Chapter Text
Reasonable
By Martin K. Blackwood
Just the idea of you adjacent to me
Overcoat on, coffee in hand, staring at the ground
Never breaking the gaze with the sidewalk below, but
Always inching a little bit closer,
Tiny movements like secondary school, tiny shifts of your fingers towards mine,
Hand tremors like ripples in disturbed water, twitching closer and closer
And in this fantasy I imagine it is me who takes charge, who grabs your hand –
Not nervous anymore, not afraid of your rejection, just doing what I will never have the guts to do.
Someday I hope you will actually know me as anything but a nuisance, a disruption;
Is it so unreasonable to hope I can hold your hand? One day?
Maybe it is, but still
Silence is beginning to ache, ache, ache, and hiding no longer feels reasonable.
Radio Silence
By Martin K
The way your eyes used to glimmer like gold coins underwater,
The way you used to smile, just for a second, like you hoped nobody saw, nobody knew
The way your mouth formed words you liked, wrapping around them like candy
The way you gripped your ice cream cone like a crutch as you rambled about emulsifiers
The way you spoke to me, your accent that dripped with ostentation,
The way you reacted to spiders, like they’re the spookiest thing we dealt with,
The way you reacted to the word spooky,
The way you pretended to hate my tea,
The way you pretended to hate me.
Now, you do hate me.
Now I’ve lost you, every bit of you, and I don’t know why,
Now I’ve lost even the parts of you I couldn’t stand,
Now I’m stuck trying and trying,
But I still miss you.
Because even when you hurt me,
It was delectable,
It was beautiful,
It made my life worth living.
Waiting for Zero
By M. Blackwood
Ten weeks you were gone
Nine years old when I was left for the first time, made a second
Eight hours daily in hell
Seven cups of tea a day
Six months laughing with an impostor
Five days a week trapped in these walls
Four eyes, a nickname I couldn’t shake, but now there’s five.
Three holes in her decomposing chest
Two murders they thought you committed
One man waiting for you to come all of the way back.
The Tapes
By M.K.B.
Loneliness used to be comforting.
The chattering terror of a conversation fading away
Until the only sound is that of typing, of scratching at paper,
Of the quiet wash of the rain that you can only hear alone,
Of the tape recorder.
This is good. I promise myself this is a good thing.
If I’m away from the resounding it,
Then I don’t miss him.
I can’t miss him, because I made the decision on my own.
But I do miss him.
Now, he is limited by nothing but his meager physical limitations.
He buzzes in a constant state of mania,
The Eye blinding him with hubris,
And so he climbs into the coffin, because no matter how much he knows,
He’s an idiot.
Even as I isolate, the terror set in,
Violent and unnerving, enough to fill the bellies of the hungriest entity
I was puppeted, but not by the Web –
By love that refuses to fade.
But is love not the true mother of puppets?
I’m not meant for isolation
And how could I be, as he lives and breathes?
How could I be, as he has relaxed his pompous accent when he talks to me?
As his eyes glimmer like pennies underwater?
How could I possibly be lonely when those copper eyes follow me everywhere?
All I could think as I did it was that there was no chance the world could survive without Jonathan Sims. The Lonely still lives inside me anyway.
I pressed play.
I stacked the tapes high as a mountain, as high as I could get them;
I aligned their power vast as the sky.
Jon found his tether,
And that tether was I.
Untitled
A transcription of a recording found at the base of the panopticon; the speaker is addressed as Martin, and is widely accepted by historians to have been Martin Blackwood, though his full name is never stated.
[SPEAKER]
Horror. Horror surrounds me. It won’t go away. I covet the time when life was just spooky, when the supernatural was curious. When worms were my worst fear, when I carried around a corkscrew and hid my fear behind CO2 canisters. I miss when I didn’t hear the –
As the speaker quiets, sounds of flesh being audibly mutilated fills the background of the recording. The speaker inhales sharply.
Well. That.
A sigh is let out by the speaker.
I thought this would help. I thought this poem that won’t stop playing in my head just needed to get out, but I can’t even hear it anymore and it’s just gone, it’s gone, and now all that’s in my head is fear.
Another sigh.
I know that’s the point. I know, I know.
Pause.
I feel almost like I’m giving in by admitting that I’m scared. But they know. They know and there’s nothing I can do to hide fear. It doesn’t matter if I show it.
Speaker’s voice cracks.
What – what happens if we can’t fix it. What happens if there’s nothing –
Speaker falls silent, before they begin to cry quietly.
And – and I don’t even have the worst of it. I don’t know where Basira or Daisy or Melanie or Rosie or anybody that I have ever cared about are, and they could be in real danger, and I… well, of course they’re in danger.
Speaker lets out what seems to be a laugh.
I…
Speaker trails off, and there is a whoosh of air as if the tape recorder is being dropped to their side. The crying grows louder, and then there is an impact, as if the speaker lets go of the tape completely. The crying becomes muffled, as if the speaker is crying into something.
[MUFFLED] Jon, please come back. Please be done soon. Please. I… I know you need to do this, but I’m scared, I need you back, come back from your statement, please. Please, if this world shows any mercy, please say he’s done soon. Please [UNINTELLIGABLE]. Please, Jon.
Footsteps are heard, and speaker sobs.
Jon.
Another person joins the discussion, confirmed by apocalypse historians to have been Jonathan Sims, the Archivist. The sound of a weight hitting dirt can be heard.
[JONATHAN SIMS]
Oh my God, oh my God, Martin, are you okay? Did something hurt you? Did something happen?
More sobs in response, louder now. Fabric rustling, assumed to be an embrace.
It’s okay, love, I’m here, I’m here, I love you – oh Lord, you stupid piece of infernal plastic, will you mind your own damn business –
Tape ends.
No further recordings of this interaction were found anywhere near the panopticon, Hilltop Road, or in any relevant location. Most fear-apocalypse researchers find this comforting (and, of course, perplexing), considering the Web was able to, for once, “mind [its] own damn business.” I, in my professional opinion, would like to believe that the Web understood that it wasn’t wanted. I’d have to disagree with M. Blackwood in his poem The Tapes – most love (possibly healthy love) appears to be completely separate from the interference of the Mother of Puppets. Despite their “tragic love story” as some have coined it, most of their romantic involvement did not seem to be relevant to the Web’s hunger, and thus there is only snippets and innuendo related to major apocalyptic events in the tapes that were recovered from the apocalypse.
This collection of Blackwood’s private poetry acts as a historical record, allowed to be used in educational or research settings only. Illegal recreation violates copyright laws.