The Art of Self-Destruction

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The Art of Self-Destruction Page 2

by Douglas Shoback


  She laughs-a guttural laugh, deep inside, her body becoming an acoustical resonator, a sound board. Wrapping her arms around him and bringing his body closer to hers, stroking his back with her hands, she whispers in his ear "What do you mean perverted? Sex isn't perverted."

  To prove her point she slowly reaches a hand up to caress his neck hairs. She can see him shudder as the nerves send impulses to his brain. She starts to slowly pull her fingernails across his skin, saturating his brain with pleasure. Then she slightly scratches the skin, just a little, to add pain to the pleasure.

  He shakes his head, trying to remove her hand. In the process, a fingernail is dragged roughly across his neck, breaking the skin. Blood starts to slowly trickle from the wound. She can see him flinch in pain. His eyes are angry. "This kind is." Matthew continues to struggle.

  "Since when have there been multiple types of sex?" she asks, smiling warmly, "I thought there was just sex."

  He tries to push away from her, but she tightens her hold on him, pulling her body closer to his, her breasts pushing against his chest. She can feel his erection on her thigh. She tries to maneuver her hips so that they are aligned with his. His struggling only causes him to get harder.

  "I don't need to pay for this. I didn't come here for sex."

  She raises an eyebrow, "Are you suggesting that I'm a prostitute?"

  "Yes. Yes, you're a whore. I got the wrong story. This isn't the one I wanted. I didn't want you, I wanted someone else. This is wrong. Let me go!" His muscles tense as he tries to push off of her. She won't let him. She laughs in his ear as he grunts with exertion, lifting her legs and wrapping them around his waist, locking him in place.

  "Oh God, just this once?" she pleads. He begins to thrash, trying to loosen her grip. Her legs tighten around him as she unravels her arms and slips a hand between their bodies. She begins to murmur, a low sound, repeated over and over, "Please, just once; please, just once before...; please..."

  Her fingers search out his belt. She begins to unfasten it. "Just once just once, please, please I'm so tired of existing as this as, just once please, this place these I want and just once is it nice? is it nice? is it nice? I'm so tired and you I know you I know you I know you I know..."

  The click of the metal flange connecting with the rectangular buckle seems to echo loudly in the room; he grips her shoulders suddenly and fiercely, forcing her down onto the bed, pinning her arms with his elbows. Then, with her legs squeezing tighter, her nails scraping harder across his back, and her manic babblings, Matthew manages to choke out the word "end."

  The room ripples, waves of heat refracting the sepia tone, blurring her vision and sending her into vertigo. A screeching comes from the window, someone pulling fingernails across a slate board. The sound increases exponentially, becoming louder with each second. Still hovering over her, painfully holding her arms down with his elbows, he begins to shudder violently, his body gripped in a manic palsy.

  His image doubles, triples, her eyes unable to focus on the singular form in front of her. Instead, he exists in Doppler, blurred images of his body shuddering back and forth. His mouth is open in a silent scream and his eyes are rolled up into the back of his head, the whites exposed.

  The bed begins to shake with his movements, the springs squeaking and the headboard hitting the wall. Sounds engulf her, the screeching, the bed, the creaking fan, the sizzling sock; his elbows grind into her arms leaving painful white tattoos in her flesh.

  She fails to notice the burning in her neck until her blood stains the sheet.

  Then it is over, the rippling, the screeching, his manic shuddering. The room has returned to its original color, the fan creaking slowly above.

  She feels an immense lightness take over her, a glimpse of memory and nostalgia. End, the single syllable erupts in her head. End, over and over. Above, in her blurred vision, she can see pulsating red lights; dark red, watching her, never wavering or moving. Right above her.

  She has been here before, done this before, countless times. Only there was never a sock baking in sunlight, never the smell of sweat and dirt. This is new.

  She can see a figure hovering at the side of the bed, her peripheral vision exposing a dark mass blocking the light. He is standing over her, his body a silhouette, looking at her as she lies prone, naked, open to him.

  Then she feels the stickiness on her shoulder. She tries to turn her head but finds that it is rooted solidly in one position, unable to turn or lift. Her body becomes something separate than herself, a shell of empty importance.

  However, her eyes are still functioning, her brain still computing the immense visual information it is currently receiving. And she sees red, a great pool of red. Red lights, red fluid, red anger pulsating, hatred, emotions that have seeped into her through the ages.

  She wraps herself around the color, finding comfort in it, a familiar friend that is always there at the end, always watching over her.

  The sheets have become saturated in red, the tiny fibers and threads absorbing all that is possible, forcing the excess color to pool and flow. She becomes aware of the pumping in her neck, the steady and continual spurts of arterial motion. And it comes to her in a moment of clarity that although she is, indeed, bleeding heavily from the neck, she feels no pain. She can't see the cause of her injury, the screw embedded deeply in her flesh, but she can sense the door handle-its tarnished gold knob refracting the faded light from the window, casting wavering ghosts on the wall. Her blood spurts across metal, dripping like syrup from the cylinder, greasing the threads.

