— Entry 001 —
Psychopomp Ave
First dispatch. The door opens.
Filed by: Unseen Witness
Location: Corridor of Threshold Sector
Status: Initiated
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I walk the corridor of twilight hours,
where lamplight flickers like synaptic sparks
in a tired hemisphere of dream.
The world hums in low sedation—
a soft hum,
like haloperidol in the bloodstream of a nation.
I pass through cities wearing hospital gowns
stitched from mortgages and Monday meetings,
their veins webbed with traffic
and the slow drip of dopamine in cup holders.
On a bench,
a boy genuflects to the holy glow of his screen,
each scroll a self-inflicted lobotomy.
His eyes flicker—REM sleep in waking hours.
Next to him,
a woman mouths affirmations to no one,
likes blooming in her lap like lithium pills
spilled across a prayer rug.
I pass rooms with no walls—
cubicles lined with panic and performance,
where men pace their daily psychodramas
under fluorescent suns.
They whisper about freedom
while filing forms for approval.
There—
a house where silence screams in floral wallpaper.
A boy with too-soft wrists
folds napkins like apologies
his father will never read.
The table is always set for two.
Only one chair warms.
Families fracture like neural pathways—
a daughter exiled for loving the wrong ghost,
her name turned into a diagnosis.
They light candles
but pray only for the idea of her.
A woman shouts into the mouth of City Hall,
voice cracked like porcelain under pressure.
But the clerks have turned to wax.
Their smiles drip slowly
into forms marked “Other.”
The streets are institutional in their repetition—
routines polished into catatonia.
And the people,
God, the people—
they wear their delusions like credentials,
eyes blank with the confidence of the medicated,
each convinced they are the only sane patient
in this great asylum of denial.
Still I walk.
I do not tap the glass.
I do not hand out diagnoses.
Their awakening must be elective.
Their epiphany: self-induced.
So I listen to the static between heartbeats,
the dead air behind their eyes,
the echo of something once called communion.
And beneath the din,
I swear I hear a question
knocking gently
on the inside of every skull.
Compos mentis?
Annotations: Transcribed under veil breach. Subject states:
“no intervention required.” Entry filed and sealed.
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