June 15th
I woke up this morning and immediately reached for my left arm. There was this awful, awful itching sensation. It felt like it was coming from under my skin. I have no idea what it is, but it seems to have stopped now. Hilda is worried, as usual. She keeps telling me to see a doctor, but I tell her, it’s just itching. It’s like a rash just a bit under the skin of my arm. She’s so sweet, though. For once I got up and she was right there, next to me, asking if I was alright. Usually when I get up she’s already out gardening, and I have to say good morning to her out the window. I like that, ritual, it’s cute, but there’s something to be said about waking up next to someone. Maybe it would have been better if she hadn’t though; it seems I’ve sent her into a tizzy. I’m so lucky she’s here.
June 17th
Reminder: Go to gardening shop tomorrow, we need a new hose and some pesticide. There are these little black things that are killing Hilda’s flowers.
The itching seems to be dying down. Not sure why.
June 19th
The itching has gotten way worse, if I had less self-restraint I would have clawed my arm off by now. It’s not constant, but enough to really make getting anything done. As soon as I mentioned it to Hilda she took a nosedive – it’s not my choice whether or not I see the doctor now. She went rushing out to the chemist to get me something as soon as I mentioned anything. Just dropped what she was doing and ran out. I tried to work on my writing today, but I just couldn’t bring myself to finish anything, this itch was so annoying. I think it spread up my arm, too. I just ended up watching TV all day.
Today I saw this documentary about a philosopher called Hobbes. He believed in something called a social contract – that people aren’t kind to each other because it’s in their nature, but that it’s just considered socially acceptable. That deep down, we’re all just horrible monsters looking to fuck and eat each other. He was a pretty grim fellow, but I can see his point. He’s saying that it’s not really up to us, that deep down it’s human nature to be aggressive, it’s genetically pre-programmed. I don’t know though – when I look deep down, I don’t really feel anything morose or dark. I doubt there’s anything but sunflowers beneath Hilda’s skin.
Thank God we can overcome things, eh?
June 21st
Jesus, fucking, Christ. So I went to the doctor today and sat for like, an hour and a half in the waiting room. This old man gave me his newspaper. When I smiled at him, he just sort of looked forward. He must have been on autopilot or something, but it stuck with me for some reason.
So I get into the doctor’s office, he looks at my arm and tells me we have to go through this whole ordeal of getting an x-ray. He says I’d have to wait a couple of days, but when I told him how much of a bother it was, he agreed to move things around. I was grateful. The machine made me nervous at first, I always hated these things. When I was younger my brother stole a bag of cookies from me, and for some reason that made me mad enough that I ended up breaking his arm. He had to get an x-ray, and the whole time I was waiting for him to come out, I was scared. For him and for me. I wanted him to be okay, but I also didn’t want him to tell on me. In the end, he didn’t. He lied, said he fell down the stairs. This confession’s a little late, but I only just remembered. Sorry, bro.
I get home to find I’ve already missed a call from the doctor. When I phone him back, you know what he says to me; bugs. I have bug eggs, inside my arm. Seriously – I got a cut in my arm a few weeks ago, and it got spider eggs in it. He says there’s no worry about them hatching or anything, but it explains my itching. They need to figure out the best way to solve this, and will get back to me. Seriously, fucking eggs. I told Hilda it was just a rash.
June 22nd
Knowing there are spider eggs inside me has already made the itching go down. I think it’s neat – these little things living inside me. These little creatures forming in me. Ha, does this make me a woman? I guess I am pregnant. I can almost feel the eggs moving around in my arm. Hilda sprayed the little black bugs in the garden hurting her flowers today with pesticide. I felt like running in and saving them – “my babies, my babies!” I would yell. It feels like my arm is a huge ocean, and the eggs are little boats. I can write peacefully now, I know everything’s fine. That’s not stopping Hilda from worrying though, poor thing.