  And he is watching all of this, standing right next to her, blocking the light. A bubble of blood erupts from her mouth as she parts her lips, oily like soap, popping suddenly and splashing her face with drops of red.

  "See," she gurgles deeply, "no...mistakes."

  "I guess you're right," he mutters, shifting back and forth in front of the window, the light eclipsed. She is engulfed in a wave of his sadness, despair and hopelessness so strong that she would have fallen to the ground shuddering if she could move.

  She tries to speak, to tell him to stop the fluid movement of his body, but is unable to move her tongue. The pumping from her neck slows, her pupils constrict, and the room begins to grow dark. She watches him move from the side of the bed, across the slash of light from the window, walking across her field of vision and disappearing into the hallway.

  She hears the door creak open slowly-somehow without a door knob-and then click shut. Her periphery is gray, melding together into the absence of color. However, right above her, staring down like burning stars are two red lights, constant and glaring. Watching her and waiting.

  The room folds into a singularity. She is awash in electrons, fading into the binary, machine language invading her mind. And she is no longer on the bed. No more blood and soaked Egyptian cotton, flowing through the pure numbers and contradictions of code, coursing through circuits that eventually are broken, stored in memory, silent and cold.

  #

  Everything dissolves and blends into the darkness of the small room. Before him is a scratched metal door glowing sickly brown from the single halogen hovering over it, the only source of light. Whispers and moans careen outward from the black perimeter echoing across riveted aluminum siding. Charcoal darkness.

  Points of red splatter outwards, pinpoints of color punched into black. Colored eyes leering or instrument panels; either is a bit sinister. Matthew rests his hand on the cold metal of the door in front of him, scanning his lower body with his eyes, looking for any signs of blood or secretions. There will be none, of course, all fluids disappearing into an electronic net hidden in silicon. But he cares.

  He is missing a sock on his left foot. He had removed it inside, with her; had thrown it haphazardly across the room. It should be sitting in front of him, existing as a real object. No. Gone. Like a fog. Just gone. His shoe, however, is there, a sickly tint of brown absorbed into the leather. It used to be black.

>   Matthew slowly bends down and picks it up, lifting it to his nose. He sniffs before peering inside. The hole is gone. Strangely, besides the new color and the intense odor of foot sweat, the shoe is like new. He slips it on, sockless.

  The whispers grow louder around him. Someone far off moans either in ecstasy or in a masochistic shudder of painful pleasure. Next to the door is a hook for hanging unneeded clothing. He grabs his dull black overcoat and slips it on.

  The light above the metal door stutters erratically; off, on, off, on. He flips open a small metal case embedded in the door, revealing what looks to be something similar to a hotel key card: white, dull around the edges, smudged from multiple finger prints. Matthew grabs the exposed edges, removing it from the slot.

  The red lights grow brighter, floating toward him, moaning, howling, sighing, whispers of torture and death and hatred and bloodletting that is deserved and reaching inside of her to grasp the warmth buried below skin, pulling it out for her to see the decay, the darkness, the rot, and the scraping of metal against concrete, door latch clicking, and the smell of cinnamon bubble gum mixed with discarded chicken tikka masala.

  He is outside next to the vending booth. The woman inside raises her eyebrow. The pink orb pulsating from her mouth explodes. Cinnamon.

  The woman wears a long, flowing black skirt with the numbers "0" and "1" in white randomly patterned across the fabric. She also wears a black t-shirt with the words "There's No Place Like 127.0.0.1" plastered across her chest. Her breasts stretch the words, the numbers becoming oversized and appearing to compliment her skirt. A tattoo of a red star marks the upper part of her left hand.

  The woman swings herself off of the counter, jamming the shredded gum back into her mouth and smacking it wetly, her skirt following her body's movements slowly, almost regretful that it has to be disturbed.

  "Did you have a good time?" She begins ringing up the additional minutes he spent in the room.

  Matthew doesn't know how to respond, staring first at the woman's bright pink hair and then out into the busy street. It's raining. Pools of water are collecting in the makeshift gutters parallel to the street. Slurping sounds come from metal grates, the water flowing downward to be filtered and spit out through kitchen taps. Streetlights reflect off the dark pavement. Cars swoosh.

  "I guess I did," he says, still staring into the street. "There was kind of problem though. I don't know if it was intended or if it's evolving. She wanted me to fuck her. More than anything."

  He reaches behind his head and feels the scratches left behind. He finds small wires poking through the skin. Nerve endings coursing through gold wire, ohms of the body. And for some reason this does not bother him. It seems to be the rational outcome of his experience.

