Chapter Text
You must understand; I was not in my right mind. I found myself saying this for many reasons. Of this fact, I was acutely aware. There was a fog in my head and my skin and my flesh and my stomach… It was a thick sort of fog, as if you had put cream into it. It was also as if there were cream in my body. Heavy cream. I drag it along like a body bag. It’s my body in the bag.
Fatigue hung over my head like the blankets of clouds in July. Had it turned to July? Was it May? I regularize my view of the world.
There were things. Things… I use words like these because I have no more words. I couldn't see a thing. Thing thing thing. It was the fog, I surmised. The fog and things. Was I there at all? Knock upon my door, I thought to myself, as if it would come to mean any thing. Or don’t. My mind was in complete disorder. You can never be sure of any thing in such a state. Much less things that eat away at what little mental faculties I have left. It was a state of shock, maybe. It felt like I was in shock. I think I was in shock. Shock, or some thing else. I’m not sure as to what other things it could be. I thought of it like the shock of pouring boiling water into a cold glass. I boiled things often.
Boiling came to be something of a holiday to me. I have only begun to boil recently; such things were not necessary before. And it is with this recency that I have discovered such intrigue within it. It is a pleasure to watch as bubbles form from nothing beneath a blanket of water, subject completely to its currents and whims. Listless—yet they still rise. I often hummed to myself as I watched such a process. I think them different from birds. Though I still enjoy watching. It was thoroughly ungraceful; in their mannerisms was hysteria. But such things are also enchanting.
I have thought about it, and I have concluded that bubbles are lesser, though. I do not like how they gather, or form queues. How they attach themselves to the potatoes or cabbage or lettuce or whatever it is I am boiling. Imperfect. The shaky ascent is exciting, but not exhilarating. It is short. Frenzied. Neurotic. Neuron. Neurotic. The bubble floats to the surface and knows nothing higher. And then it pops. Neurotic. I begin to think that I quite like this word. Especially in reference to boiling. It feels good in my mouth. Neurotic. Neuron. Antibiotic. Newark. Moronic. Forgone. Caustic, Lower-on, Terrific, Sown-on, Mystic, So-on, Holistic Abduction Corroborative Arson Malicious Carmine Climactic Articulation Historic Chapon Acidic Ketonization Slapstick Colon…
These thoughts or words or whatever form they had taken on split out of my mind and onto my tongue and between my lips and out into the air. I had gone mad. So said the words back at me in the atmosphere. They floated up like bubbles. The world was being boiled, I surmised; I was being boiled. Frog in a pot. I’m not a frog, I’d object. But I had no solid evidence stating otherwise. Wet and water and moisture and mania were in the sky. I thought it was July. But what did I know? I plucked stares from the ground like camellias or maybe absinthe. I don’t know these words. I try to reel myself in—but the hearse had sunk. This is my left mind. What?
In some sort of way I condensed on the edges and came to notice a few things. My feet were being bitten at. I am swaying like a tree. It was raining, but only over my head. And then I crystallised once more and was estranged from such. This was a mess… This is a mess… I realise that words are now swirling around me. Circling? Like birds. I began to try to tie them together, but they float beyond my reach. This was an ascent unknown to me. I like to think that I began to follow them. I’m not sure. You must understand. I say these words hollowed of meaning.
The world is glossy. I began to think that I needed glasses. Glassy. Glassy-eyed? No, that would make things worse, I thought. Perhaps my name could be Glassy. I rolled it around and it fell onto the pier and rolled into the water. No, I thought at the moment. It skewed to the down. What? This was an exceptional chill. My bones were being seduced. Only my bones, in a way. In all of the ways, maybe. I sweep with a mop to chance at becoming a billionaire in spirit. We all want to be billionaires.
We? I am not we, maybe. A question knocked at my door. But there was nobody to respond. The door is on the right. I’m too far? I draw squiggly lines to suggest some sort of connotations, which cannot be there because I see only squiggly lines. I suppose all lines are squiggly, in a sense bereft of sense. I hemmed. Things are spiraling…
“What? Who—” and words crashed together and slipped out into my ear canal. I say crashed because they were fragile; Wobbly? Watery. Wobbly Watery. Goodness! Everything is glass.
“Sunny… Why are you here? Why would you come back?”
I think I try and pull something in but it slips and waters. Slips and wobbles. I began to rationalise and it breaks because it slipped on the way in through the door. Slapstick!
“Just go away. Just go away and leave me alone… Just—
Fuck. Stop staring at me like that, you freak…”
Aspiration. Aspirated. Aspirin. Words? Exhaust. I turn and flip the page but there’s no sunlight. These words remind me of that lack of sunlight. I think. They were like a dying breath. This is one of the few sounds I know. I have been stepped on by words like these before; I faintly probe through the mist. Stuck my arm in the shredder-box. Made of glass, at least.
