Unwritten ROARS never get heard

Yeah, so, umm,
You don't know me.
You've never had a conversation with me.
You've never even hung out with me.
We talked once, and it wasn't a very good conversation.
So why are you in love with me?
What lies have you built?
The mind stealers came,
They took away yours
And added another's dreams.
What?
You're sane?
Really. I had no idea.

I never planned on
This disaster.
Things don't always go as they should.
I love him.
.. So please,
Go away?

The mind stealers
Preying on the human need
For butterflies and prettier things
Turn us into stone...

The Mind Stealers

There was blood boiling in a frying pan in the lab-like kitchen oven. Carly was stirring it -- "Is it thick enough, yet?" -- the skin being cut up by her brother, Josh. The skin Josh was cutting up was very dry -- the best kind. Bones with bits of meat left on them were in a dish for the dog. They still hadn't named the dog, but they were leaning toward Breaker. He was a somewhat big dog, with thick brown fur. He barked a lot, but he was really sweet to Carly.
    The dinner table had been set. Their parents, Mark and Janette, would be home in an hour. Mark and Janette worked at the lab over in Harlottesville. Josh always got to poke fun at everyone else because his parents worked there. Not only did they have a very important job, they had had the president to dinner once. The bombs they made were... well, Josh wasn't really supposed to know. Carly put a bag of fingernails in the center of the living room table. Josh turned on the television to catch the last few minutes of the show, The Mind Stealers. His only qualm with the show was that they had no idea what it was like to steal a mind. Josh, personally, liked it. Carly, on the other hand, absolutely hated it. However, she knew what she had to do to survive. They all knew.

The block-coloured logos
turn your eye for longer t
han the average consumer
minute. Last seen in prim
ary school, they show sim
plistic colours, hasty spla
shes, your mother's coppe
rplate handwriting, and th
e plastic forms that encase
them. We eat out and o ho
w our brows are soothed a
nd smoothed over, hand-bl
ended by a million paper n
apkins that assure in assur
ed voices


'o thank god' you blithely reply
'i am so glad' as your mind stea
ls away behind the door marked
staff only - it's where you'd hav
e to hide without your diploma
(which incidentally your mind stole
from a few million books and webpages with
the aide of caffeine pills and Buzz Gum® marked "made in Brazil")

"How We Disappeared"

The mind stealers come when you're sleeping (even if your eyes are open), looking for you with hollow inhuman eyes and calloused unfeeling expressions. They can see in the dark, you know; there's no use trying to hide from them. It's not like the monster in the closet, under the bed or in the attic; they're not cowardly phantoms who stay in place and rattle chains or go bump in the night. They have a single-minded purpose, which is probably why they're so terrifying. It would be easier to deal with if they were here to eat brains or drink blood or something ridiculous like that, but instead they have an altogether more sinister existence.

Here's the guy with a near-stranger in a cheap motel room, not thinking about when he'll have to look at his wife and kids again. He found her at the bar and like all creatures that prowl had taken his prey down and dragged it to where it would be his own. It really isn't too different from that, except this prey goes willingly, believing there's some kind of sparkling diamonds in the jaw of a beast. Suddenly there's a crash at the window and a scream and a brief struggle but no blood spilled. A moment later, here's a guy with a complete stranger underneath him and broken glass everywhere and he doesn't know what he's doing but he keeps doing it.

Here's the girl quietly collecting her few things she has left in this world, putting them in the duffel bag as quietly as possible. She doesn't know where to go, but she's getting out of here. Her two black eyes and twenty-three bruises urge her on and ache as the tears roll across some of them. She turns back to look at the man who said he loved her "forever" still laying in bed, surrounded by the alcohol and scents of vices that would destroy her if she stayed even a minute longer. She opens the door and there's this quick sound of dragging feet on carpet and a brief struggle but no blood. Next, this girl's waking up with the man she's going to spend the rest of her life with because she forgot why she should leave in the first place.

And here's you and me sitting on the couch with the lights off and your legs across my lap and we're kind of tired and not saying much. It's been a good day, where the sun broke into laughter between the shadows of the new trees we walked under, laughing. We had decided right then to live life like the universe was exploding, and here now it might be. And I know I was happy and tired, and the small secret smile I can just barely see on your face (in the dark) told me you were too. I'm holding your feet with one hand and conducting a symphony you can't see and I can't hear with the other. Then there's that horrible sound and the locked door flies open and in comes the most evil of everything to take our minds too. And paralysed by fear I think about how this means the next moment I won't remember why today was so good, and how life ought to be lived these days. Impossibly, we are incredibly bright in the dark for a fraction of a brilliant second and then vanish like vapour.

The wonderful thing is, the mind stealers die every time a flash and a vapour evade them. The frightening thing is, so many times the mind stealers come, and nobody ever notises.

As of 5.21.04