Sometimes it's on the bottom

You hunch over as another wave crashes through you. You sweat and grind your teeth; it feels like fire inside you.

With a horrible convulsion you feel something inside you wrench loose, and know there’s no holding back now. You can’t help yourself, though; clenching your teeth, clamping your jaw, and trying, trying to keep it down. It doesn’t work.

You crash to the ground, covered in whatever foulness had been previously kept inside you. You pant, choking, spent.

A glance to the side (and up, up, up…) and you are struck by where you’d been. It towers over you, pale and hollow now. Hardly any lighter for your having left, but somehow it seems like a breeze could carry it away now.

You turn away. There’s no time for wonder or nostalgia. You have far to go, and are barely as tall as your thumb used to be, now.

You scurry.

Can't see, won't see, no no no

You scream.

You scream and claw at your face. You can't stop. It hurts, it burns, it licks all over you as you struggle through it.

Even if you come through this alive, if you come through it and history calls you a winner, you know you'll never see again. You felt your eyes pop under your own nails.

You can't stop screaming.

Your eyes dribble over your lids, your voice goes hoarse and trails off. You can feel your jaw work, chewing up your lips, your tongue, blood flowing down your throat, choking you on yourself.

It doesn't matter. You hold on, hold, hold them close, hold them tight, fingers wrapped around their throat...

You feel them shudder... go slack. You don't let go. You can't let go. There's nothing in your world now except the darkness and the shrinking space between your hands.

You scream, until others find you.

Pleasant scents applied too heavily

Large and hairless and clammy.

Pasty, pale... unblemished and all the more grotesque for it.

He is gentle, sickeningly light and puffy when he brushes against you.

He brushes against you frequently.

Your skin crawls every time and you dread the day you should ever get used to it.

You have a knife picked out for that day.

You haven't decided who it's for, though. You keep putting that off.

Painfully literal

The artist stands before the canvas, blank, empty.

The artist wants to create, desperately so, but... nothing. Nothing. No ideas, no inspiration, nowhere to start. Nowhere to go. Blood, sweat, tears, the artist wrings and wracks themselves for anything, anything to put on the canvas. They beat their brains out for an idea, desperate to make any sort of statement.

It's a success. All agree, it's the most moving, unnerving piece of art they've ever seen.

The artist is given a beautiful funeral, and commemorated in all the news.

Don't run... DON'T. RUN.

His body flew threw the air, legs kicking uselessly. He could feel his chest dip in where he'd been hit... breathing was hard already, and wouldn't get any easier after he bounced.

In hindsight, the scrapes and broken wrist didn't seem so bad after all.

Breath bubbling in his throat, he managed to protect his head just in time for the incoming kick. His attacker didn't let up though, and it wasn't long before he was unconscious and missing a few teeth.

Panting, swearing... his attacker made sure he was alive and started dragging him back inside.

To wander, to roam, that is who we are

The stranger in the suit waved energetically as they approached. He declined their invitations to sit or have a drink, claiming that he was comfortable as he was but don't let that stop them.

After pleasantries were concluded, all parties turned to business. They wanted certain goods delivered in a timely manner; they began to describe the cargo to the stranger, only to be cut off. He didn't care for details other than where to take it and how quickly they wanted it. It wasn't rudeness on the part of the stranger, not intentionally. There was just a constant desire to go, to move, to act.

When they told him where it was to go and their schedule, he laughed and promised that he could be there and back in half that time. They argued, saying that it took that long just to get around-

The stranger interrupted with a scoff. He explained that he didn't go around, he went through.

Shocked silence.

But the disappearances, the effects, the madness..! Again, the stranger scoffed. This was nothing new to him. He'd gone in laughing, and only come out laughing louder. He could handle it.

The negotiations were changed after that, and wrapped up quickly. As the stranger took off in his spaceship, they turned amongst themselves and shuddered, at the strange, mad human they were dealing with now.

Words would only filter the truth

They meet. They touch. They love.

They wrap themselves in one another, lost to time, to everything around them. There is only themselves and the other.

