Them,

I’ve experienced a lot of darkness in my life and sometimes the smallest things people do or say can make more of a difference than they will ever know, 

I used to go to Sheetz in Trucksville many times a week,

I no longer go there because during the past summer some of the employees there started to make fun of me and mess with me and that’s bad business as it makes everything worse for everyone, 

but for the longest time,

before a lot of the strange things started happening,

again,

there was an employee there whom I only knew as Dave The Cashier,

every time I would go into that store to buy anything I would always make sure to tell whoever was working to have a good day after I would finish checking out and eventually I started just saying have a good one, 

because whether it is day or night it can be made good,

when Dave The Cashier was working he would always say ‘No matter what’ in response and that always made my day or night, 

sometimes he would be the one to say have a good one and I would say ‘No matter what’ back and when I would he would say ‘now you’re getting it’, 

its cool to have things that you do or things that you say or things that you wear that are just because it’s your thing, 

when I started teaching as a substitute I found that it was the most effective and efficient strategy to have a sort of routine that you do to make things feel the same every time you do them and to get the students to hear something every time that they could think about and help them better themselves,

make everyone better,

one of the most important things in any kind of routine like that is your opening and your closure, 

from saying the same thing every time I began to obsess over it and made sure that I selected each word carefully, 

I open every lesson,

every class with ‘Ok everyone’ because ‘Ok’ was one of the last things I said to my friend Robbie Nardone when he told me to promise him to never give up on my dreams before I would later discover that he had taken his own life, 

people have said differently since then but I trust in what I know and feel, 

There are not many people that I trust,

maybe to some they didn’t and even that is real somewhere,

and I chose ‘everyone’ because that promise applies to everyone,

when you teach a class and you are in the front of the room facing everyone, 

that is everyone,

I close with ‘everyone have a good one’ for much of the same reason why I started to say that to Dave The Cashier at Sheetz,

day or night it is made good and it is up to everyone to make it good,

that is good,

I know that titles relating to job positions are important from working in different schools,

different buildings,

and being forced to create my own pass to sign for students when they would leave to go anywhere to create consistency where there was none, 

I ended up selecting the word employee for who could sign The Pass because I felt that would be the best all encompassing term,

as well as the title ‘The Pass’ itself because with that you could go through the lunch room,

The cafeteria, 

as well,

that anyone employed by the school could sign The Pass even if they weren’t employed as a teacher at the time,

I don’t know if referring to Dave The Cashier as The Cashier is offensive or in opposition to what Sheetz as a company refers to their employees because the employees I talked to probably were messing with me when I asked them about it because they made fun of me and messed with me before, 

even if it was in nondirect or proveable ways, 

it is not meant to be offensive,

it is just what I knew him as, 

I wanted to show people that you wouldn’t need to worry about doing or having things that are your things when you’re out and about at a store or wherever else because people wouldn’t actually mess with you just to mess with you, 

I was wrong, 

there are even other worse things happening that occur in every group large or small, 

Many groups,

but every time I heard Dave The Cashier say ‘No matter what’ in response to ‘Have a good one’ it created light in an otherwise dark day or night and made it good, 

when I was running the back mountain trail during some of the darkest periods of my life,

 the trail where one of my favorite places is the bridge overlooking the waterfall, 

the same bridge where I would hear a voice in the deep reaches of my subconscious either of my own or from a darker spiritual origin say that I should take a rope and hang myself off of it, 

I would often see a person riding a bike with a radio on it playing music who had either a natural afro that was colored rainbow or a rainbow afro wig that they wore, 

every time I would see them ride by I would forget about the dark dream I was creating and smile because of the light they had created for me, 

