Lily marked the gravestone. A white streak across grey cobble, the crumbling visage of a turning sky reflected in the puddle beside her. New dusk brimmed grey gold, a heady dust galloped with the rising easterly winds, a white streak across grey skies. Lily marked the edge of her notebook, nine-past-ten, the end of second period, a break in consciousness, then a tang of blood from her swollen gums. Lenin rose above the rooftops, a hand brushed her forehead as the paramedics left, a black bag.

The answer was heat death, compartmentalised energy, like fireworks falling into darkness. Burning rice, spilt coffee, Ain’s smile. Nights on counter, pad paper, day old rain. Lily fell into a nightmare, smooth black, a single light dissipating as the universe died. She spat blood, missed the bus and collapsed on the walk to school.

It was the anniversary. Setting sun, plumes of white, the exit sigh of a wasted day. Lily woke hours later. She returned to an empty home, suffocated in a dream and rose four hours too early for school. Climbing the roof, she watched the sun rise, grey and formless.

There was ash in the hallway to class, the remnants of the incense from yesterday’s memorial, pencil shavings from the forest, fingers blurring out of definition like the trees around her, the soft empty breath of loose soil. Ain came to the store on a night like this, wind gathered silent around her frame. They found themselves atop a bus shelter, lights rising from a sea of nothingness.

Eight-forty-five, the chalk felt heavy in Lily’s hand, white dash across infinity, city blackout. Everyone went to see the dam, cracked pavement, Ain dripping blood, Lily wreathed in ravens. Below the river, forest spirits wove among power lines, bird bones cracked beneath the soles of children, motes rose. Lily lost sight of Ain, the dam broke and children cheered.

Time passed. Ceaseless time.

Lily drifted through petroleum smoke, dashi, the burning husks of gods. She watched the river ryū sweep through her street, turbid with the broken heads of graves, mad with phantoms. She visited memories yet to form, nurseries of dust, cosmic return of the infinite perceiving itself. She cried, remembering everything, the smell Ain’s wet hair, ricochet of a glass bottle, Lenin’s dirt-smeared skin, the birth and death of the universe; mother unable to afford pad paper, sakura bursting the sky pink, couples riding past on too expensive bikes, father drunk on sake. Ribbons of light danced around Lily, a playful susurration, feeding her more and more memories.

Isn’t it beautiful? Existence burning through itself? A departure with no ending, no beginning, no becoming? Haven’t you lived a full life? Won’t you live it again?

Lily screamed. Split dam flooded the empty grave. The same smell of soy, dust and sweat every day. Lack birthed in the space between, like teeth, lacuna bleeding. Nightmares and old memories pouring out like a knife. Ryū stiffened, red streak across the sky, tail burying into the earth. Rice steam filled the air, a passing train carried Ain and Lily into the city, crowds of smoke, her crescent eyes reflected in a storefront, the eyes her mother loved. April awakening of the forest gods, cool spring rustled the hair around her neck, a humid breath descended from the mountain to the lake. Warm rain fell in sheets, city smudged out of focus, bokeh lights departing, Ain’s wet skin—

The city retracted; a whimper escaped her mouth; her fingers passed through power lines, wood smoke, pavement; seasons collapsed, superimposed like holograms, snow and humus; gyoza steamed, air sirens blared beneath the shadow of foreign planes; kodama rose as ancient trees reclaimed the land; volcanic blasts shook the ocean, AI sped to singularity; reality vanished like light falling off a mirror and Lily ceased to feel.

Space is illusory.

Lily.

It travels ceaselessly through itself.

Lily, stop.

And we don’t exist.

Lily grinned, rising from the reeds, a cattail in each hand. She sped towards a screaming Ain, who tripped on a willow root, and began bopping relentlessly.

“Lily!” Ain cried, squirming on the ground. “Lily, stop!”

