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Fearfully, I walked back to the small village station. With every noise I jumped, expecting to see his crawling form, every child’s laugh reminding me of that horrible scream. I had left his body, already decaying, where he’d landed. I wanted to be cautious, I told myself, and make sure that whatever madness he’d had couldn’t spread to me. But then why hadn’t I told the local doctor? Why hadn’t I brought in the police, quarantined the estate? Deep in my soul, I knew the answer. We are all irrational creatures, moulding reason to fit our desires, but even as I carefully deduced a logical explanation for my behavior, I knew it would hold up to no scrutiny. I knew that to confront Hartford’s monstrous psychosis was to accept the reality of its existence, and confront the fact that a exemplary member of society, healthy and rational as anyone else, could be so twisted and warped by his own mind. I knew that to contemplate whatever mad abyss he had fallen into was to gaze into it, to consider his insanity was to have an obsessive seed planted in me, to slowly grow and encroach and expand its roots until all my mind was buried under the twisted bark of the unanswerable and uncontemplatable. So I soldiered on, each footfall driving me further away from that wretched experience, to hopefully be buried ‘neath the cleansing, indomitable river of time. In a neurotic trance, my head pounding and eyes watering, I approached the ticket-taker to purchase my salvation. I bought the ticket, and in an hour, which seemed instant to me, I was boarding the last train back to Atlanta—my home— to report a successful collection of payment. It seemed mere minutes until the six-hour train ride was complete, so it startled me to find it ten at night when I disembarked. I knew that my client, owning several bars. brothels, unlicensed casinos, would most probably still be awake running his business, but troubling him with business matters at such an hour seemed unprofessional. Hesitantly, I decided to take the gem back to my apartment and lock it straight into my safe, to be delivered tomorrow. I had a top of the line iron-cast safe for my valuables (paranoia is one of my largest faults), so I had absolutely no doubt that I can keep this gem secure. Once I returned to my apartment, I finally had the chance to examine the prize that I had been so mentally scarred for. I must admit, if there was ever a reason for losing one’s mind, this gem would be it! It truly is exquisite: a stone of the deepest, darkest, purest blood red I’ve ever seen, with uncountable faces giving it a roughly spherical shape. I could stare into it for hours, every new glance yielded some new curve or sparkle in its unending depths. This stone truly is precious, and whereas before I was somewhat reluctant to leave such a valuable liability and theft-magnet in my home, I now have absolutely no regrets as to my decision. I could have left the gem unsecured on my kitchen counter for a month, and it would be worth the risk just to see it this once. Like a Vermeer or a Rembrandt, it was a work of beauty unrivaled by any rival. In my profession, I’ve seen million-dollar diamonds and seven-hundred-year-old emeralds, but none can come close to the complex, subtle intricacies of this incredible ruby. Today, I’m supposed to deliver the gem to my client. But I’ve woken up with an even worse headache than before, and my whole body is finally feeling the effects of that terrible fight with Hartford. I’m going to take a day to rest and recover, I’m sure my client will understand. Besides, I can spend tone more day admiring this truly incredible ruby. I briefly entertained the idea of showing it to my sister, but then declined. While we may live in the same city, she was never an art-lover, and only an art-lover can appreciate the ruby’s subtle depths and tints. When I stare at the ruby, I feel myself transported to another world, swiped by its depths to another dimension of pure, unending redness and shine. In my time, I’ve been to several opium dens, and not even the greatest, most intense opium high can compare to this sensation. If it could, I’m sure we would replace every art gallery with an opium dispensary, and live our entire lives in the clouds. No, I’m certain now that I’ve found my very own art gallery inside my office, sitting on my desk. The next day, I take another sick leave. I can see the ruby out of the corner of my eye right now, and sometimes even when I’m not looking at it. When I close my eyes, I see a shifting kaleidoscope of reds and burgundys. I read an article in the paper today about ruby appraisals, and have become convinced that I am the only sighted one in this world of blind men. If these other, pretending rubies have even one one-hundredth, or even one one-thousandth of the beauty of my gem, then the whole world must be blind for not putting them on a pedestal in every town hall, in every school, in every home. When I look into its depths now, I can see my own inner peace reflected. The darkness and the pain evaporate under shifting, twisting polyhedra, drawing me in like a hypnotic