leaving of age —「charlie gallows, musings.」

The fields were always there once, but now they have become fragments of gold.

I look away from the train’s window. It has become far too dizzying, idyllic pastures bleeding together into a moldy yellow sort of haze. If I stare any longer, I know I’d feel worse. And, honest to Ripred, I feel the worst I’ve ever felt in my eighteen years of living.

But at least its justifiable, though. At least I am feeling bad not for any reason but the sole one which involves twenty-four children tearing each other apart.

A sigh.


Maybe I should eat, sleep, or really do anything aside from looking out the accursed window and drive myself mad through its mercurial velocity. Insanity is a short distance away now; I can make out the stop sign.

I need to escape. Not from here, not with the absurd degree of care they take to ensure a smooth delivery of their children sacrifices, but from the mounting dread in my heart, from the growing cloud in my head.

A breath enters my lungs.

There’s a technique, a way we use to numb out the gristly sights of the abattoirs like ice against a bruise, and it firstly involves grounding yourself. I touch the glass-pane. Cool, brittle, and smooth. Slants of sun dance gingerly through the gaps between my fingers, staining the skin red, coloring me present in this moment. I exist. I am here.

And then I am not.

It’s a jump of consciousness, a here and a not-here, a leap from your present into your imagination. If the real world is paper, I have folded a swan out of it and disappeared in its creases. I see the sunspots but I also see past it. I see my family, a dinner spread between us, ma’s clay-braised pork and pa’s stir-fried vegetables. Sangria glasses are alive with wisps of flavored steam, and so are the bowls full of golden broth, rich as molten gold. Laughter. Joy. A shared heartbeat. I feel the smile on my lips long after it formed.

It doesn’t last forever, though. Doesn’t last long even as the train lurches and the image is swept away because of it. I land back in the present as though I have been forsaken in it, running a hand across my dazed eyes, adjusting to the cold and sterile hall.


The memories were always there once, but even they have become fragments of gold now.