm for the upcoming arrival. This is the war call. This is the feathery onslaught of the white horse who gallops through your body. This is how bone becomes hollow and changes the posture of your spine.

This is all a metaphor. Of course.

The eyelids close down to about halfway, just like the shades to an abandoned house where no one is home. The mouth opens partially, as if the jaw lets go of its position and the knees bend and the body folds.

All this comes once the gunboats deploy. Do you understand? Can you see the pawns who gather and sacrifice their sorry truths? They do this. They lend themselves away to the rooks, bishops, knights, and the off-putting queen who protects the infected king.

The gunships have all arrived and all are destroyed. The packages are up and loaded. And all is gone once the hooves are deployed to gallop through the aperture or the bore of the needle.

Here comes the pinprick. All is settled, like the sunset of the soul. All else slows down, like the seismic vibration of your body’s quake. The mind is at the epicenter of al kinds of madness, which suddenly braces to stop and becomes otherwise ceased in the most amazing way possible.

The Devil never tricked anyone by being ugly. No. His truths on the other hand. This is another thing, altogether.

The flags of your soul go down to half mass and the body declines as your mind descends. The battle has begun. You are the sway of flickering light which dims, as if to become lifeless. Or worse, you are as you are; as if to be possessed by the gentle demons whose zombie-like minefields become the wasteland. Its amazing how destruction can become this quiet. All are destroyed without force, and degraded without effort, and possessed without resistance. What a trick this is.

There is no fight anymore. There’s just a tired surrender with empty rewards that diminish and disappear by more than half, that is, each time we try to resurrect ourselves.

“Are you him?” I am . . .

Those tiny lights never go out. (I noticed) They never go away and neither do the war wounds nor the smells from the battlefields.

There is no way to unsee what we see, —even if we never saw this to begin with, —all we’ve seen has mounted into some formal disorder, which we have all been warned about. And yes, we have all bee warned. We have all been informed. We all knew the truths when we signed up or volunteered. And your warnings, of course. They are more sinful and tempting because it would be easy to offer your warmth, despite your ways that are cold to the touch. It would be easy to offer something euphoric and sell your trades as some kind of self-help remedy. But no. Not you. Not your soldiers. Not our dealers. Not your weary enemies and not your tiresome battles that explode without fire.

Your biggest temptation is not what you offer. No. It’s what we’ve been warned to stay away from. That’s your trick. Your biggest temptation is not that you said come in; it’s that you told us to stay away when of course, you knew that we couldn’t.

“Is this why you’ve come?” (he grinned)

Come? And just like that, out came the Devil with his package and a new system. I suppose this was his way of changing his accent, —to keep us guessing. This was another trick to share a new fix: To keep us altered. To render us useless Or keep us unobjectionable. Either way, not a shot was fired in return and all of us solders went south o ide in the burdens of his sin.

The devil interrupted When you ask me if this is why I’ve come, perhaps I should remind you that yes, this is why I have always been here. I was here before you. I’ve always been around to tempt the soul, to check the measures of your morality, or to prove my point.

I am alive and created to show your God how your free will is too weak and hence, “His” creation is flawed because you are defective. You are weak like the empty cobweb that dangles from the ceiling of your haunted rooms. And you? To me, you are nothing more than a short story that takes place at a meaningless time. Time is meaningless to me because I am timeless and you? You are serving time and waiting for the guards at role call to summon our jurors. You are all sheep. But where is your Shepheard?

You are the fiction in your mind, which you believe that He created. When, in fact, —this was all you. Even I . . . I am your creation.

This is just another system of existence in your head. Do you get it? And to me, this is another figment of your Purgatory which comes from an imagination that you designed.

Not me. I had nothing to do with this design. This is all you, Even now, as you talk in both the first, second, and third person, I ask you. Who do you believe in? Because whomever this is, this is the sum or the total of your meaning.

The lights that glow ad refuse to go down; these are more like a symbol of how the sonic boom reverses, like swirling Angels falling backwards and upside-down. Condemned to die, like you while you wait for this upcoming sentence. Who are you waiting on?

This is you. Not me.

“But why me?” Why not you? “Why does this have to be who I am? Then, who are you?

