Fog.

Awaken.

Rise from your bed. Face the world. Wash your face. Eat your meals. Have some coffee.

No, not yet. Here, amongst the fluffy covers...it's just like heaven. A safe place to be. The only safe place to be, if you will.

If you're mad enough, that's the only place you'll ever know peace.

But no. You are awake. There are bills to pay. People to talk to. Chores to be done, work to do. Many, many things await you.

Like all the shadows outside.

Shadows, that take the same bus you do. Shop at the same store you get your groceries. Use the same paper in exchange for everything. Food. Electronics. Cars. Love.

Shadows, everywhere I see. They drive cars. They curse each other. They fuck each other. Fuck, fuck, fuck. Each and everyone gets their chance. Their round.

Shadows pass through me on the streets. They have voices, but no faces. They were once human, now they are just...shadows. Blocking my way. Cursing at me.

Everywhere I go, just shadows.

I'm still laying awake at my bed. The last frontier. The last haven. Already, the shadows are creeping outside. They're everywhere.

I don't really want to go there.

Everywhere I go, there's a shadow looking at me. No face, no reason, no place. Just this. An apparition. Shadows hand me my credit card back. Shadows bag my junk food. A shadow, driving a rather expensive piece of shit it calls a fancy car, almost ran me over.

Can shadows die?

Some shadows, they talk to me. They try to make me listen to their wisdom. So much wisdom in their words. So many opportunities I've been missing, to mingle with them. Doesn't really matter who you are; you are just another shadow. Doesn't matter if the female shadow hitting on you is already married to someone else. Fuck her. Fuck this shadow. Fuck her, and fuck her husband too. He will never know, oh the flimsy, undecided, not alpha enough of a shadow.

So fuck him too.

Shadows try to enlist me on their religion. They want me to join the battle against other shadows, their evil minions. They want me to sign documents. To sell my soul.

Can shadows even have souls?

Shadows, they try to take advantage of life, of everything we're not supposed to enjoy. Only there are some shadows, a whole lot of them who tells me that shadows are not supposed to enjoy life. We're not supposed to drink. To smoke. To have hopes in a future even slightly different than the one they're selling. The future provided by a holy book of shadows, written by yet another shadow so many eons ago.

This is just one truth sold to me by the shadows.

Another ones, they're trying to help you. They tell you, you haven't looked hard enough for the things you want. If you want love, you need to search for it. But first, you must accept the true love of the only Savior--

I stopped listening. Can you really listen to a shadow?

Thirty something years, and I'm still living amongst them. Fucking everything up. Denying the whole truth, since the shadows in charge won't abide to let me be the one I really am, the one disguised by this shady cloak I had to put on sometime, long ago, in order to grant myself some solace, some refuge of all this madness.

I walk on the streets, shadows just breeze by me. Blocking my way. Slowing me down. Putting me down. Making me angry at myself for not being like them...and yet that's secretly my worst nightmare, to finally give in and be just like them.

Shadows. Shadows in the fog.

Some still talk to me. But they all smirk. They all know I'm wrong. I'm here, but I'm not. I've never, ever been here. I just pretend to be.

In this circle of hell, the shadows are demons in potential. Trying to make me come to their side. Stop fighting. Quit struggling. Just let us own you.

Shadows. They believe they're nice, just and humane.

They're 'just', alright - like nature meant them to be. Humane only by the dictionaries' definition.

And what am I? Just another shadow. I just don't believe in kindness amongst shades. I don't think everything's gonna be alright. Things will not get better. Never, ever.

Shadows will develop cancer. They will rot from the inside out. Arthritis. Arthrosis. Your strength will fade away. You will get tired. And they will win.

They will try to blend together, only to find they were never meant to be together. Every shadow is its own. We're all alone, even if some of them says otherwise.

Shadows will never accept others' shadows beliefs. They will not tolerate. Their truth is absolute, their will made of iron and flames. Shadows want you to just be like them. Don't be different. It is absolutely forbidden.

So you see. That's me.

Just another shadow.

In the fog.

Nowhere.

