Sensation

I flip on the television, each channel is static. Empty, senseless, obnoxious. The occasional flickering image scrolls across, quickly to descend back into the mindlessness that preceded it. Soon, my mind offers a context, the images become real, and I realize it's not static at all-- this is the programming.

I can faintly see the flickering image of a child killed in war.

I go blind in one eye as I watch CNN. I can only believe half of what I see, but I trust it nonetheless. The Newsman married the Politician's daughter, but he assures me he has no bias. As blind as I am, he is blinder still-- he hides the truth of his father-in-law, otherwise revealing an indictment against himself. My voice goes hoarse as I shout warnings to the random passerby, my pleadings melting into the mass of hopelessness. I can either scream in the city and be drowned or whisper in the country and echo.

I can faintly hear the buzz of an FBI wiretap on my phone.

I see recurring images of the missing white girls, angry black men, fundamentalist terrorists, and forest fires, and realize I've nearly gone deaf. The whisper of corruption is completely gone, and I can no longer trust my senses. The blank smiles and practiced reactions become such a pattern that I can't tell genocide from panda bears.

Tears of blood trickle down my cheek as the world becomes scarlet. The smell of death surrounds me as oil seeps through the carpet, the world becoming nothing more than the smells my nose can discern. Led by the anchorman, I know not where he's leading me; I've come to accept his guidance without question.

I can faintly smell the oil on his hands.

My olfactory shuts down; it has been overloaded from the chaos. I can taste the smog of the city, but eventually it's gone too. I can't tell whether it is society that has abandoned me, or if I have been lead away from it. The truth has become completely concealed, but still I trudge onward.

I can faintly feel the barrel of a pistol pressed against my forehead.

And soon, I can no longer even feel. Everything has become empty, indistinct, senseless. The context of my life vanishes with whatever remains of my being, and my identity is scattered across the floor. My spirit remains trapped, this void consuming and bonding with my intangible essence. I have become my hatred. I have become the void. The emptiness. Static.