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It's working - a slow, billowy inflation of drowsy smoke, thickening, gaining, encountering my cranial vault eventually... no headache though. The expansion bumps against it and after a few tries dissipates. Tiredness. It was induced. By way of the last man who worked for the Big Man. He did it and I let him do it. I let him do it because I didn't know I could stop him from doing it. I let him do it because I didn't know what he was doing. I didn't know. I didn't know. I didn't know.

And now it is too late. It is over. There is nothing left and these words, do not be fooled, they do not express anything. They are not an attempt to heal. They have nothing to do with me. In fact I am angry with them, they are not my words, I have not chosen. They are shrapnel. Nothing more.

The Big Man was afraid of me. I learned where He lived and how He made His living. It was accidental. I learned from an old friend-- a lover really-- his teacher taught him and he didn't teach me but I learned by snooping around, reading his papers and then writing them, and then writing my own.

Don't worry if you can't make any sense of this. The last man was thorough. He wasn't really the last man, but he was the man who initiated the end. So I call him the last man. There were more after him but the poison was already placed. I was not made any sicker, only more tired.

I imagine getting artistic with my words. Painting portraits with them, as billowy as this disease. But I don't feel like it, and that was his intention. So what shall I do instead? I waste away. I waste time, I waste effort, I waste everything because there are no other options.

Let us lighten up, then, shall we? It is not all glum. The glumness comes from stubborn memories of being bright. I was bright once. And this is the shame of it. Some go through their whole lives dull. For some the poison has no effect. But I remember. Something. Something vague and blurry. The word hope almost describes it but I can't be sure. It's there, but I cannot tell if it is a symptom of the disease or the remedy of its healing. I want to heal. Where are we going now? We are not going anywhere. You want me to go somewhere but I cannot. Just here around and around with words that mean nothing and heal nothing. Words that are not creative or soulful or reflective of an age, and most definitely not words that embody excellence. This was the true target of the Big Man. It was my own fault. I wanted excellence desperately but you cannot attain excellence through desperation.

Oh forget it. I'm just trying to be clever, taking on that airy trance that provides no greater insight into anything than the consciousness involved in mall shopping.

The Big Man wants me trapped inside. Inside. Inside. My mind, my will deeply buried... my body locked in my home... because it made me afraid, this potion. No-- I was already afraid. But not abnormally so. Now I am stuck and I have nothing to say. He has won.