The Mortal Burden
Book I


The Mortal Burden
Book I
Chapter III
The Mortal Burden – Part XIII: Zombie or Zombi?
The Mortal Burden – Part XIV: “I Can’t Take You Anywhere!”
The Mortal Burden – Part XIV: The Third Coast
The Mortal Burden – Part XV: Infinity as My Witness
The Mortal Burden – Part XVI: The 4th Wall
The Mortal Burden – Part XVII: Eternity Is a Concept



The Mortal Burden
Book I
Chapter III
The Mortal Burden – Part XIII: Zombie or Zombi?
The Mortal Burden – Part XIV: “I Can’t Take You Anywhere!”


The Mortal Burden
Book I
Chapter II
The Mortal Burden – Part VII: Remember
The Mortal Burden – Part VIII: Gods of One
The Mortal Burden – Part IX: Cold Heat
The Mortal Burden – Part X: A World to Die On
The Mortal Burden – Part XI: Boundaries Into the Deep
The Mortal Burden – Part XII: The Singular I


The Mortal Burden
Book I
Chapter II
The Mortal Burden – Part VII: Remember
The Mortal Burden – Part VIII: Gods of One
The Mortal Burden – Part IX: Cold Heat
The Mortal Burden – Part X: A World to Die On
The Mortal Burden – Part XI: Boundaries Into the Deep


The Mortal Burden
Book I
Chapter II
The Mortal Burden – Part VII: Remember
The Mortal Burden – Part VIII: Gods of One
The Mortal Burden – Part IX: Cold Heat
The Mortal Burden – Part X: A World to Die On


The Mortal Burden
Book I
Chapter II
The Mortal Burden – Part VII: Remember
The Mortal Burden – Part VIII: Gods of One
The Mortal Burden – Part IX: Cold Heat


The Mortal Burden
Book I
Chapter II
The Mortal Burden – Part VII: Remember
The Mortal Burden – Part VIII: Gods of One




When every song has has been sang, when all rhythm becomes one,
when the melodies have gone flat,
Each and every cord has been played and the strings have all been strung
When all configurations of all music depleted
the choir’s harmony lost
When all the bright golden angels of our nature have rusted and dimmed
And all and every demon bled thin
When all the lyrics have been written and every word sang
When all of the combinations of music
of all the world’s, of all of the people,
of all the universes, of every string, of all reality,
of all time
Have been strummed
The metronome will stop
when the last song
Is finally sung
It’s the time, when all things, and all time, all of everything everywhere it’s the end of all things, it has finally come

©️ Jacob Pickard.2026.

The Mortal Burden
Book I
Chapter I
The Mortal Burden Part I: Specicide Blues
The Mortal Burden Part II: This Mortal Burden
The Mortal Burden Part III: Blood Furnace

The Mortal Burden – Part IV: Six feet of razor-toothed bloody destruction

The Mortal Burden
Book I
Chapter I
The Mortal Burden Part I: Specicide Blues
The Mortal Burden Part II: This Mortal Burden



The Mortal Burden
Book I
Chapter I
I decided to serialize my novel. Chapters are just two big for this media type.


Sleep Paralysis
Had lots of it in my 20s and 30s..I still have them, but they are not as acute as when I used to sleep on my back. I’m conscious, while my brain locks down my physical reactions so I can not move. The opposite of night terrors & Sleep walking.
A wall of fear has kept me from the abyss of eternal sleep.
This wall feeds upon my soul; it hungers for my nightmares, a half-delusional matrix caught betwixt consciousness and the domain of vivid alien visions.
Somewhere in this realm lurks a terrible shadow of my reality. A grotesque mocking of the material plane. It teases and prods me, offering unknown vistas of experience and mind. A quest through the immense expanse of the universe, beyond the normal view of existence, to places where only the mind can enter.
The shadow mocks me with these alien expanses of thought and space; it forces me back with a wall of my own fears. This fear, my loathing, and the inability to take that final step, cross that narrow line that will force me over sanity’s edge—an edge I know I can never come back from.
Yet, I crave the genius of insanity, that foresight of the unkown senses, reaching farther beyond the greatest minds, to have insight into the depth of the soul, to know the mad creator of the universe, to be one with omnipotent existence!

©️ Jacob Pickard 2026.

Precognition
Active since childhood
Rare now but more vivid and I remember more had this vivid dream in mid ~2004
Tsunami Wave hitting on the ocean archetype/city with cloned humans from mainland.
Dead people’s bodies together touching trapped in a purgatory (French women and family, Americans, Asian, etc….) Same dream, etc… Can not get out.
People who die and face death again are freed.
People who will not accept keep on being trapped.
People who figure out their situation are even more screwed because they will not accept anything as real. Although they soon are able to figure out differences between real and fake situations.
These people are helped by aliens/angels, etc… as guides to try to help them out of the situation?
French woman’s husband (with another soul) brought back (he was human) to their house on the shore high atop a cliff. The human who could not accept his death/fate was alive (for real) this time, but the caveat.
Wife and children still dead, other dead people can now come back and haunt the man who came alive again and his living life is now part of their purgatory life.
You can not escape death, death follows you?