So I was going. Didn't know how the hell I was supposed to pull this one through, but I was determined to make it happen. I went to hell and back again; I wasn't afraid anymore.
-Yo.
-Hey buddy. Name yer poison.
-White Russian.
-Ah, nice one. Coming up.
As the bartender pour, I looked around. No sign, no evidence. Nothing. A lot of people, but I just felt like I was there all by myself. "Sucks to live this way," one of my so-called friends told me. "You're not helping. Get the fuck away," I told it.
-Slow night?
-Not really. Last night was the night of the dead. Tonight's much better.
-I see.
-Here's you drink, pal.
-Thanks.
I took a sip of the beverage, sneering a bit. A little bit stronger than I would make, but not that much of a problem. There were bigger ones dancing around me. "What a dump," another one said out loud. "I know." I just nodded.
Hours went by slowly, and people came and went, a lot of people. As the night grew older, the amount of smiles, clinking glasses and sideways looks increased accordingly.
But no sign of something or someone worthy.
I ordered two more Russians, and was already quite tipsy at this moment. The bartender wasn't very talkative, or at least he wasn't the type that would start conversations, so I basically kept to myself. I smoked three cigs at the outside lounge, and kept on looking. Kept staring at the ground.
What the hell was I doing there?
You're searching.
For what?
You're trying.
To do what?
I'm not at home, I'm not alone. I'm not spending the night wasting my time in front of a computer. I'm not laughing at useless nonsense off forums or playing a role in a fictional universe.
And to what avail? What good could I get from standing here, drinking my ass off, being with all these people, all these nameless faces, these bland smiles, all that nonsense?
Try to fit in. Be yourself. Talk.
I got nowhere to fit in. No myself to be proud of. No interesting things to talk about, except internet fucking memes or some similar bullshit - topics of no relevance whatsoever to everyday people, normal people, so to speak.
Another Russian. Another cigarette. Repeat.
After a while, I found myself staring at the counter, counting scratches on the beaten wood finish, or just playing with the ice on my empty glass. All my 'friends' were talking to me simultaneously, and it was driving me crazy. I looked up, only to find the barman's face staring at me with a funny look.
-Had enough?
-I think so. Here it is, keep the change.
-D'you need a cab?
-Nah, I can manage it. it's not that far, I'll just walk it off. Thanks anyway.
-Right. See ya.
I walked off the bar, leaving all those empty shells, those nameless, anonymous people behind me. The street was desert, the wind was howling and cold.
"Why dind't you--"
Shut up.
"You could have gone and talked to--"
Shut up.
"You should have--"
Shut up.
"It's all your fault, you know."
I know. Shut up.
"Go home, go back to the prison you created."
Shut up. Shut up. Shut up.
Just shut up. Leave me alone.
"You are alone."
The streets seemed to be screaming at me, the lamp posts dancing, the ground shuffling. And my head wouldn't just shut the fuck up. Never before that walk felt so endless. A few blocks seemed to have transformed into a long, slow, endless desert.
But I got home.
I went upstairs.
I locked the door behind me. Lit a cigarette, fell on the couch, stared at the ceiling.
Everywhere was nowhere. Everywhere felt like nowhere.
Nowhere.

Pants.

It's there. It's still there.

At first glance, no-one would notice. No one would care, so to speak. But someone looked. Someone saw, the most unusual thing, and yet so concealed, so hidden amongst the everyday, every morning blandness, the monotonous scenario leading to your day job, your boring job, your boring life.

But there it was.

Through the bus' window pane, through layers and layers of dust and whatever people may have...deposited across the glassy surfaced over the days, over the years, you saw. You saw the most unusual thing.

While everyone else was staring at the TV screen placed carefully inside the bus, while they were busy checking their texts and whatnot, there it was, for people like you to see. For people that don't belong along, for people that simply aren't there.

People that don't live here, amongst us.

Only this kind of people notices such things. Only these fools care about these things.

Fools. They live here, but they're not here at all. They seem to be alive, but they're not. They're long gone. Dead. Dust to dust, ashes to ashes. Only a shell of a human being.

Only a shadow of what's expected to be a human being.

They don't like to talk about small things. They don't like to discuss everyone else's lives, they don't care about clothing, about style. They follow no trends, they follow no church. They have no God.

Can you imagine a soulless person like this?

Can you picture how hollow is to be like that?

They don't like to be at the spotlight. They don't want to be famous, at least not like the winner of the decade-old reality show. They don't want to be on the cover of Caras. They have no ambition, no drive.

They don't care about money, they don't care about cars. They purchase only the things they truly love, such idiotic items, pencils, picks. Guitars. Pedal effects. Papers, inks. They have no desire to buy the finer stuff in life. Ferraris. Calvin Klein shirts. Ray-Bans. Things that really matter, that really makes us unique.

