There were no flashing effects or powerful gusts of wind, no divine force or surge of power in my body… I just sat here, and the floating eyeball disappeared.

Tomorrow, huh? Why not now? What sense does this make. Well this has never occurred before so perhaps it’s merely illusion, that’s sad, I’d really hoped to avoid the more garish affects of my seemingly ill mind. I wonder if he means tomorrow like, when I wake up or… in 24 hours. What a world we live in if even divinity is as vague as common mystics.

I certainly can’t fall asleep now, that strange encounter has me all on edge and anxious. The instant Deus left he took the calm with him. “Deus, Deus, Deus…” I mulled the word over, chewed on it. Deus ex machina. How apt a name if im really granted powers, haha. Probably only a progression of psychosis.

I think I’ll take a walk.

‘Would a writer have to consider product licenses and copyright?’ He thought, as he slipped in his earbuds and scanned for a podcast or lecture to listen to, ‘what a trivial matter as to what a thing is called, life lead by money is truly pathetic.’ Deciding on some philosophy lecture and stepping out of the house, a grey cat ran up to greet him.

“Meow meow meow meow!” He said, rolling around and smashing into my ankles. His friend or housemate lounging several meters back under the shade of a bush, he was not quite as social or vocal as little grey here. Kind of flippant and terrifying really, head swiveling like a crackhead and darting at leaves as they fall. Little grey went between slamming into garden shrubs, concrete bricks, and getting head pats, as I performed a quick search toward the legalities of product usage within a text, in fact, I googled it.

As are most legalities, it’s vague and whimsical, pendent to interpretation. ‘It simply ruins my aesthetics to care about such things!’ Koan thought, ‘ I should be a right outlaw of an artist!’ Placing the phone in his pocket and patting the cat goodbye, trading meows of respect to the grey beast, Koan set out down the street for a walk.

Midday summers of California, without even the luxury of a seaside breeze, what we trade for the lack of coastal moral depravity we get back as barren heat and cracking desert; legions of some odd million homeless in sects of seemingly counter cultural communes scatter the coastal regions of America, and by America we Americans mean the only one that matters! For a nation thought to be run by Jews, we certainly can’t manage money very well, it’s starting to make me reconsider our overlords. Aliens. Or oh yeah, I just encountered a god didn’t I? The God? Thought that was without form. Oh well.

Making my way to a local park and doing several pull ups, knees touching the ground with each descent. I am alone here, me and the trees and sky. Birds and squirrels.

I am poor, a lack of nature to explore, inability to escape. I feel crushed by the city, skyward towers of a real city might make me jump off one. Leaving this children's park to continue walking, the buzz of vague enlightening monologues seep into my ears, listening out of habit more than gain; what am I to gain? It all feels so unreal to me now, knowledge of the world is but a sedative for those who will not act. There is not even a cave for me to recluse into and attract a cult following, pissing mushroom laden fluids down the gullets of other escapists.

Perhaps all this has finally made a snapping in my mind, seeing a little daemon appear within my room. It almost doesn't matter now, crazy or empowered, maybe the first guides me to latter.

I walked for about two hours, zig zagging under trees and shady spots away from the judging sunlight. I would still probably have a pink burn.

I get home and shower, my family is unreal to me. I see them, though without my being they appear not to exist, no change or growth, appearing more so as autonomous objects than what “I am”. Solipsism in small doses can be alright. Its only six, I don’t really want to sleep; the anxiety of excitement and dread gnaws at me. I have always loved and hated sleep, to be not here, to feel nothing. Sometimes it is not nothing, and what is no thing anyways, I am aware in that emptiness, I have yet to master peace within the dream and waking worlds.

I lie under the covers, blinds drawn, only a bit of sun peeks through.

