“The greatest evil that exists in the Universe exists in the hearts of man.”

His mouth was the pit of my focus. Since he had stopped speaking aloud, thoughts festered on his tongue. Stopping its movements. Rendering it superfluous for him to speak. From whispers to utterances to biting his tongue. He’d stopped vocalizing. He said: “You’re trying to become a God one day. I’m shooting for more like Wikipedia.” His frenulum wedged between his teeth. I discovered then a canker sore forming on his bottom lip. “From smoking” I said. “You’ll never be in Wikipedia.”

Moving slower than a continent. It was eating the airspace behind his neck. Nothing tries harder than an umbra of envy. He could hear saliva smack off the roof of its mouth. “It’s this thing” he said. “I sense you are not alone.”

“Tell me about the astral plane.” He no longer waited for the answers that do not come. “You got here by accident. Admit that, this was not your intention.” He was getting hyper. “You stumbled upon, one day, and fell through, a portal. Somewhere is a portal. A leak from this dimension. Energy. However. This physical world. This is the primary plane wherefrom you derive.”

The entity answered him: “That’s your probability.”

“Is that really all you can say!” He was furious. “Fucking you’re, a conglomerate, of fragments of humanity, of moments in time, something like that.”

The entity laughed.
I said: “Yeah way to tell ‘em.” This enthused him.
The entity laughed again.

“How in the fuck, can I believe you are anything special, more advanced than myself, and not an abomination of myself? How in the fuck does this not offend you?” He started his car. The entity replied with something but it was plain gibberish. This engaged him, though, I did not catch what he had said.

A family of three was murdered with knives in the 80s. He doesn’t believe this. Killers who succumbed to gun shots by arriving police, still roam the apartment complex where he lives. With knives in hand, reliving their last moments without relief. Virtually no one however, notices their presence. (He is an exception.) This is their hell to them, and it is their afterlife.

“We both are failures” he said. “You’re as dumb as rock, and lighter air.” A more tangible thing that was. His tending to explain his every unjuiceable thought. He was becoming a vault opening its door, to reveal obscurity and uselessness. He was now speaking out loud in this moment and he had forgotten that he doesn’t want to do that. But the only conspicuousness about him, was his face.