  Taking the plastic card in his hand, he places it into a large metal case, snapping it shut.

  "This your regular Hommy?" The woman takes the metal case from him, rolling it over in her fingers. The credit machine buzzes, approving his card. She smiles at him, handing back his Visa.

  He returns to the words plastered on her chest, "There's No Place Like 127.0.0.1." Matthew suddenly sees the numbers swirl, roll, 1's and 0's attacking the rogue 2 and 7, beating them out of existence. More 0's enter the pack. More 1's. A swirling of digital text growing exponentially into...something; as Echo would say to Narcissus 01001011 01001011 01001011 01001011; Narcissus: "May I die before I give you power over me." Echo: "I give you power over me."

  Plastered there on her shirt, in roiling waves, hovering and whisping is the µ, staring at him, right there, distorted by her breasts, but there, following him, created of 1's and 0's.

  µ.

  Pink hair rolls her eyes and says, "Yes. They're breasts. Boobs. There are tons of programs out there showing better tits than these. So stop staring, ok? It's creepy." He must have staring.

  Matthew doesn't feel like explaining his growing terror-and how does he know this woman with the pink hair and the pulsating µ across her breasts isn't one of them? Tenuously, he lets the whole thing go, allowing the woman to think he's just another dirty old man. Instead, he turns the conversation back to the anomaly in the program.

  Anxiety overflowing, Matthew manages to sound a bit normal, "This wasn't my normal hommie. I, uh, try new ones every time. You can check. Uh...don't really, uh, this one was new."

  The woman humors him with a mock frown, "Well, I guess I could check the stock program." She rolls the metal case back and forth between her fingers, "Or I could do a whole format and reinstall the program from scratch. That'd be a big headache and a waste of time though. You're sure about this? She wasn't acting like she should?"

  Matthew nods; trying to act interested and ignore the pulsating sign on her chest at the same time, turning his gaze toward the street once again, at the cars driving past and the droplets of water being flung into the air.

  Pink Hair shrugs, "Sorry about this kiddo. But you know our policy. No refunds."

  He pretends to shrug. "I also lost a sock."

  Turning away from him, throwing the metal case into a basket, the woman mutters, "Yeah, we'll keep a lookout for it. Room 3. Smelly old sock. Check back."

  Matthew sighs and attempts to walk normally out of the cramped alley-tripping on a discarded Chinese food box that has miraculously avoided any rain. He catches himself on the alley wall, the fabric of his coat scraping against the grime covered bricks. Above, raindrops clatter against hand machined tin roofs.

  Matthew stumbles out of the darkness of the alley and into the glowing street, buzzing plasma televisions the color of sky tower overhead on billboards and special constructs built specifically for the medium. Colors refract and bounce across mirrored office complexes. Rain has pooled on the sidewalks, escaping the crumbling gutters.

  Somewhere nearby, dogs howl.

  The Sky Above the Harbor

  Humans float by Matthew, each breathing separate breath, pumping different blood, yet having a singular smell. He joins the movement, hunched within his dark overcoat, the entropy of human motorization on the street, carried through the stream toward a destination predetermined by X: the first one to start the crusade, to begin the line, everyone following him or her to the final destination. Until then, movement is what keeps them going.

  Any one of these people could be following him. Each shifting eye a marked piece of intelligence on Matthew's state of being, his presence. The µ haunting him, scratched into the metal of a lamppost or drifting through his peripheral vision on a bus advertisement. Two way televisions, observing his every movement, a singular person in a control room scratching notes on a pad of paper, "Leaves complex at 5:00 P.M. Enters crowd. Switch to camera B." Matthew can see the eyes behind the phosphors of the multiple screens; cathode rays pulsing beyond 60 hertz, the hidden frequency intended to transmit two way visuals.

  The rain already having saturated his hair, droplets begin to stream down his neck, flowing over the tiny wires growing from his skin-new wires, wires that should not be but are. Like the µ.

  I give you power over me.

  Matthew can feel the wetness in his shoe. If he were wearing a sock, he'd be protected from this discomfort. The crowd sweeps him by a clothing store. He worms his way inward toward the shop sidestepping the continuous onslaught of meat and cloth.

  He stands in front of the store's window considering whether or not the possibility exists that he should even begin to go through the motions of purchasing a new pair of socks.

  It begins to rain harder and the entire city seems to echo, for just one moment, with the simultaneous openings of millions of umbrellas.

  ###

  About the Author

  Douglas is a speculative Science Fiction writer based in Chicago. He researches too damn much and doesn’t spend his time writing. Shame him. Shame him incessantly.

  Contact the Author

  Email: [email protected]

  App.net: @caycepollard

  Twitter: @caycepollard1

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