prologue

the first time you crossed paths, they were sitting alone at a bus stop, chewing the inside of their cheek as if trying to swallow themself from the inside out. shoelaces untied, coat a size too big, and had a look of something unfinished. you saw it in the way they held their shoulders; rounded, caving in, and in the way they stared past things instead of directly at them. the thought occurred to you that some people live like they’re already ghosts. you watched as they fumbled with a bag of bread they’d dropped- didn’t pick it up right away, just stared at it as if it wasn’t even worth the effort to reach for. it was almost sad, like looking at an animal wobble around with a broken limb. you scratched at your scalp while thinking to yourself, "this is it"..

they needed more than just food. they needed someone to care, and to give them a purpose, a life. while observing them, you sucked hard on the paper straw to get the last bits of the dr. pepper from your take-out cup. you knew it deserves better.. but you had to take them now, before someone else noticed the same thing and ruined everything for you.

the days stretched on and you noticed how they always seemed to pass by the same discount grocery store, always with that defeated look in their eyes. exiting the building carrying a pack of expiring-today meat with the big red sticker on it; perhaps in solidarity? as well as a single ramen packet in their arms almost daily.. you followed them for weeks to be completely sure they were the one who needed you. they ate alone, walked alone, and came home to an empty apartment where the only light was their computer screen. it felt sinful for meat like this to be left to rot and to waste away, and who were you to condone this act against a god of which you don't truly believe in?

the night you took them, they barely fought back. they couldn’t, not when it felt so right this way.. well, aside from the seven deep bite marks adorning your hands and forearms. other than that, the slight wrestling, the slow realization in their eyes, along with the strained gasping before the duct tape sealed it- some part of them must have known this was coming. it's almost like they wanted this the whole time. after you threw them into the backseat, you realized to yourself; how they would or at least should be grateful. you’d be giving it everything it could ever need, and they’d give you the only thing that mattered in return.. a purpose. you’d both be happy, as meat and butcher.

the missing person

your rubbered hands lift the soggy crumpled-up flier, steel-toed boots kick the empty carton of milk. the smiling face on these recyclables is declared missing, but you see this strange creature every morning and night. 'what a horrible tragedy.', as you crack a gentle smile.

on your way back home, the street lamps illuminate a warm glow, and it bounces against the shallow puddles beneath your feet. your head keeps playing the moment of duct tape, trash bags, the stars in both of your eyes. the apartment doors all faced outward, opening onto a second-story balcony that circled the inner courtyard. from the door of your suite, you could look down past cracked concrete and faded lawn chairs into the murky blue of the communal pool; mildew and relaxation. upon entering through the heavy steel door; you're stood on the other side of the room, unfastening your coat and then laying out your tool bag atop the wobbly metal table.

"the weather is so nice out there, i shouldn't have even brought my coat." you said smiling, pulling the now flavourless chewing gum out of your mouth with your fingers.

i sat with squinted eyes. my eyelids dark, and the skin around my left ankle rubbed clean off.

"hey now, what's with the long face?" you walked over to the fridge and pulled out a hunk of something wrapped in plastic and brown paper.

i didn't respond, i just continued to look around the stale unit of cardboard boxes, loud radiator, buzzing fridge and freezer. wooden planks over the windows, and metal tools thrown askew atop any surface they allowed. i crawled over to the dusty t.v, and climbed onto one of the two bean bag chairs which reeked of dampness and cigarette smoke.

i felt like a shadow, you're staring through my body, sweating, and blinking slowly like a cat displaying affection. my stomach feels queasy as i turn my body away. i watch and listen to your feet shuffle on the concrete floor.. you rarely took your shoes off upon entering the unit; the flooring is full of scuffs and dander, mainly consisting of my shedding hair or dry skin. it's been a long 7 days.

the cold cellar

you kneel down in front of me, your greasy forehead is shimmering from the overhead lights. the unforgiving lighting bringing out every crease and crinkle as your face contorts while speaking to me, flecks of saliva flying out periodically. you repeat the same things over and over, telling me what is about to happen.. when, and why it's about to happen, how beautiful it will all be.. the concrete is cold, and your breath is hot like a suffocating humid day.

i sit thinking to myself, just put the borderline unidentifiable slop into the bowl already.. i had been eating a wet concoction of what i can only assume to be ground up meat and some sort of carb.. bread crumbs mixed in? it's probably nutritionally better than what i normally eat at home, but doesn't make it anymore appealing. the calligraphy on the ceramic bowl spelt out dog, with 'teethie' written in front of it with a sharpie marker.

i observe the surroundings constantly. heavy cellar door, bucket on the floor.. i hold my hair back as black ribbon-shaped eels of vomit expel from my mouth. the food isn't sitting right, and i have an intense craving for pancakes. i throw myself down onto my back, my perspiring skin contracting against the cold floor. as i am laying down, i looked at the materials stuck onto the fridge; grocery shop coupons, polaroid images, my missing poster, and a 25% off mcdonalds meal deal flier.

