The Quiet Ones

All was white,
with no shadow that he could distinguish.
Light came from everywhere;
it was as if he was encased in a cubicle of starlight.
He lay flat on the cushioned floor, staring up into the brightness,
soundless, motionless, the drugs now transporting him
into the darkest realms of calm. Everything was
heavy and light at the same time:
his body seemed inseperable from the room.

If he tried to scream, all sound would be pinched in his throat,
burn there with the silence, the deafness of a thousand roaring suns.
If he tried to reason with them, his thoughts would stir to a quick frenzy,
like leaves and debris in an autumn cyclone.
In fact, though it was unbearable, all they did was watch him,
but with looks that penetrated all his feeble defenses.
They had no faces, no bodys yet. They glared at him from everywhere,
from nowhere, with dagger thrusts. And then the lights blinked on and off,
in each frame of darkness he saw them flash closer, amorphous, red-tinted shadows.

And then the lights were out and they engulfed him.
Madness reached its zenith; his thoughts were
a scatter-storm of dissonance– a mindscream.
He was being devoured by the Quiet Ones.

He was one of them forever, now.