I sat back in tears as I added the math up in my mind. 25,000 gallons at five times a day…that’s 125,000 gallons everyday! I looked down at my cell phone for what date it was…this was day THIRTY!  I turned off the television set. And I walked over to my dog’s urn. Standing still, shining bright, Maximus: Born October 1993 died April 2009. I shed a tear for a long lost friend. As I opened the door to walk outside I am baffled that my house sat at the end of a long forgotten beach and not in the city. The sun casting a light on the shining sparkling ocean water and I hear its waves splashing against the rocks nearby. The sound is so soothing it makes hairs raised on the back of my neck. The sand was as white as snow and I noticed how my feet would sink into the pit of sand and the tiny cold rocks felt good against my skin. I hear a bark coming from a distance. Tears instantly fill my eyes as then a shadowy figure emerges. I can hear a bark and the silhouette turns into the form of my former dog. “Maximums? Max…is that you?” I ask in disbelief. It could not be. I knew I was not dreaming, but in front of my eyes my dog jumped up and tackled me. The lovely act brought back memories of the past and I felt like a ten-year-old boy again! Max took off in the opposite direction running as fast as he could. He was flying like an angel now. As I stand up to chase after him screaming his name. I noticed something that to this day I wished I had not given attention to. It awakened me to something far more terrifying, something far more real. With each step I took, as my foot laid on the surface of the white sand, my foot would sink down into something…wet. Noticing something had changed I looked down and pulled up my leg from the sinking sand. To my shock it was covered by a black liquid dripping from my toes, dripping back down into the dark sunken hole of a beach that was now surrounded with darkness itself. I looked at the ground and noticed that the beach was soaked in oil. I called out the name of my dog…something was wrong. “MAX!” as he comes walking back, I notices his limp and slow painful walk with a look of agony in his face. He collapses at my ankles. Dying…I stared into his wide open eyes, his dark black eyes, and he is now lying still…dead and covered in black oil. I am alone. I am dead and alone, surrounded by a black ocean, an ocean of oil. Greed would splash as waves formed on the horizon of a toxic sky. Black clouds hover by, thunder creates more death and drips of acid rains down on me! The sounds of oil splashing against the rocks now make me want to vomit.

 I sunk my head into the abyss of an oil filled sandpit. Shamed by our own humanity, we sink. The beach swallowed my body but could not contain my soul. As I open my eyes to a lucid reality…I realize that my nightmare was only the beginning.

Copyright © 2010 by Joshua James McCollum

This is a physiological journey through the complex psyche of a man who’s only known name was Damian Michael Turner. Being labeled as a paranoid schizophrenic, he was told that he had chronic delusional tendencies. At a young age he is placed under the care of a psychotic psychiatrist who sadistically guides young Damian down a hypnotic path of horrific self-destructive behavior! This is a story about a growing addiction to ones own self-destructive mind. It is a story about insanity.

The year is 2020. A building explodes. Thousands of innocents perish in its great terror of destruction! Utopia has successfully designed a psychological operation on the current generation of lunacy. By using the new Thinkbox technology, tracking and constant surveillance is not only possible but is currently being conducted on the public. Not by some outside voyeur, but rather from within. This is a story of consequence verses coincidence. They depend on the Thinkbox to survive. The media manipulates the thoughts of all men that willing becomes dependent on technology.

Is Damian’s obsession in this compulsive behavior the consequence of a mental disorder? The generations of internet dwellers are consciously aware that they are exhibiting irrational behavior for public consumption. They have designed us to spy on our friends and neighbors.

They have designed us to spy on ourselves.

Copyright © 2010 JJ McCollum’s A Lucid Consciousness