01c. 1981 ADEvery time I go to sleep, I know I may never wake up. How could anyone expect to? You drop your tiny, helpless mind into a bottomless well, crossing your fingers and hoping that when you pull it out on its flimsy fishing wire it hasn't been gnawed to bones by nameless beast below. Hoping you pull up anything at all. Maybe this is why I only sleep a few hours a month. I don't want to die again. This has become clearer and clearer to me recently, a desire so sharp and focused I can hardly believe it's mine: I don't want to die. I don't want to disappear. I want to stay.Isaac Marion / quote ↗
02c. 1981 ADNora knows better than most that nothing lasts forever. Life doesn't, love doesn't, hope doesn't, so why would death, hate, or despair? Nothing is permanent. Not even the end of the world.Isaac Marion / quote ↗
03c. 1981 ADThe shadows of the room pool in the lines of our faces, draining our eyes of hue. "There's nothing left worth saying.Isaac Marion / quote ↗
04c. 1981 ADThe Dead are a larger army than any ever assembled, and they follow no leader, fear no threat, and accept no bribe or compromise. The Dead are the silent majority, and should they ever decide to say something, it will be the new law of the land.Isaac Marion / quote ↗
05c. 1981 ADI have begun to wonder where I came from. The person I am now, this fumbling, stumbling supplicant... was I built on the foundations of my old life, or did I rise from the grave a blank state? How much of me is inherited, and how much is my own creation? Questions that were once just idle musings have begun to feel strangely urgent. Am I firmly rooted to what came before? Or can I choose to deviate?Isaac Marion / quote ↗
06c. 1981 ADWas it just fear? the voices wonder. We were fearful in the best of times; how could we cope with the worst? So we found the tallest walls and poured ourselves behind them. We kept pouring until we were biggest and strongest, elected the greatest generals and found the most weapons, thinking all this maximalism would somehow generate happiness. But nothing so obvious could ever work.Isaac Marion / quote ↗
07c. 1981 ADShe remembers sprinting over the thin after-waves that slid over each other like sheets of glass. When she ran with the waves it looked like she wasn’t moving. When she ran against them it looked like she was flying. She refuses to believe her brother will never know these things. Somewhere, they will find sand.Isaac Marion / quote ↗
08c. 1981 ADMaybe eventually winter will finish our job for us and end the world in ice instead of blood.Isaac Marion / quote ↗
09c. 1981 ADI want to change my punctuation. I long for exclamation marks, but I'm drowning in ellipses.Isaac Marion / quote ↗
10c. 1981 ADI erupt from the dark, crushing tunnel into a flash of light and noise. A new kind of air surrounds me, dry and cold, as they wipe the last smears of home off my skin. I feel a sharp pain as they snip something, and suddenly I am less. I am no one but myself, tiny and feeble and utterly alone. I am lifted and swungthrough great heights across yawning distances, and given to Her. She wraps around me, so much bigger and softer than I ever imagined from inside,and I strain my eyes open. I see Her. She is immense, cosmic. She is the world. The world smiles down on me, and when She speaks it’s the voice of God, vast and resonant with meaning, but words unknowable, ringing gibberish in my blank white mind.Isaac Marion / quote ↗
11c. 1981 ADI'm watching her talk. Watching her jaw move and collecting her words one by one as they spill from her lips. I don't deserve them. Her warm memories. I'd like to paint them over the bare plaster walls of my soul, but everything I paint seems to peel.Isaac Marion / quote ↗
12c. 1981 ADAre we all just Dark Age doctors, swearing by our leeches? We crave a greater science. We want to be proven wrong.Isaac Marion / quote ↗
14c. 1981 ADThe burning red taste of blood floods my mouth. The sparkle of life sprays out of his cells like citrus mist from an orange peel, and I suck it in.Isaac Marion / quote ↗
15c. 1981 ADI think I remember what love was like before. There were complex emotional and biological factors. We had elaborate tests to pass, connections to forge, ups and downs and tears and whirlwinds. It was an ordeal, an exercise in agony, but it was alive. The new love is simpler. Easier. But small.Isaac Marion / quote ↗
17c. 1981 ADHow do I appear unthreatening when her lover's blood is running down my chin?Isaac Marion / quote ↗
18c. 1981 ADI feel the flatline of my existence disrupting, forming heartbeat hills and valleysIsaac Marion / quote ↗
19c. 1981 ADShe hugs me. It's tentative at first, a little scared, and yes, a little repulsed, but then she melts into it. She rests her head against my cold neck and embraces me. Unable to believer what's happening, I put my arm around her and just hold her.I almost swear I can feel my heart thumping. But it must just be hers, pressed tightly against my chest.Isaac Marion / quote ↗
20c. 1981 ADIs this muteness a real physical handicap? One of the many symptoms of being Dead?Or do we just have nothing left to say?Isaac Marion / quote ↗
21c. 1981 ADI'd like to sit down with him and pick his brain, just a tiny bite somewhere in the frontal lobe to get a taste of his thoughts" -Warm BodiesIsaac Marion / quote ↗
22c. 1981 ADThere’s not really such thing as ‘good’ or ‘bad’ people, there’s just like…humanity. And it gets broken sometimes.Isaac Marion / quote ↗
23c. 1981 ADThere is no ideal world for you to wait around for. The world is always just what it is now, and it's up to you how you respond to it.Isaac Marion / quote ↗