"bad dog! i've been feeding you only good meat, it's fresh and quality. please don't waste it again, it's not respectful."

i don't know why, but i felt so upset in a way that i have never before. i sat up abruptly with sludge still seeping from my mouth, fumbling with the items on the table nearby until i grabbed one that felt right. the light bulb dangling from the ceiling was beaming into my eyes as i waved around one of the metal tools. you were putting some food onto your own plate as you turned to look at me with one eyebrow raised, looking confused. i clumsily spun around with the weapon, it felt like when you're in a dream and simply can't hit your target.

you tried to remove the saw from my hand but i beat you to it; i just gave up. i threw it to the floor causing it to clank against the ground adjacent both of our feet.

i slumped over for a few seconds while you watched me with a blank expression. you approach me, and i clawed at your face as much as i could for about three minutes, until i got tired. but thinking about it now, it seemed like you would've let me keep going if i had the strength.

a moth with no wings

i woke up the next morning with a growling stomach, bad breath and a couple fresh tattoos on my body. dotted lines around my elbows in black ink. i was confused but i didn't have time to question it; i heard the sound of hard-soled shoes hit against the cold concrete floor, then watched you approach.

"good morning, teethie! i hope you slept well." your voice erupts projecting through the room. you gesture me to turn my head to take a look at the decorations hung up around me. looking at me with a 'so, whatd'ya think' facial expression. i wondered, "did you get these from the dollar store?"

"no, i didn't actually." you said trailing off, crumpling up a receipt to put into the pocket of your too-tight slacks, shifting left to right inside of your brown work boots. the thought of how you knew it was my birthday today hadn't even occurred to me until right now. you came closer to get a better look at your work. "well, you didn't tell me.. how was your sleep last night?" he questioned. "fine i guess.." i couldn't remember last night, nor could i remember my dreams.

"your eyes are bloodshot." he replied as he stood beside the metal table, his eyes meeting mine while he lifted the surgical mask to cover his nose and mouth.

my head is still a bit drowsy as you begin strapping most of my body onto the cold metal table with plastic wrap. i stare at the ceiling while you rambled softly about judgement day, and the rapture as the ends of your mouth curled up into a smile. he suddenly blurts out;

"i'm just joking with you, you didn't really think i believe in that sort of thing?" i didn't really think that for one second anyway.. if anything i'd like to hope that if god were real, i wouldn't be laying on this table unless i was already in hell.

the crow’s feet around your eyes were prominent when you smiled showing your teeth, and i felt disgusted with myself for finding it slightly endearing. you got sucked into a tangent about how you had awful thoughts everyday but beautiful dreams about life and the future. i didn't care.. and i can never tell which of these statements are ever genuine. i sharply cleared my throat of the grime lodged inside of it, and you snapped out of your haze. i turned my head and caught your eyes flip as if there was another person inside of you.

"look, please don't be sad about this, you'll start actually feeling like yourself soon. i promise."... you looked away from me with a wave of pride and excitement on your face. you said under your breathe, "..the prized birthday pig."

i'm horrified of this man standing in front of me, in his work pants and clean hair. smiling at me. i'm quivering at the sight of somebody smiling at me.

i can't tell if it's something wrong with me or with him.. i know there is something wrong with me, and i don't know if the error happened at birth or even before. i've tried on many occasions to become a tolerable thing, similar to that of a human being. smiling when expected, necessary eye contact, but the feeling of being incorrect never washed off of me almost like a permanent foul odour infused into my skin, emanating out of my pores.

no matter how much i try to layer clothes on top, mask the smell with perfume.. i suspected that others notice but refused to say anything or do anything about it. in the outside world, the way people looked at me as i walked around felt as though i was merely a mangled flesh blob, covered in spiked metal rods and chainsaws blaring loud; scaring and alerting those passing by. but if people looked at me like this, how did he get away with smiling like how he does? why don't they look at him the same way in terror like how i'm looking at him right now?