June 23rd
I’m trying to keep my arm as still as possible. I remembered this Bible verse “Oh lord, your sea is so big and my boat is so small”. I’m going to be nicer to the eggs. Hilda insists on putting this lotion on my arm now, she’s such a worrywart. Seriously, I love her, but it can get really annoying sometimes.
Writing is a lot easier now – these spiders in me are a muse. I pretend they talk to me – and just the idea is pretty grim and fascinating in itself. The doctor phoned me today, but I didn’t answer.
June 24th
I ordered some Hobbes today.
June 25th
I went into the doctor again; I can’t avoid the calls any longer. The eggs are such an inspiration to me, now. I’ve started writing a new story – a horror, about spiders. They’re such a cool symbol, now I think about it. The perfect image of evil – these little horrible creatures that everyone seems to hate. There’s even an evolutionary disease (arachnophobia) that makes you scared of them. It’s genetically pre-programmed that we fear them. I looked for the old man in the waiting room – nothing. Maybe he’s sick. There was this other patient there; this daft guy, who got out his cigarette, ready to light right there in the office. Luckily he regained his wits and put them away. Smoking, eh, it just disgusts me.
The doctor gave me these weird pills – I think they’re meant to break the eggs down. I start taking them tomorrow. Goodbye, my little pretties. I feel bad about losing them; I can almost feel them in my arm, the little seeds of evil. I have to hide the pills from Hilda, if she finds out; her compassion will make her throw a fit.
June 26th
I woke up to Hilda this morning. She was awake, looking at my eyes. I could look into her eyes, and they seemed infinite. Not deep, they seemed like some sort of optical illusion – a trick. They went on indefinitely, like she had reached some sort of profound wisdom. A summon bonum. It was an amazing way to start the day. I got up, and had to hide a jump. I felt the eggs slipping around inside my arm.
I went downstairs and found my book by Hobbes had gotten here. It was resting on the doormat were we wiped our feet, neatly and patiently. I opened it up and left it by the bed. I didn’t start reading it till later – till I was done writing. I didn’t want my work to be too heavily influenced by his. I finished the chapter, making note of everything my little residents told me. I think I’ve given myself an artificial intelligence, or some kind of higher understanding now. The bugs, they know things. I should listen to them more often.
I read the first chapter of the book today. I don’t even want to go into it – there’s such a dark quality to everything this guy has to say. I love it. Hilda asked what I was reading, and I just said it was some journalist. She smiled and went to sleep. She never really listens, I don’t think. I looked over at my pills, and decided not to take them.
June 29th
I thought about that man again today – the one who gave me the newspaper. It’s all Hobbes – he didn’t give me the newspaper out of kindness or anything. It was just a social contract. Either that or he was done with it. That’s why he didn’t say anything; he didn’t feel anything. It’s all so obvious now – we all have this deep impassion inside us. This hollowness and self-interest. Take away 911, and “social norms”, and we all go back to the jungle. I don’t itch anymore – I let myself feel every ache and twinge. I adore it, now. I adore that they’re inside, I’ve embraced it. I imagine what they say, and sometimes listen to them. I wonder if they’ll ever hatch?
Today I woke up and Hilda was there, but still asleep. There isn’t as much wisdom and profound insight in her eyelids. I stayed there, unblinking a while. She didn’t wake up. I was up first, for once. I had won. I celebrated by opening my pills, and flushing them all down the toilet. It made this pretty, satisfying pink foam. The eggs will eventually go away. Or – maybe they’ll dissolve into my blood? There’s a creepy thought. Or... Maybe my body will reject them?
Ha!
