An excerpt from "Shadowland", a short story of mine. A place and time where words / symbols are used as secret weapons of coercion.

What does the mind want kept secret? Perched on the bedside I suck in a new batch of nicotine. It’s 3:47 am. How contaminated is my mind? Have nanobots invaded and await a new day’s instructions from tagged language symbols? Am I aware, can my attitude fend off artificial outside coercive instructions? Which layer of reality do I inhabit? How far off be the surface, that area where language filtering gills are not necessary, a place in which Shadow Land is not? An existence without tool text, symbol, or spoken word. A place of rising mist, calm waters, and silent figures circled round a warm mesmerizing light, a light casting no shadow. A keystroke or child’s lullaby appears fragile in the face of the sword. Not so within Shadow Land. Like whirling gyroscopes of consciousness five and a half billion internal dialog balance humanity on a spinning planet in circular orbit within galactic rotation, an unceasing collective dialog capable of adding or subtracting words of weight consciously and unconsciously. Languages and dialects disappear in the tens each year, replaced with verbal homogeneity inspired through technologies or social integration. Isolated creative ideas must grab hold and assimilate themselves amongst the collective world thought process gyroscope. Centralized homogeneous language dilutes creativeness. Later that day I park my car next to the local city park. And watch. Cars and trucks zoom to and fro between signs and stores and trees…all beneath blue haze. Something snaps in my mind. The buildings and water tower become coral beds. The trees are now sea grass and kelp. The sky is rapturous blue ocean above. Compact cars are small quick striped fish darting about. Larger sedans and pick-up trucks become small size predators searching the reef for prey. Eighteen wheelers racing by on the hi-way are tuna with a mission to somewhere else. And then something new appears. A shark disguised as a sheriff’s patrol car comes cruising into the area, slow and purposeful. Between the coral pillars it glides…long, ghostly, menacing. Others among the reef keep watchful eye. The shark disappears for several minutes, then reappears as it stalks for unwary prey. Another appears. And the two quietly prowl the bottom, their hollow eyes hiding purposeful intentions. Then they’re gone as quietly as they arrived. The fish begin to relax and dart about once more as the reef lives on as it has for many, many years in sublime solitude beneath blue waves, a sort of muffled endless dream somewhere in Shadow Land. I sip a lemonade and smoke. The small town bothers me. Many buildings vacant and in disrepair. I know very few inhabitants. Desolation. Do they feel it? Something once alive yet breathes and struggles to regain its balance. A zombie. Yes, that’s it. Limbs move. Discolored rank skin. A hint of something once was, like scents of day-old barbecue pit, bits of charred tin foil, a few flies and ants. With blood stained lips and hands it stumbles. It remembers something as its hungry belly gurgles and belches. It remembers eating. But what? The zombie falls to the pavement. It looks. Only one leg. Now it remembers. Familiar words ricochet from lobe to lobe inside its skull. Words it holds true---pop machine, self service, television, consolidation, strip mall, freeway, amusement park, Wal-Mart, cell phone, apps, televangelist, eat pussy. All the good pussy left along with small town life. So why not feed on itself. The zombie is but a shell of once was, all those soothing enigmatic words reverberate within empty echo chamber. Benign words. Or so it thinks. Words with promise and expectation. Words as gifts…from Shadow Land. Zombie Town wonders where all the good pussy went. It wonders if the fat Mexican with big tits and tight shorts will be enough. It wonders what aisle will host the next red-light special. It wonders if its sons and daughters will text home tonight from far away places. It doesn’t wonder about much else. Not even catchy words like “rhetoric”. Time for another leg.