The Hope

Much doubt begins to take up residence in Dean's mind. It is unlikely that it can be a rat, he thinks to himself. Something more subversive, something more low-brow, something more disturbing. He lines up his suspicions before him, as if before a firing squad and he names them one by one. His brutal pain reveals itself in the deprecatory female names thet he levels upon them. He feels the illusion of being in greater control as he exercises and successfully dominates them mentally.

One night, he awakes from slumber for no apparent reason except that his pain has willed it. His eyes fling open and for the brief moment before his thoughts catch yup with his action, he is but a skin vessel with functional muscular contractions. The vacuum suck of harsh reality rapes him form the temporary respite of slumber into the conscious skin vessel. He is awake, now. But what? The thoughts flood into their usual progression of questions without answers, self-pity, self-loathe, anxiety, hurt and empty meaninglessness.

The rustle! There it is again! Flipping onto his stomach, he probes the squalid and small space that is his room,. Nothing in sight. But the movement rings out constant. It is very much alive. The suspects now line up in his mental-scape once again. Roaches, they must be cockroaches! A breeding mass of them in a dank cupboard ox under his bed is hardly solid anymore. It is probably chewed up, eaten, shit out and re-consumed. He imagines the the pile of dry bits and pieces that the cockroaches perpetuate in motion by crawling and burrowing within and without. The cockroaches must be so aplenty that they bored, climb all over , fornicate with and defecate on each other. Each is a part of the whole yet each is the whole because if even one ceased its devil dance, the whole would collapse into non-existence.

Dean holds his breath and is once sick to his core at the mere thought that he shares the same air as the circus orgy beneath him. He hols it bravely and fens off his anxiety attack. Good clean air, he repeats to himself. Good, clean air..... But suddenly, he lets loose his tightly clamped lips as if involuntarily and takes in a huge drink of air. And then a sly smile begins to form on his face as he closes his eyes and dreams of the visual scene of the orgy. As he revisits the sandman once again, a tear streaks down upon his cursed face.