Methods of Madness

         The sharp toll of a bell echoed on the glass of the stairwell early that monday morning, gently stirring the morning dew as if to awaken it from some drunken stupor of the night with the first pale glow of a sun that wasn't there. Here two men wallked. one man is a tall burly fellow, black hair slicked under a baseball cap with a orange striped shirt covering his pale skin. next to him was another man thin darkened in the perpeutual night that surounded him, broke only by moments of undeniable clairty, a calm in the storm.
"I think i am going insane." the words came easy but the breath on which they flew did not, his rasping voice echoing slightly in the early hours of the morning.
The burly man spoke not, but gazed at him with a look of fright, a look of a man who might be insane.
"Why would you think that?"
and the illusion was shattered, for with that megaer phrase the confidence, the understanding, the clarity faded back into the dark as if the sun was setting once again.
he placed a hand upon his head and stroked his temple and for a moment between the tell tale tolls of the bell, ringing in and out of mind like some phantom pendulem.
"If you were insane would you know you were insane?"
"I don't know, would i?"
They both gazed at each other for a moment, mixed feeling not defining their gaze but leaving it like deadened tolls of the morning bell, lifeless.
"we should get to breakfast"
and though he nodded and they both walked he knew the breakfast was not true. as they stopped in the bathroom on the way to  clean the stains of that night from them, and as he stood at the sink gazing into his own eye scurbing and scurbing but not able to wash away the dirt, he looked in the mirror and saw himself with his dark glazed eyes that looked like eyes left soak in a morgue overnight, the juices driving all pigment from them. as the burly man washed his hands he stood next to and closed his eyes just for a moment.
"we should hurry up"
and though he heard the words as clear as day, when he looked on into the mirror he saw nothing.


As the sun set he lay back in his room, a women arond his age walking about, fluffing the pillow, fixing the bed, and though he had so many fond memories of this person he could not tell you why she was here.
and then she sat next to him, her eyes once aided by glasses now abandoned. she had the most beutiful eyes.
"why are you staring at me?"
and she was not next to him anymore, as if in a flash of lightning she was, nor ever was, next to him.
"why did you get rid of your glasses?"
"i didn't need them anymore, i always hated them so i had surgery to not need them"
"why?"
"because i hated them"
"so you changed your self?"
"yes, why do you care ill do want i want to myself"
and he gazed out the window at the last fleeting rays of sun as they dance over the horizon.
"my dear if only you could see what i see through your glases, then you would understand"
and she looked at him not in anger, and not in fear, but in uncertanty.
if only when she turned her head to look at him those beutiful eyes would be scrunched and fiery, but no they stood there like two blanks sheets, lifeless like the ringing of the bell, lifeless like the gaze the man had lifeless like the gaze he shared with this woman who he loved but didn't know why.
she grabbed her purse and with the last glimpses of the sunlight in her eyes said goodbye.