i had a feeling of what was going to happen but all i could think about was how i just wanted to experience the only object of value i've been afforded since i got here. which is either pain or the potential prospect of death. i closed my eyes and said a prayer to a god we both don't believe in, i begged for him to mess this up.. give me the wrong dose of medication, give me too much, i pleaded for a complication. i realized that i shouldn't have stopped taking my blood thinners last month.

when you grabbed my arm, you cradled it first as though it was something fragile. your thumb traced the dark veins that sprawled out like branches beneath the skin of my wrist. for a second, i thought you were checking my pulse to make sure i was still there inside of this body. i watched as you carefully lined up and put the needle into my arm, then injected me.

my head felt blank, i was barely there; couldn't move nor feel much.. almost like sleep paralysis. my fingers were twitching as you started carving, almost as if they were trying to run away from my hand to escape. i think the sound was the worst part of it all.. slick, wet, tearing sounds of skin and tendons giving way, almost like a 'pop' sound before you get to the grating dry grinding of when you reached the bone. the liquid splashing of gushing blood spilling out and trickling onto the plastic sheets. it echoed so loud, like when you scratch your own head, it's amplified because it's inside of your own skull; but you're laying there whilst someone has a saw to your limb, ripping through your skin and muscle, slicing through the thick bone still attached to your body. you can only watch but cannot move.

you paused before the break, your fingers fondling with the limb like a doll you weren’t sure how to dismantle. i thought i saw hesitation in your face.. but you held onto the arm, and it was hanging on like a loose tooth. you twisted it, then yanked firmly to snap off any remaining ligaments. i surely would've blacked out from the pain right then and there if it weren't for whatever was injected into me. the snapping sound filled the room and you left the arm on the table beside me, my fingers were curled into a fist. it's hard to describe the feeling of seeing your own arm on a table next to you, completely disconnected from your body. my brain still thinks i have an arm attached to me.. i try to move my fingers but they don't respond.

you didn't even look at me, you just walked away to change your soiled apron and grab some more tools. i couldn't believe that i wasn't just dreaming. i stared for a while, i said goodbye to my arms, covered in scratches, cuts, hair, and fresh little tattoos whilst i sat there on the table. i started crying, thinking about all the things i won't be able to hold, all the things i had held before, played with, picked up, secret handshakes.. the heat in my face almost caused me to melt through the metal table beneath me.

your presence erupted back into the room; practically running back over to the table like a little kid. interrupting my grieving, your arms were full of two boxes with tools and cloth rags sticking out. "i'm sorry i took so long!" you choked out, while slightly out of breath.

i didn't respond, i felt sick as i got stitched back up. the little needle from the sewing kit sticking in and through my ripped and mangled skin, struggling to close up the hole. i turned my head to the side and watched as you squinted and looked concentrated, almost as if you were performing brain surgery. i didn't understand you, i still don't really.

i just wanted you to die, i wanted you to die a very painful death, i wanted you to feel every single thing you've made me feel. i wanted you to have no arms, no legs, no brain. i wanted to take an electric saw to your head, or.. i wanted to place your head by a table saw. slowly push your head to the blade so i can focus on the incision... slowly.. making your head approach it, the loud blaring whirling of the saw blasting your ears with your imminent fate. and then finally, the sudden burst of your head like a watermelon being blasted by a shotgun. your life everywhere, all over the shop, all over my feet and legs, coating the walls and floor. it's indescribable the feeling of no longer having your hands. my brain still hasn't caught on to the fact there is nothing beneath my elbows anymore.

a dog with no tail

the guilt wasn't new, it was always there festering under my skin like how mold lives in the bathroom walls long before you ever see it. what butcher did and is doing to me isn't new, i've seen his kind before. although, what he is doing to me is nothing compared to what i've done to myself a million times over. perhaps he is more dedicated, more efficient with the tools he possesses. my mind and body had been failing me long before the day i bit butcher. i felt like dead weight for years, dragging myself around since i was a teenager. that's why it feels like he is just doing what i wanted to do to myself anyways.

the prospect of sitting here should be more terrifying, deep into my core. i feel as though i shouldn't even be able to think right now, but i feel the slight unsettlement and impatience as though i am sitting in a waiting room. inside the unit, i'm waiting for the inevitable return with no knock. every night i'm left alone again, embarrassed like a child who had just wet the floor.

