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The ringing hadn’t stopped. He never consented to this. The washing machine continued to swirl as it emitted a racket at a dependable pace. Like a cycle. A menstrual cycle…
Blood. Blood. Red. Rushing through his machine body. His innermost gears grinding to sustain him. To sustain the persistent pattern of his existence. His existence. His. A possession. As if he owned the machine. As if he asked for it. He was just a slave, with his machine body programmed to respond to whatever.
He is the machine, truly. And the buzzing of existence never stops. It tortures him, forcing him to ejaculate a reaction. He is a windup doll, a marionette. Above all he is a slave. And his masters are whatever he is not. But what is he but just a persisting pattern? Is he simply a piece in a larger persisting pattern? Certainly he must be he… Unless of course he is she… But she hates him because… Blood. Red. Brown…
Like his skin. He is a caramelized creature. Except nobody wants to lick him. But t-that’s fine. R-really. F-fine. He n-never wanted to be l-licked. Or t-touched. He never consented to this. Any of this. Maybe he forgot? All mankind does is forget anyways. Forgotten by mankind: the loved ones, the things made, the words spoken, the conflicts sparred, and all else that is forgettable. Chiefly forgetting to forget something forgotten is quite an issue. Forget the Holocaust that never happened. Forget Partition that totally was not a mistake. Forget oppression. Forget triggers. Forget mankind…
Mankind is to forget. Mankind is to love. With the heart. Pumping blood… Blood. Red. Brown. Pain.
Mankind is pain. Like what those pills are supposed to kill. But he won’t let them. He is a pacifist in an ocean of war. And the pills never help. They can’t kill something unkillable. Although he is a machine, the gears are detached from he. The self, himself. So what if he is just a ticking contraption according to some philosophy, he is he! All things are assumptions anyway, mankind just chooses to use the convenient ones. And the ones that are convenient are the ones that help mankind to survive. Pills are not convenient.
The visions and the voices and the thoughts and the buzzing. That is what is convenient. But the buzzing is just a distraction, a thought, a voice, a vision… A mirage. In a desert of loneliness. Barren. Infertile. Untouched. Unnoticed. Unimportant.
Just like him. A collection of cooperative cells that will ultimately be replaced. Again. And again. But the idea, the self, persists. However, none of that matters since nobody cares about him. Nobody wants him. According to the World, he is just parts. Spare parts. Bad parts. Dumb parts. Unskilled parts. Unloved parts. Unhated-because-unnoticed parts. Dead-but-alive parts. And yet, the blood still rushes through him.
Blood. Red. Brown. Brown. Brown. Brown… Black. Aborted. Miscarriage. Miss Carriage. The person he should have met long ago. Before the universe existed an appointment with Miss Carriage should have been set. So that the memories could wash away, like the steady turning of the washing machine. Like the steady turning of his unborn flesh into its logical conclusion, something else. Something other than him. But still his soul may persist – luckily he is a ginger and never had to worry about that. Ginger. The remedy for a sick stomach. But what is the remedy for a sick self? A cleansing, of course.
So begins the final solution. The crescent moon smiles upon another night of self-sterilizing. Blood. It drips. And sh-she let it flow for him. And she h-held him under the s-smiling crescent m-moon. And she h-hel-hel-helped him. She s-suffered p-p-pain for him. She b-b-bled for him.
Love. She loved. She loved him. But mankind is cruel. The ringing never stops even as its loudest noises are muted. She and he, separated but still connected. Blood. Mankind’s greatest connection.
And it flows, like a river of honey and milk. Denial ain’t a river, but it sure is the first step.