I wished I was the butterfly.
---
My hair's been getting long. I only ever cut it when I notice it, and now I notice it so I cut it. I use scissors. I know I'm supposed to use a knife and have it be all uneven-looking, but I'm not trying to be crazy so much that I need to wear it on my sleeve so I use scissors but it comes out uneven-looking anyway because I don't really pay too much attention while I'm doing it because it kind of bugs me to pay attention to things like that. I mean, people people people pay so much attention to little things like how you look and if you stammer or fumble over your words or whatever. I wear clothes, I wear a shirt, I sometimes even wear shoes. That's normal! I don't care that they're a little ragged and maybe sometimes the colors clash or whatever. I don't care. I don't. I just put something on and if it fits it fits and if it doesn't then I either snip something off or sew something on. I don't care if there's any little holes but if there's any big holes then I need to sew something on over there because otherwise it gets drafty and apparently nipples are something of a faux-pas.
That was a joke. I'm trying to be friendly.
---
One time when we were together, we went out for muffins. It was delightfully pedestrian. We talked about all manner of insipid things, like weather and the future and the people in the cafe with us and music and even a bit of television. Not politics, sweet Satan, no. I can't pretend to care about pretending to care about people who pretend to care about people's problems.
---
I remember when I was a little kid. You've heard of children pulling the legs off bugs? I used to do something like that.
See, I used to catch butterflies.
People always think butterflies are so pretty, so beautiful. I can't tell you how many times I've heard children think that moths were just ugly butterflies.
I used to set their wings on fire. I'd watch as they turned from being colorful, crisp, full of life to being black, deformed, dead. Just like the moths. Just like everybody else.
---
The rusted walls echo the tortured shrieking of the drill. I pause; my goggles are covered. I pick up the nearly-saturated rag and wipe them; it does little good. I'm faintly aware of the whimpering, pleading voice. Something about 'mercy' or 'compassion'. I keep drilling.
---
I'm not actually a Satanist. It's just a long-running joke with a friend I had. He's dead now.
---
Sometimes I follow kids home from school. Sometimes I grab one with a particularly stupid-looking face and tie him up and drag him into the sewers and tell him Santa isn't real and that he's the reason why mommy and daddy fight all the time before I gut him like a fish and leave him to be eaten by rats. I don't really like children, I guess is what I'm trying to say.
---
This doesn't even seem like it's written in any order at all.
Stupid.
---
My mother used to tell me I wasn't very compassionate and I should work on that. I used to tell her to go to hell.
After she finally did, I figured I won that argument.
---
I'm about to slit the throat of some woman I found with offensively red hair, when it occurs to me I should probably shake things up a bit. So I stick the knife between the bones in the palm of her left hand and wiggle it around while I think of something interesting. She screams. I'm sure it's excruciating, but she's getting quite annoying. So I cut the hand off and stick it in her mouth. She shuts up.
---
People always try and pull meaning out of stories they read. That's stupid and you're stupid for doing it.
---
I pay attention to wings. Birds have wings. People look at birds' wings and dream of freedom and flight. The actual wing part of a bird's wings gets forgotten in all the excitement. A bird's wings are one of the few things I find aesthetically pleasing without being excess. Butterflies have wings; gaudy things that stick them out from their surroundings like the attention-whores they are. I've moved on past the childish need to maim them for it, but I don't need to find them any less insufferable. Moths have wings, and they're downright practical. They use their wings to hide.
---
There's a saying - you might have heard it before - that says we're all the same on the inside.
It's true; I've been checking.
We're all the same on the inside. Gross and squishy.
---
I don't really remember my parents. I don't really even remember having had them most times. Mostly because I don't care and I don't think they're particularly important.
