Inside my stomach there are needles. Needles and screws and worms and glass and they all slither around and wring themselves through my intestines, slowly squeezing down. I can feel it. Every inch of it, like watching one of those snakes unhinge their jaws to swallow an egg whole. Squeezing and writhing and wriggling and squirming. And everytime I take a step I can feel the hammer pounding down, compressing and forcing the mass further down, ever slowly tearing its way out.
I have not eaten anything today. I don’t feel like it. If I ate I would probably just puke anyway because of how sick I feel. Punch me in the stomach, punch, punch. I laugh because it feels no different. Go ahead, punch away. Every time I exhale my head reels with a lurching dizziness as if I were drunk. Swimmy. I’m in water, I’m pulling my body through hot, sticky, humid air. Fuzzy warmth radiating into my skin, eating into my pores and rolling off of me like dew drops. The air is vichyssoise. The throbbing behind my eyes creates a wonderfully disorienting strobe effect to my already vertiginous display.
Looking down, my jelly legs seem to be moving by themselves, somewhat long, shuffling strides that say something like oh no I need to go to the bathroom or maybe oh no I feel sick or maybe just get me out of here. Are people looking at me? I stuff my hands into my pockets, forgetting that they’re so tiny I can barely fit my knuckles in. Grrr, look at me with my elbows sticking out and walking fast. I am a performance artist. No, probably just the piece itself. Let it speak for itself. Why try to analyze everything? This is my most spiritual piece, and no, I am not elaborating on that. Ants crawling out of my ears and a sticky sap oozing in honeyed drips. Is it sweet or is it bitter?
Step, step, step, step, one, two, three, one, two, three, one, two, three. Here I am walking down the sidewalk. My stomach feels like it is currently the storage unit of something heinously foul. Not in a gross way but in a reprehensible way. Like if say Oppenheimer was cooking up something good with Haber. Boom! A tungsten steel bowling ball in my stomach. It drags on the ground behind me. Is tungsten heavier than normal steel, or what even is it? Either way, razor wire, barbed wire, knotted around my stomach, which, inside, holds a bundle of sea urchins. I can feel the goop slosh around. Stinging needles crawl up my throat, burning my lungs.
Step, step, I keep going, step, step, step. I lift my head off the ground to try and look before me. I am trying to get home, I remember. I remember what I am doing. I am just on the way back from the store. Right on the corner. Yes, I grabbed a snack, or a drink, or a smoke, or something. I don’t remember. I am walking home.
Wait, I didn’t eat anything yet today. Did I? Or did I just have a snack? Either way my stomach pulls down to the center of the earth. Why? It pathetically moans. O, why do you sorrow me so? Shut up. Walking. Going home.
I keep moving. Looking around. Looking into windows. Staring into shops and apartments, feeling like I’m unzipping flies, pulling down underwear and just boring holes into naked flesh with my eyes. I can see everything, you know? Why do you keep your curtains open at night? Lights on, figures moving. Music playing. Maybe simmering onion wafting through the kitchen window. Next a man shoveling worms into his mouth with a tiny pitchfork, lips stained with the blood sauce. A little girl mashing crayons into the white tablecloth. I pass a group of ragged looking people, their smells getting vacuumed towards me, satellites that orbit out of disregard. Clenched fists in pockets. Somewhere, eyes looking for me, every searching for mine, but I keep them hidden. I cannot show them to people.
I continue my voyeur stroll. Is it? Are they just oblivious or do they keep them open on purpose? Watch it, creep! She says as she smiles, pulling down the shade, sticking a tongue out. I feel a laugh. Next I will see a couple intimately embraced. I will stand and ogle and without knowing I will press my face against the window, slobbering, drooling, like a dog about to get peanut butter. How long will I stand there? Excuse me? Are you ok? What are you doing? People tapping my shoulder.
But I just keep walking. I can’t look in the windows, that would be obscene. A breach of privacy. Regardless, I have my stomach to focus on. It feels so bad, doesn’t it? I know I am only a few blocks away from my apartment. I can see the building. Street lamps illuminate the entire area. But it’s hot. I feel heavier. I am so heavy. My legs are steel beams. Tungsten steel. Is that heavier? Rub, rub, rubbing against my toe is a piece of sandpaper. When did these shoes become uncomfortable? I can’t remember how long I’ve had them, nor if they’ve ever been comfortable. That girl was drawing a house I think.
Amble, ample amble ramble pamble down the road I go. To where o there o fare I go whichever shall I know. I know no rhyme could make such sense as a rippled rumbled fence, yet hither and thither I tither and slither, whence, thence, and hence! Shut up. Stupid. Shut the fuck up.