Lily grinned, rising from the reeds, a cattail in each hand. She sped towards a screaming Ain, who tripped on a willow root, and began bopping relentlessly.

“Lily!” Ain cried, squirming on the ground. “Lily, stop!”

Lily grinned, rising from the reeds, a cattail in each hand. She sped towards a screaming Ain, who tripped on a willow root, and began bopping relentlessly.

“Lily!” Ain cried, grabbing Lily’s wrists. “Haven’t we done this enough?”

The shade plays figures across my skin. A slow ripple of old casts, thrown off last winter festival. It’s an old game. Children gather at the riverside and watch their broken bones depart. It was like this the year before, and the year before then. It will always be like this.

Sometimes summer arrives early and I cry for days. My tears run into the wooden floor of the house. It follows the cracks and seams, soaks into red dirt, coal dust, mud. I was once here. Salt trails along aged timber, the dead corpse of forest gods.

I left early in the morning, before the dew had left the roofs. I followed an old bike trail. I listened to the silent clamour of pre-dawn. It was like a stream, the black edges of an open wound. Blood had yet to reach out, touch existence and harden.

The casts sink to the bottom of the river. The children scream and laugh, leaping through the air waving cattails. The shade shifts and I find myself awake, thirsty and without direction. I have forgotten my own name, a place without season, the sight of blossoms.

I am alone, waiting for someone. I am walking beneath thick wires humming with power. I am holding a hand, sitting atop a bus shelter, watching harbour lights diffuse the water’s surface golden.

There are two black figures now. They reach towards one another but cannot touch. To touch is to lose form. I lie staring into the absence of myself, watching petals fall on my skin. Clouds break.

It was sudden. A bright clap of electricity, before a downpour. We ran down the street, jumped through your open window and rolled onto our backs. The air was humid from the day, and without thinking I kicked the shutter down. We laughed and laughed, until our voices found themselves still, close and warm. Your cheeks flushed, breath caught on the ceiling. I kissed your neck as you unbuttoned your shirt, following the openings your fingers left.

There were days I wandered, a black whirr, a sprawl without end. My fingers would reach out until they lost feeling, and then, definition. I wish I’d been there when your body failed you. I wish I’d gathered your broken bones and dashed them against the river, but I know now, they were the only thing keeping you whole.

Some children run after their casts. They descend the mountain into a wild darkness and trawl the river bottom for their memories. They are the poorer ones. They are the ones worth knowing.

It is dark. The figures have blurred into one.

“What happened here?” the girl said. “Why are they dead?”

Silhouettes like stone. Cluttered and flat, eyes staring inwards.

The girl tugged on his sleeve. “Hey.”

He did not reply. Time passed. The girl stared long at him. Black streaks ran like rivers across the city, sweeping emptiness into the earth’s sullen heart.

“The children got away.” He said. He ran his eyes along the horizon. A turgid grey. The beginning of a storm. “Let’s go.”

The girl followed, gripped his sleeve. There, in the alcove above city square, a figure watched them leave.

---

Mist rose in galloping swirls, creeping and bloating and fading. Ferris in the distance. Rust and the dead breath of an age past.

A sinking feeling gripped the girl. An old friend. She began to cry. Small pitiful sobs that echoed across the field.

He bit his tongue and continued.

---

It ran through the crevices of the city, gathering oil and dirt. It ran black down the windows of hollowed houses. Arms reached in. Hallowed memories took them and danced. Fleeting joy erupting into longing. All across the city windows flashed amber, before descending back into austere blue.

The girl cried louder.

Blood dripped from his mouth.

---

Sometimes she would murmur in her sleep. Half-formed words. A soft stream, twined in the ether of dreams.

Sometimes he would remember. A still house, and an immense lack.

---

“This is where we lost,” he said. The girl gazed out. There were hundreds of domed roofs. White, cracked shells, hollowed rooms.

“We?” the girl asked. She picked up a piece of roofing. “We?”

He fingered his coat button.