i wished to shiver, to feel my body get paralyzed from the cold. i can't even remember what life was like before this. after my birthday, he put cartoons onto the t.v to play. it was some VHS tapes, and he got a cake from the corner store as well. the icing was thick and coated my mouth with every bite he put into my mouth with the metal spoon. my body has never felt this bad. i feel like i'm shrivelling up, my body is tightening around my muscles and tendons.. my bones. my skin is three sizes too small for me now.

i was dreaming; i was back in my old life, but i could still feel you under my bed. through the window. or staring at me from your car. i was such a fool back then, i was so fucking miserable but i'd do anything to go back. i hate myself for taking it for granted, i should've been happy but i can't change the worst part about myself. i wish to be cold, i mimic the motion of trembling, i'm wishing to shiver. now that i am sitting on cold concrete, missing so much of myself; not counting my limbs. i remember wanting to be free from it all, i wanted an escape and i wanted someone to just take me away and save me. i hated my job, i hated the people around me, and yet they're a million times better than who i'm with right now. my saviour is my destroyer, and i wish i could go back.

but there is no point wishing to go back in time, and the past is the past. i can't stop myself from wallowing in it. i don't think i was ever a girl but something that looked like one from a decent distance. as a woman i have no name, soon i won't have a face and in this state i somehow feel more at peace. the less of me there is to be misconstrued, the better. each mutilation, each missing limb of my body felt like a paragraph in the long self indulgent letter i had been writing to nobody in particular. before the pain was barely visible, but now i can see the destruction, the rotten filth and vomit that had always been there. i am not a martyr, and i am not brave because bravery requires a choice which i didn't make to be here. i am cowardly, but i make the choice to let my body undergo the truth of the world.

i sit on one of the beanbags as you're squatted onto a dusty foot stool, feeding me soup. you blow against the spoon; causing most of the contents to spill back into the bowl. you put it into my mouth, nicking the gums above my front teeth with the spoon. it tasted good to finally have some high quality meat, despite it being dumped into 99 cent canned soup. i really didn't care.. eating was my favourite part of the day now. i sleep for twelve hours, and feel like my soul is being pulverized for the rest. but for the past three days whenever he'd open the door to leave to get snacks from the convenience store, i'd see a glow behind him. there was a beautiful illuminated hole amidst the grey abyss, and it smelt of chlorine.

a bird with no beak

i keep thinking to myself, that it is true i wanted to be saved, i think everybody wishes someone less miserable than ourselves would simply love us for all of our inadequacies and infected wounds. i believed for a moment that someone would appear before me, a dark silhouette with a pale and tender face to hold the mess without trying to sterilize the infection nor to further defile the corpse; someone who could look at the puss-filled gaping wound without flinching, nor wanting to rip it open even further. at least.. that is what i think, i know i didn't wish for butcher. perhaps i wanted someone who was worse than me- but wasn't miserable about it. who didn't care about my faults because they themselves were so much worse.

a few cycles of my sleep-filled ecstasy went by, and my dry eyes opened abruptly to some sounds and the feeling of being shifted. i was worried this was going to happen so soon.. but it's better than constantly awaiting the inevitable. i get lifted up and placed onto the metal table once more. you pressed your fingers into the muscle of my thigh, i guess feeling for a pulse.

there is something eager in the way you squeeze my leg, wrapping your hand around the circumference, how you studied the muscle and try hard to look through the skin to peer at my veins like cupping around your eyes to see through a foggy window. i know what’s coming but it doesn't feel real. i twitched as you hummed in satisfaction, as you push the needle under my skin to try to numb the nerves throughout.

something heavy is pressing down and pinning my knees to the table, and then i feel the first cut. it didn't feel exactly the same as my arms did, it felt more of a sick pulling, meat coming apart in slow motion. a weird and wet tearing over and over like sawing at your piece of food that just won't cut. after the meat is ripped i feel the bone splintering. the wet crunch, burning, stinging, unimaginable pain and then almost nothing at all. it feels like there's no reason for me to go into it again, i relive this pain every moment i look down at 'my body'. i feel the face-melting drowning ripping of flesh, grabbing, complete tearing and annihilation of the human form.

you murmured something sweet as you worked, wiping sweat from your brow with your gloved finger. i can't see your mouth and i can barely hear through the mask. i thought you were talking to me.. but your eyes are fixed on the mess of blood and chunks near my lap.