I check back in with my eyes to see how far I’ve made it. I’m a block away. Right? Something is definitely off today. I find myself getting lost much easier than usual. Have you ever tried to tell someone a story, but you just cannot stop making tangential tangents that tangentially refer to the tangential tangents tangents tangent tangent tangent tangent words words words words. You are reading, congratulations! Reading, you say? I do believe this is simply in my head, dear Watson. What could possibly make you think that my good ol buddy ol pal oh chap oh good heavens! By jove, would you look at the time! Thick tobacco smoke punches my nostrils. Hmmph! I have tarried and tallied far too long in this- shutupshutupshutup.
Step, one, two, three. Inhale, one, two, three, four. Exhale, one, two, three, four. I have lost track of my pace again. I find myself two blocks past my building. Turning around, I see it’s actually five. No, six? Anyway I’m at this intersection. I’m trying to cross the road but the sign says DO NOT WALK. There are no cars. It’s dark. If I step into the road I am surely to be run over. I can see my guts splattered all over the asphalt. The pavement. The road. The tarmac. Tyres. Park your car in the drive. Funny, that. Bones, crunch crunch crunching, somehow my ears still hear hear hearing, and my eyes see see seeing. When you die you lose all bowel control right? My luck I’m smeared like a meat crayon on the pavement but worse than the blood is I shit and piss myself and everyone laughs at my juices rubbed into the ground. I can still hear them laughing. Then the sun comes out and it gets so hot. O it gets so hot, my sludge starts to sizzle and frizzle and bizzle buzzle, bubbling on the pavement, fried eggs on Sunday morning. Two, squishy please. Two toast, and bacon please. No milk, my bones are powder on the pavement. My bones creak eek eek eek as I step. My knee pops and I am walking.
Maybe I wasn’t at the store? Where had I gone? The world is spinning still. I remember again. I feel an absence of something in my back pocket. There used to be something there. What was there? If you can’t remember what was there then your yolk will surely break, my dear. Have I crossed the street yet?
The sign turns to the little white man. I thought it had words before, but I obediently walk out into the road even if I see two floating orbs of knowledge come beaming towards me. The smell of exhaust punching right where my nasal cavity seems to touch my brain. Like the nail setter things. I don’t even know what they’re called. You know, the little rod things you hammer the head of an already-hammered nail? If I was a nail I’d be the one that you bent on the second hit, but just kept whacking anyway. Eventually you get too far and you realize you have to pull the nail out, but it’s stuck. Then maybe you hit your finger. Bruises. Purple. One time I dropped a brick on my finger when I was a kid and shut up shut up.
There is actually a car in front of me. I can’t remember when it showed up. I also realize I’m wearing headphones. It’s dark. I can’t hear anything. There’s no noise coming from them. I would like to listen to music but I’m too focused on imagining I can hear the whispers of someone or something crouched in the nearest alley. Look, that’s a fresh piece there, look at this catch. Tear me up. Devour me. Eat me with your eyes. I am vulnerable. I feel like I’m lost in the grocery store. I have been down every single aisle, twice now, and I still cannot find my mama. Please somebody, find my mama.
There is actually a car in front of me. On the other side of the street. I see this as I begin to cross. I step out. One small step for man, one big step for mankind, or whatever Fuzz Legstrong said when he was the first person to jerk off on Mars. Hooray! Humanity is saved, isn’t it great Billy? We live in our very own fabricated biosphere where the very air we breathe is synthesized to slowly poison you every time you inhale! Good luck holding your breath! The car is on, that’s the exhaust progenitor. Ancient, primordial flame is the muffle-steam. Breathe in its holy intoxicant. Hail the metal of this structure.
Car is on, but lights off. Dim lights inside. I just keep walking. My stomach is really now stretching itself. Like a cat when it gets up from a nap, mrkgnao! Joycean cheshire smiles and then violently scratches, tearing into the body like a cartoon pirate knifing his way down the mainsail. Dirty landlubber! I’m getting the sea-sillies for sure. Some people just can’t hack it, they say. I can’t, never could, never will.
I’m too close to the car now. I have to go this direction to get home. For some reason this is the only possible route. I have passed hundreds of thousands of cars in my life, a percentage of those at night. Statistically speaking, this isn’t good or bad. Myers sitting up in my backseat, choking me from behind. My pathetically sensual moans escaping with my last breath. Please, audience, dear audience, save me! Autonomous, onwards my legs purge. Wait, hadn’t I heard the door open and close? Maybe my feet scuffing the pavement. It’s always interesting to look at shoes, specifically the bottom. That movie says you can tell a lot about someone from their shoes, but what does that mean about where it’s worn on the bottom? Or was that what they meant? You can at least determine someone’s walking pattern, their gait. I wonder if a recovered shoe or boot has been forensically analyzed in this process to determine the wearer, wearee, if you will. I will, thank you! Why, you are of the most welcome my good sir/madam.