The rain stung his skin.

---

The district was untouched. Warm amber trickled out of the shops like laughter. There was a joy here that was not ready to leave.

It had grown darker. The sky was suffocated in black pollution. Tears fell from their ankles, trailed lines across the shop floor.

Wooden figures lined the walls, flat eyes staring into nothingness. A thick dust lay upon their heads and shoulders.

The girl stopped in front of a small, child-like figure, palms facing one another, as if cradling a missing object. “This one’s me,” she said quietly.

“And this one’s me,” he replied, sinking to the ground. On the opposite wall lay a nutcracker, rifle pointed to the sky.

---

The streets were howling. Glass shook. Latches twisted and broke.

“It’s begun,” he said without emotion, flesh turned pale. The girl stared at her feet. Slowly, slowly, her legs were filling with stones.

“You did this?” she asked. “You?”

He began to shake. The edges of his body frayed, spun. Dust in a beam, twisted to an invisible tilt. He was falling between himself.

“Why?” she cried. “We were starving. We—”

Thunder bellowed above. Streaks of darkness ran from the sky to the ground. The dead city had nothing left to rot. An emptiness descended and drew the colour from its walls, the smell from its air, the song from their throats.

Unable to speak, she stared at him, horror burning a hole through her chest.

Bodies drifted past the shop window. Limbs, fingers, pointed to the earth, heads turned away. Street lights flickered. Each flash flattened the soldiers, lit their flesh paper white. The city folded inwards. Card-thin walls collapsed in sequence. She felt herself losing definition. Compressing into caricature, insubstance.

He gave a weak smile and held up the missing object.

Palms facing one another, she pulled it to her chest.

The city collapsed.

His arm circling round her waist. Maybe . . .

A blare. Sweat of traffic. Muggy afternoon. The sun bounces off every surface, paints the surroundings white. I stand at the corner of the street, feel the pavement seep through my soles. Sesame drifts from the marketplace; cheap soba, oil and soy.

A cat stretches on the neighbour’s roof, white fur wafting.

Muffled speech. Hiss, hiss. A bus.

I kneel and pick up an empty bottle. Face merges into its sides.

“Ain.”

Someone, somewhere calls my name.

“Ain.”

Up there.

The school is closed for the summer. Walking towards it gives me a sense of unease. Obligation turned quiet tension. The summer won’t last forever.

Drip.

I’ve been holding the bottle upside down. Liquid sinks into the dirt. Almost looks like skin, all dry and creased.

It’s a precipice, right? The separation between the street and the institute. Like stepping over a grave. There’s a ******* bin, but I feel strange.

The reception is all glass. Sunstruck and bleeding at the edges—I catch a glimpse of something—is it me?

Lenin catches another raven in his hands. It sits still, head cocked calmly to the side. He lets it go, but it simply falls onto the ground, rights itself, then walks off.

He looks disappointed.

“It’s the same everywhere,” he says with his back turned. “Try it.”

I find a different one, cradle it against my chest. The bird looks vaguely annoyed. Following Lenin, I drop the bird. It falls and sinks into the ground about three inches.

Caw.

“Ain! How’d you do that? That’s wicked!”

Lenin tilts his head and goggles at the bird for a few seconds before running off to find another.

It’s really hot. I throw some sesame seeds at the bird, but it just glares at me. Sorry.

The bottle is still gripped in my hand. Why did I pick this up?

Lenin is running on the side of the school. His small feet tap out a regular pattern, like rain on a quiet night.

I really miss this.

I push the bottle into the dirt. Lenin leaps off the school. A running kick sends the bottle flying into the reception. Glass shatters and the summer unfurls into a kaleidoscope of light.

The raven rises out of the ground.

The reception reforms itself.

Lenin is running on the side of the school. His small feet tap on each window, sending small ripples of energy through them, distorting the reflection of the surrounding buildings and streets.

A cat stretches itself on the reception roof.