For everyone,

they always looked genuinely happy, 

felt genuinely happy as they rode by,

I feel the emotions of others strongly, 

after a while I stopped seeing that person ride by and often wonder what happened to them,

what happened to them and people like Dave The Cashier, 

things like that make a difference, 

Whenever I see a rainbow I know that it means ‘Never again’ because I will never again feel the hopelessness that I felt,

that I feel when the dream becomes that dark, 

sometimes something can become so dark that it shines its own kind of light, 

I don’t know if they are alive or if they still have the things that are theirs but I do know that it is good to have things, 

it is good to have things,  

I am in the stand, 

it is night, 

I am more than one level up on the mountain from the road and the only source of light,

yet I can still see everything around me clearly, 

I can still feel everything around me, 

it is 2020 or just before or after, 

time has a way of fading when you are on your own, 

even if it is just mentally, 

it is before the time I had to leave my home when everyone was sick and the trees exploded in the darkness from the rapidness of the cold as I burned two large candles in the shack that rests on the same level as the source of light just to stay warm,

sleeping in a room filled with smoke because that would be a better way to go than freezing alone,

Then waking a few hours later to open the door and wanting to breathe after dreaming of someone tell others of the time I may have faded away entirely and became the blue star,

before that,

but still everyone around me was sick in an otherwise difficult to describe way, 

Hard to place in my mind,

One-Moment,

I had to get away,

I had to leave, 

I needed to be alone, 

Solitude, 

subconsciously may have avoided staying in The Jeep with the engine on and the heat on full blow because of the need to conserve gas in case still farther away I needed to go and at the time unknown that a cracked exhaust manifold was venting carbon monoxide directly into the cabin as the mechanic I had to go to would let me know later on, 

I abandoned my technology that I knew I couldn’t fully control as vulnerabilities were exploited by groups or people unknown that caused my technology to do things damaging to my physicality and psyche that I could perceive as happening but not understand enough to explain in ways that the people I had around would be able to understand if I could even attempt to explain to them the situation at hand because of my distrust of them after discovering the invasions of privacy that they influenced and took part in as a way to control my beliefs and actions to better coincide with their own,

there I am in the stand in the hours between one day and the next somewhere in the middle of the night with darkness all around yet still able to see as though a glowing radiance extended from my chest and reflected off the trees and brush, 

I have a weapon in hand but hunting for something I am not,

for the first time in a long time I feel as though myself as I feel and see the glow of animals large and small that move throughout the brush, 

along with them I see lights that move along what I had known as game trails, 

orbs that glowed and moved with intention this way and that like the traffic of cars on streets elsewhere in town, 

yet clearly different from the reflection cast by the eyes of animals that I had known from walking the trails in the early morning on hunting days on my way up to the stand, 

these seemed different and had a feeling to them too and reminded me of when I had watched the lights dance in a room at school years ago but those lights had no feeling to them and moved like a show, 

the only technology I had was an iPod with the screen off and locked,

eventually many of the lights movement stopped and disappeared, 

what I was feeling from them went away as well,

the glow that radiated from my chest into the woods began to feel as though it was being pushed, 

inward I felt something pushing against my sight and the visible distance around me began to shrink, 

I felt something else,

there is something in the darkness, 

something I felt as evil,

something that I knew to be there, 

slowly it enclosed and my weapon wouldn’t be able to save me, 

I felt my memories start to fade and falter, 

like another time when in the safety of a dorm during a trip likewise poorly planned I had experienced the complete loss of memory that at the time I had equated to the self left me with the realization that even in memory without I was still me yet this time feeling something else being drained that is difficult to explain in other ways than the feeling of life itself,

something in the darkness, 

something that is there, 

I put in my headphones one in each ear, 

the playlist I made, 

when I was running the trail, 

the feeling I felt fighting back against a similar darkness back then,

One-Moment, 

I turned the screen back off and put the iPod close to my chest inside my clothes to keep warm and to keep it alive, 

I sang the songs inside my mind and out, 

with each lyric and tone I felt and saw my light fight back, 

the darkness around me,

I pushed back,

something in the darkness, 

I remembered games and stories that described things in similar ways and the ways those characters learned to fight back,

One-Moment, 

I’m still here, 

eventually through the trees, 

another light met mine,

with dawn came a new feeling of relief,

temporary I understood,

something is in the darkness, 

I knew I had to leave, 

I had to build something,

the light from a fire’s flame can bring other dangers that wonder in from the dark and the smoke and smell can alert worse yet,

especially without the tools to face what is in the dark, 

I am, 

We are, 

-Lucid