Raw Power

I need to start grasping onto the real. The problem is I can’t seem to find it. Every time it feels as though it’s within my grasp, it moves like a fish evading the net. Then I fall; I plummet toward what I hope is grounded in reality, but I’m generally quite far from it at that point. Once I’m in contact with the new illusion I have found, it slowly sucks me under. I find myself deep within the fantasies.

The fantasies of late have been quite frightening; they are intense images encompassing strange feelings of blood and terror. But I oddly find myself feeling at home. I adapt to the situations and I prosper. I save those who need to be saved by doing the indescribable; the blood on my hands can’t seem to wash off, but it doesn’t seem to bother me.

From time to time, I find I can surface. I find I can separate illusion from reality, to a degree. I see what has happened and I see what I have become, and it makes me sick to my stomach. I try to latch onto the small reality I have found, but it’s hard; it’s so very hard. I give in and drown once more in the wonderful fake sanctuary I have found.

I become no one. I become a hero. I become a king. I become everyone and everything. I become a god. I realize there is no need to seek out the real when the fake is everything I ever have and ever will want. And, somehow, it scares me all the more. It scares me knowing that I can find such happiness being such a monster, and yet I continue to delight in the feast of my illusionary enemies.

Eventually, the feeling of wonder and amazement wears off at the same time as the euphoria associated with it. Illusions conspire against me, and I feel less powerful. Those I had originally saved bite my hand and it all becomes meaningless to fight for what is right by doing what is wrong. I become an outcast. I know the pains of the exiled, and I know when my time is up.

And so I awake.