Dema Fic Preview

|Fear|

There are only two certainties in existence.

You will live, and you will die.

Everything that colors in the space between those certainties are just messy assumptions. We as humans love to play at God, but we don't even fully understand what that means. The existence of a God, or the lack thereof, is just another assumptions.

Assumptions are fodder to fear. Fear will take its fill of assumptions, growing stronger by each passing moment on the doubt. Doubt, assumptions, fear. It's where it all begins. And we have an unstoppable capacity to manifest doubt and fear.

Fear has power. And once it takes hold, it can transform into something else...

That fear has a name. It doesn't always look the same. It doesn't always sound the same. But every single living thing is connected by it. Perhaps fear is the single greatest force in the universe simply because it is the single thing in existence that is a commonality across all living things. 

Everything, and everyone, feels fear. It's what keeps you alive. But it's also what traps you, if you allow it to gain too much power.

Fear is like a blurred face. You know its existence. You know the general form. You may even be able to pinpoint the context that allowed it to wake up. But as soon as you try to give it a name, it fades away. It eludes us until we grow comfortable in the fear. It becomes the only thing we know, so we learn to coexist. 

Coexistence become tolerance, and tolerance becomes acceptance.

But there is another option. One where naming that fear gives us control, gives us an ability to enforce a jurisdiction over that fear. To say this is my line, and you, fear, cannot cross it.

The man paused, rubbing a hand across his face. Wrinkles ran under his eyes, and a cane tapped on the floor every few seconds as the man paced back and forth. Somebody coughed, and the man seemed to be drawn back from wherever he had gone. He continued on, but Daniel Greythorne was no longer listening. He was miles away and years in the past, exploring what should have been an abandoned power plant. Should being the key word.

It'd been ten years. Ten years, a lot of therapy, and a funeral. But he knew those lines. He knew that face. He knew that voice. He knew that man's name.

Daniel Greythorne was no longer listening to the speech. Instead, he was miles away, walking though a neon graveyard. Reading names. Running his hands over headstones. Pausing at one grave. Cracks had already crept along the stone, despite it being only a matter of days old. He couldn't see the body - though he didn't think he wanted to. 

No, Daniel Greythorne was no longer in the same room as the speaker. He was sitting in a camp, slowly wrapping himself with yellow tape and listening to the other men speaking in soft tones. They were talking about him, he knew it. A kid was sitting next to him. Thirteen? Maybe fourteen? He didn't know. He didn't care. He was writing again. Writing his letters. Where they went, or how they got there, he didn't know. Clancy. Clancy. Clancy.

How many had there been? Graves? Bodies? Letters? Bishops? Reality was hard to unravel.

And suddenly he was back. The auditorium was still dark, the man still on the stage. The seat Daniel sat in was still uncomfortable, and the AC was still cranked to high. The notepad he had been using was now filled with writing, but he couldn't recall even picking up his pen. He closed it, turning his attention back to the man. He could see now that he was wrong.

There was no red robe, or black painted hands, or white face-covering. There wasn't even a feeling of being drained or hopeless. He was just an old man, speaking on fear and the human condition. But for the life of him, Daniel couldn't recall the man's name. Boraski? Babaki? Bandoza? Barboza?

He glanced down at the program. Nicolas Bourbaki was written in cursive across the front.

His head shot up, and his eyes searched for the man. There. That was it. He finally understood what had been weird about this whole thing, all along.

His face was blurry.

//
Happy five years Blurryface. You really were an amazing album and an amazing set of shows.