spiral. I can spend hours looking at it, and frequently have. I was supposed to meet my friend Gustav, a German émigré to go admire a friend’s art collection. I don’t bother, I have something greater than all the museums in the world sitting at my desk. I realize now, I have not yet degraded far enough to miss, that my fascination with this ruby borders on obsession. But could anyone, once exposed to the magnificence of this heavenly gem, chastise me? If there things worthy of obsession, surely this indescribable gem is the most deserving of the lot. I know it might be unethical for me to linger with this gem for so long, but again, could anyone rightly blame me? To take this bottomless well of joy from me would be a cruelty on above all cruelties, an inhumanity above all inhumanities. As I awoke at my desk, I came to a sudden and most unpleasant realization: as I rested and recovered from my horrid ordeal, the more and more sick I felt. It was as though my body was a snowball on a hoary hill, and by sitting still I was only letting the frost flake from my skin. So, for the first time in several days, I decided to leave my apartment, and venture out into that brave and all-too-often harsh world. It was Sunday, I went to Church, to refresh my body through movement and my spirit through Christ. I sat down in the aisles and said my customary greetings, looked with mild amusement at the awe-struck children gazing at the stained glass. If only they knew true beauty. However, despite my early amusement and hopeful high-spirits, the sermon left me disgusted and nauseated. The preacher spoke words of humbility on earth, and the triumph of heaven’s beauty over any earthly situations. I left halfway through. As I kicked the dust on the road away from church, I looked down to discover the ruby in my pocket. I instantly felt every nerve in my body light on fire, adrenaline pumping through my veins. How could I be so careless, leaving it thoughtlessly in my jacket! Anyone could see it, could be captured by its beauty, could seek to take it from me here! I almost vomited at the thought of some horrible hoodlum stealing it from me, or some pickpocket swiped it from me unaware. I would much prefer the former, because the latter would leave me still alive to ruminate over my revolting, horrifying absentmindedness. One of my former client’s men could find me out here, out in public, and try and take the ruby from me! They wouldn’t even glance at it as they pried it from my lifeless fingers, they would see it as no more than a particularly expensive people! I couldn’t allow any uneducated, unenlightened mobster or petty criminal to lay their hands on my fountain of pure beauty, to have it lie in such unappreciative hands would be a sin against beauty itself. Suddenly, I could only see my fellow street-travelers as the potential thieves they were. Right then, the church-doors opened, and a wave of screaming, unwashed, thieving monsters rushed for my ruby. I could see it reflected in their eyes, that lust for beauty, that greed, that hunger for possession and ownership. Frightened and disgusted, I vomited all over the ground and almost collapsed. Helplessly, I gazed up at the approaching hordes, their pale blue clothing a funeral shroud for all that’s good and right in the world. I couldn’t act, I was paralyzed with fear. At that moment, when I was surest of my death and damnation, some divine power interceded on my behalf. I remembered that bloody, broken, battered body launching itself at me in one terrible last greed-ridden attempt to steal my ruby. It was like a light had shone down upon me, I realized that my hesitation there had almost cost me my life, or even my ruby, and became determined to never make that mistake again. I picked myself up right as the unwashed masses were about to descend upon me, and I ran, I ran as fast as I could until my lungs wheezed and my eyes burned with sweat and tears. I looked up, stealing breaths from the air like an indigent addict, and saw my apartment. I resolved to never leave it again, to never face the horrible, unenlightened commonfolk ever again. I would stay in my home and create a crimson tower of beauty, a temple to the holy purity, divinity, and indescribable wonder of the inner soul; a temple to my soul’s image, seen mirrored in the ruby’s scarlet depths. I’ve taken up poetry lately, that beautiful art which allows the soul to sing in all the colors of the rosy rainbow. I sit all day in the palace to the beauty of the inner life—the inside—and live in the lap of intellectual luxury. My form is declining, but my eyes have never been sharper; my knees lock up, but my eyes can now see the multi-dimensional figures in my ruby’s innermost depths—if my ruby can even be said to have a bottom! I sit for ages. Days? Years? Months? Or maybe even mere seconds pass while I consider the Ruby’s innermost depths. I feel I am a prophet of a new age; only I am able to read the codices stored in this galactic extra-earthly device—my ruby! It possesses heaven-sent knowledge, and I must deliver it. I must deliver the ruby’s red beauty to all humanity, they will all be red in the end when