C3-1 No man is an Island

He could smell it as the breeze flew over his face and his hair, the smell of the ocean covered him instead of the stale smell of blood, ash and stagnant intoxication he had gotten used to.
Hedzel opened his eyes as the sand almost halfway consumed his legs, dug in the soft and scratchy grains.
It felt nice to be gone from his captor, from that hideous place he had abided, was it all a dream? Had he been here the whole time? Were all the tubes and hospital bed reality?
This felt as real as the other, the salt water brushing his face, he wanted to stay if only a moment more if it meant being far from the room he had stayed in.
A smile crept on his face, he was happy, relieved to be in the open air, no walls, fresh air and surrounded by beauty.
It was an escape from everything he had grown accustom to, the wretched, wilted, rusted and confined space of the trap that was a constant reminder of the trappings he desperately tried to escape.
If he wasn't to know what reality was then this was the best non reality to stay in and he would stay as long as he could.
He wanted to spend his life here, this wonderful paradise that he either created or just inhabited.
What kind of life could he lead here? He was alone again, Daemon was exhausting to interact with but he was someone, was being alone better than with a tormentor who constantly ridiculed you, belittled you and kept you in pain?
He decided to get up and walk around his new home, Hedzel walked up the shore and into the jungle up and away from the beach.
As he walked the foliage got thicker, the sun disappeared in between the leaves looking like stars, the trees consuming the light as a starving man consumes the sustenance he craves.
Deeper, darker, the trees took him into themselves, Hedzel found himself wandering with little light, noises came and glow of eyes stared, voices of the jungle, haunting him, following him, whispers and strange jumbled words and phrases  he didn't understand.
Hedzel found the closest tree in an attempt to climb to find it was not bark of a tree he had latched onto but that of flesh, a petrified human forest.

C2-4 Pain

Hedzel was in pain, he lay there half dazed, his vision blurring in and out trying to focus on anything but to no avail.
He tried to stand but collapsed to his knees in pain shaking like one of those tiny dogs that seem to shiver even in 60 degree weather.
Hedzel closed his eyes and tried to take a deep breath to regain himself, every breath was thick because the air was heavy as if he was on another planet.
"Look at that view" Daemon said casually as he sat in the corner of the ceiling holding binoculars to his eyes.
Hedzel finally regained focus and looked at what Daemon was looking at, it was a poster of a beach with the waves coming in against the shore, palm trees swaying. "You can almost feel the breeze can't you"
Hedzel groaned and looked at his ankle which was still attached to the bear trap which in turn was attached to a eye fixed on the wall.
"We almost lost ya."
"I was there, I could have been free"
"That is an illusion, you don't want that Hedzel."
"Better than this hell" Hedzel said weak and softly.
"Oh I don't think so, You just have to learn how to play, here you can do anything, up there it's bills and work and pain and..."
"Here it's pain and work too, more pain than work."
"Hedzel, Hedzel, Hedzel, you have this world at your command, you could be king if you played by the rules"
"What rules?!"
Daemon grinned, his lips curled in a twisted fashion.
"Why, that there are no rules"
"Who are you? Why are you here, Why are you doing this?"
"You have a short memory, I'm here to help you learn to have... fun"
Hedzel looked at the poster on the wall, He wanted to be there instead of here learning to have 'fun', he closed his eyes and then he was gone.

C2-3 Let's go Fishin'