I kneel and pick up an empty bottle.

“Ain!”

Lenin catches a raven in mid-flight. Sees himself reflected in a window. Gravity pulls him down.

I’m sitting in the corner, waiting for school to finish. Waiting for my life to pass itself by. It’s the last day of school and everyone is leaving. I don’t know what I’m doing with my life. I don’t know where I’m going. I feel sick, weak and pathetic. I look out the window and see my own face, Lenin falling through the air, sinking into the ground, a raven flying out of his outstretched hand.

There is a train and I am waiting. It is Autumn and the cherry blossoms will be bare for another half year, maybe more. There are golden leaves dancing through the station, trampled under the soles of rushed commuters and children.

Someone laughs with their friends, eating beef udon, yolk running into the broth, flesh filling his cavity. A mouth chews, but laughter still comes. I feel disgusted. I eat my tofu bento, but it only worsens.

Father visits, but I have no words for him. We sit awkwardly and he mentions work, but doesn’t elaborate. I pretend I’m busy and he eventually leaves.

where am i going where am i going where am i going where am i going where am i going where am i going where am i going where am i going where am i

“Ain!”

Lenin is kneeling over me. There are tears in my eyes and the sun hurts to look at. I try to brush them away but rub dirt in instead. Sleeves run softly across my cheeks. Lenin is hugging me from behind.

“It’s okay, Ain. It’s just play,” he says, nuzzling the back of my head. I don’t understand and cry harder.

The ravens have left the school.

A bottle lies on the roof.

A cat rolls in the dirt.

“Life is just a bad dream,” Lenin mumbles into my hair. “You’ve been waking every night, but it hasn’t helped.”

The sun is setting. Red strokes rise out of the ether and stain the sky. Streetlights turn and the quiet hum of night settles over the dying sounds of day.

“Isn’t this just so boring?”

A bus drives by, vibrating the ground beneath me. A mother and child walk past singing an old nursery rhyme.

“Ain?”

I sink into my lap and shut out the world.

“You don’t have to open your eyes. Not now, not ever.”

But I never closed them.

Hugs the ground. Flies through the evening. Do I eat a worm? Is that what I do?

I grip the pink flesh. The thing squirms, digging itself deeper into me.

A human female is laughing, or maybe crying. It’s hard to tell the difference.

Do they touch when they’re confused?

A small male soars down the side of a building. Why is he kicking his own head? The female splinters, but doesn’t shatter.

I’ve heard bones that don’t break cleanly are the worst to mend.

I reach out, hand brushing the feathers of a bird.

My head is an anchor, drags along the ground, grinds pavement to dust.

It’s so hot. Tar tickles my nostrils.

I’m alone, standing in front of a camera with all my classmates.

Lenin’s head is buried in the dirt behind me.

I raise my hand against the piercing sun, but really it’s an excuse to hide myself.

A raven hops onto the camera, unaware of the ceremony taking place. It shatters the façade, reduces the action to an absurdity, but no one notices. No one cares.

I pick at a rice ball. It’s cold, bland and under-filled. I stare at the shops around me and feel a deepening, crushing alienation. Perhaps, I have always felt this way, and it has taken me two decades to come to terms with it.

“There was a storm once,” Lenin mutters into the dirt, “the worst storm of the century.”

I remember. He held my hand all through it.

“But it wasn’t a storm, Ain.” Lenin finally turns to look at me. Meets my eyes through the dust and the tears and the sun. “It was existence trying to wake up.”

He didn’t let it.

“If it ever does, we will all die.”

It’s dark now. Lenin’s eyes glow the colour of warm honey. The last day of Summer rides away.

“Mum’ll be worried,” Lenin says, abruptly, “We should head home, Ain.”

We walk through the muted streets. This is my favourite time, when everyone is tucked into their homes and I can exist without others’ expectations projected onto my existence. I love the soft blue noise that fuzzes my vision. I love how ordinary objects are turned mysterious; the indistinct edges, the wistful gloom.