©️ Jacob Pickard. 2025. Written ~ 2004.
“And when it’s all too late
You won’t see me“

The opposition
Carcinogenic sweat that hides
The persecution
These hidden walls keep us aligned
Yeah, they keep us in line
Fourteen hours more
Covert tonight
The operation
A covert plan to get outside
The consecration
An archetype of a will that shines
Shining alive
Will you die or can we keep you alive?
When there is a machine gun on every corner
You won’t see me
When your every move is monitored
You won’t see me
When there is a federal eye in every household
You won’t see me
And when it’s all too late
You won’t see me
Ten A.M. · Snapcase
End Transmission
℗ 2002 Craft Recordings., Distributed by Concord.


Energy
Given freely
Is as breathing
For me
Understanding
Until now, ive had so much of it
But, frankly
I
Am
Utterly
Exhausted
I
Speak Truth
I
Endless hope
I
Set
Boundries
I
Don’t give up
……Why do I feel guilty?

Truth
I
am
prey
Human predators smell empathy
As
Sharks smell blood in the water
Allowing myself to be used
without equal reciprocity
Used
Endless cycle(s) of neglect
Affection to weapon
Sex to Weapon
Shrunk as weapon
Tool of endless emotional grounding
Control
Power
Stability
Comfort

I
Am
Tired
…….So very very tired
And I’m afraid
I
Have
Changed
I
Am
Broken
Victim
Survivor
Pariah

Empathy is a curse
©️ Jacob Pickard. 2026.
I am Pariah
A life devoid of touch, love, passion, a pillar of rough-hewn granite, to make other’s lives more comfortable so they don’t have to feel guilt. A mirrored avatar to reflect what they want to see; taking responsibility for the cowardly acts of their Phantoms.
Selfish Ideological Narcissists, making victims that exist in the interstitial spaces, Acceptable losses in the war.
A living taboo, stigmatized, no one wants to touch this flesh, it is taboo made real.
Aged masculinty shattered into dull edges, ego ripped out, longtime ideological identity destroyed; the devouring mother’s hunger satiated.
I no longer want to try to identify with anyone, as anyone, or with any group. All are phantoms.
The gulf is now infinite. Not your spaces in-between, because nothing exists on either side.
Playing my part in the background, while the Phantoms roleplay; it’s the curse of total detached awareness & empathy. Pain hidden in the shadows, invisible to all.

Pariah is my rightful place, I am the sacrificial king: I will let this demon eat my soul.
……and I will REVEL in the consumption
One with the Pariah that haunts the
interstitial spaces
the Pariah that whispers to the
phantoms in your nightmares
©️ Jacob A. Pickard. 2025. Originally
published on SubStack.

I’m stronger than you’ll ever be
Because, to endure and have your sanity, to make it so long, a clearly defined character, rock hard in its clarity
I am strength
hidden in the hot exhale of your breath
only seen in the cold void
when there is nothing left
©️ Jacob Pickard. 2025.
Things have changed.

Time vigor pride beaten down by the club of life.
Resurrection?
Not while we’re alive.
©️ Jacob Pickard. 2025. Written ~ 2010.

I have no white whale to consume my soul, I am that white whale. Born a beast a monster: failures, oppression, hurt, murder, rape, death, genocide, femicide, and even your internal misery. I am your enemy i am your monster.
qualities you possess, your biological virtuous signaling superiority; a kingdom built of rage safe space for authority
victimhood aggreivment gives you power, self righteous-justification, superior unquestioned objectification
of me, the white whale
pluck out my eyes, spear my flesh, spill my blood, sickle my fat, bind my girth, blind me with your spit, hell hath no fury like your scorn upon me, i am your monster, your beast, a sacrifice for the goddess your ruler above, penetrate me, rape me, a mangled object your conquest that was born guilty

Yes be Ahab, understand
While lashed on your shattered ship
Sinking into the ocean abyss
”Damning yourself was a choice, you created your end by decision, your agency was your own.”
“Never understanding the nature of revenge while you let me consume your soul, do you understand you never were free, as long as all your thoughts were always centered on me.”
I, the white whale swims free, I will forever, be the last thing your living eyes ever shall see

©️ Jacob Pickard. 2025.

Each of us is a temple of ego: a beacon to the uncaring universe, that has no value for organic, the growth, over the membrane of existance.
What? You think that you are the pinnacle of creation (or evolution for the atheists)
How precious?
We, you, us, an abberation in the universal plan. We know existence is a curse. The Increased organization & order brings suffering, losers in an extistance that will disappear, we are nothing.
Fighting against the entropy of bliss, we are the chaos in a reality evolving into absolute nothing, perfection.
I write this to make us small? Is this an excerise to crush your ego? Or to test it?
Does it matter?

©️ Jacob Pickard. 2026