He was enveloped in the darkness, it was so hard to move, every tiny movement Hedzel made it was like sifting through quicksand.
It wasn't like he couldn't breath, it was like he had gills, it was just a thickness, almost like swimming in a cloud of peanut butter.
he was afraid to move too far from where he was, afraid to open he eyes, not that it mattered much because it would have been a pitch black sight.
He didn't know if he was up or down, if there was an up or down or if this was reality or just a sick nightmare he wasn't waking from.
Then he heard it, a muffled sound through the thickness calling out to him, calling out in the darkness, was it to him? To anyone in general?
Hedzel swam to the sound but felt himself being pulled in a direction, downward to him but it might have been up for all he knew.
This world, this dream was confusing and strange, he tried fighting the current of suction but it seemed that the more he fought it the more he would be pulled, it was so strong.
He wanted to escape and find the calling voice but he felt too weak to fight the pull, he kept swimming toward the voice regardless.
Hedzel reached his arm out to pull himself to the voice and finally felt air over the surface which he was surrounded and pulled his head up taking a huge breath.
He opened his eyes and sat up gasping, the tube clogging his throat making it hard to breath even with air being pushed in his throat.
Hedzel's body tensed up in pain and it seemed that as soon as he was free, it felt like something painful grabbed his ankle and yanked him under into the darkness again, Hedzels eyes rolled to the back of his head and collapsed on his bed once again.
Daemon pulled on a chain through the floor, inching his way closer and closer to the end of the chain whistling all the while a demented tune that seemed to echo in the room.
Daemon pulled down as the chain was on a pulley system over the hole in the floor until the chain reached the end attached to a bear trap which in turn was attached to Hezel.
Hedzel winced in pain as he was pulled up into the room by his ankle upside down, Daemon tying off the chain.
Daemon smiled as he tiled his head to the side and then rolled his head completely off and upside down in his arm slightly fumbling it and catching it quickly.
"I swear I'd lose my head if it wasn't attached" he laughed "Well looks like we caught a biggun' today wouldn't you say Earl?"
"Yup"
Hedzel looked over to see Daemon dressed in overalls with no shirt, straw hat and a piece of straw hanging from his mouth.
Hedzel looked over, dizzy and tired as he passed out as Daemon pushed Hedzel spinning him around.
"Well that was rude." Daemon said with his head in one hand and the other on his hip.

C2-2 Mud

His face was a distorted mess coming apart piece by piece and building up under the cracks in His fingernails, sticking to the tips of His fingers until they had become numb.
It had become useless bedlam and would have torn the skin off in shreds had his fingers not been so caked with mud made from the ash scattered throughout the room and now clung to Hedzel.
The water ran down the sink taking the mixture of mudash with it all the while Hedzel not noticing or even being able to see the problem building up in the drain.
Clumps of mudash started sticking to the pipes on the inside and started building up first forming a ring, then forming thicker and thicker layers until it was more of a blockage than a portal.
As the water level began to rise the mudash slid down over his eyes as if his face was earth and His skin a mudslide falling first around his eyes and then over them, covering them completely in an overwhelming frenzy of disorder and chaos.
Layer upon layer fell at his feet and still more would come until the point that Hedzel's hands looked more like mittens than his hands and no longer able to tear anything from his face let alone his eyes.
Now blind, Hedzel furiously assaulted the water before him with his hands making splashing noises as the water level rose higher every moment that passed.
It didn't take long before the water flowed over the sink and onto the floor at Hedzel's feet caressing the floor like a lover.
Hedzel yell out for help but could hear no reply as not only his eyes but now His ears were enveloped as well never noticing the floor beneath him sinking.
it became harder and harder to walk around him as if He were standing on a marshmallow sinking and grabbing his feet as he struggled to keep his balance in the midst of it all.
As the water reached across the room Daemon casually stepped up the wall and out of the oncoming rush of shallow water.
"Daemon, help me! Where are you?"
Daemon didn't respond as there was no point since Hedzel was unable to hear anything outside his own head.
Hedzel sank through the floor as if it were a mixture of quicksand and bubblegum that had been chewed, at first it was a slight sicking sense of the floor to his feet as if He was at a movie theater.
The sound of ripping stickiness as He lifted His feet and walked trying to feel his way around, then more came as the floor would rise with His foot as of they were connected.
It all led to a final sinking into the floor as it gripped over his feet consuming them until they were engulfed within the new pliable floor.
Hedzel became more and more consumed with every passing moment, everything was black in front of him and below was a hungry platform threatening and squeezing him as if it were an Anaconda.
He fell face first into the floor, as he hit it felt more like a giant marshmallow than a hard surface but what would be a relief at first would turn into panic as the floor soon started swallowing the remaining uncovered body of Hedzel.