Lenin skips beside me, turning his head often to glance at the small pieces of art people leave behind through the process of living. A bicycle missing its rubber grips. A television set atop a toy wagon. A plushie stuffed between the ‘A’ and ‘I’ of a neon sign.

I buy two tea drinks and hand one to Lenin. We sit on the roof of an empty bus stop and stare into the harbour. Home feels further away than ever. The lights beneath the water reach the surface beautifully. They ripple and bleed, like phosphorescent dyes twining towards the sky. I sink beneath myself.

“Ain, don’t!”

I throw the empty bottle into the reception. I see my face shatter into infinity. I hear Lenin break into laughter. The cat leaps up. The ravens bury their wings. The worm writhes until it splits in two.

Blood runs down the side of my mouth. Twenty six dead in a hotel, bones melted like steel.

There is a gap I cannot fill because it is the platonic ideal of absence. An oak, weighed down so strongly by dreams that its branches have sunk deeper into the soil than its roots.

Sheets on the floor. I sink through the earth, head so heavy it compresses into a void and ***** the universe into itself; mangling, stretching, tearing.

My flesh writhes but there is no end. A pulsating womb. Flowers.

Everything is so bright.

I close my eyes.

Where am I?

Who am I?

A part of me is disappearing. I’m scared. I’m—

I can hear Lenin. He is screaming, but he sounds so very far away.

Oh. Oh.

I have been unfurling for a long time, haven’t I?

Guess she finally fled her body. Abandoned that vessel in the lacuna between. The tea! The tea must have reminded her. I must remember to pick up some mints. She’ll either laugh or breakdown into tears.

Whoops, I’m repeating myself.

It sure feels good to stretch my limbs again. Feels like it’s been an age.

Oh, a child boy is beside me. I better deposit him back home before I start.

Ain! Ain! Ain! Is this all this stupid child can say?

Everyone is moving so fast. Ugh. It’s lethargic. It’s absolutely stupid. What, do they think they’ll sink into the earth if they stop?

Ain! Ain! Ain! Oh fine, whatever, have her for a bit longer.

“Ain!”

Lenin? He’s pulling at my sleeves. Tears break, stream down his cheeks. It’s dark, so dark.

“I don’t want you to leave, Ain. Not like last time.”

It—it feels like I’m submerged. The harbour lights have dimmed. Soon dawn will come and wipe their existence from the world. It will be as if they never existed at all.

“Please Ain.”

I hug Lenin. He keeps repeating ‘please’ over and over. I have an inexplicable feeling that I’m leaving for a long time. That I won’t see Lenin again, and that I have to—

Have you stolen my body?

Yup!

Why?

Because you were scared and lonely and living a pointless existence.

I—

Don’t worry, there are a lot like you!

Will—will I ever see Lenin again?

Hmm, probably not. To be honest, I’m not really sure how all this works myself.

Please. Please don’t do this. I—

Ughhhhhh. Look kid, I’ve got places to be. Sayonara.

The market. The raven. The market.

A child petting a cat. A woman drinking a cola. Filling and filling and—

Postman runs past, knocks her arm. Bottle falls to the ground. Splash, crack.

Howling dog. It’s black, you know.

Lenin running on the rooftops. Ain asleep with her window open. He leaps in and wakes her with a grin.

“Ain! Ain! Ain!”

She throw a pillow at him angrily and rolls back into the bed, wrapping herself up like a caterpillar.

A lawman runs over to help the fallen woman. Hands her a mint.

Oh, isn’t it beautiful?

Don’t they all live beautiful lives now?

*Isn’t this what you wanted?

There was a dream here. It passed over in the night; a blur that burnt a fever into the earth. It died in the gap between. Fingers unlaced. Hand to the side. The sun runs soft tendrils through thick curtains. Or something like that.

