The Grayman

Do You See Now?
It is not from here that I watch. For what reason would I think to try and hide from you. I am there. You are looking right at me. I am a smudge, an odd discoloration in an otherwise picture perfect landscape. I am not noticed. I cannot be noticed. I am the odd mistake, the odd mistake that an artist makes when he paints a true work of art, but goes unnoticed until he is ready to show it to the world. Except, I am the artist. And you will never see my work.

Oddity.
There I am again. "Where," you ask? "There," I say. A look of puzzlement crawls across your face and quickly vanishes as you pretend to see me. It matters not, it is but a picture. And I am merely a mistake from the development. But nonetheless it is me. And while I myself am not important; the knowledge that I contain is. Oh, the secrets I could tell. But I don't. Why would I? I do not care. I simply observe the events around me. Walking through the world, watching. Always watching. Sometimes I act on my observations. But during those rare times that I do, I am still only observing results.

The Cough in the Maelstrom.
I am here again. Amidst you, drifting silently. Utterly silent except for a cough. A small cough in a large crowd. The crowd turns. Heads swiveling in the direction they thought they heard a cough. Attempting to seek out the source of this possible contamination. This infringement on their healthy lives. Eyes darting from face to face seeking and searching for the source. Seconds pass. No one knows where the sound came from, but I do.

Fading.
I drift, through the snow as it sinks. I watch as it puts this world to slumber. Here and there a person meanders. For once I feel a kindred connection with these others. The ones that also stray. As I wander I see those most intriguing. A girl sits and smokes on a bench. Her skin is bleached by the light above. The snow drifts across her face. An attractive, if fleeting, camouflage. I watch as her chest rises and falls. The exhalation of smoke and spent air. A fleeting spray of ash. Cinders, trying to be snowflakes but proving even more ephemeral. Too mortal. They snuff before they hit the ground. And drift to dust before their time.

On the Edge.
There. In the corner I see it. Sometimes to my left. Other times to my right. And at all times it is on the edge. A flash of white. A camera snapping a picture on the edge of my vision. This thing is a constant. An unwanted recurrence. It distracts and annoys. It disrupts my focus. Maddening. It does not happen every day and it does not seem triggered by any certain event. I have a thought of trying to catch it. As I think, it happens again, again, and again. A rapid succession of shattering lights that rip my thoughts to fluttering shreds. And still it occurs. And still I silently rage.

Rage.
I rage and rage as these lights bombard me. My body swirls and twists around me. The snow is caught in tiny torrents. It reveals me to the world. As eddies form and collide, my mind begins to calm again. What is this thing that saps at my thoughts?

Amidst the Stream.
Flowing, falling, rising, engulfing. The stream it twists and turns, surging and ebbing. The bell sounds ten times and marks the hour and a surge. Eddies twirl around clusters immovable in the midst of the stream, disrupting the flow, slowing it and angering many. The bell tolls again five times and marks the quarter hour. The surging stream begins to die as it reaches it's many destinations. And here I sit alone with the stream dead and gone around me. Rivulets swirl by as the bell tolls the bottom of the hour.

The Beginning?
Floating high above the city I watch as the lights flicker below. In these night clouds I feel the clouds around me as they slow disperse. Closing my eyes I reach out with mind and body until I encompass the night sky around me. Focusing on my thoughts and the sensation of the clouds passing through me I bring forth my thoughts. As my memories, experiences, and knowledge parade through my mind I inspect them. My mind seems endless before me and I wonder how long I've been here. Am I young? Old? Was I ever young?

Next to You.
There I sit and here I stand watching, waiting, and wondering. How long will I watch as the world whirls by me. Sitting in a crowd I watch as people, scuttling to their destinations trying to forget the cold, bump into me. Paying little mind to what they have done they turn to apologize and see no one. An oddity, their faces confused for the briefest of seconds. This is an event that occurs dozens of times per day. Rarely does anyone acknowledge the incident and even more rare that someone might take a second to turn back and apologize. It is decided.
This one I follow.