---
We used to go out. Not necessarily in the classical sense of the phrase, mind you, but it was pretty much the best that people like us could hope for. For example, one time we kidnapped some white-collar desk-job guy going through a midlife crisis. We left him in a cellar naked, tied-up, and gagged for two days straight. We'd left a record player with a stuck record on high-volume. I don't know what it used to sound like back in the day, but at the time it sounded like a cross between screeching nails and dying cats. Oh, and we made him stand on rusty nails, just in case. After the two days, we turned off the record and ungagged him. We wanted to hear how much fun he was having for the next part. Well, long story short, We taught him that there were scarier things than middle age.
---
Sometimes I worry about me.
---
I don't like psychologists. They try and read too much into things I say and do. They think they somehow understand me from the way I talk and the things I talk about. Arrogant. I stabbed my last psychologist in the face. I'd considered eating his heart just to prove a point, but I couldn't find a microwave in his apartment and really kind of needed to get out of there quickly.
---
I'm not a big fan of color. It's tacky, frankly.
---
I wake up with the taste of blood in my mouth. It's mine. I'd been chewing on my left arm in my sleep. Crap. I'm left-handed. And I just washed these sheets. And this really kind of hurts.
---
I'm stabbing some angsty pre-teen in the mouth and I just remembered something someone said once that made me laugh and now I can't remember for the life of me what it was. I hate it when that happens.
~~~
Would you look at all this fucking filth? I can't stand it; how the fuck do I live in this shit? Fuck, it's like I'm a goddamn retard or something. Just some fucking child or whatever. Look what I did to my fucking arm! Shit!
Gonna go rip something/someone apart.
~~~
My head hurts. I'm tired. I wonder what time it is. I don't want to look at the clock. It feels like around three A.M. I hope it's earlier, so I can sleep more before the sun comes up.
I don't like it when it's bright outside. I don't like much.
---
I miss my mom. My dad, not so much.
---
I'm sleeping better, now that she's gone. I'm still not sleeping well, but on the whole I think I've improved. That or I'm just so used to being so tired so often it doesn't even bother me anymore.
---
I'm eating a donut from the corner-store. There's a hair on it staring back at me. It isn't mine. My hair's getting long. I'm thinking about cutting it. This hair's short. And blonde. And curly.
---
Tired. Tired to the point where I can hardly even see. Haven't slept in three days. Not for lack of trying. Tired. Tired of this. Tired. It's a word hanging over my head like a blade on a rope, swinging back and forth, ticking slowly downward towards my throat. Need to write that down. Tired.
---
I'm dancing flying around the flame. Dangerous, and yet the light is flickering and enticing. I can't resist some primal urge drawing me closer. I beat my wings and drift closer, closer. Every section of my compound eyes is filled with splendor and anticipation. Finally I can bear it no longer and rush headfirst into the fire. The flames are wrapping around me and through me. It burns but it is a cleansing feel; a purifying flame. The fire fills my wings with color. Through the fire, I am transformed into a butterfly.
I wake up back into dismal reality. I wake up and I am still a moth.
---
I rap my knuckles along the meat hanging from the racks as I walk by. It's cold in here, mostly to keep the room from stinking to high heaven. I look at the faces to the left and right. Some of them used to be people.
---
I'm cold. I hug my knees tight against my chest and wait for the knot in my stomach to come undone.
---
The pipe thuds satisfyingly against his face before he drops to the ground. The impact sent happy little shudders up my arms. The first strike is always the best one. I hit him again, same spot and everything, but it's just not the same afterwards. It's still nice, though, so I keep going. His skull gives out well before I'm satisfied, though. Ah well, "there's plenty more seniors in the retirement home," I think the saying goes.
---
She used to dye her hair. She had long light blonde hair, but always dyed it black. She was really pretty, and surprisingly enough I never resented her for it.