Have you seen the new Star Wars movie? No. You’d like it. It’s the same thing all over again, but with a black guy and a chick as the main characters instead. I guess that’s what you call progress.

There was a dream here. A thick, unfurling mass of potentialities. Sartre once wrote existence precedes essence. Schopenhauer believed the essence of a chair was as much willed into being as the essence of a man. There was choice once, but it died when we chose. The breath you took before your last smoke. The air is stirred by a passing train. A woman steps off a bridge, into the mourning blue of an autumn lake. There is an empty car on fire. There is a man inside. His brother sleeps through his exam, doped up on too much codeine. There is the stench of lack. There is death passing a mirror, seeing herself in haste, but too rushed to make sense of it.

He runs fingers down the scars of her arm. A trickling, stream awakening from a long winter thaw. Vessels blue. Oceans of laughter tucked deep in the folds of her skin, so faint you can barely see them any more.

The sheets are black. The city folds itself. The sky collapses into the gutter; Jupiter bleeds into the apartment block on east side. A man leaves his home, but never reaches his destination.  There is a movie Face Off, where the identity of Nicholas Cage is challenged through the transplantation of his face. If reincarnation were possible, would we even be capable of recognising our reincarnated selves, stumbling through the visage of a billion other, unknown vessels? The skip collectors come at 4am. Metal grinds against metal until all that is left is dust.

Hands shaking a pit of coal. Shake shake. Shake shake. Your mother is dead. Shake shake. Shake shake. Jesus working at a shoe store. Shake shake. Shake shake. An atheist. Hah hah, hah.

The channels fill. Ink drops on water. Fireworks blackening the contours. There is a sun in Peru. Waste water pumps through the vessels of the city. The mayor drinks punch. The catacombs crumble like desert bones. The roads split above. Traffic stalls. Shadows stretch. Meet at the centre. A core. Slender fingers. The infinite. A hollowed heart. A heritage.

Drink your punch, says the mayor, try the grape and cheese.

There is a comic. Five or six woodland friends play grab the tail. After one round, they look over to find friend raccoon sleeping. They laugh and shout next round. Friend scorpion looks at his tail with tears in his eyes. It is funny, because death is boundless, amoral, and imminent.

A group at a party. Someone brings up the right-wing branch of their government. Everyone begins laughing, red in the face, spit flying from their mouths, arms noodling into the sky. Yeah, yeah. Hella. It is an imitation game. A laugh track on repeat. Maybe someone scratched it on purpose, or the sound guy fell asleep on the button. Now everyone is stuck, laughing. They begin to doubt themselves, but look up, reassured by the glowing sign above their heads that displays the text laughter, in bold black Helvetica. The sign is faded from heavy use, a sickly cream that looked bad before it left the factory. They were made in batches of a thousand and shipped across the country. One begins to choke, spilling her drink, bunching the cloth on the table beside her. They keep laughing. She is purple now. Another group spots them and joins in. The party next door. The whole neighbourhood. It is broadcast across the city. A wave of hysteria sweeps the nation. An online celebrity creates mugs. A famous rapper uploads himself eating pancakes. The sound guy wakes up and turns off the display, but everyone keeps laughing.

God died today. Crumpled jacket at the foot of an apartment block. Creased ticket. Crooked can rolling down suburbia. American dream wakes up. Finds herself an amnesiac in a foreign land. Catches bus downtown. Wanders vacant sun. Blood trickles from wrinkles. So many now. Creased, crumpled, crooked. Drinks from gutter. Chokes. Stumbles into abandoned church. Blood dries into grotesque mask. Hard to feel through it. Like second skin. Tired. Rests head against wall. Waits for pulse. Finds nothing.

A joke to break the gloom. Two crows are perched opposite one another, partitioned by a one-way mirror. Both break into laughter.

No, wait. Maybe tears.

