Blood & Gristle Read online

  A figure in his eyes: growing, fleshing out.

  A name?

  Nothing.

  She was laughing, pretty brown hair putting the daystar to good use. Eyes, teeth, more of the same milking the daytime shine for all it was worth. He could see a flash of pink from between her teeth, playful tongue smiling, making him smile. His face failed to respond, but he could feel the corners of his brain pushing upward, gray matter mimic, giving all it could.

  He tried to approach her.

  Approach he thought, a dull firing, his synapses super slow to spark, like a sputtering motor, until the message was sent, translated and enacted. His legs heeded the command and stumbled over one another.

  After a few clumsy steps she vanished. No fanfare, no expanding or imploding lights, nothing flashy to signify the disappearance – one moment she was there nearly wrenching something that felt as though it must be important from his central processing unit, the next she was gone.

  Where?

  Where had she gone?

  He tried to call a name, but none presented itself. A groan rattled his throat. A little black blood seeped from the corners of his mouth.

  She?

  Who?

  He had no trouble stopping, standing in place, but wonderment came much slower. There was a moment of pure dead before wispy tendrils of surprise began to overtake his intellect. Vanished. Where? But just as realizations began to cut in and take root, they became edgeless, deflated by the shifting of that which was dead in his stomach.

  Gas, so gaseous it attained visibility, unfurled green and smoky from his mouth and nostrils. As noxious as it was, there was no smell, just the re-visitation of maddening violence and an immutable pull that made his stomach scream with hunger. His body lurched forward animated not by will, but by the fetid rot festering within his bowels.

  Brief flashes seared the insides of his eyeballs: tough, corpulent, shreds of meat gnashed between thick, yellowish teeth, stuck and pulled and slick with saliva.

  He lunged and wobbled, trying to catch up with his stomach, falling forward, grabbing for support. His right hand found something cold and solid, the side of a building perhaps. He brought up his left hand for further stability and through the haze noticed it was missing.

  The fit subsided as quickly as it came and a flower blossomed within his optics. It was a glorious, leafy thing, petals as thick and pink as a man’s skin. His attention traveled toward the vein like roots. They pulsed, living brown, barbed and hooked, splaying this way and that, searching for an epicenter of life, a mound of untapped dynamism from which they could siphon life’s blood.

  The image faded until his mind’s eye reflected a brown glob of nothing.

  His feet ached. They arched. They ached.

  Focusing, he realized he was all aches. Not in his bones or even in the soft mushy parts that made up the remainder of his biology, but somewhere in between. A thin layer of agony ran itself throughout, looping in and out of his physicality, humming electric anguish from each and every hollow. The throb was so consistently consistent he didn’t seem to notice it unless he stopped and concentrated.

  So walk it off, walk it, walk and walk and walk. Shuffle those feet. Break thickening blood. Motivation. Until he got his thoughts back. Until he was straight like a razor. Ironed out. That was the plan.

  Where had they gone anyhow?

  His thoughts.

  His thoughts?

  His?

  His ability to form and then maintain them?

  Had they disappeared into the world (like everything else)?

  Had they seeped into the decay that was everything and nothing?

  Into the husks and leaks and unfinished projects?

  Into the dead world, screwed and twisted, fucking itself backwards?

  Into that (dead) place he regarded with a frown?

  Like with the smile, his face failed to comply, but his brain, that little go-getter, collapsed in on itself simulating a scowl as best it could.

  “Ha!” He laughed and spit and cried dry tears and worried himself sick, staring into the world as it reflected his confusion and stared back.

  The world as a mirror.

  This was a scary thought.

  The world as a mirror.

  Thoughts thought upon thoughts and he couldn’t take it so he ran. His body ran. He ran. Ran from the mounting frustration.

  A park. A swing: measly, piss poor, strap of black leather, worn ass friend tethered by rusted twins. He sat and kicked, pumped and repeated, and before long he was soaring high. For the first time, in a long time, exhilaration seized his still heart.