~~~
HATE. Anger. Rage. Furious fucking shrill putrid godawful shithole of a place this is, is it any wonder I'm so goddamn angry? Not nearly as mad as I used to be, though. Fuck. Listen to me bitch and moan and whine and complain. "I'm cold," "I'm tired," "I'm hungry," what total fucking bullshit. What a sorry fucking failure I've become. So goddamn disappointed in me. ME. I am better than this. BETTER. Time was I'd start to feel down and then I'd pick myself up but look at this shit. I can't fucking believe it. Well, I'm feeling better now. I feel the old rage, the blind seething anger. Punch the wall. Might've just broke my hand. Feels good. Punch it again. FUCK, yes. Okay, better bandage that shit before I bleed everywhere. Worth it, though. Feels good to be in control again. I'm laughing at the top of my lungs, heaving like a fucking hyena. The night is young.
~~~
I wake up with blood in my mouth. I don't think it's mine. Kind of wish I remembered what happened last night, and who I'm laying on. I can tell it was a person because there's these very human-looking hands tied to the corners of my bed, but everything else is pretty much mush. From the hands, it was probably a woman - or a very effeminate man. Doesn't matter so much anymore though. I look over the edge of the bed and find a pile of mostly-broken bones. I sigh as I walk naked to the bathroom. This isn't the first time I've woken up like this. I'm not sure whether I should worry more or less about that.
---
There's a wolf chasing me. The wolf is a shadow. A jagged shadow with blood for eyes. There's a howling around. Now I'm in a forest. The trees are dark and look like they want to hurt me. Branches shoot out of the ground and spear me in several uncomfortable ways. Dad strips me naked before stabbing me in the gut.
I'm standing by the window and I don't remember how I got there.
---
I feel somewhat awful. My hand hurts. I shouldn't complain about that because it's my fault, but it does. My hair's gotten way too long - inexcusably too long - and I can't put it off any longer. I can feel it on my shoulders. I'm cutting it and my hand hurts and I make mistakes and it comes out uneven but I don't care just cut it cut it cut off get it out of my way.
---
I wake up tasting blood. Is it mine? That can't be good.
---
I'm not really fond of sex. For one, I think it's pointless. For two, it makes me uncomfortable. When she'd want to have sex, I'd go along with it. She enjoyed it, and I cared about her. It's not like it hurt me to try and show affection. I felt too hollow to be hurt, anyway.
---
I'm not normal, am I?
---
The first thing that comes to mind is "if you were dressed like that, you were pretty much asking for it." The second thing is a mote of pity for the poor baby who's parents thought that that hideous outfit looked remotely presentable. I really don't like children, either.
~~~
She's naked tied up screaming; lovely, in other words. Long, blonde hair, pale skin, curves, she looks like a fucking beauty queen. She's crying. Pleading. Something about "why, why, how could you do this, oh god, oh god." Boring shit I've heard before. I punch her in the stomach. Then the crotch. I pull out a knife and fuck her until she shits all over herself. Knife-fuck. She's looking at me like this is the worst damn thing that's ever happened to her, the lying bitch. That would probably have been having those miserable little shits that were her kids. Or, if she liked her kids, then it would be me slaughtering them while she was naked tied up screaming. I pull out a hacksaw and give her a hysterectomy. Now she won't be able to pollute with more of those fucking hellspawn. Or, do much of anything, given how she stopped screaming and probably died around halfway through. Pussy.
Still time before morning. I clean up, get dressed, and walk out the front door.
~~~
I really want to make some nachos but I'm out of chips so I look on the fridge in the cupboards under my bed behind the couch under the couch in the couch on the table on the chairs in the pantry in the stove behind the stove in the garbage under the sink in the drawers in my dresser under my covers in the yard and on the roof but I have no chips anywhere but I swore I just bought some and I have no idea what happened to them and it's really going to start bothering me soon.
---
When I was really really little, I used to have this horrible painful nightmare where my dad would come into my room late at night tie something around my mouth and have his way with me. The worst part was the time I woke up in the hospital with a needle in my arm and a scar under my navel and a doctor explaining to my mother how I'd never be able to have children but with proper hormone treatments I could still be a normal young woman.
The punchline has something to do with being screwed up inside.
~~~
Oh look, a moth. Squish. Fucking bugs.