i think the worst part of it all was the smell, i wanted to ask if i smelt like pork, but my tongue was heavy inside my mouth. i wanted to tell you that you can stop now, but i close my eyes instead. when i open them back up, you are stitching the wound and the space where my legs used to be, while humming a song i almost recognized. i closed them again and just waited, i stared at the top of your head.

i do not look down. i do not need to. i just say goodbye to my legs.

a tiger with no teeth

usually when someone starts unleashing blows down onto your skin, they slightly turn their head away from you. the eyes might linger, but the head always turns. once you start crying, they avert their eyes.. but this time the head and eyes stayed stagnant. but it didn't feel like eye contact, i was being looked through, like my being was secondary. you don't think about the pillow when you're shoving the casing back on from the dryer. you shake it around roughly and shove it, throwing it back down onto the bed.

he used to glance up at my face while cutting but now he doesn't bother waste time pretending to see me as a person. he realized that it doesn't matter; i don't react the way that i am supposed to anymore. when he was fixing the stitches on one of my arms he accidentally ripped one out, tearing a large chunk of flesh away nearly exposing muscle again. he apologized, looking startled- but i didn't even know what he was talking about until i looked down and saw it. now that the pain feels different inside of my body, i'm thinking of it as information. this spot is open, this spot is wet, and this spot used to be warm but now it is not. sometimes i wonder if i will ever die, or if i will be able to survive anything now, like a bullet, house fire, or falling from high heights. i thought maybe i wanted to survive, and it didn't seem so scary anymore, nothing did. it’s funny how much strength you can find deep inside of your rotting body when you despise someone more than you despise being alive. but this feeling was quite short lived, like it always has been.

harming yourself in isolation is a thankless job. there is no audience, reward, and you don't get the satisfaction of being seen. it has always felt like more of a personal chore, like brushing your teeth or detangling your hair. it made the day feel complete. this time around the hands are steadier and the blades are sterile. if a younger me would have met him, she'd mistake him for a god; but i know now he is just a convenience. make the decision for me and draw the line.. when i'm strapped down i feel like i'm back at the sink, collecting my tools; i don't have to think about it anymore.

i think one of my stitches opened up again. i keep picking at my seams when i’m alone, tugging and plucking hoping it'll unravel everything. maybe my whole body, innards and all will spill out through a slit in one of my legs. i fantasize about leaving it open and letting it bloom out like a rose, watching the infection crawl outward like roots to cover the concrete floor. my body and butcher keep trying to close the wound but i don't want it to close. i want to be split open and bare on my own accord, i want it to leak, fester, and smell until there is nothing left to fix.

there is a conflicting air regarding butcher, in how i struggle to fully hold him accountable because i feel like his actions are finishing what i started years ago. it was an inevitable outcome being exasperated. in fact, who am i to feel so repulsed when this is what i have been doing to myself for years? i despise him, and now i still despise him more than i despise myself.

in a way it seems that before i even got here, i was always here on this cold grey floor. this is where i was born, my newborn body splattered amongst the amniotic fluid on this same floor i now rest my head. i've been trying to communicate continuously to you, but my words feel like a stranger's. when i open my mouth the voice feels distorted, i have no idea what i have become. i don't know what kind of person i am now. i barely feel human.

a cat with no lives

i woke up, wrapped up in a large towel. this time i was placed onto the right side of your bed. the bed where you slept each night, every night before me, and where you'll likely sleep every night after me before you get caught, captured, gunned down and executed. it was something that kept me alive thinking about it.. how will you die? will they burst in here after finding my body and aim a million firearms at you? will you run away from here, living a life on the run marked with poverty and hiding your identity.. will they surveil you, spot you taking trash out to the dumpster, and line up all the sniper dots onto your forehead? bright, red and moving like a firework show to precisely hit the centre of your skull. i imagined myself as a cat smacking at that damning red dot placed upon your forehead like a laser pointer. whether you end up in skid row or death row, neither matters to me anymore.

when i look down at my personhood i'm less horrified by what is missing, more so by what is actually left. i feel like a necro dog.. my body is nearly half missing from me now. where have you managed to put it all? my long limbs have disintegrated, i haven't felt this small since i was just a child.. i really, really feel like a child now. hopeless, helpless, a small baby child. i don't want to think about how i felt as a child. so i fell asleep again.

