Glyndon Peters asked Garon Whited:

your the best cant wait.. :)?

Garon Whited I'm glad you're enjoying it!
Here, maybe this will help hold you until June 1st.
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Basement

It feels weird to be inside my own head like this. I—if I may use the pronoun—“I” feel weird. I feel disjointed, dissociated, fragmented… as though I am a puzzle, trying to assemble myself. There are pieces missing and no box top to guide me. I know who I am and how I got here, but there’s something more than that, somewhere, and I’m not sure what it is.
It’s hard to concentrate on that sort of thing; I’ve got running to do.
I’ve given a lot of thought to the word, “basement.” “Base,” as in the foundation, and “ment,” as in “mental.” The mental foundation. The foundation of the mind. That is obviously not the real derivation of the world, but it’s oddly appropriate at the moment.
Mine’s full of garbage and unpleasant Things. I should know. I seem to be stuck down here.
Lopsided and gutted buildings give the landscape a drunken look as they lean at odd, uncertain angles. They seem distorted, somehow, making perspective a subjective thing and given to rapid, unpredictable changes. Small fires burn in small patches, throwing light and shadow into dancing alleys of not-quite-there surreality. Smells of smoke and decay drift through the darkness like ghosts of old memories drawn from under houses and forgotten root cellars. Bits of broken things—lost toys, old cars, fractured dreams—litter the cracked and sunken streets. A stream of something dark and acrid ripples as it slops, gutter-like, and the occasional ripples have nothing to do with anything on the surface.
I like my study much better. This place is a nightmare.
Yes. A nightmare. How apt. Where else do nightmares come from, if not from this rusted, blasted place, a rotted slice of lukewarm Hell?
Of course, no Hell is complete without the damned. I’ve seen little things emerge from cracks and crevices, some as small as scuttling beetles, some as large as rats. They come out by the hundreds, perhaps by the thousands, wherever I pass, following me, licking at the bloody prints of my bare and tattered feet.
I don’t look back. I can hear the skittering and pattering of tiny feet and tiny claws, sometimes hear the lapping and slurping as they lick at my bloody footprints. That is more than sufficient. I don’t want to see them.
I don’t want to see the ghostly, nebulous figure of an unborn baby boy, either. But it’s there, hauntingly present, always behind me, following me like a balloon. That’s all it does. That’s what it always does. That’s all it needs to do.
Other things actively chase me as I run naked through the ruins. There’s a man, for example. He’s a little taller than me, a little more broad-shouldered. He looks a lot like me, but with a more chiseled jaw, and eyes that flash with charm and humor. He’s immaculate and impossibly perfect. He smiles at me, always understanding how I’ve failed to live up to my potential. He’s perfect—so perfect, he magnanimously forgives me for being a failure by comparison. And yet, he won’t leave me alone.
Another problematic figure is the fiery lady. A giant made of bloody flames, she laughs as she stomps after me, leaving footprints full of sullen, greasy fire. She carries the remains of a child in her left hand and occasionally pulls pieces from the charred corpse to eat them, crunchingly. She’s not fast; she can’t catch me. She just shows up unexpectedly, like an incendiary bomb, and always when I least expect it. Then I have to run from her as fast as I can. She’s too powerful to face.
And then there are the harpies, swooping down whenever they find me, defecating and shrieking. Their bodies and faces are familiar, but twisted—cruel, angry, evil versions of the women I love. They dive at me, screaming epithets, accusations, remonstrations, blame. Sasha screams about how I am unworthy; Shada demands to know why I didn’t save her; Tort always shrieks the question of why couldn’t I love her. As they dive, sometimes one or another will swipe at me with a dirty talon, forcing me to duck, driving me to the ground.
I am filthy, covered in the muck and mess of a lifetime of regrets, anxieties, fears… What are the deadly sins? Avaritia, gula, ira, invidia, superbia, vanagloria… have I forgotten some? Surely I have. But whether I remember their names or not, they’re here. Oh, yes; they lurk around every corner, spring forth from every shadow, and wear my most terrible memories like masks made from the skins of corpses.
Nothing will let me sleep. Even when I slip down narrow alleys, shake whatever pursues me at the moment, endure the burning of the foul waters on my bloodied feet, and leave no tracks to a hiding-place, I can only rest. There is no sleep in nightmare.
Then something finds me again and I run. It’s hard to stay hidden for long. Some of the things that live in the depths of my mind never come out into the light. They lurk in the darkness inside gutted buildings, scrabble in the deeper shade between a wall and a leaning billboard. And they watch. Always, they watch, with eyes that reflect the guttering fires with a sickly, yellow gleam.
Freud was wrong. Perhaps he would say I am a dethroned Superego trapped in a dream of the Ego and the Id. It’s not that simple. If there were only three of us, I might reach some sort of accommodation, some sort of balance or agreement. I have a million adversaries hunting me and haunting me, all spread through the landscape of my forgotten unconscious, all wanting to punish me for creating them, or for allowing them to be created.
Or maybe they want more time, a greater sense of self and self-control, of independence. I don’t know. They may be parts of my mind, pieces of me and my thoughts—those little voices that urge me to do or think things I choose not to do. If so, I still don’t understand them.
“Know thyself” has taken on a whole new meaning.
Got to run; my demons are catching up to me.

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