~~~
I'm eating a bagel down at my favorite coffeeshop, and I realize I haven't killed anyone for nearly a week. I glance around. There's a skinny emo boy who keeps giving me these quick glances because he doesn't want to get caught staring. His shyness might almost be adorable. He'll do.
---
Something happened. It was a papercut. I don't remember if it was an actual papercut or some kind of metaphorical papercut but it was obviously really important because I remember that it happened. I'm pacing. Up down up down. I don't know why. Something's bothering me. It's been bothering me a lot lately but I don't know what it is or was. Maybe I'm remembering fear or creating fear or something or something. I'm not scared though, just tense. So unbelievably tense. My nails are digging into my arms and I just noticed. No blood this time, just marks. My hair is getting long. No, it's short. I'm feeling it right now and I can't even grab any of it it's so short. Did something happen to me? I don't remember. I don't like this.
~~~
I howl. I'm a wolf. A predator. I hunt, therefore I am. I hurt. Others. He sees me, but doesn't know what he sees. He sees a vulnerable girl. He sees prey. He's a predator too. Stupid bastard. Never crossed his mind that I would be better at it than he was. He figures it out by the time I rip him in half. Not that it does him any fucking good.
~~~
My head hurts. I need to stop waking up like this.
---
It was right after my mom died. I was put in an orphanage that I hated. The other kids would hit me and none of the adults cared. So I left. Then the police found me and put me in another orphanage that I hated even more. There were boys who wouldn't stop pulling my hair and throwing rocks at me. One day I just started hitting back. I found a rock on the ground and hit this boy in the head with it. He fell to the ground immediately. The others stopped. I hit him again. He didn't move. The others ran off. I hit him again. I hit him again. I hit him again. I hit him again. His face unrecognisable from a minute ago. I dropped the rock and ran away, forever.
---
I'm worried. I feel like I'm changing. Into something. Someone? I don't know. Sometimes I just black out. I usually wake up sore. Sometimes in very interesting places, usually not. It's starting to upset me. Up to now, I've just been accepting it as something that happens, but lately it's been coming on more and more frequently. I don't like to admit it, but I'm scared.
---
This is garbage. I'm writing garbage and you're reading it. Why are you reading this garbage?
---
My hand itches. I've got a tiny splinter or something in it. I really need to clean my basement better. It's bothering me. The splinter. I think it's a splinter. Might be fleshworms. Wouldn't be the worst thing to find inside me. That would probably be earwigs. Hundreds or thousands of earwigs in my flesh. That would be the worst thing. They creep me out. I'm guessing it's the claws. Pincers. Pinchers. And I don't want to know why they're called earwigs. At all.
~~~
I'm out of the cocoon. Free! Not trapped. Not sick; transformation. New. Better. Better! Better than that fucking whimpering simpleton I was. I'm here now, and I'm going to make everything better.
Hungry. Going to feed. Back later.
~~~
I'm standing behind this obnoxiously fat lady in line at the bank. I swear to Satan, I would kill her right here if only I had a knife.
---
I need to get some peanut butter. I'd been out of jelly for a while, but that was fine, I just ate peanut butter sandwiches. When the bread ran out, I just ate peanut butter from the jar. But now that the peanut butter's gone, I'm going to need to go to the store. Can't say I'm looking forward to it. I think I'll go tomorrow; a day without food isn't going to kill me at this point.
~~~
I'm at the goddamn store. This jackass clerk is too busy staring at my chest to ring up the three things I came here to get. Well, I'm feeling playful, so I grab a fourth thing too. When we get to his place (gross, filthy, horrible shitty place with too much fucking color), I strip him naked. Then I stake him to a wall and fuck him until my cunt hurts. Then I split open his arms and legs, pull out the bones, and blugeon him with his own femurs. I wasn't paying attention to when he stopped screaming, so I have no real idea when he died. Then a silly idea crosses my head and I make a sandwich. It's actually quite good.