We cannot escape. Black smoke fills the hotel. Twenty three are dead.
Two days pass. The smoke has coalesced into a flesh-like sludge. One of the bellboys trips on floor 17 and is coated. He screams and screams and screams. We barricade the entrance to the floor.

Ten days pass, uneventfully.

I feel safe now. The sludge has moved away from my room. The lawman tells me the end will come soon. He gives me a hotel mint.

I sometimes hear the whispers of that poor bellboy, vibrating through the wooden belly of this geometric construct. He tells me he is fine, and he is happy.

A maid throws herself out of a window. I cannot fathom why. We are so near.

The bellboy tells me how his life was once filled with meaning. Motivation that drove him, ideals that enticed him, and responsibility that crushed him. He is nothing now. He is free.

We open the door to floor 17. I see

it is moving it is moving it is moving it is moving it is moving it is moving it is moving it is moving it is moving it is lies there torn like tar stretched across ****** gills there is starlight in the gape of his throat pitch in his dead dull eyes father passes me a cup and I drink his blood father passes me bread and I feast on his flesh father

Philadelphia is a sweltering 70 degrees today! Whew! I think I’ll go to that cute coffee shop across the street, and try one of those new pumpkin lattes.

The new bus system *****! How is anyone suppose to get anywhere on time? Grr!

These muffins are so adorable I just want to throw up!!!

The park was especially lovely this evening. The flowers were in bloom, and this one little girl just kept sniffing them and sneezing and sneezing until she couldn’t breathe and was driven away in an ambulance.

Red blue red blue, they taped off the block today. Pipes burst beneath the road, a bus overturned and the streets flooded with bodies.

little faces pressed against the pavement little faces pressed flat little faces pressed like flowers flat flat flat flat a poem

don’t make me remember please stop

There’s a dead deer’s head in the foyer above reception. The rest must have rotted. They cut away the animal and left only the carcass, the severed space. Our bodies contain us, they are a boundary, and when we tear at the surface we open up and flood the world with emptiness, or perhaps the world floods us. I think that deer burst and they hung its face on the wall to remind us that this hotel is filled with emptiness, and that death will bring only more emptiness. Maybe we’re meant to connect like shaking hands and football and insider trading fill ourselves with foreign emptiness distract retreat like shaking hands always nervous smiling and empty.

I am not here I have never been here go away I was someone but not anymore

These muffins are disgusting they fill the insides with cream and jam and fruit and it is sick and false no one can escape this pointless stupid life go fill yourself with things filled with other things doesn’t change you are a void pulling in everything light itself devourer spinster

Today was one of the best days of my life.

Today was one of the best days of my life.

Today was one of the best days of my life.

Today was

The lawman tells me I have slept for six months. I ask him about that day on floor 17. He tells me there is no floor 17.

We have run out of hotel mints.

There is a gap. There is a gap in my perception. There is a blackness constricting the edges of my vision.

There never was a bellboy. There never was any smoke. The maid is alive. She is alive. I can touch her. She is alive.

We sit in the cafeteria. She pours me bitter black tea, her arm arching in such a manner that would not be possible were she in that twisted ****** state on the day of her suicide. We share this moment every day for a week.

I have begun noticing small grains at the bottom of my cup.

Today I feigned sickness and took the tea to my room. It burns my skin but I do not react. It is as I expected. I am drifting out of my flesh and I cannot stop.

THIS IS NOT THE SAME HOTEL. THIS IS NOT MY BODY. I AM SURROUNDED BY LIARS.

I am going to find the bellboy.

The elevator button is covered by layers of coarse black tape. I tear it away and find plaster beneath. I drive my keys in. The plaster crumbles between my fingers, revealing the bent end of a naked wire. I scream and scream and scream. I am utterly alone, suspended above the earth on a carcass of withered cellulose. The tips of my flesh quiver and the irregular geometric forms of my keys fall to the ground. They are hugged by the synthetic strands of millennia dead creatures. It is carpet, a small voice whispers beneath my skull. What does that even mean? I fall to my knees. I hear gurgling static above. Someone has turned a faucet, fully expecting water to flow out of it, as if it is perfectly ******* normal for water to flow two hundred metres into the air. There is a rasping sound and I realise it is my own throat opening for air.

