CHEETAH

This is a work in progress.

Cha pt e r 1

We reintroduce cheetahs so that we can kill them for sport. And keep them as trophies. Next, we breed the cheetahs and sell their organs in the black market. 

We skin the cheetahs and use them as new-age fur coats. Then, we kill every other species in the country for sport. Just for fun.

Next, we buy more lions from Africa and let them roam free in the streets, and let them eat all the little children. Then, I move to Madagascar and do a crap-ton of coke. I then take a private jet to Brazil and have some civet cat shit coffee, following which I kill the civet cat. Now in Brazil, I do more coke, and get blown by hookers from the favelas. Yes, I enjoy being in the company of fellow down-to-earth people from humble backgrounds. However, I am a benevolent man, so I pay for their pedicures afterwards. Better Call Saul reference. I then kill the hookers (but I really only just strangle them and they just happen to stop breathing) and move into a hotel room in Rome. I attend an opera on a calm Thursday evening. I do more coke, and kill a stray cat by beating its head against the Colosseum. Its blood drips from my eyelashes.

I go back to my room and pull out the gun (that I bought illegally) from underneath my pillow. I put the barrel in my mouth and pull the trigger. Pull the trigger on a brand new Porsche 911! I now drive erratically, having consumed 4 bottles (litres? gallons?) of Rome’s finest wine, along with a small, but healthy helping of MDMA (it helps me relax). “Life is beautiful,” is the thought that arises in my mind as I ejaculate in my pants. Luckily, I am wearing a diaper. I'm into that sort of thing. I drive all the way down to Venice and scream at the locals asking them where I can find Antonio as I throw up in my mouth. This place reminds me of Venice beach, although I’ve never actually been. Bile runs down the arms of my shirt. I grab a random tourist and begin beating their face in, as I cry to God for forgiveness, wailing into the night like a cello twisting inside a pressure cooker. Suddenly, I receive a vision - a vision that beckons with a call that I simply cannot refuse - and realise I must fly down to Amsterdam to get my face sat on by a woman who has her bush trimmed down to a cute little heart. I am on the flight, and I am being handcuffed for biting the tongue off of one of the -

I wake up drenched in sweat and immediately run to my bathroom. I frantically take the lid off the flush tank and grab the dirty syringe I’ve been using to inject the ketamine the homeless man sold me (I had to use a spoon to dig into his eye socket before he would accept an offer for the vial he had hidden up his crack) into my veins. Immediately, I am slipping into that familiar, comforting K-hole and I look at the barren oil-spill of my body. I wonder why I’m not microdosing on ecstasy instead. I take a mental note - “microdose on clarity.” I begin to drift back and ponder beating a dog to death with a golf club. I am happy for the first time in my life. I strip my clothes off and run into the street, and end up grabbing a woman by her shoulders and motorboating her. Her breasts are small, and she screams for help, but I can tell she’s enjoying herself and a nearby (American) stranger (tourist) fires his gun at me, aiming at my knee. He misses, but the bullet flies straight through my left testicle. There is blood everywhere, my left nut having just exploded to bits. I feel no pain. I let her go, and lay down, naked and sweaty, on the dirty roadside of downtown Mumbai. This roadside, I notice, is particularly filthy - even disregarding my testicle splattered all over the place. The pani-puri vendor close by is unfazed and continues washing his dirty dishes in the sewage running down the ditch along the road. I feel the warm pani-puri pani begin to pool up against my neck. A dog runs up and begins humping my foot. Yes, I am barefoot. Yes, blood is still pouring out of my nutsack, spurting out in short bursts. Man, I love Mumbai.

I wake up in a hospital and grab the nearest syringe I can find and inject myself with the last of my Special K that I’ve been storing up my ass for tight situations. Jumping off the hospital bed, I rip my catheter out and begin chewing on it. The nurse falls to the floor. I am apparently in Bangkok. Hell yeah, ladyboys.