The Devil caused me to think – I remember sitting in a room on the floor with my legs out and my back rested up against the couch. The apartment was dirty and the brown carpet and the worn couch was fit to be where it was. There was trash on the coffee table, which was piled high. The light bulb dangled from the middle of the ceiling which is where the old fixture used to be. it hung there, like the visions of dying ghettoes and how the symptoms became the problems and the prognosis became our death sentence.

The ashtrays around the apartment were filled with old butts and the smell in the room was unfortunate but true.

I swore the devil was persistent I remember being asked, “Have you ever been to a shooting gallery before?” No. “Well, then welcome home son. Nothing gets better from here.”

Chelsea, New York City Somewhere or sometime during the summer of 1989. I remember.

And no one knows and no one sees, unless of course, —you were there to begin with, or if anything else, you were somehow there, —even if you were elsewhere to see this yourself. That’s the only way you could know.

“Stay away from the pins, kid!” This was a warning from the elder to me, the minor. This was a man warning me, a kid, or the young one, —too sure that I would never be “like him,” and too caught up to believe that something like that would ever happen to me. To be honest – I don’t know what I believed. And I’m not too sure if I cared enough to believe in anything.

But this is what happens. This is what happens once you cross the line. One you’re in, you’re in. You’ve already come this far to pay the price of admission. The ticket is paid for. The ride is about to begin. Buckle your seatbelt. That’s all you can do now.

And hold on too because the slowness of your speed is like the reversal of all polarities, to which our speed becomes motionless, and your motions become staggered. From one extreme to the other. You infinitely turn inward, like the tides of the ocean would do if the world slowed enough to switch and turn the other way. But gently . . .

“Are you the one they warned me about?” No. I’m the one you’ve been looking for since that first time you opened my package down by B15th Street in Rockaway. Remember?

“I do.”

No one knows what comes next. No one thinks the inevitable is real, —or maybe once the ride takes place and once the Earth begins to spin; maybe no one cares.

Did I? I don’t know.

Maybe the so-called breadcrumbs I left behind were blown away by the wind. Or maybe the nod took too much sand from the hourglass in my spirit, and next. the salt of my soul became too flavorless. And so – Maybe I was otherwise lifeless or lost.

If you don’t know, then I suppose you can’t know. And if you can’t know, then I suppose you could never understand, which is not to say that I understood or that I understand now. Maybe I never understood. Or maybe this is all a misunderstanding. Who knows . . .

(Shh, Keep your voices down. I can hear the sound of keys. I think the guards are on their way)

Is this paranoia? Is this just me? Or maybe you and I are just two mice, experimenting in some maze-like routine. Maybe the two powers we’ve created are still debating between their diagnosis.

Is this a game of free will? Is this a war between good and evil? Is the rapture on its way? Or is this more of the same and somehow, The risen and the fallen battle to claim the worthiness of our irredeemable souls.

It was another night in the cell, here, in Purgatory.

“Are you the one who can help me?” I’ve always been here to help you “Can she see me?” Yes, my son.

(The sound of cell doors roll open and shut)

“I don’t want her to see me like this . . .” I know, son. And so does she.

“Ma!” This is the most famously said last word on a man’s deathbed. This is a primal truth.

The lights never go away. The worries appear like the rising of enemy ships who appear to storm your coast at dawn.

The impending doom puddles with its emotional catastrophes that otherwise distract the soul. Drink this, These are our tears. These ideas you have are the emotional items that distort our reflection. This is no different from how the serpent distorted the truth in the Garden of Eden.

“I’m just afraid. You know?” Afraid of what?

“That I’ll never make it.” “That I’ll never be good enough?” “That I will be forsaken too.”

I understand . . .

“The guards tell me there is no hope.” And who do the guards work for? “I thought they worked for you.” No, my son. “Then I’m confused, Who are you?”

I am north of where they come from. “But didn’t you create them?” I created all of this, no more than you believe that I created you . . . My son.

The devil grinned. “you do pretty well with this real fiction shit.” Is this real? “Well, it sure as hell isn’t fiction!” No I guess it isn’t. But who the hell cares?

You know?