  Swinging, he thought about thought, how it used to be, how before the change he could begin with a point, go round and round, tangent upon tangent upon anecdote and then come back to the initial point making a logical connection.

  He thought about how it had become harder and harder to maintain the focus that the blessing of his species – elliptical thought patterns – required.

  The gift, the ability to think in connective cycles, was nearing impossibility with each passing day. Night eradicated it. The dark rolled his eyeballs inward and turned vision to meat. During the day, rational thought was being upended by the imagistic. Visions, a barrage of senseless color with no regard for the sequential, dominated. Coupled with the blurs of uproarious violence that rose from his stomach, any attempt he made at logical cognition derailed.

  The frustrations of his condition propelled him. He swung, hitting the swing’s limit, feeling the bucking, erratic, hitching of child’s playground equipment red lining. He gripped the chains tightly.

  Right hand.

  Left hand.

  He noticed his left hand was missing.

  Digging his feet down, carving sole sized landing strips into the soft sand, he brought himself to a stop. He lurched from the swing and staggered. The sand, soft, too soft, sucked at his steps. Fearing that he might sink he leapt for the grassy perimeter.

  Floating in the air: wings, clouds of gossamer, the girl with no name reappeared.

  The vision caressed his brain and spun thoughts as soft as silk.

  “I will hold you forever.” Her voice echoed, a sweet melody sweetened by gauzy reverb. “I will hold you forever.” The song died into an ocean of static.

  The fantasy flittered and he landed face down within the green. The grass kissed him, but he couldn’t feel it. A few blades caressed each eyeball, but it was as if they weren’t there, as if he wasn’t there to feel them. He was wrapped up tight somewhere behind his skeleton. He couldn’t feel the greenery against his face, because his face, his true face, pressed roughly against the inner walls of his cheekbones.

  Another bout with the violence buzzed, but he fought it away.

  This felt important.

  He struggled to hold on to his train of thought. He converged, convened, and centered hard, converged, convened, and centered hard, converged, convened, and centered hard till all he could see was a world of grass and a city of earth.

  Microcolonies moved, built, spawned from the shit, rose from the shit, life from the shit that the world trounced underfoot on a daily basis.

  Downward, deeper still, into the strata where life looked just like we did.

  Molecular.

  Broken down into our purest form.

  Atoms of dirt vibrating to the rhythms of design, housing that which died, but did not give back.

  That which fossilized and told scientists lies, laughing through granite teeth.

  That which became death eternal.

  Deeper, until he reached a point of stasis complete. A place to blossom: box of pine, cold, filled with a darkness that glowed and begged you to read its night secrets. The wood embrace held him like a child, safe, shielded from the realm, insulated from the cruel cradle of humanity above, enfolded within the arms of a pure, untouched god.

  He pushed at the earth to no avail, flailing limbs, biting, burrowing, desperate, like and a worm
fighting for purchase upon a bed of concrete.

  He remained topside, thrashing shallowly within the turf.

  He clawed, ripping clumps of grass and soil from their dwellings. Again, he noticed that his left hand was missing. This time he managed to hold the thought. The hand had been cut away just below the wrist. All that remained was a crusted stump. He couldn’t remember how he lost it.

  A thick wall of clotted blood, a hardening scab was all that separated his insides from the outside. Alas, nothing could break through that revolting, putrid mess, but he thought that what ever was inside of him must be trying. It begged for the earth and wanted to be free of leathery skin. It wanted to seep and meld.

  Escape, the ideal.

  Escape, liberation.

  The heart had a plan, it most definitely did – all organs of emotion did. They had to. It’s how they manufactured those gooey feelings. The stump however, the cold, clotty joy killer was different. It was an end, not a beginning, and any chance of exit was sealed off thick and tight.

  The hand was forgotten as he rolled over.

