The Art of Self-Destruction

by Douglas Shoback

  The Art of Self-Destruction

  By Douglas Shoback

  Copyright 2014 Douglas Shoback

  Published by Douglas Shoback at Smashwords

  Smashwords Edition, License Notes

  This eBook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This eBook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to your favorite ebook retailer and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

  Table of Contents

  The Rooms

  Glitch in the Program

  Desiccated Sock

  We Don't Make Mistakes

  The Heart Wants What the Heart

  The Machine Stops

  Red Paper Lanterns

  There's No Place Like 127.0.0.1

  µ

  The Sky Above the Harbor

  About the Author

  Contact the Author

  The Rooms

  What is truly disturbing about the rooms is not their construction-they're only as big as a walk-in closet, minus the clothes and shelves and racks-but what is held within them. Most rooms hold a presence, a feeling of past inhabitants: their feelings seeping into brightly painted walls or bubbled wallpaper stippled with floral patterns. Dreams, pieces of lives gone by. A reality forced into empty space, humanity becoming a piece of plaster, laminated wood, wainscoting, perhaps the carpet, if there is any. These rooms don't have plaster or wood or carpet. They do not hold a presence. They hold a scream.

  At first glance, each room looked normal. Tiny spaces that served no purpose outside of existing. Lined side by side, rooms extended down an alleyway, metal doors scored and matte in the buzzing lights overhead, each one the same. Step inside a room though and it took over. It enveloped you, sucked you into darkness and pumped the air from your lungs until the faint light from overhead ventilation faded and faded and the door itself became another wall, not a means of escape; a barrier to pound and scream against as your lungs further compressed, your eyes faded, pupils pinpointed, and a gentle laughter overtook your ears as your fists slowly, slowly pounded against the door, each strike growing longer in time, until you finally gave up and fell to the ground, stared to the ceiling, legs folded fetal style- the room controlling your body, forcing it into this position-and you descend into the darkness around you, become a part of the room itself not just a presence. Your body becoming nothing but another brick in the wall, next to another brick that was once another body. Body upon body, building walls but never growing.

  But this is only a feeling. This does not really happen. It's only a room.

  Yet the rooms of this place dripped. The walls are plastered with hooked razors coated in dried blood of the unreal. Physically, the walls are painted black. They have to be. Otherwise the programs wouldn't be as believable. But they still felt hooked, violence everywhere, dried blood from countless bodies. Infinite screams from infinite nobodies. Death hidden underneath the sheen of black metal. The blood in the thread disappearing once the door is opened, flickering light once again bathing the space as it is shown to the world-normal, nothing, a room. Empty.

  Men have entered these rooms dressed in myriad of clothing, from business suits to rags. All with the same intention. All with the same buried instinct, primitively civilized, masked underneath eons of enlightenment. And here, in these rooms, the human emerged, flowing streams of viscous fluid dripping to the hard floor, pooling like gel, dark eyes gleaming red, teeth bared, nails scratching across stone, breaking and splintering. The walls exploded in blood, gore, flesh-faith became nothing, belief dissipated with the clothes, replaced with pure fury and yellowed teeth. He was what he is and nothing more.

  The room folded in on itself, around him, his body centered and focused as electricity pulsated across the walls. The room expanded and constricted and walls became cages, wallpapered, brightly painted, desiccated, constructed of wriggling insects, rusted iron; space became immense, claustrophobic, normality, surreal, a meadow perhaps or even a moonscape. Whatever man imagined, eyes closed, smile rapturous. And as the last bits of electricity crackled slowly to an end, man slowly opened his eyes and smiled at what he had created and what stood before him.

  Glitch in the Program

  He removes his shoe and lifts it to his nose, sniffing it before closing one eye and staring into the darkness of leather and stitches. "I knew I should've worn those insoles," he mutters.

  "Is there a problem?" she says, her voice light and airy. She is sitting on a dingy bed, her maroon robe flowing down her body and spreading across the dark bedspread.

  "No, not really." He is standing in front of her, his faded blue shirt hanging loosely from his thin body, black slacks the color of coal.

  "You know, it's not like you have to wear it. Just leave it off." She leans back on her hands, smiling coyly up at him. He glances at her momentarily, stares back into his shoe, and then throws it violently against the far wall. The contact creates a hollow moan, sound waves oscillating into nothingness. "Piece of crap..." he trails off, staring at the floor. Silence separates the two for a second. "Is there another problem" she says, a tone of impatience and annoyance creeping through her normally neutral personality.

  "My sock has a hole in it."

  "Oh. Well, that is a problem." She flops prone on the bed, sending a cloud of dust into the air. The fold of her robe opens slightly, revealing a patch of caramel skin and invisible hairs. A breeze flows over her, stimulating the hidden follicles, sending electrons across her nerve endings, chemicals released into the blood stream and the brain pulsing with biological pleasure.

  "It's a hole right where the middle toe is." She watches as Matthew stares at the unclipped nail of his toe, yellowed and grotesque in the light of the room. The whiteness of excess growth becoming an attached accessory, a piece of him that shouldn't be. She wonders if he ever clips those nails or just lets them break off. She wonders about the pain caused by unclipped nails; hangnails, itchy and annoying. She's never had a hangnail or anything close to it. Somewhere within her she wishes she could experience the pain of a hangnail or a broken nail.