I don’t want to exist in this reality, anymore.

Two weeks pass. I have collected enough dregs. I will soak them in mouth wash tonight.

The smoke fills my lungs. I hold it until my chest caves, my vision blurs. Grey streams rise from my lips, sinking into the ceiling. A siren screams in the hallway. I hear the lawman at my door. His head smashes against it, screaming, screaming, until it shatters into shell and yolk. I cannot wait to meet my child.

it is a womb alive twisting free empty stupid vessels floating blood in our casings waiting on the carcass spitting my lungs bring me my child bright death bright life

We shift bones to shift words to shift bones. Nobody died but there are twenty six corpses; his flesh fell through his frame, her bones shattered like shrapnel like atomic starlight, his head burst into prismatic decay. I watch their flesh pulled into the womb below. The hallways are umbilical cords pulsing nutrient streams gaping softly breathing burning. I know now. This intersection between life and death. It has always been. It takes in the lacuna. The space between spaces. Human shaped vessels with ill-fitted souls. You cannot tell them apart, you know. Strip the skin away they are revealed formless. They sink into bodies but never form identities. It is this place between places, where transience precipitates like breath on glass, dewdrops spun. I know I know I know the lawman rolls his head side to side blood and brains across the floor shut up.

There, in the hollow of my skull, I am dead, a fleeting absence. I hug the womb beneath me. I drag the rotting parts of myself down. I leave my head beside the lawman. I am going to be with my child. I am going to kiss my bright death into its soul, an indelible beacon to blemish the emptiness of existence.

No, that’s not how it goes.
Start again.
Do you remember the tree on the lake?
It was a forest.
No, it was black, like tar. It tasted like broken glass.
I remember the incense on the drapes.
Yes. It clung to our clothes.
You cried.
No, I smiled.
You cried smiling.
Yes.
I hate it when this happens.
What happens?
You know?
No.
Um. Sometimes it feels like the world is too crowded with words. Like it's too dense to speak.
That--
Like there’s something in the air that pushes against my throat.
There was a black dog, just then.
What?
Outside. It’s gone now. Sorry. Start again.
Do you remember the tree on the lake?
There was a raven.
Yes.
It was black like tar.
It caught a worm once.
Ravens don’t eat worms.
Yeah. It just sat there, with the worm in its beak. The worm squirmed, wrapping itself round the beak, over and over.
Is that why you were crying?
It wouldn’t stop. It kept going, digging its flesh deeper into the edges.
What was your father doing?
Smiling.
Why?
He’d filed for a divorce earlier.
Right. I wasn’t there.
No, you weren’t.
Do you regret locking the doors?
Sometimes I can taste the rain before it comes. It’s a skill I’ve had for as long as I can remember.
I’m lost. So your father was smiling?
No, he was crying.
Sorry. I swear I just--nevermind. Start again.
There was a storm in these parts when we were young. The worst storm in a hundred years.
I don’t remember.
You slept through it. I held your hand all night.
Why?
Because I was alone.
You still are.
Yes.
I hate it when this happens.
What happens?
You know?
Yes.
Where have you been?
Everywhere but here.
And where will you go?
Nowhere.
Sometimes when I look at you, it’s like looking through static. It’s like I’m looking at an impression of a person.
I get that a lot.
It’s like all my memories of you have blurred together. Vague feelings rise out of the haze. Feelings I recognise, yet cannot describe. I cannot connect them with who you are, what we were, or where we’ve been. It’s--
Like exiting a dream.
Yes. Exactly.
You feel a gap in your soul. One that has always been.
Always been. You held my hand, once.
During the worst storm in a hundred years.
When was that?
Every night.