I now have a rope. A rope that I am tying around the ceiling fan in my room. Bangkok is great. I seem to have lost the ability of experiencing post-nut clarity along with the loss of my left testicle. I am alone, but not lonely. I have my rope with me.

It is the next morning and I wake up with my hand on fire. Literally. I rush to the bathroom in my tiny, cramped Thai shithole of a hotel room where I accidentally rip the faucet off the sink. Water sprays everywhere, and something bursts behind the shower curtain. I feel my lack-of-left-testicle begin to bleed, like it has been every morning, and I rush out, stuffing a crusty sock into the gaping hole that remains. My clothes reek of piss and vodka. I rush out the door to avoid paying for damages and get slammed by a bus. The bus runs over my body and my forearm snaps clear in half. The bone is poking out, straight through my shirt. The bus driver jumps out and rips my shirt off and he slaps me across my face. His fingernail scratches my cornea, and grazes something deeper. My right eye instantly fills with blood. With crimson vision, I turn around and run, straight into a tuk-tuk whose glass windshield I shatter into tiny shards. The police show up. They drag me away as I kick wildly and scream every slur I can think of.

I am now sitting in the Indian Embassy, lunging at anyone who offers help. They think I’ve gone mad, for some odd reason. They think I’m crazy. Well, fuck them. Fuck everyone. Fuck everyone who thinks I need help. They’re the ones who are crazy; they’re the ones who need help. I run out of the embassy, and reach into my left pocket, where I find my phone. I have lost almost all vision in my right eye. I catch a glimpse of my reflection on the screen. Man, I’m pretty. I dial my rich uncle, who offers to fly down to Bangkok and fuck some chicks. I wonder what he means. I scream about how I need to get the hell out of Thailand. He shows up an hour later, and throws me into the trunk of his car.

I am now in the trunk, trying desperately to suck my own dick. If only I didn’t have those last two ribs. I think about Sting, and the trunk opens. I climb out, I notice my uncle has been shot in the head and that his body lies on the ground next to the car. No one is around. I wonder how the trunk happened to open on its own. Suddenly, a scorpion stings my foot. Out of nowhere, a man dressed in a terrible Native American halloween costume jumps up behind me and puts me in a chokehold. A similarly outfitted man runs up and begins sawing my foot off with a blunt hacksaw. I feel the grinding up my leg, in my teeth. I am screaming in pain, and the man whispers in my ear saying it’s all for my own good. His friend then hands me my foot. The both of them then walk away, and I realise they’ve switched my foot with someone else's; what I’m actually holding is shockingly (really?) someone else’s foot. It is rotting and has maggots crawling under the toenails. I sniff it and pass out.

I am in a fever dream ia am in a fever dream i a mu ai i am in a fever dream i am in a agever frame i am in a fever fream this is a fever team this is a forever dream this is a fever fream is is nt real 

I am conscious again and I take my diaper off. I need to jerk off. It takes me a while, but I nut and my ejaculate is stained red and tastes metallic. I look around me and realise that I’m still in Mumbai. I take a step forward, and my foot lands on an open-faced used sanitary napkin with a rotting egg on it. I am hungry. I am naked. 

I run into the nearest hotel and demand a room. The staff are swooned by my immensely strong sex appeal and check me into the executive suite. I take a shower (where I jerk off real hard) and put on the brand new tuxedo I stole from the hotel laundry. I smell of shaved wood and ripped-open eyelids. I walk to the hotel bar where I get wasted on an insane amount of whiskey. I decide to reveal my mommy-fetish to the hottest woman in the bar and we have dirty, passionate sex. Snorting a medley of drugs from each other’s assholes, I make her cum. She fingers my left-nut-hole. I wake up the next morning having forgotten everything. I then take a flight to Bangalore (after making her cum again). In the flight, I piss on a woman and then steal a bottle of champagne, break it against the cockpit door, and threaten to stab anyone who comes near me. The plane lands and I jump out the emergency exit. Suavely evading airport security, I stick my finger out at them. The middle one. I steal a cab and drive to Bannerghatta National Park where I strip naked and run into the forest. After hours of terrorising the animals, I get mauled by a tiger. I die. I wake up in a celestial plane above human existence. I am empty. I am a pathetic little puppy desperately trying to cum all on my own. I stare into the Eyes of God. I need to go back. I cannot let it end like this. I need this.