~~~
I wake up with the taste of blood in my mouth. And this isn't my apartment. Do I live in an apartment or a house? I'm pretty sure I remember where it is, though I'm not sure what it'll look like when I get there. I need to go to the store today. Or, well, I highly doubt this guy's going to need this bread or peanut butter anymore. And this jelly isn't even opened. I grab them and head out.
---
We first met when she found me, passed out in a gutter somewhere. I had polio.
Wait, no I didn't. Did I? I don't think I did. Hang on.
---
It was right after my mom died. I ran away from home to get away from my dad who hadn't yet been locked up for raping me.
Wait, that doesn't make sense. We'd already been to the hospital by that point, and he was arrested right around then. Wasn't he?
No. No.
---
She showed me her collection. She had hundreds of butterflies pinned down in glass boxes. "In the end, they're just bugs." Were those her words, or mine?
---
Who am I? Who am I who am I who am i who am i ~~~
I am a wolf. A hunter. It doesn't matter where or who I've been, I'm me now: a merciless force of nature.
Know me; know death.
~~~
When is it? I have no idea. What day? How long had I been sleeping? My head is throbbing.
Who is that? Oh, it's me. I forgot that's what I look like.
I look kind of scary.
---
I'm riding the streets of a war-torn city. I'm seated atop my blood-dripping skeleton horse. His mane is fire, and his hooves clang like thunder upon the scorched earth. My scimitars blaze fiercely in the moonlight. I ride until dawn, cutting down all in my path.
---
My lungs are in the back of my throat and I can't breathe. I feel terrible. I don't know why.
I'm gnawing on myself again. I hate this.
~~~
My nails rake the walls. I'd pity the wallpaper if it didn't house such ugly fucking memories. I hate everything. Destroy this place. Fuck the world, fuck it all! Hate, so much hate. It fills my everything, rampages around inside until there's nothing else to feel but this awful searing seething anger, and I fucking love it!
~~~
We first met when she found me, passed out in a gutter somewhere. After the second orphanage, I was fending for myself. It didn't last very long. There's not much a six year-old can do to make a living in the city. I was starving. She found me and brought me back to health. Her hair was blonde. She hadn't started dying it. She brought me to the elementary school where she taught. She taught third grade, and when I was old enough, she started teaching me. That was around the time we started having sex. She'd always wanted to do it with one of the kids in her class. I didn't really like it, but I never minded.
---
I'm losing it. My lunch. There it is.
Wait, no.
How about
a nice happy birthday surprise?
Won't that be
nice?
I'm surprised.
You always liked parties.
What time is it?
I have to go
to the bathroom
to vomit.
~~~
This sucks.
I should probably be sleeping like a pussy.
Fuck that shit.
I grab my stuff kick open the door dance down the street to kill some fucker before I explode.
~~~
Ditch. Waking up. My face. A ditch. They've become acquainted. Crusty nostrils. By the smell, puke. I wipe most of it off but the smell's still there and now it's caked under my fingernails. My shirt is hopelessly stained but right now it's not the most pressing of my worries. That would be, getting home. I feel sick.
---
When she asked about the scar, I told her what my dad did. She held me close and told me everything was going to be alright. When I got older, she got medicine for me. I look pretty much normal on the outside, apparently. Like a butterfly. I know what I look like inside, though.
---
I think I'm awake. I've been dancing in and out of dreams for what feels like years. I get up. Look at myself in the mirror. I'm me. This is what I look like. Red eyes. My scales the color of wood. My scar's hiding today. I walk outside and a giant hand picks me up and rips my tail off. It grows back and gets ripped off again. Then I'm dropped. I fall. I'm in my bed. The sheets are stained with urine blood vomit peanut butter and I'm sure other stuff. I throw myself to the floor and thud painfully. I get up walk to the bathroom and brush my hair. I step out the window into the woods and past my name carved into every tree. The purple leaves crunch underfoot as I make my way into the field with a single dead tree at the center. The lion waits for me at its base. I run up to her and we kiss but I vomit in her mouth and it runs down my chest and I'm on the floor covered in puke and I hate this.
