Late Night Thoughts

You think the sadness leaves. It doesn’t. 

When I first met you, I said you were my Prozac with yet unknown side effects. Well I know what those side effects are now. First, that its efficacy is short-lived, and yet my body has grown so accustomed to it I cannot live without it anymore. Second, like most drugs, there is a period of complete and utter bliss, but then comes a crash that is so violent, it is something singularly spectacular to behold. 

These black, viscous, septic thoughts well up in my blood. These cancerous, virulent feelings course through my lymph. I’m trapped in a Sartre-ian limbo. Death says, you are far too contaminated, far too defiled for my kingdom. 

This sadness is inherent in me, in my mother’s blood, and her mother’s. This sadness caresses me, drowns me, buries me. I am the darkness that overwhelms, I am the darkness molten.

Down the Rabbit Hole

This is one of those nights when you wake up groggy and disoriented and everything seems so distant and faraway and you find that you’re in the midst of giants. Your entire head vibrates excruciatingly as their thunderous footsteps make contact with the ground, one after the other, and the nerves in your temples are throbbing so vigorously it’s a wonder they didn’t explode into a mess of blood and capillaries. The giants are all around you, talking and laughing and occasionally one steps over you delicately - but other than that they do not seem to notice you. You’re watching them with disinterest until one of them leans down and grabs your shoulders and shakes. Hard. 
 

“Alice,” the giantess shouts, “Alice, get up.” 

I blink once. Twice. And my eyes begin to focus on the face inches from mine, her eyes wide with – what, fear? – for that few seconds until it is apparent that I have not overdosed and am still very much alive, thank you very much. 

“Tara,” I croak, “water. Please.” I’m still lying pathetically on the floor – which pretty much explains the roomful of giants.  

“Jesus Christ, Alice, are you trying to kill yourself? How many goddamn pills did you do?” 

Tara licks her red, red lips, livid; and I say, “enough to go to Wonderland”. 

Wonderland, where all sorts of magnificent creatures – gryphons and unicorns and even mock turtles (which according to the Queen is what mock turtle soup is made from) dwell. I want to tell her that it was a place where animals talked, like in Narnia, and they sang rhymes and had the most outrageous croquet games. I want to tell her that there was a Queen of Hearts, who was pudgy and rather stout but oh, how she loved having people’s heads cut off. “Off with his head,” she would say, “off with his head” because she liked the way it sounded, “off with his head” because she can. 

I could stay there forever because they were all mad. Everyone was mad and no one cared that monsters live behind my blue irises and my teeth were stained with blood. The Duchess served me soup with too much pepper and put a baby in my arms who turned into a pig. I didn’t want a pig any more than I wanted a baby so I slaughtered it and made a pork pie. Everyone at the tea party enjoyed it and the Mad Hatter pulled me aside and told me it was the best he had ever tasted and he kissed me but his mouth was full of porcelain chips and they cut into my lips and my tongue. 

Only the unicorn saw me for what I am. “You’re a monster,” he said but he got into a fight with the lion over the White King’s crown and died with his flank torn into ribbons before he could warn the others.   

“I was in Wonderland,” I repeat.

Red Riding Hood

A figure cloaked in crimson disappeared into the enveloping gloom of the forest. It was winter and the trees were bare and so densely packed that the forest grounds remained shaded from the moonlight. The barest of light shone through, just enough for her to make out the silhouettes of objects around her. As far as fairy tales go, it was a predictable breeding ground for monsters and creatures. And indeed, the forest had been the inspiration behind many tales the town folk told to their children; most of them featured disobedient children who wandered into the forest despite their parents’ forbiddance and were ravaged by horrible beasts.

The town nearest to the forest was merely a kilometer away and the town folk, raised on generations of such stories shunned it as best they can. The ominous presence of the forest loomed insidiously over the town and when the moon was at its fullest, the howling of the wolves sounded like an army of banshees descending upon the town. It was enough to scare even the most foolhardy and reckless from ever setting foot in the forest. The bravest of the town folks would plan a wolf hunt that would never be carried out and the craven would be hiding in the warmth of their beds, hoping against all odds to catch some sleep in the ruckus.

In the town where everyone cowered from the sinister, impenetrable forest, there was a girl who would sneak off into the darkness of the tall, distorted trees while the town was deep in slumber.