I am reborn as a beggar. I instantly strip naked and begin chasing pedestrians, flinging my shit at them, threatening to rape them. It is nighttime. I find a plastic knife in a garbage bin and begin sticking it into my nutsack. I miss my left-nut-hole. I make an Instagram profile and look up a girl I used to know from high school. I instantly fall in love with her and I need to suck her tits. I deserve to. I am going to kill myself. I walk into a nearby H&M and come out looking as goth as humanly possible. Walking across the road, I enter the local police station and rob them of a gun. I then look up the addresses of everyone I knew back in college. Their time has come. “The Hawks Feed You to Feed Itself” by Nervous Cop plays as I drive down Church Street with the gun tucked into my waistband. I am a perfect person. The first name on the list is the only person I kill. The others, I torture for a period of 29 days before letting them choke on their own blood. I wonder if the “God” I have seen is real. I convince myself that I have just been staring at my reflection in the mirror in the H&M bathroom this entire time. 

I pull my phone out and begin listening to “Tarantula” by Wavves. I order a pizza. Halfway through eating it, I vomit it all up, along with half a can of Dr. Pepper I had had the previous night. But, I’m not rich, so I scoop it all up off the pavement and eat it. Dirt, and all. I suck the marrow out of my broken forearm. 

Now, I illegally immigrate to Zambia. The fish are selling like hot-cakes. I find a job as a fish factory worker and kill a night watchman on my way to work by hacking him to bits with a machete I find lying on the side of a dirt road. Life is good again. I think about the little kids working in Apple assembly lines. I am angered by the world’s lack of response to my words. I am in control. I remind myself that I am in control. I do not need to remind myself that I am in control. I stare into the Eyes of God again; I could do this for hours. Life is good. I want to stare at this person, this woman, her body, her eyes for hours on end. I want to fade into nothingness. I sit back down on the pavement. The vomit soaks my pant legs.

I am disappointed, sad, and in ruins. It is now the next day. I sprint to the nearest photobooth and take 113 images of my face. I then throw these images out the window of my taxi on the way to the railway station. Arriving at the station, I fire my gun against the driver’s headrest, immediately killing him. His brain splatters against the windshield, which has somehow stayed intact. Blood begins to pool up near the pedals, causing the bits of his head that broke out to float. On the bright side, I don’t have to pay the fare. I buy a first class ticket to Goa. Arriving there, I get hammered. I then wander the desolate streets aimlessly, singing to myself. This is the happiest I’ll ever be. I turn into an alley. Unfortunately, I don’t actually become an alley, and a gang of fat gundas corner my human form, armed with makeshift knives. I hand them my wallet, but I spit at them and they end up shanking me. My stomach is torn open, and mushy pizza splatters out. I am losing blood fast. Suddenly, I realise that I have gotten off at the wrong station. I’m not in Goa; I’m just in a different part of Bangalore. I wonder why I can still hear the shore. At this point, a bloated rat crawls out from under a garbage can and scampers up to my body. Quickly, the rat jumps up my t-shirt and squeezes itself into the gaping stab wound on my abdomen. The pain is sharp, and my gut feels like a deflated water balloon with a rat gnawing its way inside. At least I’m not hungry anymore. Suddenly, a fellow hobo runs up to me on all fours. It is terrifying how seamlessly he accomplishes this. He licks his hand and sticks it into my stomach. I feel him reaching around, and all I hear are his grunts, and my intestines squelching. I am in agony. After struggling a little, he pulls the rat out and bites straight into its abdomen. The rat screeches in pain and explodes. The putrid scent of sweaty Cheetos and two-day-old belly-button fills the air. 