Chapter Two - Part One: Water

It was a hard landing as Hedzel Rematerialized mid-air, falling face first to the floor in front of His guest that resided in the dark room.
Daemon stood before Hedzel, His eyes looking down with a menacing grin escaping His tight lipped mouth.
"Welcome back, that was awfully quick wasn't it Hedzel, I almost started missing you."
Hedzel lay on the floor unsure what had happened, as He had not quite grasped the meaning of the sly and sarcastic remark made by His obnoxious guest.
"What happened to me?" Hedzel gasped out a word at a time, His mouth parched from the minuscule debris covering His mouth, each word escaping as if His mouth as a car trying to start with a sputter.
"The universe took you... And then, put you back, I find it quite funny when it happens and yet..."
Daemon stopped His sentence as if frozen in time trying to think of how to answer the rest of it.
Hedzel made His way up once again barely standing to His feet as He felt as though His legs were filled with apathy, they were lethargic at best as Hedzel found it very hard to move His legs as though His bones had been replaced by a heavy metal.
Grasping on with one hand to His pant leg and the other holding onto the counter top He made His way to the sink where He turned the water on.
Hedzel lurched forward as His body slumped onto the middle of the sink and putting all His weight down so He wouldn't fall to the floor as gravity would often send Him crashing down obviously not favoring Hedzel nor being concerned with His well being in the least.
He touched the water finding it slightly warm to the touch, it wasn't the cold wetness He had been hoping for but He would take it over nothing to wash the filth from His body.
Hedzel cupped His hands taking the water in and splashing some on His face letting it trickle down his chin and drip on His shirt but finding the liquid to become more Heavy and viscous as It was applied to His face.
The Debris had now started to cake and crust as if His skin had turned to clay clumping and pealing off as He try washing the substance off.
"There's nothing so sad than a person so desperately trying to wash their own filth off, you do realize no matter what you do you're never going to get clean on your own Don't you?"
It was a useless endeavored mission as Hedzel continued to try and brush the caked pieces off His face and head only smearing most of it around all the while softly and quietly sobbing from the ordeal.
This went on for quite a while until his head was so caked in the substance that if he had looked at Himself Hedzel would have seen a stranger rather than his face he once recognized.

Chapter One - Part Four

When everything went black a white speck of light poked through the darkness like a lone star in the night sky.
Steadily He watched it's mass get bigger ripping through the darkness as if it were a train light, Getting closer to Him with each second that went by.
He felt like He was on the tracks but finding Himself strangely floating midair and unable to move away from the oncoming light.
He would wave His arms much like a swimming motion and feeling as though He was making His way upward but when He looked He saw the light continuing to move in His direction with no sign of stopping whatsoever.
A burst of overwhelming pain shot though His body as the light came into contact with Him blinding Him as well with a intensity He had never felt or seen before that point.
He screamed out as a glimpse of a high ceiling started focusing and a high pitched beeping rang in His ears, a blurred figure came into the picture standing over Him as He scream out in pain.
A strange echo fumbled around His ears unable to grasp onto the language the figure spoke as all of a sudden the light that had hit Him backed up and shot back through the darkness to dissipate into nothingness again.
All at once He was in the void of a pitch black space again, not knowing which way was up or down, the blackness going on forever as if He was embodied within a universal mobius strip.
He looked on in the infinite darkness hoping to get a heading of something familiar, something He would recognize as being trustworthy to His sight but nothing like that existed in the place He was in.
Closing His eyes He floated in place while in the nothingness of the space He was in leaving a silence so great that sound seemed to be absorbed from the very moment it entered the atmosphere.
He would try to talk but His speech sounded distorted then it would cut off, stifle and dissipate quickly as if a vacuum were sucking up His words.
It was then He felt it, pieces of Him being taken from His body as if molecule by molecule were departing making it look like sand blowing through the air.
As the bits of Him floated away He started to scream, it wasn't because it hurt or was painful but the thought of being blown away with a seemingly non-existent wind was terrifying to Him as He did not know where He would go nor if He would come together again in the end.
Strands of Himself whist away with Hedzel grasping greedily at what was once pieces of Himself only for them to slip through His hands as He continued to unravel to His very core before His very eyes.
Closing His eyes He stopped, realizing He was fighting an up hill battle and foolishly trying to keep something that was not permanent.
He drift away into the darkness carried away by an unknown force that now held sway in the darkness with no control on the part of Hedzel.
He didn't know what would become of Him and that was what He feared the most, to be tossed and thrown with the wind.
With His eyes closed the last of Him detached from the rest of the remaining pieces and followed the rest of the bits in it's now current state of unrest, flowing as if it were a river of sand across a vast stretch of nothingness.

