Around
midnight, or was it two or three, I followed a trail of blood. I was led to
strange apartment buildings and thick, frigid fences; these were surrounded by
sporadic dying patches of yellowing grass lying unwet against pre-potted oak
trees, grown. The oaks, they were actually behemoths, yes they were, they hung
sterile and bone and picky-fingered in that no-wind you get on any hot, bereft
midnight. And, when they weren’t hanging, they’d loom; it was a sort of ominous,
watchful looming, the kind that towers and eyeballs and spies and detects and
shadows and is silhouetted, a nasty tangle of sharp and web against that
perfect howling cream cheese disc at your zenith.
The
soil beneath was moist. Rich, thick; but, like an unfit mother, it’d lost its
ability to nourish its sprouted, withering babies.
Bits
of moon played, reflected on the trail of blood. Moonlight, that’s a reflection
of the sun. The sun, a reflection of god. My eyes: if you saw them, that
glimmer of moon sliver shimmering—that’s the reflection you’d find there.
Spots, revenants, remainders of something once with breath—but, alive?
The
blood is my alive, now. I’m living on this blood; I’m fucking greedy about it.
My eyes follow its slithering under a fence, and, hungry, I stop walking.
What
passed through here, bleeding this way?
Have
you ever followed something, just because your instinct told you to? The
question, the ‘why,’ the reason, it was vague; but! –you did know it was
something unanswered. And, as in a dream, you followed the question, you
searched for the comfort in knowing the answer.
“?”
That’s
the question. Its rational contents are vacuum; if you could Deify that there
little mark of punctuation, if you could glorify the Riddler—you could play
Batman…and be left with the gift of a journey—something to eat following a
grueling, successful hunt. Only, you wouldn’t necessarily know where to go!
–but—go you would, if your interest was piqued by an unexpected trail of blood,
say, that trickled bizarre through a dark and curious city with awful swirling
faces, all lumped and crooked and greasy.
There’s
barb wire up top, and a hole in the fence to my right. I pop through.
*****
I’d
told the blonde I was only going for some air, which was a lie, anyway, because
air is not a cigarette, but the lie was bigger than that. I didn’t want to hear
another word out her pretty little glossy slut-lips. She had this way of
spewing garbage, chucking armies flying spikes and arrows and sharp barbed
poisons, fish bones and squishy turds: She talked and I cringed.
*****
I’m
between brick buildings, considering the possibility of getting jumped. Dark
alleys are good for getting jumped in.
There’s
no moonlight, here, and it’s hard to see the trail. It fills the cracks between
rectangular cobbles and seeps deep into shadows, where it drips, where it gets
lost, where it’s the fabric of my thought, where it’s my ability to remember.
That
cave, that library, that place where I reserve thoughts like to-do’s and birthdays
and coupon expiration dates—its catacombs are ragged, cavernous and black; they
roll and sink into dusty, sunless oblivion. I’ll shine a light at the mouth.
That light’ll sink down into forever, dissolving into an infinite and thick
yawn. I’m a black hole, you could say. Think Alice’s hole, only no Wonderland,
no fantasy to wake from—only a sort of slow drifting into dreamless
nothing-sleep.
*****
She’d
been edging into me, rubbing into me like a cat. Her softness was ripe,
inviting, fruit that will be flawlessly ripe in, say, three days. I can still
feel it, now, far away, gone—her fleshy warmth, she kept it concealed under
soft clothing, but only from the eye. Her calf, my calf. Her elbow, my leg. Her
breast, my side. Her whisky, my gin. My kind of girl.
And the
lights! The lights were shiny and everywhere! Neon Bud Lite, Neon Bud, Neon
darts, neon fucking dots and dreams and winking on my glossy shot glass,
whirring and buzzing and dancing in the jukebox and on the smartphones, in
holes in time and on the bitch’s glasses, that’s all I remember from her, she
wore glasses and they screamed I AM THE ROOM and I did not like The Room, did
not care for the busy busty bartender of The Room or its upbeat swinging
restroom doors, those doors which also reflected this chaos moth party in their
swinging, or the haze by which we all grew progressively drunk and horny; and
as that haze crept through the bar, I have to tell you, you could feel a
palpable urgency. There was a need to whet appetites for moisture—but the
moisture was leaving the bar two shaved legs at a time—and the hour would come,
it would, when the bar would just dry up, crack, and die.
******
The
blood, the stream, ends. It trickles, now, a thin stream that ends at the grate
by the curb.
A
pungent sewage reek, that’s there, and there’s dripping liquid. The drops echo.