I hate you. I hate you, for you are the cause of my suffering.

The following morning, I run up the stairs to a local monastery and ask how I get to the stars. The sky is so far away; I want to be among them. I am advised to love and respect the world. I spit in the monk’s face. The world belongs to me, and so will the stars. All of a sudden, the world explodes. I whoosh up into the sky, smiling madly. This is it! Floating in space, I am observed by the Eyes of God. Rest in peace, Harwell. “I Miss the Girl” by Soul Coughing plays as I stare back. The Eyes tear up. Everything is returned to the way it was. I take a flight to Mangalore and drive down to Maravanthe. I walk up to the shore and sit down. The sun has set and all I hear is the soft crashing of the waves. It is nighttime. I look up at the sky and notice the stars. I stare at them for hours. I do not have to leave. The waves continue crashing. I think of nothing. Her eyes are beautiful.

I wake up at 4 AM. “I Claudius” by Sleaford Mods is playing on my phone. A red sky at night. Sailors delight, I am on the beach. I want to call up my friends and dip; nutter! I killed them all, ahaha! I find a boat a couple of steps away, push it into the sea, and climb aboard. Time to go back! My eyes are dry. I hear Gordon Ramsay’s voice scream “Wall Street is calling!” He is on the boat with me. I think my eyes are just dry. The boat stops abruptly, and I’m in Yerpedu. I think about Fiona Apple and whatever it was she had to go through. I hate tea. Voices speaking Telugu overwhelm me. I am suddenly enraged by Saint Levant’s music. He mentions “Twitter” on one of his more popular songs, but then that isn’t a thing anymore. I’m not lost.

Everything is fading out. I slip back into familiarity. It feels like the end. What more is there? What more is there to it all? I am slipping back, slowing down. This is it. I can’t do it anymore. I hear “Delta” by Mount Kimbie playing. I listen. I feel myself transported back in time; I face my 18 year old self. Four words? A chasm in my abdomen, I look him in the eye. He stares back at a dirty matted-haired homeless man with an eyeless left eye socket and blood stained clothes smelling faintly of vomit. A moment passes. I say, “It doesn’t get better.” We smile, in understanding. I chuckle softly. He nods, presses play on “All Of The Time” by Jungle, and walks away. This is it.

C h ap t er2

I can’t sleep. I am staring at my ceiling, where the plaster is peeling off. I am a man of God. A pendulum, in perpetual oscillation, I am at an extreme. I have an incredibly deep sense of irritation and regret about the fact that nothing will ever be perfect. Like a pillbox hat, I hate it. I am feverish, and my armpits are damp and have that characteristic, familiar stench of starch. My head hurts and I have no idea why. This is a bad day. Every day of this past week has been a bad day. Like rice-water, nothing really feels different. I am tired. I am consumed by paralysing dread; it makes my stomach heavy and my mouth taste rancid. I am on the verge of complete collapse. I open my eyes and I see darkness. I am inside something. I am inside someone. Suffocating now, I trash wildly, trying to claw my way out. My nails aren’t sharp, but I stab outwards, ripping the flesh surrounding me to shreds. I suffocate. I claw with more aggression. Light. With one final shove, I am outside and the air is sharp and freezing. I scream out and feel the muscles in my throat become grainy and the sides of my neck become bitter. “I Love It (ft. Charli XCX)” by Icona Pop plays. Welcome to Cheetah.

