You're not supposed to be reading this.

The note is meaningless; really. It's apart of a song only few will understand. (Psst. It's NIN)

.Drowning.

By: Manifest Nightmare

Where…

…Not a question or a plea but a feeling that he's lost and slipping like stray grains of sand into the undertow of what's pulling him farther and farther downwards. This place is beautiful and horrific and heaven and hell and the sun and the moon and the stars and….It's an endlessly, spiraling, infinite, blackness highlighted by burning tri-pods and motes of incandescent violet which sear patterns of indescribable irony and pain into the back of his retinas. He is there. She is not. He is not there either. There is only the devil; but, he is not in the back of his car. (1)

The Snake rears back and exposes a brilliant, deceiving smile before sinking it's fangs in.

Where is my mind…?

The pain slices through him and explodes inside of his stomach like a raging maelstrom of flame which shoots through his veins and erupts behind his eyes. It's not a fever or a sense of God-like power; only a pain which shoots up and down his spine like electrical fire that fries his nerve endings solid. Dimly, he's aware that something is burning a cold, painful trail through his insides and something is dying a tiny death it's died before on a grander scale inside his mind.

Something is…something is…

Where…

He's slipping even though he's hanging on with broken fingers. He's being consumed by a tidal onrush of venom and sapphire that he's barely been able to hold back with his breaths and words and promises. He remembers Itachi, black and shimmering and mad as any Messiah is perceived to be and admits that he loves him too much to kill him. He remembers Naruto, radiant and happy and burning with a goal and always carrying dream like a banner and an allegiance they never shared. These were the reasons he lived, and these were who he remembers the most before…

It all goes black and rigid and cold and time looses meaning like the backwards ticking of a languid second hand. He feels something akin to ocean water lap at his burnt fingertips like cold November air biting from his insides out and he feels a needling, annoying sense of doubt blossom in the back of his neck. He suffocates it and finds that he's gliding, or floating, or hanging in a space where all he hears is static white noise and the scream of a thousand chirping crows far off in the distance.

Where….

He's falling backwards into a sea of regret and drowning in a power that was never his.

He's drowning in nothing and living a lie his parents and his brother fed him and painted him ruby, iridescent red with.

Nothing's real.

Nothing's left .

…He remembers his family; the real one which wasn't regal and pompous and more concerned with standing than with love; but, he soon forgets them because the ocean and the static and the quiet, inane chirping of crows he doesn't quiet care for blot out everything in his own personal Hell.

Where…?

Loosing consciousness like dragonfire let loose screaming from his lips or like dancing lightning swirling and lancing out from inside his palm; and, he's losing himself with every tide and every shattered memory he lets out to breathe, or think, or survive in this place of static nothing.

He's sinking deeper down into a place made up of eyes (which are the most important) and memories (which he can barely hold onto.)

Where is…?

He's silently leaving This behind and he silently remembers () what he used to have. There was a Sun, or a Flash, and a Flower. There was a Brother or a Monster and a Father or a Teacher (Scarecrow?), somewhere. But, he's given it all away for this.

For this.

For what?

For this.

There's nothing left but him without the connotations or the vengeance,
And his last coherent thoughts are.

I'm hating myself …
Hating myself …
Everyone hates me now …

Everyone has changed …
Everything has changed …
Everyone has changed …

But me …

…

…

…

Where is my mind…?

: Because living as he did only brings Ruin. :