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Marlon may throw his bag as hard as he might. Marlon may run from the apartment to scream. Marlon may punch the person next to him as hard as he wants, then watch their nose explode in tiny rivlets of blood and oblivion. Marlon may stare into the mirror, at least for now.

A journey to Crapcago requires the heaviest of boots and the roughest sense of innocence- almost innocence unawares. No journey is ever made with just the destination in mind, but then what trip is ever made with a real sense of finality? By that sense, what dreams may come are not the yieldings of our journey?

In the second floor by some stop on the way, Marlon met Despair. A loathing creature self set by lockjaw clumped down upon his final meal. Stuck with that bittersweet succulence that was the last chosen meal and now the only taste he will have for the rest of his life.

Despair hefts up his dog, Ignorance, by the ears to display for Marlon. The dog, for her part, can’t divorce the perma-smile on her face. Her yap screams out welcomes to him in a voice hoarse of a happiness deserted long ago.

Despair draws on the joystick through the open hole in his throat; the ember glows golden, then Despair moves the joystick, carving the humid and hollow air into words.

-If I could put her away from her misery, I would. I don’t know which of us is more miserable. Neither I nor she want it; neither I nor she could leave. Here and now is all I have. There is no future. There is no past. Only the here exists for me.

And each night Despair uncoils the noose, and each night the noose goes round his head. Then every morning he wakes afresh to repeat the process.

Marlon takes this memory and all the fresh memories from today and puts them in his box in his living room. The grief, the frustration, the anger, the remorse, the guilt, the despair. He banishes them out of his head and into the box, only to reminisce over them for the briefest of pauses. The humiliation and self loathing that belong to each one of them wink out from underneath the lid. He lowers the cord, then, in and around them in thick circles. He entraps all the misery and debt each one is owed.

Then he shuts the lid; it is all over for the second.