The Alley

I want to tell you what is going on.
I find myself in an alley, narrow, smelly and moist. Soundless, and yet the sticky heat falling upon it, scratching the walls on each side, is deafening. Time here has no meaning; there is no room for Time.

I am amongst a mob in motion. Motion in mute, motion of tired, monotonous, heavy feet. In my front human backs. On either side profiles, and below, endless sets of feet. The crowd goes on for as far as the eye can see. I, myself have been going with the flow for quite some time now. I have spent hours (days perhaps?) looking at the side walls as we slowly proceed; desperate for an opening, struggling to balance my attention between the walls and being on the move, for I am conscious of the ruthless crowd behind me. Hoping for a crack between the heavy cover of leaves, the depressing wallpaper of the alley.Dark green leaves, almost bloody. Trying not to think of the claustrophobic madness pounding in my ears.

All sound I once recognised has never sounded here, in the alley; Instead, silence is the loudest, as it fiercely bounces from one wall to the opposite, trying to escape, just like I am. My thoughts have lost all credit, they can not be trusted, and the agony within surpasses all the torment of my predicament. I have torn the leaves in fits of ecstatic fury. I have scratched the black walls with my nails until I had nails no more. The past, present and future have been fused and are now visions on the walls, which disappear when spotted. Without a sense of future, the sense of hope is inevitably dissolving, my searching eyes are drying out.

In one sense, I am the only living element in here; the expressionless crowd seems to form another particle of the alley, like dust gathered between two books. It is this peculiar contradiction, of asphyxiating physical proximity with the mass and yet acute loneliness inside, which unfolds the great horrors now in me. Read of, seen, but never before so truly felt. Fragments of thoughts, calming memories, I force upon the sickness; the sound of a piano…fingers stroking its length…taking their time choosing a key…breaking its resistance…

My eyes burn with visual exhaustion, as if the iris alone cannot tolerate the monstrous quality of the alley spectacle. I turn them upwards, immense blue skies are instantly imprinted behind my eyelids; oh the despair, bound by my human nature, what good is thought to me now? I will remain here, trapped in my head. Cursed to ponder for eternities upon eternities, staring at my only exit point, the blue.