We have a job. A mother. A fiancé or wife, sometimes we can’t remember which. It rarely matters. They are window dressing that we dig beneath so society allows us safe passage.
We wait in the dining room. In the office. In the truck driving miles of highway every blinding day. We chafe at the stale taste of time. The normalcy of our lives chokes us. Because we have these things — girlfriend and colleague and kid — but we live alone. We are separate from our families and coworkers. We stew in memories of loneliness. Of separateness that is so wide it is impossible to gap. Our parents never understood us. They pushed soap into our mouths and hit our bare buttocks with a leather strap. The branch of a willow. Their huge hands. They spoke of gods and prayer and the unholy ones. We were the unholy ones.
Shame burns hot in us. It flames to rage. But the only thing that hurts is that we are separate from each other. To know there are others like us and not be able to reach them. That is true loneliness.
• • •
We boiled in rejection and taught ourselves not to feel. Now emotions give us only disgust. Our wife kisses us, and our lips freeze. A friend hugs us, and we go stiff. How we long to choke her with our tongue, or crush them against us! We would hold them so tightly their breath would cease. They would merge into our bodies and we would not be alone. At least for a moment.
They have no idea about the passion simmering in our hardened hearts. Every day — every moment — we might show them —
But we wait.
We push down every bit of sickly humanity growing within us. We prune ourselves of these desires until, one day, we’re ready.
Or perhaps we’re not ready, but we cannot wait any longer.
We search for you on the internet, in parks, through the entire city. We create lists of perfection. We desire someone even half as pure and gorgeous as you.
Or we stumble across you, and you’re good enough. Because at this moment, our need is great.
Your hair is the perfect shade of blond when hit by the evening sun. The tilt of your chin sends a shiver of possibility through us. You’re thin or plump, beautiful or plain, but there’s always a hint of weakness in you. It’s in the way you keep your head down and rush to your car or the way you would do anything your friends told you with that shining trust in your eyes. It’s like watching someone who cannot swim flailing in the water, sinking, their face going under.
We want to show you how to breathe, then hold you under. We want to exploit that weakness and destroy every beautiful thing about you.
You have become our obsession. You are our world, and we have much anger towards this world.
• • •
Their voices are so loud. They scream. They whisper. They drop casual comments about our worthless existence.
Shut up.
Shut up. Shut up!
The excitement of you doesn’t silence them completely, but it mutes them to a hum we no longer understand. It is the background of what we are, smeared into impressionism, almost pleasant in its buzzing.
If we were a painting, we would be messy and beautiful.
We stare and wonder what magic you possess. We want to consume it and keep it always. What have you ever done to deserve innocence? Why did we not deserve it?
We edge closer until our heads roar with the possibility of you. Our past is drowned out completely. Finally. You smile and bring silence.
There is a stillness in that moment. True bliss.
You laugh at our awkwardness. Perhaps you mistake it for charm. All that matters is you find us harmless — a reflection of yourself. Or perhaps you find us attractive because you do not understand desire. Or we are invisible in your perfect world.
Won’t you come with us?
We found a wallet, perhaps it is yours. We are giving out free samples. A dog that you can pet and let lick your hand. Or have we lost him? Won’t you help us look? We have a limp that makes us slow and we couldn’t possibly hurt you. Someone is hurt, please, this way. We need your help. Come closer. We need the warmth only your smile can give.
Doesn’t it feel good to be noticed? Needed?
We don’t feel at all. We were never needed. Or wanted.
We want you.
Then truth comes like a whisper through the silence and perfection of this moment. It wants you.
We grab you tenderly by the elbow. Around the waist. By the ear.
We whisper promises. What we’ll give you. What we’ll do to you. Our words work into your ears. They worm their way inside you, and your heart thunders.
You’re afraid.
Don’t worry — no one has taught us how to keep promises. Our life has been hope and disappointment turned to disillusionment and hardness. You’re so soft, and now you’re whimpering because you realize the situation you’re in has no way out. None. Except through us.
But no, not us. It. And it is coming faster now.
We can teach you how to not care. Before it’s too late. Before it’s here and tearing you apart.
You care so much. About how you look and sound. How those around you feel. What they think. Whether others like you.
We don’t like you. We don’t like the way we need you. We don’t like the way desire chokes us every time we look at you. Tied up in a cabin. Chained in a basement. Kept by fear and a promise on the tenth floor. You make us want. You make us need.
You make us human.
• • •
You’re brought us to the cusp of childhood, and we’re tender eyes and a sniveling brat. We’re snot and shame and we hate that you’ve seen us like this.
And we love that you’ve brought this tiny sliver of humanity to the surface.
And we hate that it exists.
And we love
and hate
and feel.
And that’s when it comes through us.
• • •
It likes you. It wants you. It needs you like the burning depths of the earth, never to be sated despite how much we give.
We whimper and hide in corners, much like you. You cry out when not too parched or weak. We want to cry out, too. But we open our mouths to soap or the strap and close them again. The lashings reach through memory and skin. They hurt. We thought we were beyond this, but you bring the pain back.
We froth at the mouth and swallow bubbles of spit. We are beyond speech, and your wide eyes know you don’t have long.
It walks toward you, and your pleas turn to silence. You understand cries are useless.
There’s a pressure in our heads, like a womb giving birth. It pulsates, growing and demanding. Then a push. A pop.
One. A tiny, terrible tendril bursts from our left eye. Two. A second slimy appendage slithers from the right.
Now you scream, your voice echoing off trees and minivans and the solid construction of a skyscraper. No one can hear you, because we have a space that is separate. That is ours. It rubs against your world, a space for us and you and it, no one else welcome.
A third tentacle seeps from our right temple, covered in blood and growing toward you.
The fourth is inevitable. It comes from the other temple, and through the pain there’s a release. It eases the headaches you’ve caused.
You resisted. On the sidewalk. In the forest. In your house where we demanded more and more and more.
Humanity is such a struggle.
Five and six grow thick from our ears so we no longer have to hear your screams. Blood rushes to the new appendages, and it can feel every ragged breath you draw.
Shh, no need to scream anymore. Even your clothes vibrate. Your jeans. Your summer tank top. Your blazer. Your little black dress. The fabric shivers with fear and it draws nearer.
Seven. Eight. Our hands lengthen, our fingers fuse.
It touches your whimpering face.
We hide from your disgust, so much like our mother and grandmother and that girl at the market, in class, down the street, who we’ve never talked to. They all stared as if we were an abomination. But you know the truth. You know what was always in us. You see it, and we are so ashamed.
You quiver and beg and think our ears can still hear, but we run far away. We’re in the bowels of earth, the depths of space. We are in silence and stillness, and it is divine. We drink peace and give all our space to it.
It undulates through us and seeps out of us. We have a space that is just for you and it. A cabin in the woods. A cold basement. An empty apartment.
The space is sacred. The ritual is brutal.
It reaches with its tentacles. Your scream is delicious. And it drinks until you are no more.
• • •
We drive to where you won’t be found. The light is gone from you. Cold, you no longer look innocent.
We dig. We clean up its mess. We feel its shame. We hear the voice of our parents and classmates and that man in the airport we’d never see again. Still, we let him hurt us.
It hurts. We dig.
You are buried. We wish for the same fate.
We start the car, the truck, the van. We search for a new place. One that is separate. We want to be hidden. Alone. But the humming turns to words, and the words become commands, and we know the space will always belong to it.