July 1st
Hilda found out about Hobbes this afternoon at dinner. She asked why I said he was a journalist, and I told her because everything he says is true. Her eyes, well, they just lit up. Balancing her fork in her hands, she starts talking about Kerguard or some shit. She tells me about Jeremy Bentham and Deontology and situation ethics and all. It was really cute, watching her run her mouth off. I can’t really remember anything she said – I was rolling my eyes the whole time though, I think. It was funny; I imaged the eggs in my eyes, rolling around with me. She was bothering me. She was a lot recently. I hope I get one of those floater things in my eyes, so I can see the egg. Then it’d always be with me. After a while I just stopped nodding and continued eating. Hilda looked at me a moment, then asked about the itch, smiling. I remained silent. After a while I told her the food was good – it was okay. I laughed to myself. “There’s your social contract”, I thought. Where’s your Bennam now?
July 3rd
The rancid eggs rattle and turn in my veins with the tides. With every beat my heart sucks them towards itself, calling to them, and then pushes them back out. Like a mother teaching her child how to ride a bicycle – it reminds them it is still there, that I am still holding onto them, and then lets go, letting them venture off into the crevices of my arteries. I sometimes think I can feel them pushing through my veins, squeezing through the tighter areas of my vessels. If I look towards my wrist when I feel this I think I can see them. Little lumps that disappear back into my skin. I am a nursery. The chair Hilda’s father made me – my work chair, it’s beautiful, but the old man can’t build anything. It creaks and moans with the twisting of my body. T’s stopping me from working. My itch has become Hilda’s fathers ineptitude! I need to keep writing – about the spiders, about society, about the monsters, but the moaning – her father’s voice seeps from the chair, pulling me back. I have to stop it.
Today I saw Hilda turn to me in the garden and smile. She had been working for hours, carefully tending to the happy plants and flowers she cares so deeply for. I remember a time when even the prettiest flower meant nothing to her; but she made herself care when she decided she wanted children. It was that first night, when she came back from the homeless shelter, tired and confused with a palm full of seeds, she planted her first tree.
I couldn’t stop looking at the soil on her hands.
July 4th
Social contract day. Today, the fourth of July, the day we celebrate our independence, I first met Hilda, three years ago. After a few months, she had nurtured the writer in me, and we had our first date. We celebrate the day we met rather than our first date – I remember the day, we both met at the soup kitchen. I wonder if it’s still there, or if Hilda goes to a different one? I haven’t volunteered for months. Too busy, I suppose.
She celebrated this agreed standard contract by giving getting me this big box of books. Immanuel Kant, Jeremany Betham etc etc. A big book of ethical philosophers. She said she was excited that I was getting into philosophy, and that she couldn’t wait to read my work now – I caught the veiled insult there. This sort of proved that she hadn’t really thought much about this. I had only started reading Hobbes couple of days. I tried my best to conform, but there was only so much surprise and gratitude I could summon. The whole time I put on that smile, I could feel the eggs squirming around my face. They made my smile shake, and the corners of my mouth twinge. I wonder if Hilda could see them. I wondered if I cared. I kept thinking, “Show me your hands”. There must be dirt under those nails. She’s been working so long and so hard, show me something. Let me see!
July 5th
Couldn’t work today. Hilda’s fucking father – his hands can’t support me. I can’t work on any other chair though – it’s like he engraved his eyes in that chair. Staring into my back, ripping open my flesh. So I sit on it, with its short leg. I sit for hours. I sit for days. For fucking days. The eggs feel different. Like they’re twitching.
July 6th
I type softly now, the eggs are in my fingers, leading me to wherever they may lead. I love it. I have to type softly though, or I’d lose my powers. I’d crush them. Those books did come in handy; I’ve used them to prop up the chair, the one Hilda’s father made me. Now it sits in beautiful silence, and I can continue my work. Nothing holding me back, except Hilda herself. And the damn doctor – stop calling me. Every time she wanders in to check on me, I can’t help but feel like Jack Nicholson. Just let me work, woman! She has no idea – no idea! What I’m writing about. How could she? Still, I’m finding my inner bitterness, the social contract, harder and harder to abide by. She isn’t helping with her fucking
Her fucking
July 7th
Today I awoke to a miracle. The eggs are gone – but in their place. In their place, my God – I have the most beautiful spiders. I can feel them, their tiny legs. I can feel them walking along my muscles, under the skin. It’s amazing. It’s incredible. It’s like I raised a thousand children, like I bore them for months, and they were born; but they never left me. Like I nurtured a part of myself that’s now fully bloomed. I feel so God damned alive.