~~~
I'm feeling better. I'm bored. I want to play.
I grab some toys.
I walk outside. I go to the park.
A police officer reminds me I forgot my clothes. Oh well. I let him know that we could come to an agreement (if he knows what I mean), but he either doesn't take bribes or he's gay or something. I have yet to meet a cop who doesn't take bribes. I slit his filthy fucking throat regardless.
There's some punk-ass kids smoking under a tree. They see me but don't move aside from (what they think is) discreetly covering their dicks. Easy. They even let me handcuff them all to the tree. I take the lit cigarette they gave me and make the fat one swallow it. Then I cut off his toes and make the others eat them. I skin one of their feet. He's standing in dog shit and crying. I bite the last one's ear off, then spit it in his mouth. I turn his head away from me as he vomits, and it gets on the second one's feet. He cries louder, then vomits as well. Then I rip his fingernails off. Then I break his fingers. Then I bite one of his fingers off. I feed it to the first one. I kick the third one in the crotch. Then I grab one of his balls and slowly smash it between my fingers. Then I stick a hunting knife up his ass. I bring it forward, bisecting his entire genital area. They're all screaming, and I'm just getting started.
They keep me busy until morning.
In retrospect, I'm guessing they were expecting something different when I said "exploration of the flesh," ha ha. So fucking stupid and typical. I grab their clothes head home pass out. All in all, a good night.
~~~
I'm feeling better. That's good. Except for the part where I'm feeling worse. That part isn't good. I'm not talking about how I feel, but feelings. You know? Like, physically, I'm fine. But, I still feel horrible. Inside. Mixed up a bit. A lot. I'm confused. Am I getting old? Am I getting fat? I'm not fat. I hate fat people. They eat too much. I'm in line at the burger place and the fat woman in front of me is ordering like twenty things and I'm just standing there wanting a number eighty - two plain hamburgers no sauce free dildo (wait what) - which is like the simplest thing they serve but first she has to get everything she wants justjustjust juuuust right so she has to specialorder every one of those twenty things, even though most of them come the way she wants them, just to make sure they don't mess up her order. It takes a hundred years and while I'm standing there I'm saying to myself "self? If I were a serial killer, this is the kind of person who I would murder horribly in some overblown ironic fashion and then chop their body to bits and throw some of the bits in dumpsters and other bits in the river and other bits in the sewer and other bits in fast food meat." But I take so long standing there killing her in my head that the clerk tells the fat guy behind me to just come up in front of me and he shoves me out of the way with his obesity and knocks me out of the wonderful wonderful daydream I'd been having and now I have to settle back in but I've got to murder him now and the clerk keeps glancing nervously at me like "what a spaz" but I'm not spaz I'm big boned and I'm breathing heavily and I don't remember what the point of this story was or why I'm telling you anything and I just I just can't breathe ~~ relax, I'm fine ~~ breathe in breathe out did you hear that was it just me it was just me just me talking to me about me mimimi I sing I sang you hear can you can you hear the voice of the planet dance and breathe life and joy about you is it there are you there where are you why is it ~~ stand on his chest, flatten your heels into his diapraghm, say with me now there's no escape no escape no fucking escape from this hellhole you brought upon yourself you crazy bitch ~~ and I'm on a bus off a pier are you here do you hear me talk talking like this so fast a thousand words spilling off where are you I'm lost I'm lost without you don't leave ~~ howl, wolf, scream the voice of ancients across the sky ~~ forgot my bags I'll go get them how did I get here where am I who are you what time ~~ give in give in give in give in give in ~~ goodnight, good night, we'll meet again or at least I think we will ~~ I'm feeling better, how about you ~~ walk a straight path never give in ~~ fly freedom ~~ give a give ~~ live ~~
I see now.
I see everything.
...It's here.
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