Eyes closed, away from it all, the world shrinks to the warmth and comfort they share. The gentle rise and fall of breath. The long, slow whisper of skin on skin. The smells caught in hair, behind ears.

Time passes. They love. They love.

Our positions will be reversed

You scream.

You can feel everything inside you shredding and unraveling. Your bones splinter and tear through your innards, before grinding themselves to dust. Your head deforms as your skull breaks apart, and the only thing keeping the froth that used to be your organs from fountaining out is the fact that your tongue has swollen to fill your mouth like a plug.

Your scream quickly grows muffled, then turns to a rattle, then dies away as your vocal chords and lungs are reduced to so much pulp.

You die in utter agony; a sack of pulpy blood, in perfect, unblemished skin.

I laugh.

The word blood repeated for 3 minutes

With a furious howl, they lunge forward. They go for the eyes, nails raking, gouging. They want blood, hot, fresh blood, to spill, to splash, to coat them. They want to hear the gurgle, the death rattle, the sound of life leaving... and to know that they caused it.

They want nothing but death, and the want it NOW.

More than an urge, it's something undeniable, irresistible. More so even than breathing, it's closer to the tides or the weather. It simply is.

And now it's too late.

I refuse to look

He barricaded himself in his room, and never came out.

He brought no food in with him, and there wasn't a bathroom or any way to get water. Somehow though, he survived. He would pace the floor, read the same books over and over and over and over again, rearrange his possessions into different piles.

From the other side of the door, they could hear him moving and sometimes a thumping.

From his side of the door, he heard many things. None of them ever good. Tires squealing... a car alarm that no one turned off for hours. Pops that could've been gunfire, but were impossible to tell how far away or how close. People shouting, yelling. Crying. The loud roar of... something massive passing by. A low jet? A convoy of big rigs? Peal after peal of rolling thunder, without any patter of rain. Things shifting and thumping on the other side of his door. Heavy, heavy breathing.

But let the world go on however it might out there.

He had barricaded himself in his room, and never came out.

She laughs and laughs and laughs

She threw herself out of the car, having made sure the brick was still on the pedal. Her shoulder was torn up pretty bad, but she was out.

Keeping low to the ground, she hoped she was far enough from the blast to not be killed from the shockwave. The wave of pressure rolled over her and left her head and ears ringing.

Once the nausea settled, she looked at what she'd done.

It was burning.

All of it, burning.

It was so beautiful. A perfect way to start things off.

Her lips peeled back over bloodied teeth, and she laughed.

We still dream of the 4-hour workday

The loudest thing in the room was the ticking of the clock.

The air conditioning was a drone that easily faded from notice.

The people were silent, distant. Barely murmuring, only heard between the clock ticks.

A small cluster of people drifts closer; on the way to the printer? The copier? To talk to you?

You can't hear them any better.

They are drowned out by the clock, the ticking, ever muffled.

You stare at them blankly, waiting for them to pass or to make their demands.

You stare at them.

Waiting.

They don't notice. They pause, chatting amongst themselves.

You can't hear them, and don't care about anything they'd have to say.

The clock ticks.

Time passes.

Even devotion must know limits

She wandered through the desert, eyes closed. Direction didn't matter. The position of the sun didn't matter. Following dunes didn't matter.

Sand. Heat. Being alone. Those mattered.

She burned, under the sun, on the sands. She never stopped walking, never slept, never drank.

Eventually, inevitably, she ran out of desert and hit the coast.

She'd ignored the sound of the surf, but when she stepped in the water, she stopped. Forcing her eyes open after so long was painful, but necessary.

Seeing all that water, seeing that the desert could end... she trembled for a moment. A furious, horrified wail tore itself out of her throat as she stared, minutes stretching out. Before her breath gave out, she spun around and fled back into the desert.

Prevarication is, today, an example of equivocation

He lied.

He tilted his head to one side, listened to them, and consoled them with all the sympathy in the world.

He tilted his head the other way, and promised the world to those that wanted it.

He lied, and they loved him for it.

He nodded and swore he could make it all happen.

He lied, and lied, and lied.

He was caught out, and forgiven, and believed again.

He never changed, though. He did nothing, nothing but lie.

