In the Dead Zone

Time was a senseless afterthought in the two-dimensional world of the Dead Zone - a world where perspective was an unaffordable luxury, and where all horizons converged at the infinitude of vanishing point. If someone, per chance, had unexpected taken a wrong turn - left to be specific - out of, say, the Barren Zone bazaar, travelled south-east for twenty clicks or so, and had the unfortunate opportunity to happenstance the scene, one would have beheld the broken figure, indefinitely placed on the horizon, silhouetted in black - a shuffling shadow if you will. Sad, but incredibly proud.

If one drew closer, the scene would have revealed flesh blackened, blistered, broken and raw as if blasted by an oxyacetylene torch. Eyes blinded by cataracts, registering only uncertain retinal afterimages, lit by a dim intelligence, like those projected upon Plato's cave wall. She reflexively readjusted her thong. Spak-Spak's brain activity had ceased long ago - at least as measurable by the most sensitive and sophisticated of next generational MRI scanners. It was a mind open and boundless as the cloudless Dead Zone sky itself; a mind unfettered by the shackles of self-censorship, a sense of the other, fashion and/or social etiquette in general.

Directing her remarks at no one in particular, and tilting her head in the confused manner of a dog attempting to grasp complex, transformational grammatical structures, she uttered at random: "Is there a problem?"; "Can I say something?"; "Did I tell you about my daughter?"; "Don't get angry Pop-Pop"; and, "Quality is a process of continuous reevaluation". The presence of another soul would only have been lost on her anyway.

The head tilting caused a built-up reservoir of melatonin, from an overactive pineal gland, to drip-drip steadily from her ear, falling to the sand in milky tears; creating tiny, moist dimples in the sand surface before evaporating without a trace.

If one stepped back from the scene and beheld it from a respectful distance, the solipsistic soliloquy faded into the background. Or so it at first seemed. And then the inconsolable wailing began again, a trait not unusually common among the sparse inhabitants of the Dead Zone, accompanied by the relentless tugging of hair after the fashion of a Jain monk.

The Dead Zone: A dead place where already dead people up-Styx to go die.