The girl hurried along, her scarlet cloak trailing behind her billowed in the chilly breeze. She was aware of the pair of yellow eyes that was following her every move, the footsteps dogging her own. Whatever it was, it was hidden in the shadow of the trees and its movements were silent, predatory. She stopped in a small clearing in the middle of the woods and it finally stepped out into the moonlight, its lithe and graceful body bristling with silver fur. It stood tall before her, its red red tongue hanging out of its mouth lewdly.

The wolf edged closer, putting one massive paw in front of the other as its eyes scoured her, stripping her naked, layer by layer, through skin and muscle and bones, as though contemplating which part of her to devour first. Its eyes were dark with hunger and its sharp, perfect teeth glinted menacingly in the moonlight.

She slipped her cloak off her shoulders and shivered. Her body was as white as ivory, breasts small and high, nipples taut. The wolf pounced forward, closing the distance between them and with one paw gently pushed her onto the ground. It nudged her legs apart with its muzzle and licked the inside of her thighs with its hot, pulsing tongue.

She didn’t feel cold anymore – the fur of the wolf was warm enough – and it had lowered itself onto her so that she was shielded from the freezing wind. They did it on all fours - like animals. Amidst its throes of pleasure, it had let out a blood-curdling howl and raked its claws across her back where half-healed scars marred her translucent skin and her blood-soaked cape was stained a darker red. She moaned in ecstasy, her burning back tingling as her wolf-lover ran its lascivious tongue over her wounds.

“What a big mouth you have,” she remembered saying once upon a time, long long ago.

"The better to eat you with," answered the Big Bad Wolf. 

Hypothesis

If you would love me, know first, that I'm a free verse. I am not a Shakespearean sonnet,  nor will I ever be the immaculate, rhythmic structure of Dickinson's meters. If you love me, it's because you understand the beauty of chaotic abyss, you appreciate the exactitude and veracity of each chosen word and you manage to find structure and cohesion under the epidermal pandemonium. You know that I will be mercurial and volatile - you will love me till your heart feels like breaking and you will hate me to my marrows. If you love me, you'll know that I love savagely and painfully, because I've never learned to love otherwise. If you love me, I will always be a part of you - at the fine line between sanity and insanity, in the darkest concourse of your mind.

Anastasiya

He met her in the woods one evening, when he strayed off the path and left his drunk, stumbling friends to the vodka in their hands and the alcohol-laced songs in their throats. He didn't drink that night, not because he held any personal intolerance or disdain for intoxicants but because the night was unusually beautiful and he had wanted a clear mind to enjoy it.

The first time he laid eyes on her he didn't think she was human; at second glance, he knew from the pit of his heart that she wasn't.

It wasn't just the fact that she was hauntingly beautiful, or that her translucent skin glowed under the light of the moon, or the way her hair fell long and straight to the base of her naked spine. It was the ethereal way she moved, as though her movements were unrestricted by the laws of the world; every gesture was a foreign language, a mystery as old as the Stonehenge. Her silver eyes were a flux of sadness beyond comprehension, as though she had seen the world and learned all there is to be learned and was irreparably scarred by the knowledge.

He was in love and they both knew it.

When he brought her back everyone wanted to know where he found her. They wanted to know her name, where she came from and whether she spoke Russian. They were charmed yet intimidated by this exquisite and lovely but unbearably cold (even for the winter-born Russians) woman. His sisters were unsettled by this strange woman who did not or would not speak. He brushed off their inquisitive probings and would only tell them to call her Anastasiya.

Anastasiya, they whispered. Resurrection. They didn't know what to think of her.

He did. He knew exactly what she was and yet he couldn't leave her to save himself. He told her that she could do whatever she wanted with him as long as she belonged to him. She would go back to the village with him as his wife, she would have a name - a beautiful name befitting her nature and she would not hurt any of the villagers - he would keep her satiated.

And so, when the doors to their room were firmly closed and bolted for the night, she slipped him out of his heavy moleskin lined fur cloak and tunic and small clothes until he was naked and shivering in the cold Russian winter. She pressed her lips to his partially open mouth and commenced to suck. At first it was just soft and pleasant, the way a lover's kiss feels like; but then his eyes grew wide as she began to suck harder and soon she was sucking away his blood and his soul and all of his being. She sucked away his consciousness and his dreams and his deepest fears. She sucked away all that was his and all that he was. He was dead and she was gorged to the brim, her body humming and vibrating with the stream of life force she just fed on.