i woke up, and now i'm sitting atop a towel laid out onto the floor. you put a glass bottle of milk in front of me, i drank it while wondering why you removed me from the bed. i was no longer wrapped up, i felt splayed out and open like a dissection. my body feels so much worse. i feel like i'm being tangled, choked by wires.. i still felt like a baby, i wanted to be a victim of the umbilical noose. i know i don't look like myself anymore, nor do i look like how i did as a child. i don't look like anything that should exist in any lifetime. i look like nothing.

my voice sounds wrong inside of my head. i can't tell who is speaking, and if what they are saying is truth. i think the voice who normally narrates my thoughts is quieter now, i think she left. when i hear clashes of metal tools in the leather bag, i mistake it for my name. when i'm half asleep, i see my bedroom from a few days ago, i'm not in it. i feel myself watching my own body sleep from the hallway, but the body isn't moving. i stand there with sore feet, waiting for her to sit up and look at me but she never notices. the longer i wait the more i feel the lump inside of my throat expand until it feels like it's going to rip the skin of my neck open. i feel as though i've become the house, the floor and the walls are my battered skin and the furniture is all of my failing organs. i believe i lack the heaviness of blood.

despite this the heaviness of the disease inside of my body feels like 1 million trillion pounds hidden away inside of my ribcage, stomach and bowels. it's a harrowing conclusion to come to, i'm completely beside myself. you cannot run away from the monster, there is no escape route when the essence of them all is permeating and incubating inside of your body. no matter how much blood you let, or chunks you hack off, you cannot run away from yourself.

i feel so utterly alone even though he is right there in the room over. i feel so isolated even when he is holding me. i've never felt so truly and completely alone. my body is horror, a mutilated and monstrous mess, and that is not because of the missing pieces. i have become something inside of myself which is an incurable disease and it's been growing for a very long time even before my arrival. am i even alive at all? i am surviving but i am full of misery and there is a hell behind my eyelids. i've become something unrecognizable to myself, i don't recognize my thoughts inside of my own brain.

a door with no lock

i'm not sure what kind of atrocities i must have committed in my past life to be doomed to a life like this. i'm born by monsters and will die by the hand of one, i've become one. in a way, it feels comforting if this is my ultimate penance, then next time i might be able to be happy. maybe i'll come back finally clean.

my disease is a cancerous parasite, if he takes more pieces off of me maybe the sick and disgusting cells will finally be purged. although he is doing it all for selfish reasons, and he is doing what everyone else did before i got here. he sees through me, he talks through me, he dissects me, projects onto me, consumes me, and will discard of me. but despite this, he is the only one on this earth to be honest and admit it all to my face. no one is there, i am nothing but a cockroach who just won't die, and nobody misses a roach. they'll never find me, they'll only notice once the smell worsens.

i've always hated bugs, i despised them.. but i allowed the ants to crawl over what is left of my rotting body. i let them trail across the dampened gauze and burrow beneath the folds for shelter. i struggle to latch onto a clump of blankets nearby while i thought about the glowing blue hole beyond the screen door. i've been throwing up black and brown for the past few days, and butcher has started to get more and more concerned by this behaviour. i began coughing and then laid on my side pretending to be seriously ill.

he quickly came over to place his heavy hand onto my forehead, and then held my face in two. he scooped up my decaying body like a good samaritan moving some roadkill to the highway shoulder. i was limp in his arms, my sweaty skin sticky from fever, clinging to his shirt. i just looked around through my heavy eyelids as though i wasn't there consciously.

"what's wrong.. do you need medicine, are you hungry? do you need fresh air.." he drifted off frantically, and then darted over to the door to get some new air in. he half opened and closed the door repeatedly to try to fan some gusts of air into the stale unit. there were gnats all over the screen door, but sufficient airflow came in, not that i needed it much.

he approached me again and held my body securely, connecting his lips to my cold, sweat drenched forehead. i reeked of vomit and spoiling food. he placed me back down onto the floor to begin packing up his bag before he goes to visit the walk-in clinic. i don't know what he was going to say to them, what could he say? he speed walked to the bedroom to grab his license and i stared at the door.

i began crawling toward the door in a slight haze, following the smell of chlorine and the tempting glow of blue light.

i charged at it with all of the strength i had still inside of me. the flimsy screen door gave way from the force of my body, collapsing down in front of me. the stitches holding my sore open nubs closed; ached beneath the shoddily wrapped gauze. it began to unravel behind me, i was shedding my skin like a snake, causing the stitches to scratch raw against the concrete below me.