I light a cigarette but it tastes a bit sour and hairy and it turns out to be a cockroach. Whatever. I stuff it underneath my left eyelid to eat later. I take the airport bus to Church Street and strip naked. Someone’s bound to be seduced. I run into the nearest restaurant I see, flailing my junk around but no one seems interested. Their loss. I grab a parka from the Zara store and book an autorickshaw using my iPhone SE. Getting in, I notice there’s this insanely attractive woman walking along the road who makes eye contact with me for a prolonged duration. I jump off and pounce onto her. She offers me LSD and we make out. Suddenly, I explode. My torso flies off and lands in the arms of a retired bank manager selling momos on the side of the road. I die. Not really; I realise I’m in the basement of a nightclub in Shanghai. I’m on the concrete floor, and my arms are tied behind my back, around a pillar. The floor is cold and wet. A woman who looks like this Instagram creator I have a crush on walks slowly down the stairs towards me. I’m in love. She has a baseball bat wound with barbed wire, and she swings down onto my crotch. Pain shoots down both my legs, and I feel something sharp underneath my toenails as if someone’s inserting needles inside and pulling upwards. Blood from my testicles shoots up at my face. “No one for you, pretty boy!” This is freaky, and I’m loving it. A rat crawls out of what’s left of my deflated boar bladder of a nutsack and I feel myself transported into the rat’s brain. I jog down its hippocampus, which now stretches for miles in front of me. In the dentate gyrus, I notice a tea stall manned by a very wrinkly old man. I approach him and tell him that I want a job. The old man pulls out the gun that he’s been storing up his butt-crack. “One more step, and you’re dead,” he squeals. I squat. I notice my tie’s askew. I also notice that I’m in an WW1 soldier’s uniform - helmet, rifle, the works. There’s no escaping this psychopath. I grab the rifle from my back, and stick the bayonet into my larynx. He notices, and smiles wildly. Running up to my body, he pulls the blade out, and filters scalding tea into the hole. Thanks for the free tea, you filthy troglodyte! I black out.

Next thing I know, I’m in Africa, heading north along the Nile in a wildly speeding jeep. The jeep suddenly flips over because the front wheels lock up. Turns out, the jeep is all just a single block of moulded plastic, like one of those green army-men toy sets. There’s a middle-aged couple with me in the jeep; I’m holding them hostage, but they think they’re on a safari in Gir. With no lions out. Anyway, we jump out of the jeep and onto dry, craggy ground. I pick at the crusty bits and hear a deep, vaguely human sight come from deep inside the Earth. The jeep slowly sinks into quicksand. The sun sets, and it gets cold. You are stranded here with me. Hyenas laugh in the distance. There’s a dull glow from what looks like one of those old storm lanterns in the distance. As it comes closer, I realise that it’s actually attached to a mummy. All wrapped in paper, like in the movies. It approaches with arms outstretched and with its jaws snapping, but right as it lunges at me, it trips and the lamp breaks, spilling oil all over the ground, into the cracks. The mummy catches on fire immediately, and it runs around screaming. It should stop, drop, and roll, but it doesn’t. Norman Reedus shows up on his motorcycle, pulls out a sawn-off shotgun and blows its head clean off with a single shot. The rest of the mummy continues to burn slowly. That’s food and warmth for tonight. He nods at the group and rides off into the moonlight. I decide to continue walking along the river because I’m not hungry because I’ve been having a tab of Ozempic for every meal for the past 18 months. I think I’m losing weight. A hyena approaches, and I slow down and puff my chest out; “I’m not afraid of you, chupacabra!” I scream. The hyena opens its mouth and says “Yoo, it’s the man from Chapter 1! I’m a huge fan, my G, no cap.” It unhinges its jaw and I climb inside. I walk past the hyena’s larynx and there’s a massive million-dollar mansion inside. I decide to stay. Sure, the walls are all made of flesh and the floor is slippery with bile, but I really can’t complain. I’m home. The horse standing next to me rears up and kicks my head. I black out. I wake up what feels like days later.

This means nothing. My doors remain reticent, carefully guarded, boarded up and unwelcoming. I am unrecognizable.

