Reflections
I lie in the dark and wait for madness to wash over me, to mount me, to fuck me, to smother me in the sweet and sour scent of damp musk.
STRIVER
Where have you been? Do you not see the gouges in my flesh where sanity has sunk its teeth into my arms intending to rip and break the fat and bone? I am dripping with infection and rejection here and you are late. Don't tell me you were at Mother's again? She's your disciple. She introduced us, or was it Uncle Bob; he does love the children, Uncle Bob.
MADNESS
I am waiting for you to ripen. Your membrane's not broken yet. You've only been ass-fucked, and that's not really fucked at all. It was slip and slide. It was
Winter. I press my nose against the window and listen to a gun blast tear through the family name.
MOTHER
I told him I wanted some goddamn ice-cream.
STRIVER
I thought you loved him, Mama?
MOTHER
I do. I did.
STRIVER
Do you love me too?
MOTHER
Of course. You're just like me.
I watch as a black web plows its tentacles through her lining, through her skin and tears it open. I look inside the hole and see a sparkling light. I watch as her seams keep bursting, widening the hole with every hysterical laugh. I reach inside. I want to touch the source. I want to taste it. The light pulls her karma toward it and finally absorbs it like a porous sponge as the blade in her hand sinks in deeper and the mucus drips out, her body shaking and shriveling up around my arm, pulling me in.
STRIVER
You crazy bitch. You don't belong. You've never belonged. I hate you. I love you. I love. I hate. Love, hate, love.
I grab the light inside her. I feel its slimy warmth between my fingers as I yank it out and lick the smooth surface clean only to find it a reflection of me. I need a mother. I need a lover. I need a lover like my mother to protect the reflection. I find you, one of so many in a crowded room. You are swaying to the humming of an echo. I watch the shadow that shades and blends all the faces in the room creep toward my feet. I hold my breath waiting to be consumed, but it stops and pulls back. I try to step into it, but it keeps moving away. You smile and grab my hand and pull me down to a floor that is neither warm nor cold. I place my lips on your breast and imagine a flow of milk. I lick your nipples as I press into you to become part of you. Your eyes are closed and so are mine and as I touch your neck and run my fingers, lightly, down your spine, I feel the tingling of newborn fur.
STRIVER
I want you to swallow me and keep me away from the howling of the beasts. I don't want to think. No. I want to follow you. I want to jump up and scream, yes scream out I love you. I love loving you, and just one night as your ideas and thoughts flow down inside me and drown my own, I become someone else. Someone better you say, erasing the old reflection.
Madness appears and pulls me away toward a wall draped in dark curtains. He pushes me down onto a filthy white blanket torn along the edges with blood and urine smeared into the fabric.
MADNESS
No one wants to see the shedding and the shredding. Fornication under the consent of the king? Fuck No. It is not the beasts that howl, but the prey.
He slips off a dark robe. His skin is a ray of blue and red light. As I stroke the hard but pliable skin, I regurgitate a hollow yellow ear. The lobe is small and cracked, not completely formed. He swings his leg over me, his penis close to my mouth.
MADNESS
I will make you whole.
STRIVER
But you have a cock and should have a pussy.
MADNESS
No. You have a pussy and should have a cock.
STRIVER
But it's a sin.
MADNESS
What is sin but a wall of perception, conception, deception concealing the pure licorice secretion to be twisted and consumed by the world beaters eventually becoming a feces - a mark of the beasts spread into the minds of innocence. Follow me, they say, we will lead you. They are madness, not me. I am what they protect you from - tolerance.
There used to be an old blind man who sat at the park underneath a willow tree everyday. He would step out of the nursing home every morning and go to the park in hopes that someone would stop and talk to him. I started stopping everyday at 2:00 on the way to the babysitter. He would sometimes bring us treats he had hidden underneath his coat. He said my voice was nice and my hands were soft, and then one day I passed him by sitting in the rain. Time, my time is precious I said. I have hobbies to take care of, accomplishments to stack up, and the boxes grow higher and higher, through the roof, can you see the end of it? I'm special, especially special I said as I turned and stepped into the footprints of another, and another, and another.
END