i made my way to the railing outlining the balcony. i could barely see through my milky eyes anymore, i simply tried my hardest to push my bruised body between the railing. the two metal rods groaned and squeezed at my purple and brown brittle skeleton. i heard cracks as the rods clenched around my ribcage until i burst through the other side..

the blue light feels like a massive glowing hand reaching out before me. monstrous and open, beaming and patient. i can sense it, it's gentle but firm fingers, the soft padded palm i rest upon once i dive forward.. i don't care if it shuts in on me and squeezes my body into their fist like a fruit. draining all my heaviness, all my leaking blood. i want to feel safe in it's hand. it’s rebirth, bringing me back to a new sweet evil. the blue light is my forever womb, my amniotic fluid. born by dying.

i felt myself slowly falling through the air, and i felt his eyes seeping into my skin as i pushed myself through those metal bars. i was exiting the canal, and he was watching the birth of his child simultaneously entering and leaving the real world. his rotting and suffocating womb no longer enveloped my body, and i was too far gone to catch.

a thud filled my ears for a split second; flat and wet like an overripe fruit being slammed onto cold tile. followed by my hearing fading to total silence. i couldn't move a single muscle, all i could see in my peripheral vision was the glowing blue light, with the chlorine scented glow i had been chasing and pining over.

i wasn't in the position to think about it any longer, it was enough that i could feel the presence around me, and the beautiful iridescent blue light illuminating over my mangled diseased personhood. a puddle of mold, rust, bugs, feces, plush pink and grey organs, soft yellow chunks, dark hair, multi-coloured skin, and blood. i was slowly disintegrating into a pool of sparkling mushy dark red, my body felt so warm and i saw more illuminating lights of blue and red lighting up the sky.

a mosaic of flesh coloured blobs cascaded over me partially blocking my vision of the lights which upset me deeply. but they were moving around my field of view frantically, like a gorgeous light show.. if i could smile i would, and if the fluid escaping from my dislodged eyes are indeed tears then i was crying from how beautiful it all was, and how free i finally felt for the first time in my life.

i felt a sudden lust and acceptance for life, but at the same time i had the littlest amount possible and it was fading rapidly.. it was seeping between the seafoam tiles and down into the water. my vision was getting so blurry to the point i could only see purple, and i could feel the presence of more and more blobs coming to circle me.

i decided to let go, if i didn't let go now, i didn't know when else i'd be able to .. and i knew i wanted to be here forever. i stopped holding on, i thought about the pancakes from my dream, and then i lowered my eyelids. i said goodbye to my body. i said goodbye to my life.

♡

butcher's journal

i didn’t sleep, as expected.. i thought you understood what was happening and that's the part i just can't understand. i keep replaying the look on your face when you looked at me over your little scraped shoulder. it was almost as though you were seeing me for the first time in your entire life. there was a strange depth in those black eyes.. all of that work i'd done and you still looked surprised and distant.

you’re sick, people like this tend to forget what is good for them, you can't help them. they'll rip through your arms and run straight into the cold, stomach empty. i know where you will end up.. and it’s always going to be back here. there’s still chunks of your hair on the floor. a little patch of skin in the drain too. i thought about saving it but it didn’t feel right without you here to see me. i even made your bowl of food again, full portion this time. i left it by the corner just in case. i keep hearing scratching wherever i go, it could’ve been rats, but i like to think it was you crawling back on all fours.

teethie, when you come back, i’m not going to be upset. i’ll just fix your wounds, scrub your skin, and hold you like i did the night you first bit me. do you remember that? i still got the scar on the webbing between my thumb and index. i remember how you were so alive in that moment; like a fox chewing off her own foot just to stay wild. but you’ll get tired of the wild soon. it's cold, lonely, and you'll feel just like you did before i found you. sitting alone, eating alone, unfinished. maybe you are really gone like they say, in such case i'll scour each unmarked grave.. i'd know you by bone alone.

but in the event that you're still wandering around; i’ll always keep the t.v on in case you’re watching from the vents. just blink twice through the grate and i’ll come get you. you'll find me again. you'll follow the trail of breadcrumbs i’ve laid out. i’m going somewhere better. deeper, more deserving of me. a place with no neighbours, no interruptions, no locks on the doors.

just knock twice. i'll know it's you.

b.