Join My Cult - Original Falcon Press

Alexi would say randomly, with enormous melodramatic flair after a
similarly dramatic pause. The self-referential irony of the statement
seemed to be lost on him. Or maybe he was aware of it, and it was all a
joke. Most people didn’t take it all that seriously. To do so would be to
buy into a fantastical world composed not of actual rules governed by
reality, but of personally established rules that affect reality. In fact,
Alexi claimed that reality was a completely empty term. “A mutually
created, social concept that keeps you in line,” he would say, munching
on a burger at Lenny’s.
“…We’re all dreaming and we choose, in a delayed choice reaction,
what our futures will be,” Alexi continued a moment later, his voice
legato, his eyes unfocused. Ken snapped back into the moment. “Look
back Ken, look way back to the places you go and then disregard as
unreal.”
Alexi’s eyes suddenly focused rapidly as he held his hand a few
inches from Ken’s head. “Do you feel that?” The tone of his question
was sharp. It reversed the direction of his previous comments, made him
forget them.
There was a buzzing inside Ken’s head. He didn’t respond. He had the
feeling that the actual makeup of his body was fluctuating somehow. The
sensation felt like super-fine mist or an icy drizzle. Light static. Not able
to make sense of the thought or the feeling, instead he focused on the
stream of letters in his minds-eye, moving frantically, permuting into
new shapes and forms, coiling in what was an unmistakable spiral. The
spiral, and the letters, began much like a visualization inspired by eyelid
patterns and the flickering of the candles but soon it was too distinct and
peculiar to dismiss as a daydream.
He remembered having felt like this many times before, but never
before had he been quite so self-conscious, so crisply aware… He was
hovering somewhere between awake and asleep. Theta range. He realized
that he was speaking to Alexi and had been for some time, although
he couldn’t be sure what he was saying. Ken’s vision became blurry as
the room slowly faded out of his view, giving way to a wholly internal
reality.
The clock ticks its beats off regularly, measuring the rotation of its
mechanical innards and the seconds, minutes, hours, days of being
locked away. Her wrists are numb from the jester’s cold metal restraints,
her naked body aches from weeks without movement. The cell door
opens, and the brilliant light pains her eyes, so used to absolute darkness.
Standing there is the man at the center of the spiral. He unlocks the
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