We're chained.

If I had to stop counting, I'm certain it would mean forgetting how to
speak, because the two are very closely related, you know. Quite an
intricate duo. Language and mathematics, and then again, quite like
any other duo. Batman and Robin. Dumb and dumber. Mozart and Salieri.
Exactly the same.

The trick with numbers is that there's something else to go on,
something consistent and almost always certain. Like how it's almost
always certain that six comes after five, almost always, almost every
time. It may involve skipping a few steps, but usually, almost always,
almost every time, it works out that six comes after five, if you look
at it right way up instead of wrong way down. You seem to have a habit
of doing that, you know, looking at things the wrong way down. You
should count more often, it helps to remember the way things go.
You should speak more often, too. So meek and timid. You're like the
little blind mouse that got crushed into an unrecognizable carcas by
the farmer's wife just because he wanted to run up the clock. What's
the matter with you anyway? You see evil, you hear evil, you may as
well speak it because it irks the most rancidly normal of the lots, it
irks the most boringly average among the crowds. And I am anything
but. So it makes me quench the common courtesy for a fellow being and
rip your throat out with my teeth.

You know, you must keep counting or your heart will stop beating. We
all need something to go on, to keep our pulses going, to remind us to
breathe when we wake up and realize that, crap, this is the real
world. Well. I suppose we do. It's not entirely certain, see, not the
way numbers are. We're not always sure that after we dream we'll wake
up, or that after we wake up we will dream again. It's not even
certain some times which is which, which is better, which is worse,
which we'd rather last in or which we'd rather burn in.

A whole new world of self injury. Fire leaves a scar behind that
doesn't go red with blood, that doesn't sting with a sharp edge of a
blade. Fire is slow, sure, and in every possible way more
geometrically beautiful. Fire defies the algebra of skin, cuts through
the intricate matrices of one two three layers, four five six issues,
seven eight nine beautiful beautiful surfaces. Such a beautiful dance,
in a fire going through ten eleven twelve thirteen fourteen fifteen
layers of skin.

And then muscle.

And then bone.

And then, just a tiny taste of Hell.

To remind us to be good. To remind us to be faithful and pray. Be nice
to our neighbours and not have premarital sex. Worship is an essential
part of the cosmic countdown. We think we hurt, we think we know, we
think we're evil and then, nothing but Hell and it all kind of goes
out the window, kind of like the whole time we thought we'd been
counting, we'd been looking at numbers the wrong way down.

Well, at least we'll always have the freedom to speak.

Trail of blood...