The drops cut the silence. There’s clarity, there, and cold. It defogs,
un-fluffs. A vague siren trumpets somewhere. Far, probably. Sounds like a
football field away, or two hundred yards, or: Miles? Galaxies? Universes? The
dark is funny that way: it’s layered, and uncertain, at best; also, it’s
layered, and uncertain, at worst. I wriggle down.
*******
*****
Her
voice, that voice, that garbage truck voice! She’d pointed it in my face,
force-feeding her understanding of skiing, television, and gun control, a
rotten tirade of glass chunks. If this was foreplay, I didn’t want to see the
finish line, and I definitely didn’t want to fry her a goddamn egg in the
morning.
I was
inside the bar, but I wasn’t. Not really, no. That’s why I’m not actually a
person. Not really, no, not a person, hardly one at all, because I’m not here.
I hear what you say only I don’t understand who you are…and—you don’t
understand me, do you. No, no one does, not really, no. I don’t. There's an
orphan dog that follows me around and blocks me from people, and it stinks of
liquid and awful brown; it's got fleas and disease and pestilences that other
people just aren't interested in. Loneliness; stench; death.
********
Underground,
and through the grate, the moonlight plays on green shit water, and green shit
water plays on my work boots, invading them. Slosh, slop, and instinct tells me
to walk. I won’t see the blood, it’s lost in this river. I only know the blood.
I spark
my lighter twice before the flame catches. I’m going in.
******
She
hadn’t asked me one goddamn question about myself. What was her name? I really
did like her. Christ, what was the name of that stupid bitch? Susan?
What had it been? Sally? No one has names like Susan or Sally anymore. Susan,
maybe.
All I
remember are those spinning chaos orbs, the stupid ubiquitous retard pieces of
crap.
********
I'm
wading. The lighter flickers. I'm flanked by ancient cobble walls with a soft
glowing orange. They're bushy with wet tufts of mold-slime. The odor's getting
bigger. The lighter's hot and I let it go out.
*******
Samantha?
Sammy? Sue? No, not Susan. No Susan. She swung her hips over to me and looked
so cute and sexy it was painful. Two or six drinks later I wanted to sew her
fucking lips together. It was cowardly to leave but I left without a word,
mostly though because she was a hideous little goblin and I don’t always see that
sort of thing if a girl’s shirt is cut low enough, but I did at the bar, I did
tonight, I witnessed her ugly and left, so her ugly must have been big.
********
Sounds
like rushing water up ahead. I flick the lighter but it’s all melted and fucked
up. I walk on, all caution and slow, pushing deeper into the abyssal hallway.
*********
And the
only reason I don’t want to see the ugly is because I want to see the beauty;
and the only reason I want to see the beauty is because I am desperate to love
it; and the only reason I am desperate to love it is so that I will be loved in
return; and the only reason I need to be loved in return is to prove I’m a
human; and the only reason I want to prove my humanity is so I know I exist;
and I need to know I exist—I need that, because I’m disappearing.
End of
the line. End of the tunnel. The loud of rushing water is everything. White
noise with an echo, which means I’m in a large room. I think there’s other
tubes. I think they’re all dumping sewage into a central chamber, further down.
I think I’m gonna jump.
I’m
midair and within the descending stream and it cradles me, and the dark cradles
me, and I wish I never left her there. Maybe I ruined her night, she even
probably liked me. How can you say that!—she didn’t know me at all. Maybe she
wanted to. She thought I was cruel, of course. Do you think she went home and
masturbated? You're sick! I don’t care, can I watch, though? Don’t ask me that,
but it’s sad if she did, I could of given her the real thing. You really are
sick, you know that?
Me?
No…there
is no me.
The
fall ends, splash, and my head’s underwater and it’s cold and ungodly. It’s a
slap of slime. I’m awake! This place stinks of decayed goat scrotum! Oh my
dear God I’m awake! Cold! I feel cold! I hate this smell! I’m in my body! I’m
drowning! I forget how to swim!
My head
bobs back down under the surface. Then, instinct: I’m back, I’m breathing air,
I’m treading water, I steady my breath, I take a moment to create calm.
I see
two doors in front of me. They’ve got a faint glow, like someone squashed a
jellyfish and pasted its luminescent guts on two doors, only there wasn’t
enough jellyfish to go around, so the glow is few and far between and tough to
make out.
Everything
else is pitch black. I swim toward the doors.
I know
where they go.
Left is
nothing, it leads to nothing, it's rest, it's where I'm already going, I'm more
than halfway there, it'll be comfortable and nothing...right, if I take right,
right will shit me back into the world, the real world, and
that's when I realize I've left the world, this tunnel is not a worldly sewer
at all.
All I
know is I can sleep when I'm dead.
~Eliahu Case, student
