Tuesday, February 7, 2012

Halfway through my dark journey, in a moment of quiet introspection free of mindfucking, I asked myself why, precisely, I was consuming such a prolonged dose of horror. Since we last spoke, I’ve had two memorable sequences seared into my brain. In one of them, you walk into a warehouse, night flitting through the windows, and all is quiet, save for some moody music. The sole source of light is the small, blinking red button of an answering machine, sitting on a desk in the middle of the room. Upon pressing the button, you’re greeted with otherworldly shrieking instead of a recording, and all the windows in the warehouse shatter. Spectacular.

In another scene, you peer into a dark maternity ward of an abandoned hospital. Suddenly, your in-game persona hallucinates and sees a faceless nurse in soiled uniform cradling something. She turns to you, screaming through the window, until some invisible force slams her against it, creating a shower of gore. I remember furrowing my brow and wondering how twisted you’d have to be to come up with this shit. This also begs the question of why an arguably sane mind would persist in partaking of this stuff, and I think the answer is twofold.

Part of the answer is I’m in too deep now, and a foolish sense of pride prevents me from wimping out. The other part of the answer is the idea that I’m leveling up my mind, expanding its capacity in new directions, which is just too compelling, scars or otherwise. Surprisingly enough, I’ve been sleeping soundly recently, in spite of these regular sessions of terror. It’s weird, though, how I’ve been feeling consistently tired and sluggish at around 2, 2:30 in the afternoon. How do I remedy this? For starters, I can try not sounding like a 5-Hour Energy commercial.