They go on and on, displaying their lifeless faces, they are so empty inside. They are so wrong. They think twice before saying things that may harm other people. They care about friends; they even think they have actual friends!

When you're really alive, you realize that you are unique, you are your best buddy, and no-one else will ever love you like you love yourself, no matter how ambiguous and wrong that sentence may sound. You just know that money is love. That the things you buy define yourself as a person, a refined gentleman.

Such barbaric fools. They are so naive. They really think that human beings should care about this nonsense. They think that we're just as moronic as they are.

And when they realize that they are nothing but stupid, idealistic people, that's when they begin to die. And after a few decades, they're as good as dead. Vagrants of a human body, real human hobos. They think they're so special. So full of contempt with their so-called "higher values" and some other bullshit like that. In the 60s, they were hippies.

Now they are just...human waste. Nonproductive human beings, parasites. With all their ideals and shit like that. In the end, they go on living until they realize they are utterly alone in this world. In this humanity.

In the end, their fraternal friends, those that are really smart, abandon them to their fate, their certain doom. These friends they once valued so much, they just realize how foolish it is to behave like that. So they leave, they change their ways. They evolve. They progress.

And the soulless men, they remain there, sitting alone in a bus, looking through a dirty window, seeing a pair of red pants dangling from the high-security fence across the street. Only these fools would notice a dumb thing like that.

What is the purpose of noticing such things? What good will that do? Noticing these useless things won't get them laid. Won't make them any richer. Won't give them enlightenment or some crap. Won't get them nowhere.

And yet, the dead man still stares at the scene. The idiotic scene.

Such a waste of life. No wonder everyone that ever hung around these fools eventually abandon them. And that is so ironic, they actually think they are doing something good, remaining faithful to their twisted beliefs.

They're just pushing everyone else away. No one likes an old grunt. No one likes a negative person. No one likes to be friends to a fool that won't ever admit defeat, won't ever face the fact that their imaginary world won't never, ever, come true.

Well, it is just poetic justice. It is an evolutionary thing: they will be extinct someday; after all, they won't be able to breed. Thank our God for that.

Someday we'll be rid of these downers. Of these human nuisances, theses empty, broken robots that wander around the earth, trying to bring us down. Trying to show us that we should be like this or like that.

Someday, they won't be around no more.

And then, we shall rejoice.

Nothing, nowhere, anthing.

...and there are these mornings, when you suddenly realize that no matter what you do, you'll end up making an ass of yourself. Mornings in which you just know that no matter what you propose yourself to do, things to change and so on, no matter what you want to do, you just have that omniscient feeling of impending doom at the end.

I'm having one of such mornings today. The feeling of helplessness is strong, and it appeared due to such trivial thoughts to the normal part of mankind, such as the old realization that people are jerks, and will always be, no matter what you do. When you realize that even your family act like demeaning assholes, you know you're in for even worse surprises down the road, dealing with other assholes worldwide. Jerks who think you'll get better if they yell at you, pricks that think that you will react just like they do whenever criticized, dicks that think you'll spin into action if they just berate at you.

Mornings like these, it just makes me wish that suddenly everyone just blew the fuck away, no matter how gruesome this might sound.

Then again, I'm rational enough to realize that I'm a jerk just like they are. I just get mad at them because I just can't understand their modus operandii, their way to deal with life's adversities and the most palpable kind of hell ever invented - other people.

Sometimes, I imagine myself being analyzed by other folks at times, and whenever I do, I just know this for a fact: I'm an asshole just like they are. Because I do have a lot of wonderful skills but no guts to try and make them work out for me; because I do have a lot in my hands and I just contemplate it with no idea whatsoever on what I should do. Because I'm not married at my age; because I'm no good at flirting, blah blah blah, and so on.

And this realization, this notion of everyone's asshole-ism should propel me to act, to try to do something about it, but then again, why bother?

Everyone will remain just selfish bastards forever. Me included. Everyone will prevail, because each one of us are just like this: my opinion is the best, my religion is the righteous one, my team is better than yours, my car is bigger and better and faster.

And they ask me why the hell I think people are solitary. Doomed to die alone. Live alone.

We do. We are alone, because we're the kings of the world, each and everyone of us. And fuck those who don't think like we do. They're wrong, they're dicks. Assholes. Asshats. Jerks. Even if we're attached to someone, we're just trying to prove that we're better than them. It's a race, a race to prove that our opinion is better, that our car is faster, that my brand is more fashionable that his, that her house is bigger than his, and so on.