And Hilda has the nerve to walk in and ask me how I am. I’m amazing.
July 9th
I woke up this morning to Hilda’s eyes, and turned instantly. She asked what’s wrong.
Today I snuck out to the shed, and I threw away the pesticide. I tossed it over the fence into the neighbour’s garden. Take that, I thought. You thought you could get to me through the chair, and when that failed you infected my garden. The plants are lovely – she’s done a great job. I looked at a patch of dirt. Ants. Wonderful ants. I let them walk on my arm, and imagine a mirror – the spiders and the ants; they walk on my skin, each, but on opposite sides. My skin is the gravity well, and I pinch the veins. I move a spider over to where the ant is, so they walk on top of each other. It’s an amazing feeling. My inside now matches my outside. My inside matches my outside!
I wondered if the spider will tear through my skin and devour the ant. I hoped so.
July 12th
It’s almost finished – my masterpiece. It’s amazing; it’s in the shadow of Hobbes. I had to overcome obstacles, like the damn phone, and Hilda’s father, and Hilda.
And Hilda.
And Hilda.
“How’s working going?”
“The doctor phoned, you should go in.”
“How are you feeling?”
“Plant a flower with me.”
Leave me the hell alone. I’m working, I’m working damn it. Thank God for my kids – they’re the only things keeping me here. Their whispers of confidence, their soft touch. I can feel them gently, sweetly slip along my body. The tickle – it’s like a feather, like embracing a cloud of snow. It’s fantastic. I feel like they’re there with me, every time I breathe, they cling onto my teeth, they ride my eyelids with each blink, peak out of my fingernails to check up on me.
And then there’s the gentle, playful tugging. The nibbling. Its okay, sweetheart. Eat my heart out. Haha, hahahaha!
July 13th
And I’m so sad. I’m so fucking sad. I’m so, so – impossibly, incomprehensibly sad. Hilda – she would try to understand sometimes. But she doesn’t, because the sadness – the sadness is in me. It’s deep down, it’s genetic and incurable. The spiders knot in my veins. They crumple together and restrict blood flow, they give me a tourniquet. Like they’re suggesting something.
Everyone feels this sadness, but not in the same way. Everyone feels it, that’s why no one can understand it. It’s human nature, it holds all of us back. Don’t bother with it – ignore it. But I can’t, I can’t ignore it! A black, heavy blanket has been draped over our happy garden; it has been for several days. Good God, it’s hard to breathe. It’s hard to fucking breathe. The air is so thick, and my lungs are filled with
I inherited this. This sadness, this anger – it was passed down from father to son in my wretched fucking genes. And I shall pass it on to my son. Hilda holds my hand, smiling innocently at me. Her ignorance makes me hate her.
The bugs tumble into my hand as she holds it, and I pull it away.
July 15th
Ha! The doctor was wrong. They aren’t spiders. Well, they aren’t JUST spiders. There are millipedes – I see them walk under my skin, like a stream with feet, flowing up my blood. Rivers in rivers. There are others, too. Ants. The ants and the spiders fight; my body is a battle ground! The millipedes pass like Zeppelins over the red seas where the other insects do battle! I can waste away for hours, staring at my arm. They’re in all of me now; sometimes I can feel them pushing each other into my stomach. Off a cliff, they push each other, into my acid! To be digested, to be turned into me! I am the mother ship, the imperial mother zeppelin!
I joyously watch outside as my wife to be toils in the garden. It’s about to rain. I grin a huge grin, and count down the seconds. I applaud the heavens when it pours! I applaud Hilda’s patience with it as it comes down on her. Spoiling her toils, spoil the toils! It’s hilarious. It’s karmic. You ruined my toils, and now the zeppelin rains down.