  She doesn't notice the fluid upward movement of his head and his gaze directed toward her, a look of recognition and shock hidden behind his eyes.

  "We've met before haven't we?" he asks.

  She jumps, and then lets the normal indifference take over, "Doubtful. I don't remember you. But I do have tons of clients." She pauses, accessing her memory banks, trying to bring up his face, his body, his actions. She can't remember if there was anything there to begin with. Sighing, she adds, "Why do you ask?"

  He shakes his head, "It's nothing. Just thought I met you before is all. You have this familiar way."

  "Don't all women?" she says, a crooked smile creasing her lips.

  He ignores her, gazing into the corner of the room at his discarded shoe. It is secluded, almost hiding, wedged between the intersections of the walls, occluded by shadow. Yet, he can tell that the dark leather that once mirrored his perfectly good shoe is starting to turn brown, stained by the decay of the place. Absorbing the taint.

  Then again, he thinks, it could just be the lighting. She silently watches Matthew lift his foot with the holey sock off the floor and balance on one leg, hopping slightly back and forth to maintain his balance. Balance unmodulated by electronic stabilizers, only fluid in a biological sac deep within his ear.

  Finally, he manages to rip the sock from his foot, snapping it against the bed as the elastic woven into the t
ube constricts, energy dispersed into the mattress, and flings it across the room. It lands in a patch of sunlight, the whiteness of the cotton refracting the light and glowing brighter.

  Matthew rubs his foot for a second and then returns his gaze to her. She sits up from her prone position and smiles warmly at him, "All better?"

  She hears floorboards creak underneath the carpet as he shifts the minute pressure of his foot, balancing on one leg while crossing the other in mid-air, supporting and massaging it with his rough hand. She giggles-the airy and lilting giggle of a small girl; the sound of fetish, of idealization.

  "You can put your foot down you know. The carpet won't hurt you." She flutters her eyelashes at him, forming her lips into a half smile-paradoxically lust filled and innocent; virgin and seductive.

  He sets his foot down, the many carpet fibers crushing against aged and warped floor boards. Fiber grinding against fiber, music for the dust mites.

  "It's cold" Matthew says, looking down at his foot, wrinkling his toes in the faded fibers of the carpet.

  "Doesn't matter though, right?" she says, leaning backwards onto her elbows. Her breasts thrust forward, accented by the maroon silk robe, images of flesh pouring from the opening slit.

  He shakes his head and then leans over her. She is fully aware of his eyes drifting across her body, hovering at the exposed flesh and immense rise in the fabric. "Something's...not quite right," Matthew mutters.

  "Have you ever done this before?" she says, lifting her leg from the floor and slowly caressing his bare foot with her toes.

  He moves his foot back, avoiding her probing toes, "Yes, once. But it was different, not like this. You?"

  "Too many times to count," she says, waving off the question.

  "Well, then I'm not sure you want me, being all inexperienced and all. Don't know how good I am." His voice cracks at the end of the sentence, an ancient adolescent curse reemerging at the least constructive moment.

  She giggles again, shaking her head simultaneously with the sound. Her dark hair drifts slowly in the stagnant air, settling gently back onto her shoulders. Her robe has opened further, exposing the inside curves of her breasts and she wonders if this is causing his nervousness.

  Ancient pillows stained yellow with sweat and spit are strewn haphazardly on the flowered comforter. Various unidentifiable liquids have stained the bed's linen into a decomposing rainbow: red, yellow, brown, green. The mattress sags underneath her weight.

  A small window lets in a cold light filtered through greasy yellow glass. Shabby purple curtains hang askew over the window attempting to add warmth to the room. They succeed in adding to the desperation permeating the place. She stares at the curtains, fixing them in her head, making the room more pleasant. "It stinks in here" she says, frowning.

  A ceiling fan creaks above her, shifting the dust and air, scattering it to all corners of the room in an entropic fit. There is no breeze, only the slight movement of air, of smell. The cold light from the window puddles on the floor, an oblique rectangle of bright green carpet fibers lighting the entire room, washing it in rust; a rip in the stasis of things, something dynamic, malleable, moving, chaotic. And the sock, his sock, in the middle of the pooling light, brown and ripped at the toe, full of his sweat and energy, moments of his life. It looks alone and sad. She can almost smell it cooking in the light, sour and earthy. A real smell.

  His shoe, on the other hand, is non-existent, disappearing into the shadows, masked in corrosion.

  He hovers over her, his eyes wide. Dark tussled hair hangs over the tips of his tiny ears, bangs touching eyebrows; a spire sticks up from the back of his head, reaching to the sky as if to receive radio signals.

  His clothes drift loosely off of his thin body. A once colorful shirt is now faded by bleach, grayness taking over the blue. His sockless toes knead the fibers of the carpet nervously, his faded black trousers flowing with the contraction of muscles. She pushes a stray hair behind her ear and leans back, exposing more of her breasts-an areola peeking out of the red fabric-and meets the brown of his eyes with her own. The room is saturated in sepia.