We're all wrong. Just like that. And if there is a deity looking over us somewhere, anywhere, anytime, whatever, it might be just laughing at us. Maybe not out of sarcasm or despite, but it must be laughing at us and all our wrongful notions and beliefs.

Ah, what the fuck. Who will ever know the truth?

Onward, my fellow assholes. We're all in the same boat, in the same planet. And we're all just dicks.

The Dreamer.

And so the Dreamer awakes once again.

He had one restless sleep last night, and when he thought he'd be able to sleep for some more minutes, the alarm clock buzzes like a pestilent mosquito, like a swarm of bees stinging his ears. He sighs. Somehow, he knows this isn't going to be a pleasant day. But he tries to shake that feeling away, knowing that he is no fortune teller, he knows not what the future holds in store for him this day.

Still, the feeling never leaves. The Dreamer is awake, and he feels the weight of the world upon his shoulders, even though he knows there isn't that much of a weight there after all - he's a Dreamer, and he's got a lot of imaginary problems....feelings, such negative feelings. But, he's keen to keep the promise he made on the break of a new year, yet another one. He promised himself.

But such promises are short-lived or are rumored to be so....he knows that. There is no real pain here. No real loss. And yet he lingers there, thinking. Dreaming. Snapping out of it for a moment, he proceeds to leave. There is a whole workday to be fulfilled, there are things to do, people to see, classes to attend to.

But as the bus carries him away, he quietly sits on his backseat, listening to his old tunes. The random selection created today seems to fit his tastes, seems to feed his unrest. He's restless today and he knows it. Instead of fighting it, he just let the dreams roll. He's a Dreamer. He knows where the secret lies. Where is the key to all that's sacred to him...to all that's pure.

So he sleepwalks around. He doesn't fight it; he wants to escape to his dreamland, to his ideal place, his idyllic rolling plains and endless, calm fields. Even though he knows...the further he ventures into his realm, the more difficult it gets to get out of such a place. The plains turn into marshlands, the fields becomes endless and treacherous bogs.

So he awakes once again, just in time to get out of the bus and face all the nameless faces around him on the street. Faces that mean nothing to him, and only adds more to the sense of despair that keep on following him today. He's got to live, he's got to find a reason. He's got somewhere to go, somewhere to be. But...He finds it nowhere. Not on this plane. Not on this realm, the real world.

But he knows it isn't possible to live in his Dreamland. He knows it.

So he strives to keep himself awake, and shake the awkward feeling away. He struggles to find that reason, that place, that person, whatever it is, that will keep him awake. That will bring the dream into the real world.

Is there such a thing? He doesn't know. And as he walks away, to another working day, we all get to see him dreaming as he walks, dreaming as he talks, sleeping as he's walking. Dreaming.

The Dreamer is awake, but at the same time, he isn't.

He only hopes for the best, he hopes that he'll find a friend today, someone to talk to, someone to share this bullshit with. He sits around and sips his coffee. He types his texts into his computer, and awaits. Until the day is done, what will happen to the Dreamer?

What will happen to someone that does not live here....even though he's always around?

What will happen to someone who know he's always wrong, even though he feels rightful to proclaim he's right?

The Dreamer awaits. And dreams around. Writes the dreams into secret files, secret stories that may never see the light of the day or meet the irises of unknown eyes. He dreams...but he tries to remain awake. He tries to stay with us. With the real world, the real people. Everything scares him, but he's managed to cope somehow. He's managed to stay awake, even though he's not here at all. The dreamland is a very solitary space, but is the safest of all places.

No-one will catch you there. No one will hurt you.

No one will ever see you.

No one will hear your wild music that burns inside, the truest of them all songs; all the crazy stories that will never, ever face the light of day. Never, ever.

No one knows you there....and yet you know everyone who's there. All you've ever created, all you've ever cared for. All that nonsense. Pain. Love. Value. Honor. A true heart.

None of this makes sense in the real world.

Shake it, shake it all away. He's still here, typing these words, this nonsense. He's got work to do. People to see. Classes to attend to.

He sighs, and awaits. He knows this is just a bad day, and it will go away...some day. For now, he just dream on. It's all he's got. It's all that makes sense to this nonsense head, to this frail mind.

He's the Dreamer. He dreams away.