Darting eyes play pong across my vision. Shadows are everywhere, one has been following me for the last eighteen blocks, one has just always been there. One moves in closer. Eighteen blocks? I can see my building, up ahead. The car is directly to my right, a perfect ninety degree angle. Sneakily sneaky sneaking in comes a looming loomer. Leering its presence in my direction. Eee eee eee eee goes a little buzzer in my warehouse. It’s a little red light, near the ceiling. The kind that has those two bulbs in it that spin whir whir whir and the alarm goes err err err and the room strobes red and you say everyone panic. I focus my gaze towards the car. I had heard the door open and close, its tail lights are on. This glues my feet into the tar. They must’ve just paved here, I missed the sign. I’m slowly being eaten by the asphalt. Like a swampiverous tarpit I ooze into obliviating nothingness. Eegling and ooking my very last ickle wickle until I can no longer, no more. Icy water courses through me. There was definitely something moving towards me, it wasn’t just a weird spot or a trick of the eye. Coming from the car, I could tell that there is a shape moving towards me. Towards. Once I met a stupid girl who thought it was torwards. Like forwards. Torwards.
I can see it now, it all happens so fast. One moment I’m walking along, ready to get home, just an oblivious girl who sees nothing but joy and love dee dedede dee doo dododo doo. Bunnies and rainbows and four leaf clovers and I had some cereal with my sugar this morning it made me vomit rainbows. Then the next moment I’m gone. I’ve been quickly acquainted with a metal bat, no, a crowbar, teeth side. Or whatever it’s called. Wham, right into my skull. It produces a juicy sucking sound, how wonderful. Black ichor streaking down my face and body, melting through my clothing, warm threads trickling down. I can feel I’ve accidentally pissed myself. Never relieve yourself in a dream. My knees buckle and instantly I fall to the ground, but before I hit the pavement I’m skewed away by strong, greasy arms that roughly handle my body and force me into the open trunk of the car. Strained grunting, hoarse and foul on my neck. Cigarettes. Marlboros, mentholated. Cheap, the kind bums smoke. Why can I still see everything? My little foot is sticking out over the side, please don’t close the door yet. The interior is old, a water-stained gray color that looks like the fabled clear skies of London. Down slams the trunk door like a guillotine on my ankle. The feeling of suddenly snapping through an ice cube when you bite down. Intense and concentrated, then gone. I always told you that dirty town wasn’t safe, I hear someone chiding into my right ear, laughing at me. Now look at what you’ve gone and done, you just had to let it happen to you! I realize I don’t feel anything in my head yet. Why can I still see everything? I’m smothered with the smell and taste of metal and mold. Moldy moldering molds molding my brain. Brain mold. We are become one. Join us.
That’s if the shape wanted to hurt me. Maybe I wanted to hurt the shape. I see that too, it reaches near to me, maybe the car broke down, or they’re looking for change. Without hesitation, I grab the small pocket knife I am carrying and go to work on this fellow. As if I’m going in for a hug, I reach my left arm around his back, while violently jerking my right arm back and forth. Quick, repetitive little stabs. Each one having its own gentle, but satisfying squelch. I just keep going. In and out and in and out. The blade penetrates the skin with ease. It’s quite pretty, don’t you think? I’m laughing, this is just all so fun, it all feels so right. I lick the viscera from my lips and inhale deeply.
But neither happened. Instead I saw two glossy circles with a muffled voice come at me, saying something like murhurfuhmurfur as a hissing snake sprays its venomous gale towards my face. Grape flavored? Not the good kind, the kind like medicine or some candy you trade every year after Halloween. Ew, no one likes the purple nurple sugar boogers Sally, you’re grody! Ew, everyone look at her! Creating a film on the back of my throat. Tingles. It tingles. I am thinking about World War One for some reason. Trench warfare and gas masks. The air above me a fantastical yellowed color that seems to pulse with its own heartbeat. Shells pounding overhead, screams of my fallen comrades over yonder. We’ll meet again, don’t know where, don’t know when. I look up at the stars just to see the clouds descending on me. What did he say? Eiderdowns? Banded overhead stretch the muscles, spanning so long. Almost gently, I feel my weight freed from my body in a warm sense of ecstasy that reminds me of finally pushing yourself over that edge. Gooey warmth, sticky and sweet fogs over my eyes and clouds my head. Bridges of spittle and blood, tendriling down like a jellyfish stinger. Zap, zap, zap, I feel in my head. Fuzz buzz fuzzy wuzzy warbling pulling me down and down and down and down and down and down and down and down and down and down and down and down and down and downdownandownandoandowandowndoanwdoawndoandoawndoandoawdoanwdonwodnaowndoawnd
submitted by /u/legalize–Ranch
[link] [comments]