  He breaks away from her eyes and stares intently at her chest. If looks could fondle...

  "See something you like?" she says coyly, opening her robe a bit more. Her nipple, hard and pointed, slips over the fabric. It is pink and perfect. He can't stop staring.

  "Am I supposed to?" he mutters.

  She spreads her legs, the robe parting as her thighs slowly separate, the darkness between them becoming more and more realized, washed in the dingy yellow light of the window. Her hand trails across her exposed nipple, her fingers teasing it, and she moans slightly as she continues down to her crotch.

  She lowers her head slightly, perfectly, and raises her eyes to his. She connects with him and feels the neurons snapping in his brain. She feels the blood flow downward and stiffen in his pelvis. She can see his confusion and desperation.

  "You want me don't you?" she says to him, pushing down on her crotch.

  "Ok, this...this isn't what I paid for." He starts for the door, fumbling for the wallet in his trousers. Desperate, not wanting to lose this one chance, she stands from the bed, sending a cloud of dust and stench into the air, and removes her robe, tossing it to the floor. The redness of the fabric begins to dull. "Yes it is. We don't make mistakes."

  He reaches for the door handle-tarnished gold, the signs of multiple wear; spots of pewter show through the gold leafing, the sign of other hands and other men.

  "Look, I didn't pay for this. You're not supposed to be doing this," he says, turning the handle sharply. It breaks off in his hand like candied rock. Sharp spikes of gold spit out from where the knob connected to the door, glittering in the light.

  Dust floats through the empty tube that once held a long screw connecting the two knobs, one outside, one inside. He has the inside knob in his hand, along with the broken screw still attached to it. The knob ends in a sharpened point of metal, dulled by the light of the room.

  She leans herself against the hallway wall, her arms folded under her breasts, her legs crossed forming a perfect triangle between her thighs.

  She is Venus.

  "I told you," she says quietly, "we don't make mistakes."

  He looks to the doorknob in his hand and then turns his eyes to her body, "Then what's going on?"

  She smiles softly, watching his eyes go over her, connecting to the desire in him, "This is what you paid for."

  His eyes meet hers again. He nervously twists the knob in his hand, tapping the end of the screw against his leg, "I said I didn't want sex. I think something is wrong with the story."

  She laughs at this, her voice ringing clear throughout the room. The sun brightens for a moment, cooking the lone sock further, sending out putrid signals of decaying existence. "A story eh? What harm is a story?" she says, unfolding herself from the wall and walking over to him.

  She takes his free hand in hers and places it on her breast, feeling her nipple grow harder against the pressure and the uncontrollable impulses of his fingers constricting against it. "If this is a story, then you have complete control don't you?"

  Matthew doesn't remove his hand. He pushes her backwards, toward the bed, slowly. His brain has lost control of his motor functions, electronic signals becoming mixed and shorted across the nerves. His fingers clench around her erect nipple, toying with it, making it grow harder. She moans as he pushes her down on the bed and straddles her.

  The fan above the bed begins to spin faster, catching the minute molecules of sweat and pheromones, spreading them throughout the room on an invisible breeze. The room begins to stink of sex and fluid.

  He pushes his body on top of hers. She can feel the hardness in his trousers pressing into her leg, smell his breath, and see the sparks erupting in his eyes. He presses his face close to hers, the tips of their noses touching. She arches her neck, trying to touch his lips, to claim him finally. Her head is yanked sharply onto a pi
llow, his free hand wrapped tightly in her hair.

  "Is this what you want baby? You want it this way?" she thrusts her hips up to meet him, moaning.

  He tries to push her body down with his other hand, the gold from the broken knob rubbing off on her skin. A patch of light erupts from her hip bone, reflecting, casting a ghost onto the ripped and yellowing wallpaper of the room.

  He lowers his head, his hair brushing against her face and her breasts. She attempts to thrust her body into his, but he continues to hold her down. "Please? Please? Just once, just once I'd like to...just this once, please? I'm sick of everything else of one thing all the time of being me of the thing I am and what is to become and..." she gibbers in his ear, her hips thrusting upwards with each syllable, stuck in an infinite loop.

  The fan above them begins to creak louder, the blades shuttering in the stagnant air. His eyes turn to the fan and its manic gyrations. She sees him as a frightened boy, his eyes wide and hair tussled. "This is not what I paid for," he mumbles.

  Her head jerks to the right and pauses for a moment, her eyes open wide, her body stiff. She becomes a mannequin, a harlequin, painted whore/Madonna frozen in time; wax or porphyry. Then the blood returns, her body softening, head moving naturally to position her eyes upwards at him. A crooked smile breaks her perfectly smooth face as she lifts her hands and runs them slowly through his hair, "Yes it is baby. It's exactly what you paid for," she says. "You paid for me, for this, this is what you want right?"

  His head snaps down, his eyes meeting hers. The connection between neuron and serotonin reestablished, she no longer reads him. He is empty. "This is perverted. I don't do this shit. I said no sex." His voice grows in intensity, the adolescent squeak banished.