Mute Frequencies

I don’t know when I arrived, I only know that I’m here, wherever here is and I do exist but not in a way that I’m familiar with. I am alive but I don’t know that I fully understand what that means, to be alive, not anymore. I’m sorry if this is confusing but I feel like I’m dreaming, and I can’t wake up or that if I am awake then I was more comfortable sleeping. I do want to clarify that I am aware that I have woken up many, many times but only to find myself still here, stuck inside this skin. What makes all of this more frustrating is that I don’t remember what was before this, if this seems unfamiliar then that means something else is familiar, but I don’t know what that is or was. I only know that I am no longer in a place I recognize, and I no longer feel at ease. I do appreciate that my thoughts are still able to make sense to me and although until now, I have not been able to communicate with others, I can understand what I’m thinking and processing. Now you can understand me, right? Some thing is receiving this, translating this, searching for me, trying to figure out what I am and where I’ve been. But in the end when you know all about me, you will know there is nothing you can do to help me. You will just have this information and the reactions that come with it. This must sound like nonsense, or words circling the drain, but I would like to explain, to the best of my ability, what I see, what I’ve done, and the creatures I’ve encountered. 

The space I’m in is dark, sometimes it’s black, and it’s thick and it moves, and I can feel it around me, but I can’t always see it. I move freely, for what seems like forever, I can move fast, and I can collapse my body into the smallest form, entering spaces too small for me and then I can reemerge, reinflate, take shape and move on. I remember the sun and the stars, and I’ve seen them, many, many times but not like before. I see them before it happens, before I’m taken or worse. I’ve escaped only a handful of times, but it doesn’t matter because I don’t know when it’s coming, the hurt, the pain. I can see, but it’s different and I can hear, but not like before, I feel sound, but sometimes I don’t, and the creatures that have hurt me have tried to communicate, on some level, at least I think they have. They have a language I don’t understand but I’m getting better at anticipating what’s coming, bracing for impact would be a better term as what’s coming is always the same. There are others like me, many, many others, too many to count and although they can speak to each other, no one understands me. This is frustrating but it makes no difference, they are in the same situation as I am. 

I sleep but don’t dream but like I said before, I remember dreams, not specifically, but I remember that I have dreamt but I don’t know anymore. I am asleep and then I am awake. I am hunted both in my immediate surroundings and beyond. There are things that consume me, they literally eat me, this has happened many times, even while I am still alive and sometimes by those close to me. I’ve been pulled apart, I’ve had the flesh torn from me, I’ve fought back, I’ve hidden, a skill I’m quite good at. At times I am a ghost, and they will pass me by, other times I use the tools I have to fend off my attackers and when I go, I go screaming and crying but they can’t hear me, or they don’t care, and I’ve felt pain and desperation and I’ve seen the inside of others and my own parts being burned and mutilated. Here, the hunters don’t look like me, they come in other shapes and sizes, they move swiftly and attack because they are hungry. My instinct is to run, and I get away most times but never from the creatures above. They have ways to hunt that trick me and that leads to capture and a slow death. I prefer to be gone in a blink of an eye than the drawn-out occasion that the aliens parade me through, but such is that. What is different is nothing is ever final. I have been killed and eaten and maimed and each time I come back. Same as before, ready to move, using what I’ve learned to stay here longer, sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t but I always come back. I do eat too, I hunt, I kill, I consume, so I am like everything around me, alive and needing to sustain and I wonder if everything around me is like me. Does it come back? Does it hurt and then wake up again like I do? I have no home just feeding grounds and prey shelters. Like I said, I remember before, but I’ve been here a long time, you’d say years or decades, or centuries and I’d say I’ve been here longer than that.

When snatched from above, I am brought onto their vessel, caged with others like me. I am kept alive, and moved across their planet, showcased like the animal that I am and when the moment is right, sometimes in front of many and sometimes only one, I am butchered. It happens in different ways; by heat, by blade, quickly and slowly, consumed by one or all and then it goes dark and secretly, I want it to be over, but I must admit I am always relieved when I come back. I feel each time I am stronger, I am bigger, knowing I need to hide deeper, avoid the hunters and find a way back to where I was before. 

Now, as I wait to die once more, I wonder if this is it. Because this time is different. This time you are hearing me, I am communicating with you right? I must be because you are staring at me like no one has ever done before so this time must be different. Because I can reach you, then this must be the last time. Right? You must be overwhelmed with everything I’ve said because you have said nothing, but it makes no difference. The time to act is now, to get up, to get help, to do something to save me or I will not come back, because this time is different. I must admit, I do this every time I go, I wonder if I will come back. But then I couldn’t communicate with you, I wasn’t able to reach you or any like you so this time MUST be different. So please help me, if this is my last time then I need you. Unless this isn’t and my consciousness, my pain, my past, will be back again, forced into existence for all time. Into a body that I can’t escape, signaling for help that will not come. 

Staring into the tank of live Octopuses in the back of a small Korean restaurant, an older man, responsible for washing dishes at this popular seafood spot, continues to stare into the eyes of the soon to be dinner for two. He’s fixated on this creature as it has been looking right at him for what must be over five minutes now. He senses something, or maybe he doesn’t but the Octopus is staring at him. Suddenly a crash of dirty dishes comes into the kitchen just as the animal is yanked from the tank, spread apart, butchered and thrown onto the grill in the kitchen. The man returns to his dishes as another order comes in.