five-eyes.

The trouble comes with sleeping. When the pale moon takes a final bow upon the water encrusted and green laced planet and gently whispers the night into a dreamy lullaby, my eyes flicker open. The flickering propels me into a multitudinous darkness, engulfing and asphyxiating. Countlessly, I have tried to garner the help of midnight charmers, oil brewers, potion mixers, witches of Wiccan Creeds, and tarot card readers. But none could render me the comfort of sleep that I once cherished.
I was awake.
Forever.

The First Eye
On an ordinary night, owls, crickets, bats and various dark-eyed creatures keep me company. In their nocturnal habitats, my body grows accustomed to their dark beliefs and sight systems. My body grows into the darkness. I am walking through the dark blanket which shrouds the forest and my feet fall into step, one after the other. The night is a spell, one which evaporates the light of day and existence and depraves itself of sustenance. And yet, it breathes. It breathes like a creature lying dormant for centuries. A beast that has not smelt the raw skin of life in all of its deprived days. A deadly. Living. Thing.

I chose the only path there was left on the road. The path to Drop-Off point. I have heard of this place from most of the deranged midnight oil charmers and brewers I have knocked upon. But none could tell me what happens to the people who go there and why they even go there if they never come back. I was on a mission to a place where I knew would just be another let down. But I was not quick to decide. I knew where it was located. It was located in Land’s End. The best tourist destination in Land’s End is Drop-Off point. I could have sworn that there was something highly intriguing about this place. But I was not to know the outcome until I had reached the intended point. Somewhere in the depths of the abysmal place called Land’s End, I was to discover my sleep, my eternal slumber of centuries, and my mind in the astral journey of dreams, my soul in a spaceship off to the distant galaxy where life is unraveled once again to inhabitants of alien planets.

The Second Eye
Drifting aimlessly in the dark brick road of death, I could only hum myself a soft dirge which the darkness around me understood. The same song would have been a curse upon the living, a huge blaring noise ripping through the ear drums of the mortal soul that tries to keep his eyes open in the day. That was the same mortal who was blessed with sleep. The mortal from whom I wish I could steal some of his slumber. My feet seemed to be giving way to the blackness of the dark but my eyes were accustomed to the darkness. I gave myself the judgment that was required for one of my feet to fall in step with the movement of the other. There is not much to be done if I am unable to decipher in the dark which feet belongs to which body. For I see many feet in front of me, maybe also beside me. The one that I am accustomed to is part of this darksome night that I fear.
It is not my feet.



The Third Eye
Trudging noiselessly in the growing blackness of the night, I cross a river that glimmers with oil. The little droplets slither around my calves, caressing it for a moment and then flowing on in the eternal river that gets eaten into the blackness of the mouth. In the dark, your vision is a mounting surface tension. It weighs upon your eyes like a heavy blanket of danger and silence. It makes you want to cry, and to want to shed the tears of centuries that have yearned to seek the light of day. However, today is not the day, or night, that I will cry. It is all a mere parallax error. The error is too precise to be determined from this level. The little meniscus of oil droplets stick, they stick against the skin of my calf, fusing with another droplet and diffusing again into many other droplets once they become too big for the surface of my skin.
Surface Tension.
Not a single droplet of oil remains the same after this process. Not a single droplet of oil dissolves with the river.
Water and Oil: Immiscible.
Far across the vast blackness, in the distance that follows the forward movement of the water, I can hear the water lapping. It seems to be lapping really slowly, in a crooning and tender lullaby.
Lap, slap.
Lap, slap, in a momentous rhythm of disorganized lapping-slapping.
Is there a bank up ahead?




The Fourth Eye
I felt at that instant, like a blind Minotaur led by a little girl at night.
Dans la nuit. In the night.
What more, than blindness could one ask for with the darkness of the night threading the voices of the nocturnal creatures into singular threads of disconnecting and tremulous bodies? There is a lot of slush in the river.
It might be one of the dead bodies, I dare say.
According to occult theories of dark-night practices, it has been postulated that the greedy Minotaur is more dangerous than the one who merely plucks at the petals of the Garden of Eden. I could feel my veins pumping blood into my hairy, grease-smirked face, my skin folding into various scaffolds of hard and rugged scales, metamorphosis. The pilgrimage was getting pointed and cruel.
I have to be saved by the lord that created the darkness.
For in light I see no credible layers of truth.
For in light thou shalt endeavor to peel my skin and taste the rawness of my breath upon your lips.
There is no crucible of abject happiness in me left.
Why have you forsaken me?

A thousand spears dive down onto my face, cold and hard, like metal, merciless like a raging warrior that has just lost his comrade in battle. I lifted my hands to swipe off the wads of water welling up under my eyes, falling in a rapid torrent from the stony waterfall, threatening to dig their way into my eyes, threatening to blind me, to cast me out of my darkness into solitude, into a silent world.
I have to get to Land’s End, I thought.
The time has come for me to indulge in the perfect slumber.
I can feel it in my veins.
After all these animalistic dwellings on cave grounds and grass expanses, it is time for me to steal some pain relieving respite through sleep. My aching feet will soon shed the fur that it is insulated with, their sinews of warmth and comfort.

The Fifth Eye?
A grey mist covered the tip of the triangular tomb of the dark ancestors that ruled Drop-Off Point. An eye was etched across the second slab of concrete that layered the multi-stepping pyramid. The grooves of the eye, the lashes of the eye, possibly femme, were carved tryingly onto the dense substance. The pupil seemed extremely large, a hole protruded through the blackness that emerged from it. Immiscible liquids were floating, amorphously around the distinct glint of the eye emanating through the blackness of the hole in the pupil. Trofimov, the bee. A bee has five eyes.