Bodies (An experiment with metamorphosis)

I have that curious dream again… the one where the ground breaks away beneath me. Only this time it happens: grappling with the crumbling pavement, I try desperately not to, but I fall. I keep falling. It is not so much the dream that has me in a panic come morning; it’s the fact that as the sunlight hits my eyes to wake me, I am dead.

I reach for my lover who, beside me, still sleeps with that beating heart of his. He does not wake to greet me. Rather, as I touch my hand to his chest he is chilled, pulls the blanket up past his neck, and turns toward my window, as if to seek warmth from the early morning autumn glow.

Let me back up. I’ve been dying for quite some time. It’s something I have sought to evade for years. Only this morning it seems I cannot continue to worm away from fate; the truth stares me right in my face. I pull myself up from my bed—my casket—and I slink to the mirror. My skin sags like a disgusting mutation before me. A frantic awareness of my death-state has me locked in terror as I grab my utensils: a hairbrush, some rouge, mascara, anything to hide this condition of mine. My efforts yield nothing; I am beyond dead. I am decayed.

I am meticulous in my actions, for I have decided it best not to wake my love. I would enjoy throwing my utensils at the mirror in frustration as each one betrays me, but I do not. The hairbrush rips my hair from my skull, and I am left bald, with a giant fissure that will expose the veracity of my situation the moment I am seen. I smear in the rouge and my skin peels away. Panicked, I continue to rub until all that is left of my cheek is the bone, although I do not bleed; dead folks tend not to.

I hear my lover stir. This ghastly shell of mine is sure to frighten him so I try my best not to hover. I lower myself to his level and I sit at the foot of the bed. I brace myself for his reaction.

He blinks morning from his eyes, and stretches his feet. They poke out from the blanket. The stretch of his arms follows.

Delay. I can’t handle this. Should I just run?
He reaches for my lifeless limb. The arm. He hasn’t noticed yet. He looks at me with what seems like reverence and I am without words. We sit in silence for one minute… two… he reaches up to touch my hairless head.

“Gah!” I exclaim, quickly jerking it away.

“What’s wrong with you? Get back in bed.”

I pause at his mindless words, his lack of acknowledgement before I surrender.

He still hasn’t noticed. How could he not?

Silent, still, I allow him to pull me back under the blankets and he croaks softly in my ear.

“I don’t care,” he says, “go back to sleep.”

Clean (an experiment in Erasure)

I’ll try not to bore you… weigh you down with details. I’ll ground you in something tangible. Something to make you consider me human again. Trust me. I’ll admit a few things.

I was probably a little too harsh with the boy.

I hung him up long ago… like an old coat. I hung him up in pieces so I wouldn’t have to deal with him. He was always my boy. I’d never deny him the title. But it ended there. Like I said, I hung him up. Sent him off, day after day. But just like his father, he always came back. He looked just like Ron, you see. That horrible sideways grin that always seemed to catch me at just the wrong moment. When I was face down in a recipe that I never could get quite right, or when the washing machine broke. Or perhaps I was wiping away the fingerprints from the glass counter tops. I never wanted that counter top. Marble, I knew, was much more suitable for a filthy family, such as our own. Hell, brass might have even worked better. But glass? That glass always reminded me of Ron’s hands, how greasy they’d be just before he’d try to touch me. Maybe it’s for the best that he’s gone.

But he knew better than to look at me like that during chore hour, that boy of mine. It was his fault, really. It seemed he knew what he was doing with that sideways grin and those pale blue eyes, with that damn red freckle he got from that Ron. His fault… I couldn’t help myself. If you had sat me down anytime before this all happened and explained this course of events, well, it would be you who was getting charged with crazy. I hadn’t expected this.

I was cleaning when I saw the stain. I was vaguely compelled to keep scrubbing. He came home with that stain on his cheek. I didn’t raise him to shame me like that. Maybe it was more like a smear, a disgusting red smear that screamed to threaten my dignity to the entire neighborhood. I couldn’t let him shame me like that. No, not today. My house was too clean.

I scrubbed. Just like Ron always had me do. I scrubbed that child, that stain on the cheek of that child. A red smear, that disgusting red stain. I sought to remove that insidious stain and I scrubbed ‘till the red from his cheek was replaced by a smear of red blood. Clean. My boy was not in danger…

So perhaps you misjudged me. I was only doing my job, you see. It was he who needed help. Trust me.