when everyone you have ever loved is finally gone  when everything you have ever wanted is finally done with  when all of your nightmares are for a time obscured  as by a shining brainless beacon  or a blinding eclipse of the many terrible shapes of this world  when you are calm and joyful  and finally entirely alone  then in a great new darkness  you will finally execute your special plan    one needs to have a plan someone said who was turned away into the shadows  and who i had believed was sleeping or dead  imagine he said all the flesh that is eaten  the teeth tearing into it  the tongue tasting its savor  and the hunger for that taste  now take away that flesh he said  take away the teeth and the tongue  the taste and the hunger  take away everything as it is  that was my plan  my own special plan for this world  i listened to these words and yet i did not wonder  if this creature whom i had thought sleeping or dead would ever approach his vision  even in his deepest dreams  or his most lasting death  because i had heard of such plans such visions  and i knew they did not see far enough  but what was demanded in a way of a plan  needed to go beyond tongue and teeth and hunger and flesh  beyond the bones and the very dust of bones and the wind that would come to blow the dust away  and so i began to envision a darkness that was long before the dark of night  and a strangely shining light  that owed nothing to the light of day    that day may seem like other days  once more we feel the tiny legged trepidations  once more we are mangled by a great grinding fear  but that day will have no others after  no more worlds like this will follow  because i have a plan  a very special plan  no more worlds like this  no more days like that    there are but four ways to die a sardonic spirit might have said to me  there is dying that occurs relatively suddenly  there is dying that occurs relatively gradually  there is dying that occurs relatively painlessly  there is the death that is full of pain  thus by various means they are combined  the sudden and the gradual  the painless and the painful  to yield but four ways to die  and there are no others  even after the voice stopped speaking  I listened for it to speak again  after hours and day and years have passed  I listened for some further words  yet all I heard were the faintest echoes reminding me  there are no others  there are no others  was it then that I began to conceive for this world  a special plan?    there are no means for escaping this world  it penetrates even into your sleep  and is his substance  you are caught in your own dreaming  where there is no space  and a hell forever where there is no time  you cant do nothing you aren't told to do  there is no hope for escape from this dream  that was never yours  the very words you speak are only its very words  and you talk like a traitor  under its incessant torture    there are many who have designs upon this world   and dream of wild and vast reformations  i have heard them talking in their sleep  of elegant mutations  and cunning annihilations  i have heard them whispering in the corners of crooked houses  and in the alleys and narrow back streets of this crooked creaking universe  which they with their new designs were made straight and sound  but each of these new and ill conceived designs  is deranged in its heart  for they see this world as if it were alone and original  and not as only one of count with others  whose nightmares all precede  like a hideous garden grown from a single seed  i have heard these dreamers talking in their sleep  and i stand waiting for them   as at the top of a darkened flight of stairs  they know nothing of me  and none of the secrets of my special plan  while i know every crooked creaking step of theirs    it was the voice of someone who was waiting in the shadows  who was looking at the moon and waiting for me to turn the corner  and enter a narrow street  and stand with him in the dull glaze of moonlight  then he said to me  he whispered  that my plan was misconceived  that my special plan for this world was a terrible mistake  because, he said, there is nothing to do and there is no where to go  there is nothing to be and there is no one to know  your plan is a mistake, he repeated  this world is a mistake, i replied    the children always followed him  when they saw him hopping by  a funny walk  a funny man  a funny funny funny man  he made them laugh sometimes  he made them laugh oh yes he did  he did he did he did he did  oh how he made them roll  one day he took them to a place   he knew a special place  and told them things about this world  this funny funny funny world  which made them laugh sometimes  he made them laugh oh yes he did  he did he did he did he did  oh how he made them roll  then the funny man who made them laugh  sometimes he did  revealed to them his special plan  his very special funny plan  knowing they would understand  and maybe laugh sometimes  he made them laugh  oh yes he did  he did he did he did he did  their eyes grew wide beneath there lids  and how he made them roll    i first learned the facts from a lunatic  in a dark and quiet room that smelled of stale time and space  there are no people  nothing at all like that  the human phenomenon is but the sum of densely coiled layers of illusion  each of which winds itself upon the supreme insanity  but there are persons of any kind  when all that can be is mindless mirrors  laughing and screaming as they parade about  in an endless dream  but when i asked the lunatic what it was  it swore itself within these mirrors  as they marched endlessly in stale time and space  he only looked and smiled  then he laughed and screamed  and in his black and empty eyes  i saw for a moment as in a mirror  a form the shade of divinity  in flight from its stale infinity  of time and space and the worst of all  of this world dreams  my special plan for the laughter  and the screams    we went to see some little show  that was staged in an old shed  past the edge of town  and in its beginnings all seemed well  the miniature curtain stage glowed in the darkness  while those dolls bounced along on their strings before our eyes  and in its beginnings all seemed well  but then there came a suttle turning point which some have noticed  and i was one   who quietly left the show  no i did not  because i could see where things were going  as the antics of those dolls grew strange  and the fragile strings grew taut  with their tiny pullings ,tiny limbs  the others around me became appalled  and turned away and abandoned the show  that was staged in an old shed  past the edge of town  but i wanted to witness what could never be  i wanted to see what could not be seen  but the moment of consummate disaster  my puppets turned to face the puppet master    it was twilight and i stood in a grayish haze of the vast empty building  when the silence was enriched by a reverberant voice  all the things of this world it said  are of but one essence  for which there are no words  this is the greater part which has no beginning or end  and the one essence of this world for which there can be no words  is that all the things of this world  this is the lesser part which had a beginning and shall have an end  and for which words were conceived solely to speak of  the tiny broken beings of this world it said  the beginnings and endings of this world it said  for which words were conceived solely to speak of  now remove these words and what remains it asks me  as i stood in the twilight of that vast empty building  but i did not answer  the question echoed over and over  but i remained silent until the echoes died  and as twilight passed into the evening i felt my  special plan for which there are no words  moving towards a greater darkness    there are some who have no voices  or none that will ever speak  because of the things they know about this world  and the things they feel about this world  because the thoughts that fill a brain  that is a damaged brain  because the pain that fills a body  that is a damaged body  exists in other worlds  countless other worlds  each of which stands alone in an infinite empty blackness  for which no words are being conceived  and where no voices are able to speak  when a brain is filled only with damaged thoughts  when a damaged body is filled only with pain  and stands alone in a world surrounded by infinite empty blackness  and exists in a world for which there is no special plan    when everyone you have ever loved is finally gone  when everything you have ever wanted is finally done with  when all of your nightmares are for a time obscured  as by a shining brainless beacon  or a blinding eclipse of the many terrible shapes of this world  when you are calm and joyful  and finally entirely alone  then in a great new darkness  you will finally execute your special plan