I grabbed something red. And then she took a step into my Glossy-Glassy world. How she did this, I had no clue. Because she was sitting! On a bench. I begin to rationalize and he’s stepped on a rake.
I crystalize and expand. It takes shape. I took shape? That changes nothing. 즐거움. His lefty-left hand dabs and wipes over the red like he-she’s painting dots. I hear a laughter and I think it gets wet.
I hear a laugh. I hear laughter. Glossy-Glassy—the cloth was already wet. Familiar, in a sense. Like the names of childhood friends. They escape you, until…?
“Sunny, what are you doing? What? Why?”
It’s dripping and there’s water and I dab it away. Lefty-left. She’s crying. A piece of glass cracks, and I rationalise. Slipped on a banana peel. After two steps forward. I cut a strip of cloth, measuring it to be just a bit longer than the red. It’s not long before the red seeps in through the white. I rationalise.
“I felt it was something I needed to do.”
There was more laughs or laughter but I don’t think I’d call it either because it feels like it’s missing something to me.
“What? That you needed to pay me back or something? I don’t need your pity.”
Putty. I was in a bookstore once, and they sold putty—which is, in fact, not a book. It was the same type used by window-glazers. In little clear plastic circles. Sold. I am introduced to a new concept. Scraped off the windows; absurd. I try to rationalise. There is too much; I spit out phlegm.
“No. I felt I couldn’t leave you alone.”
Snippy scissors cut once more. I tie her down and shackle her to the floor or the bench; it doesn’t matter. Snip-snip-snip. The cotton soaks up red and blue and wet and moist and I rationalise.
“Sunny. You’re soaked. Go home. You’re not doing yourself any good. Just go home and go back to your little room and forget about all of this already. Like how you forgot all of us before. You can do that again, right? Just make sure to watch your balance this time.”
Wiping something after misting it leaves it cleaner than before, I surmise. Suppositions. I can form such things once more. I rationalise, and he finally comes on screen with his little cane and does his little dance.
I cup a lower quadrant of her face with my right hand and she flinches.
“If we are to speak of being soaked, then this is a shared quality. Please, keep still as feasible.”
There is a square of fabric on my lap. And the wet cloth in my left hand. Strictly speaking, it is not very wet to me. I start to believe that being wet is relative. The title wet cloth means nothing when all of the other black and white and yellow and denim cloth is equally as wet. I thus rely on familiarity. I try to rationalise further, but my mindlessly-mindful dabbing of the gash on her face is interrupted by her tears.
“Why? Why? Why are you doing this, Sunny? What the hell do you mean by ‘I can’t leave you alone’?”
I began to feel that she is profoundly difficult. Such questions, I’ve asked myself. And I’ve rationalized. Is deferring answers typical of the outside world? Is she incapable of research? It’s almost endearing, in a sense. But also very difficult. I have come to realise that I do not approach questions as she does. Perhaps the very word ‘question’ means something different for each of us. Like lame ducks. Fated to limp through life fundamentally out of step.
She—with her worrying perceptiveness—notices my deep thinking, and cuts it off.
“Please, just—keep it concise. One word. Something I can understand. Anything. Please.”
Profound does not suffice as a word for how difficult she and her actions and her words and her notions are. Fervently. Maybe fervently works. Once again, I found myself playing with words.
Words are the subject of much of my play. Despite that, they remain elusive. I thought back to the pages. I ran some through my mouth and they fell, canine and horny. And then something came to a boil. Condensed, crystalised, melted, and then…
Deranged. A bubble—steam—rose from iron. Zig-zag. It craters and cavitates and.
I caught it, it popped, and I feel deeply shameful.
“Beautiful. It’s because I think you’re beautiful.”
Mari’s words found themself in my mouth and I repeated them. Shamefully.
My hands were not moving. I realized that we were in a familiar moment. It had only been a day, yet so much had already slipped from my mind. The outside world is too much for my fragile mentality and spirit. I felt I were made of glass.
It was here, like with the houses, that the differences stood out to me the most. Where before, she loomed over me, now I lingered over her. Where she had placed two bandages over my skin; I gave her three. Where once she looked large, she now seemed so small. Where my reflection was once just blurry, it had now become warped by her tears. And where the moment before ended with her moving away, this time she pulled me in.
It was another hug. An embrace. I did not feel so strangled, though she sounded like she was. Or maybe choking. It was gentle yet firm, in a sense. Warm. I felt as if I were melting. I felt I was turning into a liquid and melding into her skin. Even as she shook and held me tight, exhaustion and fatigue and tiredness weighed on me so heavy that I felt I was like a penitent. But for what did I require penance? Perhaps I was being vaporised. Lightning of vengeance. Divine retribution, of sorts. It was beginning to become dark, I mused, yet it was warmer than when the sun was high. Sleep carried me in; I slept atop a mountain of fruit.