I’m in a bad mood. What’s new? It was all just a big joke up to this point. Up to this very point. This full stop. An incomplete sentence marked by a solid, ruthless period. Punctuation. Punctuation is pause and pause is thought. Thought is lacking. Lacking meaning. I’m in a bad mood. This was all just a big joke. The sun has set and I can’t tell what time it is. I’m not wearing a watch, but judging by this desperate stretch of tar lying in front of me, I’d say it’s too late. I walk down the road in slow, predetermined steps, dragging a lead pipe behind me. Its cry reverberates off the brick walls of the buildings lining this street, piercingly shrill. That scratch of solid, heavy metal against asphalt. This is a dead end. An end that ends in death. Something lies in the shadows at the end. It is scared. Flecks of rust chip off the pipe as it runs, scratching lightly into the tar. This is real. This is not another nostalgic drug trip. The pipe is a blunt instrument. A weapon. A tool of connection. A tool of correction. It lies, eyes shining a dark, glossy black. It thinks it can hide - camouflaged by the lack of movement. It doesn’t know any better. My pipe is a tool. A tool of connection. A tool of answers. A period of loud pauses. This pipe is a paint brush that paints a patina of piercing possibilities. Predetermined possibilities. It needs to die.

You catch me today. “What are you doing?” - you ask, curtly. Obviously, I say nothing. But you know that you’ve caught me. I try to sit as still as I can, squatting like a woman urinating on the sidewalk while warning others about the stream. But my right eye gives it all away; it wells up with tears, right up to the brim. Blood seeps out the gash on my left temple, and my left hand clutches a knife bloody and wet. Inside, I’m shaking breathless. Trembling before your eyes/ I don’t know what I’m supposed to do. You close your eyes for a moment and shake your head in disappointment. I’ve let you down. I’ve let you down and you know I’m a terrible terrible person. I disappoint. You turn around and start walking away and I fall forwards onto my knees. They’re all scratched up. Must be the rats. They aren’t going anywhere.

The camera pans down to a busy street in New York, New York and the “Seinfeld” title card fades in. The bass riff begins playing and Elaine is convulsing on the sidewalk. People walk by unfazed. The audience laughs and begins applauding. The scene fades to black, and fades back in to reveal Jerry lying on his bed. His bedside clock reads 2:47 AM. Jerry is under the covers, with his blanket pulled up to his nose. His beady white eyes glisten in the glow of faint, curtain-filtered moonlight. He can’t sleep. His eyes are bloodshot, and his heart is racing. The audience hears skittering, followed by desperately aggressive gnawing at what sounds like a piece of plastic. Jerry slowly lifts his head, and peers at the door. He sees a figure, with a frame as tall and lanky as Kramer’s, and so he calls out in the faintest whisper - “Kramer? Is that you?” The audience laughs. The figure runs to the corner of the room on all fours - it is not Kramer. It is not human. Jerry is extremely disturbed. The audience roars with laughter. It is the next day, and Jerry and George are at their usual booth at Monk’s. Jerry looks terrible, having not slept in weeks. His eyes are sunken and lined dark purple. George stares at him, and then asks smugly, “So, how’d you sleep?” There’s some scattered laughter in the audience. Jerry is trembling. George continues - “Is it the rat again? You really need to call an exterminator.” George looks away, distracted by an attractive waitress. “Oh by the way, Elaine’s at the hospital. Seizures, apparently.” He does the “cuckoo” sign with his fingers at his temple. The audience is silent. Kramer walks into the coffee shop, wearing a trench coat. The audience claps. “Hey guys!” he says, plopping down beside George. “Hey, guess what? I’m naked underneath this trench coat!” Kramer laughs, and George looks at him, sighs, and says “I’ve got to go. Steinbrenner wants to see me for lunch. He wants another calzone. The guy just won’t stop!” Kramer replies “Well, he can suck on my calzone!” The audience goes wild. Jerry is still staring into nothing, shaking softly. He does not move. He mutters “please please please please please please…” under his breath. Two cops enter Monk’s and walk up to Kramer. One of them says, pointing at Kramer - “You Kramer?” Kramer nods, with a confused look on his face and says “Yeah, what’s it to you, buddy?” They promptly handcuff him - “You’re under arrest for indecent exposure. You have the right to remain silent.” “Hey just because the flash on my digicam was too bright doesn’t mean I’ve been blinding the homeless!” - Kramer screams out (he’s been engaging in street photography). Jerry is terrified. He knows he has to return to his apartment. The scene fades to black, and the audience chuckles. Back at Jerry’s apartment, Jerry is screaming, painting his walls a dark, blood red. “I AM NOT LETTING THIS RAT CONTROL ME! NOT A CHANCE! I AM NOT GOING CRAZY! I AM IN CONTROL!” Clearly Jerry has lost it. The camera pans to the window beside Jerry’s computer and Newman jumps off the roof. The audience hears a crash, and police sirens wail in the distance. The audience cackles. This is extremely funny. The scene fades to black. Time passes, and it’s the next day. 4 AM. Elaine enters Jerry’s apartment. She is confused - the walls are all red, and the furniture is ruined, with paint drops all over. She grabs a bottle of water out of Jerry’s refrigerator. “Jerry?” she calls out. No response is heard. The audience is silent. Elaine slowly walks over to Jerry’s bedroom. The camera traces her steps, and it seems like paint - a sticker shade of even deeper red has been spilt, growing wetter the closer she walks to Jerry’s bed. Elaine calls out to Jerry again, but this time her voice is shaky with concern. She looks up, and sees Jerry’s body ripped open - guts spewing out and shredded - blood seeping into the mattress. And crouching on top of his body is a figure - a black, lanky creature, with long brittle arms and legs, and nine-inch long nails shanked deep into Jerry’s abdomen, trying to dig even deeper. Jerry’s legs are left hanging onto his torso by a pair of thin muscles that seem ready to give way. The creature turns to face Elaine - its mouth foaming with red froth, and reeking sickly of rancid meat. Elaine screams, and the audience screeches out violently, laughing the hardest they’ve ever laughed. The creature lunges at her and the last thing Elaine sees is Jerry’s lifeless eyes, glassy and glazed over. The next day, George is reading the paper at the coffee shop. He reads about what happened at Jerry’s apartment. He neatly folds the paper back up, sets it down on the table beside a tipless bill, and heads back to his office at the Yankee Stadium. He ties a noose. The camera pans away, and a chair is heard falling. The audience claps and credits roll.