A Trail.
A shade meandering through the crowds. It seems to have no shape and is attached to no thing. But looking closer it has a destination. I may not know my destination but still I go inexorably towards it. Where I go is inconsequential. Why I go is all together mysterious to me. This thing that I follow is so bundled against the cold it would appear to be genderless, except for the smell. The faintest trace of lavender streams behind this wool bound creature. She heads into a library, a place many of the others seem to congregate, and starts to settle at a table. As she unwraps herself from her encasing I am surprised. It is no female as I had first guessed, but a young male. Curious, I watch as he unpacks his books and other scholarly utensils. The books appear to be a study of the human mind, soul, and body. Odd topics for one surrounded by the sciences and sureties of modern life. As he reads so also do I.
Curious.

A Quietude.
This bastion of books and bindings is a rarity. Not as a place to store knowledge in it's many sundry forms. But as a place where these people gather, gather and stay silent. Flowing from table to table, book to book, and reader to reader I watch. Listening to the breathy hiss of the heaters flowing and fighting the indomitable cold, I watch. One person is on a computer typing, another at a desk reading, and many more at tables whispering. I know of no other place where these people can gather and be peacefully quiet in their search of knowledge. A phone rings and heads turn, frowning and scowling at this previously innocuous offender to silence. As I flit over to this accidental intruder they quickly hiss at their phone and hide it away. No where else have I seen people so mindful of unspoken rules.
The silence enfolds.

A Rising Process.
Stillness surrounds me; tranquility traps. Alone I sit and swiftly squander all my thoughts I try to ponder. Drifting slowly a thought occurs. An event, an accident, and an annoyance. Quickly spinning and utterly unraveling I start to drift apart. The thought overtakes my mind, it grabs with terrifying strength and menacing claws. All other processes are taken over. They are not abolished but rather incorporated. Fodder, food, and energy for the monster that rampages through me. A monster of my own mind's machinations.

Perpetual Pattern.
It repeats and repeats. My mind is consumed and set ablaze by this thought. My body is spread across thousands of miles. Too thin. A small part of my mind is still rational against this beast that I have created. A very small part. I reach for it, clambering through a deluge of imaginings. But when I do reach it, once I have moved myself into this section of my mind, it is only to find out that it is too small and too weak to fight back against the monster rampaging through me. It started as any other thought. An idle wondering. And yet somehow and for reasons unknown it was able to take any idea I came up with to cover it up and turn it against me. A singularity of thought within my mind that sucks up all opponents. I open my senses now to try to block it. But it has reached even that part of me. Everything I see vibrates and is seemingly made of loosely connected strips. Strips laid one over the other, slowly unraveling. Sounds reach me as though filtered through a fan. Touch is no longer natural, everything is a too smooth surface. My body continues to stretch and my mind screams in irrational terrified agony. This perpetual pattern of thought denies me my sanity.

Perhaps to Dream?
The fire burning through my mind consumes all of me. Huddled in a corner of my mind I watch as my thoughts twist out of control. My mind is a desolate landscape under this fiery tornado of imagination. It burns and burns and burns. As I watch, it begins to die. How many hours, days, weeks have I been in here waiting for this moment? As it begins to die I set myself loose unto my mind and attempt to wrest control of myself away from this inferno. Ages pass and I have rid myself of the flame. My body, spread to far reaches, begins to coalesce back around me and I start to feel right again. I open my senses and things begin to become normal. The world still thrums as I watch it, but it slowly dies out. Exhaustion. It sweeps over me and I do not know what to do. Do I sleep? Can I sleep? I don't remember. As I collect myself the world around me starts to drift apart. First at the edges, they lengthen and become darker. It slowly spreads across my vision and I begin to know nothing.

Awakening.
Light shines through me and drifts away ever so slowly. Gradually I am brought forth from my seemingly perpetual slumber. As I awaken, my senses come back to me, haltingly, as though they are trickles down a window. Over time the light has nearly vanished and become a soft glow. I open my eyes and I watch as the sun sets on a distant horizon. My mind seems to be my own once again. I shudder in fear at the memory of that time. Closing my senses I fall into myself and inspect the newly barren landscape of my mind. Flat and nearly devoid of life, my mind is clear of any extraneous memories and functions. Seeking, I try to find any memories that survived the desolation. Time passes. I have found little more than what I was able to hide away with my sense of self in that small pocket of sanity that I managed to seek refuge. Here and there are smatterings of what I once was but not enough to continue on as I was. A fresh start?