  Calm crept in and stilled desire as he lay on his back and got lost within the sky. The earth was inviting, but it was there that he wanted to be. High. In the sky. Home. Eden. The eye of the universe.

  Clumpy tears ran from his cracked eyelids when he imagined a return to that perfect Elysium.

  He had found it once before.

  Once, oh so long ago.

  Once, upon the moment of death.

  Once, for a span of time that couldn’t be measured by something as imperfect as time.

  Once, uncharted, but lingering.

  Once, and in those faultless moments he felt as if he were never ending, never fading. Despite rampant mental dilapidation, despite nerve damage and bodily mutilation, despite the cruel twist of fate that roused him from the grave, he felt eternal.

  The sun began to set and the evening was alive with deep color. He appreciated the beauty of dusk. The sky looked bruised, purpled, ran through with gold filament and dreamy, diffused fractals of light – a fitting welcome for the coming of resplendent night.

  The stirring within his intestines started up again.

  These violent intrusions were much more dramatic throughout the gloaming hours. It wouldn’t be as easy to fight off the pangs and engage fragmented thought once darkness fell. When the moon took over, it left no time for broken contemplation. It drove him to fill a hungry, bloody need that he couldn’t even begin to understand. Upon the return of dawn he would regain a bit of authority, his belly would be full on death and his mind would be clean, an empty slate ready to be replenished with the wisdom of the day.

  Time was short, but for now, during these fast moving moments before pure dark, his thoughts were his own. He mused lightly, dabbling in assorted whimsy. Though he understood little, he was keenly aware of the utter pointlessness of serious, contemplative cerebration.

  The brilliant coloring of a world caught between states of being dulled to a semi-opaque mantle and grew dense with patterns of pre-dark. The buzzing in his stomach began to intensify. He abided his time unmoving, fixed, waiting for the conclusive rays of sunlight to diminish.

  His thoughts circled and circled.

  ZOO ETIQUETTE

  11:22am

  The recoil forced him to shift his balance and really lean into it. His ears rang with focus, his teeth clenched, his aiming eye widened while the other squinted away all distracting peripheral.

  Jack-o had never killed a lion before.

  Come to think of it, he had never fired his Government Issue rifle at anything save for a field of innocuous range targets.

  Plugging round after round into a living, breathing thing was quite a different experience. He figured hesitation would trip him up, lodge bullets into the dirt and concrete, like back at the range where when he squeezed the trigger those angry little slugs mostly went anywhere but into their intended target.

  Miraculously the opposite happened.

  Time seemed to slow.

  His third eye-Zen-state-calm took hold.

  Minus Drill Sergeants and Pressure and Soldiers talking their continual shit, it was as though he could track each and every bullet as it erupted forth in a fury of light and sound, shredding the sky, ripping into their furry mark, goring the great cat.

  Suddenly the sun felt way too hot.

  Jack-o’s clothes felt way too tight and restrictive.

  His vision went hyper-real. Eyesight zoomed, locking in upon the crimson holes his bullets tore through the feline’s flesh. His gut lurched and swam and tightened. Twenty yards away, blood mist rose and amalgamated the air with coppery, deathly smells.

  Jack-o gagged.

  Dropping his weapon he puked all over his thick, leather boots.

  11:15 am

  There was no pain, just loads of wonder. Georgie couldn’t even feel those massive claws digging into his back. He was sort of, kind of scared, no question, but he giggled and fantasized and ignoring the pinch, he rode joyously into his wildest daydreams.

  He pictured the lion propping him up upon its back and he imagined grabbing a handful of that luxuriant mane. Ready, together, atop the King, the proud lion and its equally proud rider, they’d prance about the enclosure while all of the other stupid animals turned green with envy, their eyes jealously narrowing. Spectator and creature alike would marvel and whisper and secretly wish it had been them upon the lion or them with a cute, little boy smiling upon their back.

