Bitcoin Dream Theatre
an unraveling — in the ghost-light of a phantom ledger
Neocities artifact · DIY ruincore
Phantom in the wings taught me the chorus of 'Buy' — his mask a ledger, his whispers: 'HODL, HODL, HODL.' I threw my ashtray savings, my last guitar string, into a velvet mouth that promisingly ate sound and issued receipts.
The dream's ticker hung like a chandelier— tick, LED, little hearts collapse. My landlord came in the second act wearing a mask of unpaid notices. I tried to pay him with the applause; it came back as static. The phantom auctioned off my name, sold it as a token, it minted and faded.
In the foyer there were posters: 'Invest to see an eternal curtain call.' In the back room a projector looped the same fortune like a migraine. I pawned a lyric, a photograph of my mother, a pick I used on happier strings. The blockchain swallowed the offerings, burped a receipt and asked for fees.
Now my pockets echo like wind pipes under the stage; the ticket booth is empty. A mask hangs in the lobby, smiling with teeth that tally numbers. I take the last coin, a sliver, I press it to the mouth of a vending machine that sells 'future.' The machine coughs: 'Transaction pending' — and my rent is a ghost that keeps on walking.
If you ask me for the secret I'll hand you the keys to an empty vestibule: buy spectacle, buy mask, buy idea — but not the table you sleep on. I loved the phantom's voice; I learned its melody by default. Now I hum the currency and wake to the landlord knocking on the same old familiar wood.
— an ode to empty pockets, to the theatre that promised infinite returns and paid me in atmosphere. Signed in the margins, with a pen that had no ink: the dream is a ledger of lost afternoons.