Marks of ownership

She wandered up and down the streets of the city, fingers brushing every building, lamp post, street sign, bench and trash can.

"You're mine. I own you. I love you." she murmurs to each thing, before hacking and spitting a gob of phlegm and blood on it, marking it, claiming it as hers.

At night, the shadows came and glided over the city, unable to find purchase. Hissing. Scrabbling. Passing. Gone.

Again.

Third wheels and kidney punches

I turned the corner and practically ran into him. With a bellowed accusation I lunged at him... and right into the attack he was dodging from the fight he was already in. I swore, a little from pain, but mostly at him.

This always happens. ALWAYS. Whenever we manage to track each other down, or more usually, stumble into each other, one of us is already busy. Well, "busy." It's fighting. It's always fighting.

I know I don't fight all the time. I assume he doesn't either. From what we've actually seen of each other though, it'd be impossible to tell. It doesn't help that we try to kill each other the moment we see each other, 

It's just... so incredibly frustrating. There's ALWAYS someone else! Or something else. Whatever. We both want to kill each other. I want to kill him. He's always attacked me on sight, if I don't see him first. And EVERY SINGLE TIME, one of us is already fighting!

Neither of us will follow through while there's a chance that it lets the other get killed by a third party. It's supposed to be US. One of US kills the other. Or, I don't know, beats the shit out of them. Who knows how far it'd go? We never get a chance to see!

One day though... I know, I just know, one day one of us will snap and not care. We'll won't care about anyone else and just FOCUS.

I really hope it's me. I do.

Endless variety of life

She takes a week to just watch people.

The first day is her watching herself watch people. She just goes into a crowd and focuses on not looking at the ground and noting what she notices. She learns, first that it is harder than she thought, she is so unused to the endeavor, and second that she notices clothes & butts first, followed closely by hair. She considers that staring at peoples butts is a compromise, staring is easier when people are turned away, that it's halfway between the ground and their eyes. She suspects she's just staring at their butts.

The next day she tries to focus on faces. They pass quickly, and it's uncomfortable, so the day becomes a jumble of pieces and impressions. Cheekbones & boredom. Bags under the eyes, a thin jaw. Wisps of hair above pouty lips. A skewed hairline & pale, pale eyebrows. A mouth twisted and wide in laughter.

A new day, a new focus. Hands. Shoulders. Posture.

By the end of the week, she realizes she has never seen the same person twice. She has drifted from place to place for lunch, and people don't usually go to the park every day, but still... she rides the same buses at the same times. She loiters in the same cafe after work hours, the same bar after dinner. No one, driver, customer, staff, no one is the same.

She still watches people, scared to stop now.

The hirsute shores

Hair.

He maps the borders of his body. Where the hair gives way to skin; the continent of his chest, the islands of his knuckles. His forehead grows every year, but his beard makes its own advances in balance.

He completes his surveys, and nods.

Body as a second language

Hands waving, the speaker talks. They talk with their mouth, saying things of fire and passion and no importance. They talk with their hands, flourishes and gestures to the uninitiated, a second speech to the speaker's cohorts.

Look how the fingers curl when the speech calls for action! Our numbers have been counted, the hands say.

Look how the arms swing wide as the speech describes a shining utopia! We are scattered but still connected, the hands say.

Look how the hands are clasped in a fierce and rousing crescendo! They will never find us all, can never find us all, the hands say.

Polite applause follows the speaker away from the podium. Eyes hooded, ears closed, the speaker counts who slaps their hands together, who golf claps, the rhythms and cadences, left against right or vice versa...

The speaker counts their numbers.

Everything will be weighed and decided

Faceless, voiceless, the figure groped blindly. It wasn't quiet in its search, knocking things over as it ran its hands, its impossibly oversized hands, over everything in the room. It wasn't careful, no, but it was thorough, fingers caressing and probing every thing that its hands came across.

Some things it set aside, some it lingered over before crushing with a slow and careless ease. A few things made their way back into those awful hands, picked up again due to the random way it covered the room. Some were crushed in this second round of the search.

Reasonless, emotionless, the figure moved and judged at random, following patterns and criteria unknowable to anyone else.