  Georgie just knew that he and his new friend would become the talk of the zoo.

  The fuzzy hug seemed to go on forever and ever and though the lion seemed to be enjoying it, Georgie was growing impatient.

  He wanted to ride, dammit!

  He wanted to gallop triumphant for all to see!

  But naturally, the lion wanted a kiss first. And naturally, it was his duty as a little boy to oblige – like when his mommy made him take pictures with family or when he had to hug his Nana. He wanted to resist and get this show on the road, nobody wanted to watch them hug (yuck), but everyone knew that big, cuddly lions loved affection, and if Georgie expected their friendship to reach storybook proportions, he’d simply have to suck it up and deal with a little cat slobber. Just a little longer, he pep talked behind his fake hug mode smile, just a few more seconds, and then the awe-inspiring gallop could begin!

  Unfortunately, the lion’s mouth was far too big and instead of a simple peck, Georgie’s entire head went in. It was musty and kind of scratchy and the lion’s smelly tongue felt all rough and hot. Okay, Georgie thought, that’s that, enough, he’d paid his dues and it was time for the hug to end.

  Georgie wanted out.

  Enough.

  It was his turn.

  Friendship sealed with a hug and a kiss and now it was time!

  Oh, he couldn’t wait for that majestic ride!

  King of the zoo!

  Beastmaster!

  Junior lion-tamer!

  His head ached.

  The lion’s mouth was getting smaller.

  Outside he heard a loud cheering.

  He heard fireworks exploding.

  His head really, really hurt.

  He felt restless.

  The animals, the people, they were all waiting for him and the lion!

  He felt hot.

  They were waiting! They had to hurry!

  He felt wet (and a little embarrassed because he had just realized the lion’s saliva was probably mussing his hair).

  If they didn’t get it together soon, everyone would get bored and no one would be around to watch except for his daddy.

  He felt the lion’s sharp retractable claws pressing into his back.

  Ease up!

  Pain.

  He felt the lion’s power and indifference.

  He felt ill-formed realizations begin to swarm and confuse.

  He felt disappointment.

  And then, super quick, he felt nothing at all.
/>
  11:14 am

  Big George watched in horror as a cloud of cotton candy squeezed between his fingers. A second ago he had his boy’s arm, and then before he knew it, all he had was his diminutive hand, and then, lightning quick, only the big, fluffy, pink blurb of sugar the little guy was sucking on.

  By the time Big George looked from the pink mess gunking up his fingers to where his little boy should have been standing, Georgie had managed to hop a low barrier and squeeze between a set of bars with zero resistance. There was no cramming or struggling, just swift and clean the little guy went through.

  There was really no time to react. Big George did so anyhow. He screamed and shook and attacked the bars with paternal hysteria. There was no way he was getting his exceedingly ample frame through. His son fit with room to spare, but his love-handles stopped him dead.

  The lion just stared, cold, ambivalent, as it went about the business of gobbling up his son. George swore the beast was looking right at him, directly into his eyes, mocking and triumphant.

  By the time the guards assembled and blasted away it was too late.

  George went numb, colorless.

  He stared at the ground and chewed the inside of his left cheek red and raw. Locked deep inside, somewhere mute, plain, a white room in his soul, he became oblivious, unaware, and uncomprehending of the carnage.

  While the world around him flared, hummed and screamed, sirens and gunfire, blood and bone, tender, pink flesh and matted hair, motion, continuous and chaotic, he faded. He was no longer there, no longer a part of it, hugging himself into the next world, rocking slowly back and forth, sweetly, desperately, hopefully, whispering the name he shared with his son.

  HOLLOW MEAT

  0

  The world spins.

  Round with sound, dark, dank, destroyer, taking it all in, ingesting remains, dispensing of the cast-off, disposing of the undesirable. Speed is temporarily altered, tripped up. In moments, the loud, uneven grumbling, loaded thick and heavy, begins to thin and wheeze.