they see! Their insides and outsides—red with knowledge! The spirit is embodied in the inner flesh, things we hide from out pale and nasty non-red skin-colored exterior. I find myself considering the redness inside me the ruby inside me but not my ruby every day. More and more I consider, that eternally vexing question—giving the whole world the beauty stored inside my ruby. My art is incomprehensible to all but the most intelligent—the visionaries of their generations in all the generations in all the world’s histories. I am reminded of the old Greek myth of Prometheus and his red fire, burning with the knowledge of tool-making brought to humanity. I am the second Prometheus—and the dawning of a new age and a new understanding is here with solid ruby fire. If the first Prometheus is the mechanic I will become the artist a master of all things big and small, matters of the soul. I seem to be tired now, in body not spirit I will rest. I still am thinking with fascination of old man Hartford; his bloody trail of madness like a lighted path to my own sanity. It has all become clear to me now: the all and the everything and the nothing is all available in once complete edition for the low low price of my wretched mortal soul. I will be glad to be gone from this mortal coil, this ugly and unenlightened world with its brutish citizens stomping to and left and right for their entire lives without ever once stepping UP. Like an eternal train of disenfranchised heathens these people spend their lives lined up to curse and hate themselves because they can never see how beautiful they are. They can’t see themselves spiritually and they can’t see themselves organically so they can’t see themselves at all. Right now and all the right nows before right now I’ve considered and been considering how our two insides are the same inside. The flesh and the blood and the pulpy intestines are all one and to see one is to see the other and know the other and see peace in art and beauty. The ruby is like a glorious trumpet of shifting shapes and colors and its patterns are making me consider horrible and terrible things like how our two insides are the same inside and I should show people their two insides and how my soul inside is my beauty and how I can never let anyone else see the ruby and see their inside because I am the prophet of my soul inside. Every day I feel less at ease in my red inside and more at ease in my soul inside because I know the ruby takes my red inside to put into my soul inside. My red inside is really red and I can see it and I can see the flesh snakes when I see my red inside and I want to be a big red slug from the holy inside inside. I am more lucid now, I am sorry for my earlier words of truth that humans do not have the brain to understand. I am no longer human I am guardian. I am the prophet of the ruby, and the prophet of the ruby is the guardian of the ruby, and the guardian of the ruby must keep the ruby safe forever to show the world its truth. Oh, how happy I would be if the ruby just fed off me and sucked me dry and turned me to her eternal guardian! How how joyous an occasion if my mind is set free to drift in the crimson heavens, and my body on earth can act as a wall against the world for all eternity! But I am not a man without duty, and in my moments of rarer and rarer and ever rarer lucidity I know I must complete my humanistic purpose. I will be the prophet of the red inside, inside all of us, inside you inside me. Once I show people their red insides and their soul insides are the same they can be at peace like me how the ruby shows me my soul inside by showing me the red inside it. Once insides are the same and in harmony they will become outsides which will make the world all at peace with itself and each other and I will be happy and rest as the eternal guardian. My sister’s house I am outside now feeling is time is nothing is red all red she is red I am red inside the ruby. Knife is now red and the red inside is on the red floor inside the house which is all red everything is red inside me inside the ruby. The blue in the cloth is red and the white walls are red and the brown desk is red and the inside me is red and the ruby is inside me so the blue-brown-white-red can’t take the red that is red that is inside the red that is inside me. I hear the red that’s red inside the red inside my red inside me tell my red insides to tell the red insides of “J. Barrett 1049221” he red man nice is who red inside is very inside is his red is inside inside the ruby will be is now I am not with Barrett his is not with me his is inside his red inside is outside he is beautiful. The red inside is inside my inside with me inside the white-red inside is will be forever now also inside. All inside everyone’s inside all inside the red inside me alone not alone with the red inside me inside. I am beautiful now he sister everyone beautiful is all is will be when the throat that is are red are is red also throat mine they are the inside inside me tells the inside to be inside the knife inside red inside mine ruby ruby ruby ruby ruby ruby ruby.
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