I’m not, not afraid… of going mad. Psychedelics, meditation, the lights and fleeting angels that arise within the silence of a mind. Even dreams for those who care to watch. No one really knows what any of this is here, existing. Even if another did it wouldn’t really help me unless I got it too, yknow? I know…

……

Sleep rarely comes this quickly for our hero, a deep and restful sleep with a crescendo into dreamland; whatever we may call it, for dreams are not all of a kind.

Two white eyes are glaring down at me, infinite darkness in the shape of an X lie in each one. I cannot sense myself, only those eyes, as if that is all there is. There are no thoughts in places like this, only awareness. The eyes merge into one with a strange sound.

Wakey, wakey, I guess.

……

“Do you know what I want from you?”

The boy slowly nodded. In a house off the end of a pier in some fuckall, who knows fishing town sat a boy no more than ten, his face lightly bruised along the cheekbones with some little roughed up scratches.

“Why don’t you clean up as best you can, put on some sturdy clothes. If you've got a backpack you can take some things along.”

He got up from his half crouch, the joints in his legs gently cracking as he stood. I wonder how long he’d sat like that. He walked by me as my eyes tracked him off into another area of the house, I waited until I could hear the hiss of water before looking back down at his parents. What was left of them.

The rug under my feet was a repulsive, gore soaked and matted mess, I heaved a sigh and knelt down to rest my palm on the floor. ‘Swirling, swirling, up it goes’, I thought, the blood began to hum and ripple, little dancing waves as all the gooey bits came slugging toward my arm.

“zzzzzzzzz-ZzzzzZZZZzz” the noise of transmutation, a soft purring crackle of plasma with a heady dip in tone when some of the more solid bits got zapped. My senses split between the little house and my inner realm, in a clear void there were three steadily filling clear containers.

The left was blood without impurity, it filled the fastest and there was the most of it. The middle was the other fleshy bits wrung of their blood, I gave a hollow smile when an eye bobbed up against the tank. The third jar housed an electric blue cloud, like aurora light. Baby blue and enchanting. I lingered there for a moment to tap and watch the wispy cloud play before my fingertips on the other side of astral glass. I’ll store these for now.

How many people had been targeted these last seven days? I’ve near had to found a damn school to keep up with these de-familied survivors, an orphanage?

I heard the boy in a room above me quietly scuffling around, packing some things, I’d imagine, conscious vapor shot up around the house again to check… Yeah, don’t look to be any more parasites, except you, little thing; gesturing to the floating bubble containing what might be roughly described as a hairless weasel, an eel with legs? He has these little horns too, vicious thing.

The boy came back down, unaware of the snarling little beast floating beside me in captivity.

“Your names Marcus, yeah?”

Marcus nodded.

Watching people, especially children deal with trauma is always… it doesn't feel great.

“I’m gonna send you to a place, and it’ll feel funny for a moment, but you’ll be completely safe. When you get there you’ll meet a nice lady who’ll give you some food and show you around. Im… sorry… this has all happened.”

He stood there and shrugged, a little stuffed alligator in one hand. I gave that same hollow smile I give whenever I feel the cosmic joke of it all, tousled his hair, and with a flash in his place was left thin wisps of vapor.

“Seal.” The world rippled with the house at its center. I walked to the door and flung it open to meet the summer rain, “seal”. A second ring of prismatic light rose up from the first.

I stood out in the downpour, “Seal.” The third ring rose up to emit a great hum. “Erase.”

I was now standing on a boardwalk, people walking, dogs without leashes happily circling their owners, the rain and the waves a grand symphony alongside the pushing of carts and pedestrians. I looked back at the line of homes to the one now missing, in the center a thin wisp of light trailing skyward without end, all signs of hospitality deleted and even the connected pipes and wiring now rerouted to function as if it were built as such.

Space and time aren't consistent here… “here”. Fuck me. Everything shimmers and shakes like a roundabout dream.

I stood at the edge of the once was property and hacked a fat wad of spit into the dirt. Plants began erupting into a garden within seconds, filling the now empty space between two wealthy, muggle rich condos. With a crack like lightning and no one the wiser— ZZAP!