Chapter One- Part Three

He was cruel to say the least, Mocking and degrading, why He stayed with Hedzel was just beyond his Grasp of understanding.
Hedzel slowly sat up pulling Himself against the already pealing and crumbling wall making it come off in pieces.
"Look at that, seems like everything is just falling apart at the seams aren't they?"
Daemon had a smugness in His voice that would stay Hidden under His monotone disguise.
"Why won't you help me?" Hedzel said propping Himself up against the wall, His head rested against the flaking paint along the wall.
"I'm helping you more than you think Hedzel."
"You're just standing there Berating me and standing there while I waste away."
"You brought this on yourself Hedzel, you say you want someone to help and yet you shut everyone else out, You depend on people and yet despise them."
"It can't be helped you know." Hedzel said with an ever weakening look.
"What? Your hatred for Humanity?"
"Look at them out there, scurrying around with their meaningless lives, selfish and greedy, can you blame me?"
"And yet you crave their acceptance."
"No I don't, why do you think I'm in here away from them?"
"Face it Hedzel, you're obsessed with them, you want to be a part of them and you want what they have."
"That is the most ridiculous notion I've ever heard in my life."
"Is it Hedzel? You're Obsessed because you can't stop talking about them, you hate them because you can't be like them and don't have what they have. Your whole life is based on the thinking that you're better then they are so you lock yourself away to escape but face it, even though you're away physically from them they're still with you. You haven't escaped a thing!"
All the while Daemon spoke, Hedzel cringed at each word that came from the mans mouth, His eyes clenched trying in hopes that if He didn't see Daemon He would some how disappear, mixing that with telling him to be quiet and failing at it.
He never seemed as bitter and empty as He did now, Nor had He felt so failed as a human as He assessed His life from His place on the floor in a poorly lit, poorly structured room that seemed to have the feeling like He did on the inside.
If anyone had looked from the outside they would have seen a pristine structure, Vibrant and lively to the eyes but dead on the inside had they looked in the windows.
Sitting with closed eyes, the suspense built while waiting to understand this place in His life, the time all the while standing still going against every notion of logic available to Him.
The sound of Footsteps clicking around the room against the floor, a stifled echo bouncing around the room, around His head in an orderly chaos.
When He opened His eyes the man was gone, Hedzel looked left, then right not seeing a trace of Daemon around.
"What do you think of all this?"
"Where are you?"
"Just Hanging around."
Hedzel followed the voice upward to the ceiling, His focus fading in and out unsure He was seeing was real.
"What are you doing up there, how is that even possible?"
"Maybe you're Hallucinating."
"Hallucinating?"
"Or maybe I know something you don't."
"Like what?"
"Like how to stand on the ceiling for starters."
"You're very strange Daemon."
"You're the one seeing a man on the ceiling and fretting about the outside world, sitting in ashes all day and you call ME strange?"
"I don't understand."
"What don't you understand?"
"This...All of this, why I'm here, why there are ashes and where they're coming from. Everything."
"It was once said that one should not think that they know or have a full understanding what it is to understand, instead know that you understand nothing."
"What does that even mean?"
"It means that you don't really understand what is to begin to understand."
"That makes no sense whatever."
"Maybe to you but then again you're the one on the floor, your perception of the way things work is only limited to your understanding of how gravity works."
"What your doing is impossible."
"What are you, the Physics police?"
Hedzel rubbed His temples finding His thoughts on the subject in disarray, as if scattered to the wind challenging everything He was taught in school.
'I'm going crazy.' Hedzel thought to Himself trying to wrap His mind around the fact that He had someone walking on His ceiling.
"You're not going crazy, I'm merely showing you something you didn't know until now."
"Are you telling me I can walk on the ceiling?"
"You? No you'll never be able to do this."
"You're doing it."
"I am but you're not meant to."