I don’t recognize myself anymore. I look into mirrors, I glance at windows that parade a reflection and I see a stranger. A person stares back at me; this cannot be me. That can’t be my face, can it? But it looks so gaunt and off coloured, pale, and ashy. The hair on top looks rough and out of place, like a wig askew. The muscles contort the face into a smile that seemingly belongs to someone else. Who is this person? I don’t recognize my voice anymore. It sounds strange. Stranger. I can’t speak in complete sentences without stammering. I lose my place in sentences. My palace, crumbling. The words fall out, one at a time. I’m frustrated and I snap at everyone I know. And before those I do not, I stay silent. Are awkward silences better? I let silence fill the air up, and it breathes out humid discomfort. Surely that cannot be me. My grip is weak. Is this the end of a life unlived? How pretty it would be if I could peel this skin, this muscle, this life off, and suck out the marrow from my bones, and be present. I know you can tell this isn’t me. Why won’t you just admit it?

It is Tuesday and my mind feels like liquid metal struggling. Repelling poles that prevent it from wrapping around things, it shudders loudly like an animal that is scared and confused. It warps, like an ROI gone rogue when left uncorrected, shifting with each passing frame to include areas of pitch black nothingness. Blissfully ignoring gleaming red patches of obvious and common interest. The regular makes no sense. Or is it me who makes no sense of it? Like W. It is Tuesday and the next day I wake up to will be a Friday.

Five hundred million years of longing and solitude. Five hundred million years of sadness and lack of empathy. Five hundred million years of new faith.