That’s not pity I’m feeling, it’s eagerness.
July 19th
The doctor phoned again today – I blocked the number. Hilda isn’t sick, is she?
July 20th
Hilda saw the books propping up the chair, and went out and got a prop when I was asleep, as a surprise of sorts. Now I don’t have to rely on them, she says. The books are like the chair – when I leave them on the table, they stare at me. But they don’t tear into me – my insects protect me, my shield of bugs protects my back from their talons.
July 20th, Night
I woke up at about 2 AM, and turned to see Hilda. To see not just with my own eyes, but my inner eyes. Her skin is soft, but her eyes are shallow. Her hair is like smoke, which floats just above the pillow, but her tongue is simple, and flaps inanely as if in a steady breeze. Her fingernails aren’t covered in dirt, but I imagine her insides are. Like how the creatures of the Earth are in me, the earth itself is in her. It must be, she tends to her flowers so often. Her happy, happy flowers.
She told me, they’re not simple. She talked about photosynthesis, and the biology of plant life. How bugs rely on plants to survive, and vice versa. She said she saw a David Attenborough program that said plants were the masters, while bugs were the servants. What does that make her? The Earth must be in her, a cut, or bruise. She’s full of mud. I can tell by her ideas.
I sat there a minute, and thought about what to do. I decided to start writing this. Has she seen it, I wonder? The drawer was open slightly... Maybe she did? She’s been acting the same though. I wonder a thousand wonders.
July 22nd
Last night I stared at Hilda again. She brings out the worst in me. The anger I keep deep down, as deep down as I can. She pulls it out with her claws. I bit my skin today, until I bled. I wanted to put some of my spiders on her plants. I squeezed, but there was nothing. None of them came out. They like it in me.
I was staring at her, and I thought about the worth of human life. About the pain, about things she couldn’t possibly understand. I can’t help these things inside me – they’re there! I didn’t put them there! I didn’t! It’s human nature to have them. These dark thoughts, this sadness, and anger. It’s just a fucking social contract that my parents signed on my behalf at my birth. I thought about going to the shed again, and picking up an axe. I went down and stood there for a good ten minutes, revisiting her putrid, rancid eyes. I decided to lie on the grass and look at the stars.
I wonder if all those creatures up there are as like me as I am.
It’s in my fucking blood.
July 24th
Today I ignored Hilda. I said nothing to her. She gets up before me, she doesn’t want a conversation? Fine, I won’t speak to her. Let’s see how she deals with that. She’ll break down. She has no idea how to deal with it – how to live without me. I ate before her, and spent the day pretending to write. I tossed those books out – they were tearing into my back.
July 25th
I made a good joke today. Hilda said she wanted to talk – for us to sit down. I looked her in the eye and asked if she’d rather we sat in the garden.
She said she’d stop working there if it made me happy. That’s an oxymoron if I’ve ever heard one! My good for hers, Pfffffff. Like that would ever happen. Empty words, Hilda. I’ve read Hobbes! I feel the wasps flutter around in my belly. There aren’t any, but I imagine if there were. I would love it. It would make me whole, choppers fluttering around inside me. I’d jump and they’d plummet into the acid pool, onto the battle grounds, and the ants would pile onto them.
Bees kill wasps by piling onto them, and giving them heat stroke. I wonder if I’d feel it, if they did that. If my skin would sizzle. What if they turned on me? What if they turned on me and did that to my brain?! What if they destroy me!!!??!?
July 27th
My children toss and turn in the night now. They make me role towards Hilda, as if they want me to keep an eye on her. They’re squirming in me, and they push and pull me towards her, then back, as if she were the heart and the very atmosphere the blood. She the center of me; the sun that feeds the plants which sustain the bugs. Do I depend on her?
Or are they telling me something else? Do they want me to do something else?