"I give up, I'm going to stop trying to understand you."
Daemon looked up at Hedzel on the floor as He stepped onto the wall and then proceeded to lean over to the ceiling and doing a handstand while walking across the room on His hands while on the ceiling.
As He walked He started loosing His Balance swaying back and forth with His legs until He was caught mid-air in the blank space of the room.
He didn't gravitate to the ceiling like one would imagine, He just lay parallel to the ceiling, floating like a feather to the floor where Hedzel was.
"What do you want Hedzel?"
"I don't know anymore."
"Well that's a lax attitude, would you even care if you died?" Daemon finally lay on the floor looking at Hedzel with His head cocked to one side much like a puppy's.
Hedzel closed His eyes resting in thought as He heard a dripping faucet in the background drowning out Daemons voice fading in and out of the distance of the room each moment the drip consolidating to a concentrated focus.
Time took a holiday as blackness enveloped over Hedzels perception of reality until He opened His eyes to Daemon within an inch of His face, eyes wide open and nose to nose with Him.
It wasn't shocking, Scary or anything of that sort, it didn't even make Hedzel jump like one would think, It wasn't that surprising to Him anymore, Nothing surprised Hedzel anymore especially when it came to Daemon.
The underlying hazard by association would by all means be a thinking point for Hedzel as His head couldn't wrap around the impending thought that He didn't understand quite as much as His mystery friend.
"Hello in there... you awake or have you fallen asleep with your eyes open?"
"How long have I known you?"
"Just now, Me on the other hand have known you much longer."
"What? How can you know me longer than I've known you?"
"I've been milling around getting to know you and you didn't even notice me until now."
"I would think I would remember someone like you walking around here, you're a little hard to miss."
"And yet you did, you missed a lot of things but don't worry most people aren't aware of us."
"Aware of us? Us who? I only see you."
"You people are so oblivious to reality it's ridiculous, you have this notion of what you have been taught that you get caught up in your version of reality but you really have no clue."
Reality was something Hedzel hadn't thought of before, He hadn't had a need to think about it, He didn't think of reality as anything more than the here and now.
Was there a whole world that everyone passed by and remained unseen? was it possible that people were so mystified with their own life that failed to see reality?
It occurred to Hedzel that if a Man could walk on the ceiling and float to the floor like a feather then maybe He had missed reality, the real reality that lay unseen to people in their life.
He lay leaning against the wall contemplating whether or not He knew anything anymore, He was so oblivious, could He trust His senses anymore? Could anyone trust what they thought they knew anymore? If they were unaware of reality did it matter?
There was no more certainty in His belief of what He thought was reality and was now filled with doubt as to whether or not what He was seeing was real or a hallucination, was the room real, was the man real? Was He real? what was real and what was a facade for the benefit of those who were unable to face the ugly truth?
Time would only tell what He would recognize as reality and a faint resemblance of fantasy, in all His life He would see Crazy people walking down the street talking to themselves or watching as people would pray and talk to God thinking how crazy the notion was talking to some invisible being no one else could see. Maybe they weren't crazy after all, maybe the one's who didn't see it were the crazy one's oblivious to reality.
Why not? His perceptions of it were challenged thus far but how would people perceive Him talking to someone only He seemed to see?
Fear seemed to grasp at the cuff of His shirt as an overwhelming feeling swept over Hedzel as He wondered if He would be taken seriously or dismissed as a crazy man and locked away for a cognitive malfunction.
Panic stricken Hedzel breathed heavy as His anxiety level rose at the very thought of being locked away with people in a loony bin playing chess with a man who believed He was Napoleon.
When it all got to be too much, His eyes rolled in the back of His head and everything went black as His body went limp, sliding along the wall to Nestle in crevice between the wall and the floor.