The Drifters Diary
“Darkness comes with the setting of the sun.� Waking alone strapped to my bed, panic and dread still consumes me. The bearer of the tooth, the eye, who brought the demise of my time in this world. I watch you now, where you stood in my room. My world it floats, but you remain the same. Standing there, hair white like dry ice, and a crooked baron smile that screamed bloodlust. But bloodlust was not what you were seeking, was it?
At least not in the traditional sense. No, you were going for the slow burn. How I wish you would have ended my life there. I dream of you slashing me with your long talon-like nails, ripping my heart from my chest with a clenched fist and a tribal scream as I fold to the floor. But I understand now, you will never give me what I want.
I used to love the sea, falling asleep to the hissing and humming of the ocean. But now I can feel you watching, waiting, lurking in the crashing waves. I hear your retched, crackling voices drift, moving with the tide in a constant rotation. On those nights when the sea calms and I can feel you floating away, you still manage to infiltrate my mind. Where are they? How many other people are being tormented, as I am? Even so, the hardest part is, no matter where I go, I will always know that you surround me.
I will always be a performer in your ring, existing purely for your own entertainment. You were born into this world as old as the cloth that covers you. Your purpose, to dictate when there should be life, and death. Each wave that forms or crashes is indicative of a life of which you have total control. The ocean sings a song of pure joy and numbing pain, a beautiful song if you are ignorant of its creator. But now it only serves as a constant reminder that my fate is in your hands. Only you know when I will die.
“I had always dreamed of flying in the sky, but it was expected that I would come back down.”
“You have admitted me to a prison in the sky.” Gravity no longer weighs on me. All I touch floats alongside me. If I drop a vase, it won’t ever hit the ground, or when it rains, I will never get wet. With each droplet hitting my skin it will weave its way back through my shirt with unknown desperation to resurface and soar. I may have to bathe with a damp cloth, float through my home and endure people who stare at my hair
as it moves with a life of its own. Oh I know, the bearer of that tooth, that eye, how you have tried, but you have not broken me. Thinking back on it all now, there was a time where I once believed that you stole nature from me, my one love. That I’d never walk down a shoreline with the sun on my back. I would never witness the things I was destined to see, or love whomever I was
to meant to love. Destined to a life in a perpetual updraftt. You nearly won. So close I could feel the victorious laugh in the ocean outside my window. It was a hopeless night, cold and dreary. I couldn’t sleep, paint or walk. I was alone, frail and broken. I had given up. So I closed my eyes, and opened my door and made my body limp like a rag-doll. I felt weightless, a feeling in
which I then detested. Eyes closed, I could not feel where I was moving, or if I was moving at all. But as the temperature shifted and the wind hit my face, I could feel I was making my way out of my home. Dreaming of floating in the stars and ending my life was okay for me. It was better than this.
This moment now, still makes me laugh. Because you were not done with me, you enjoyed the suffering in which took me to this point. In your eyes, it was not time for me to leave this world. Disgustingly, you were still not satiated with my pain. And just like that, I was shocked awake with a tug at my leg. A weight pinning me down. A feeling that now felt so foreign. And as I looked down, there was the garden hose wrapped around my leg.
And although the hose wrapped near my toes was floating as I was, its anchor was steadily dug in the ground holding me down. I was suspended in the air, only swaying side to side with the wind. I would have liked to have seen your faces when you realised what you had done. That in not wanting me to die you gave me life and an idea which would allow me to live mine. It has now been shown that what I touch floats, but this is not a chain reaction.
It starts,
and ends with me.
“So as I dance in the sky, a smile painted across my face, I look toward the ocean and howl.” All I need is weight without it touching my skin. I started working away in my shop. I melted metal and poured it into carts, attached a rope, tied it to me and I was hitched. But I couldn’t move so I had to rethink, I need mobility, along with weight. There were carts and trolleys, my ceiling covered with metal parts, remnants of failed experiments. Countless hours of pouring, banging and poking. Until finally I found the perfect solution. A pair of old shoes dipped into metal, with only the soles being
the weight. Over and over I dipped and dipped. Making sure to only touch the shoe in its creation. I would pull the shoes on and off, and slowly I would float lower and lower, until I sunk into the floor. Now I can walk, hike and climb. When I reach the top of a mountain, I tie my rope to my shoes, and float bare-foot in the air. Higher than the mountain that I once looked up to. In my own personal abyss between the earth and stars.