Ch a pte r. 3

My vision fades in and I find myself at the gaping, red mouth of a flesh cave. I must be dreaming. This is the mouth of a dead fish. Lately, I’ve been finding it harder and harder to tell real life from my dreams. Its eyes are glassy and faded reddish-orange. Does it make a difference? I don’t know anymore. I decide to step inside. I move forward and run my hand along the lips, which pulse and shudder, shutting behind me with a wet thump. This place is humid and smells like anchovies pissed on by drunken fishermen. I continue walking. The floor gives in a little with each step; It feels soft and supple against the soles of my bare feet, like latex viscera, coated with a thin layer of crusty pus that cracks with each step and then lets out a dark gooey tar that slightly bulges out into the crevices between my toes. This place is wet with blood. Thick veins run along every surface, pumping thick black sludge. The walls slowly widen and move further and further apart, giving way to a dusty desert of sharp and craggy rock that looks more like a seaside town's scrap metal left out at shore to rust. This desert of nightmares is a canyon. Walking forwards, I reach a cliff. At its edge, I see a homeless man lying on his side. He sees me approaching him and he stumbles trying to prop himself up on his left elbow. I am near him. He looks up at me. His eyes are sunken and his eyelids are caked with greenish-yellow mucus and almost completely sealed shut. Straining to open them, he parts his cracked bleeding lips and slurs - “Wake up man, do you know what mud feels like? Like mud? Are you listening to me? Wake up man! Are you listening?” I can hear him fine, but I choose to ignore him. He continues, unfazed and blabbering incoherently, drooling onto himself with every word he spits out. I avoid eye contact and continue walking along the cliffside. I walk away. I walk for what feels like hours. Maybe it’s just minutes. The horizon never changes. An organic, rusty hellscape that’s dying from within itself. Dry as a smoker’s lung, dusty as a bed of nails. I walk, and I notice a wall of flesh growing upwards from the ground to my right. It climbs high, eventually forming the facade of a 12-story prison. It stretches out forever, but remains only as wide as a single cell. Its face - a simple single row of cells, each with thick, blistered rods of iron worn down by centuries of white-knuckled clutches, and calcified walls scratched in by years of desperate clawing, scabby with haemorrhagic spots of mold. Each cell, dark and damp and soaked with excrement and decades of terrible memories, houses a single prisoner. All of them, staring off into the distance, are dressed in rags made of rough cloth and stand stunned, stunted and slouching in stunned silence like sacks of jute. Their skin looks thin, thin enough for my smallest tug to tear it apart, thin enough to barely veil the flame of a candle held close, close enough to singe it red, then black, then white. They stare right through me. Am I still here? I walk along the length of the jailhouse and then, I reach the very last cell. I see the very last prisoner. She’s weaving a mesh of dark red jute and has tied bits of it to replace all the broken bars of her cell. “Been working all day long?” I ask. She turns to face me and replies softly, “Oh, but there was no morn.” Mourning? This is not a dream. This is scorn. I’m not awake. You decide that I need to retreat back into the rust. This flesh cage is my prison. This flesh cage is my home. Homeless, I am outside. I’m driving a car. I see traffic, a red light in the distance. A family. We hate the homeless as a society. But they’re the only ones really living. Really human. Surviving. What am I anymore? 

Can you see the desperate longing in my eyes? I know it’s deep set and barely visible. Please tell me you can see it. I know it’s only barely there, but If you can’t see it then I know no one can. I need to know. My longing is yours. Everything I know is yours. Without you I am nothing. I am biased. I am my biases. I am this longing, for I am nothing without it. This is all I have. All I have is for you. I want to hold you. I want your weight on me. I want to feel real. I want to feel pain. I want to feel you. I know you can see it; the longing. You see it deep inside my pupil. I know you want to take it away. I know you want to plunge your blunt fingernails inside, past my cornea, slow, then sinking deep into that darkened abyss, shrouded until you finally reach it. But the prisoner knows this too. And she won’t let you take it away. She tells me to lay my head down on her lap. I can feel the bones of her thighs against the back of my head. She threads her needle with dark, red thread of jute. I close my eyes. Gently, she pierces the needle into my upper eyelid, then the lower one. She repeats - delicate, poetic, stout, resolute. I trust her. I trust her, but I won't trust you. You know this, don’t you?