Did you read that last entry, Hilda? Are you going to get me sent to jail?
Are you there, Hilda?
July
I think the spiders have started to spin their webs inside me. My muscle and fat and blood no longer seem to be enough for them. I think I’m breathing out silk without noticing it – like when you breath out smog in the winter. I don’t think my silk will float off though. Maybe I should invest in eating some flies. Maybe. Am I no longer enough for them? Can they possibly live without me? Can I, them? They were born in me, though – how could they live without me? How could the millipedes, after creeping along my bones and wading through the tar in my lungs ever walk upon the earth? I am the earth – I am the centre. How could they live without me? It would be like me, trying to walk the streets of China
July
Hild invites me to soup kitchen. I walk with her there, through the dark city. It’s barren, except it isn’t. The people here never really look. I feel nervous, haven’t been there in a while. The shelter. I see a homeless man, rattling his cup around. Every single clang echoes in my ears, disturbing the lice and ants that reside there. Is it part of my contract to give him my money? I don’t think so. It isn’t part of me to go to the kitchen, either. It’s an exercise in futility, is what it is. Expending my own energy, with no actual benefit. To restore someone else’s energy. If I waste me oxygen feeding you, I myself will have to eat to regain my oxygen. A fool’s gambit. I make up some excuse and go home. So I’m walking home, and who should I see?
The old man.
The man who obeyed his contract. The one who had been for years, who gave me his newspaper. I feel the need to confront him. I walk up to him, and tap him on the shoulder. I asked if he remembered me – he obviously didn’t. I said he gave me a newspaper in the waiting room, and sarcastically thanked him. His eyes started to glow as if there were Christmas lights reflected in them.
The bugs all rush to my side, pulling me away, but for once I ignore them. He told me it was nice to see a familiar face. His wife is sick. Really sick. He was waiting for her.
I don’t know how to feel.
I left. It was very cold.
August 1st
It’s over. Hilda asked me what was wrong, and I couldn’t stop laughing. The last few days I had been playing a game with her, sending her mixed messages, of affection then boredom. It was amusing, and I would spend time smiling to myself about it in my writing room. This darkness in me, it made me take pleasure in it. I only did it for two days. I can’t help it.
But she stood up, and she looked at me with those eyes. Those eyes that looked all the way through my head, the tornadoes, the wormholes. She told me that she loved me, but that to stay with her would be to do me a disservice. That she was damaging me, and she couldn’t help it and it was tearing her apart. She said she was sorry, so very, very sorry. I remember in the cafe, her telling me I could do it. A year later my first novel was published. Her helping me financially, emotionally. Where the fuck did that Hilda go?
She said that she couldn’t be with me if it was hurting me. She said she loved me, and she left.
I through my typewriter out the fucking window. I burned the pages. I lay in bed, feeling for the bugs. There are so many of them, and they all console me. They embrace me. I am more whole now than ever.
August
My head. It’s so hot. I can feel this horrible, unpleasant warmth in my forehead. I knew they would do this – I relied on them, counted on them, and now they’re killing me! I need the pills; I’m seeing the doctor today. I knew they would do this! My children, my boat, my sea!
August fifth.
I went in to see the doctor today. He said he had been trying to contact me for weeks, and that I’d been impossible to get. He had some important news. I sat down, clutching my head, ready to say my piece, when suddenly;
“We were wrong about your x-ray.”
I looked up at him.
Then he told me; there were no bugs. My slide was misplaced with someone else’s. There was never anything inside me besides a small portion of miscoloured flesh. I thought I could smell freshly cut grass at the time. I sat there a moment, and let myself breathe. My thoughts calmed, my headache was gone, and the vapours disappeared. I looked down at my wrist. I didn’t feel anything. Not even blood. Everything’s gone. Everything’s gone.
I left the doctor’s office, and waited for a bus.
I wait for the bus
alone
The End.
No comments:
Post a Comment