PROSEPOEM. The next thing I knew I was enveloped in a strange gray, weird holocaust. As though from a million miles away, separated by enormous leagues of time and space, I could hear what sounded like rifle fire and confused shouting. And then the hypnotic effect of the crystalline flooring seemed to overcome me completely, and I sank down with my face against those reflective, translucent angles, and was mirrored a thousand times in the depths of the strange cylinder. The grey mist got denser and denser, and I was aware of a strange thrumming, whirring noise in my ears; a noise as of a thousand dynamos puffing relentlessly on, as though I were enmeshed in the bowels of some machine, some superb technological masterpiece. And yet there was nothing to be seen but the grey opalescent light that rose and fell in intensity, and I in my semi-conscious state was filled with a feeling of complete and utter unreality. What was this weird cylinder? Where was I? There was a strange sensation of motion, and yet it was not motion as we understand it. It was rather the hallucinatory feeling that we get when sitting in a train at the station, waiting to pull out. We watch another train pull past us, and we get the feeling that it is us, and not the other train, that is moving. The greyness grew deeper, became tinged with purple, and the purple in turn gave way to the blackness of night. The blackness grew thicker and darker and deeper, until it became Stygian in its intensity, until it became almost as tangible as black velvet. I felt that it was crushing me, suffocating me, forcing itself into my lungs and my eyes. I felt like a man who is drowning in a barrel of darkness. It was thick, terrifyingly thick, and it was everywhere.

K. S.