But by morning it was apparent that he was coming alive again. Resurrected. His heartbeat was feeble and he was still pale as a corpse but he was alive. He wasn't too sure how it worked - whether it was her innate healing powers or if he just didn't really die - but it soon became a pattern that fell into place without fail. He died every night and was resurrected every day. He would like to believe that it was because she loved him in her own way, loved him, and wouldn't bear to let him die.

"Do you love me?" he once asked her. She was silent, as usual, but her lips curved into a cold, cold smile.

Mad World

I

She had become a phantom. That was it. Standing in front of the mirror, her hair unkempt and eyes deadpan, she could see it – that she had been fading away for the past… what? Five days? Three weeks? She had no idea how long it had been since she was in this catatonic state. Her mind vaguely registered that this should have been alarming, should have warranted a larger reaction compared to this idle curiosity. And yet she found that she could not have summoned the energy to elicit the appropriate emotions even if she wanted to.

Her eyes skated over the image in the mirror with the same mildly curious look: over the pallid, sallow cheeks and the once-luscious lips; along the gentle slope of her slumped shoulders down to her arms hanging limply by her sides. But it was her eyes that captured her attention. They stared back at her with the same indifference: one eyebrow minutely raised as if in mockery or as a challenge. The look in her eyes was dead. There were no other words for it. It was pure and utter blankness.

They say it happens when you wander too long in your own subconscious mind.

II

"We're all mad here. I'm mad. You're mad."

"How do you know I'm mad?" said Alice.

"You must be," said the Cat, "or you wouldn't have come here."

III

Mad - em. ay. dee.

M.A.D, as in:

Morbidity – the batshit crazy cat lover who is so poor she couldn’t even feed herself. She carves out chunks of her thighs for her hungry cats.

Agony – the sweet twin sister of suffering. She is forged in the womb of humanity and born from the marrows of desire. She is the blood pumping through our veins and the breath we hold in our lungs.

Despair – the poison that spreads through your mind like the Black Death. It ravages your soul and eats up your hopes and your dreams. And when you’re cold and dead and gone, it will shit on your corpse and dance on your grave. 

Madness. The satire of humanity. 

A Story of Teeth

I remember when I was 6 and my baby teeth were dropping like flies throughout the year. Remember how the falling off of baby teeth would form a border in the transition from being babies to being full-fledged children? Despite the initial horror of toothlessness (which I then overcame by trying not to show my teeth when I smile) I was delighted that I was finally getting rid of whatever categorized me as a baby. It was when I was trying to grow up too fast and had no discernible idea of what growing up meant. 

Anyway, I started a collection of baby teeth after deciding that I couldn't bear to throw away a part of myself. I think I was scared that all the teeth I dumped over the years would come together and form the phantom of a mouth I once had but without my lips or my tongue or my oral cavity. It would be two rows of vengeful, malicious teeth snapping their way into my bedroom when I sleep and haunt me for the rest of my life. Far-fetched, I know, but you know how kids are. 

So the first two teeth were given the royal treatment. I used to brush and clean them individually then rinse them in Listerine every night before placing them back into their little bed of cotton wool in a matchbox from England that my aunt gave me. I lost both of them in an unfortunate incident in which they were washed down the sink when I drained the water. The next three survived for another year before I grew bored of cleaning baby teeth every night and just left them in their bottle until they rotted. I washed them down the sink, this time of my own free will. I traded the succeeding one with my brother for dominance over the TV remote control. (He wanted to watch Ed, Edd and Eddie but I wanted to watch The Book of Pooh) I still don't know what he wanted with my tooth. 

I lost more teeth as the years went by, mostly due to similar incidents and once because I planted two teeth in the garden after the dentist told me about teeth having roots and all. I now have approximately ten more in a bottle filled with mouthwash (because I am too lazy to have to clean them every night or even every month) and they have all turned Listerine blue. They remind me of floating fetuses in jars of formaldehyde and I certainly have developed a kind of... maternal(?) feeling towards them over the years. The first two even had names: William and Harry. Dead serious. 

I don't know why I'm remembering this now but Born to Die is making me strangely nostalgic. It makes me sad to think of William and Harry and the others. It's like having a cemetery of unborn babies. 

Wonderland

I used to have the same fever dreams over and over again; an endless dream sequence set in a place like wonderland.

There, people walk around in a stupor with half-smiles on their faces. They talk about how the sun is shining so brightly, or compliment the precise diamond-like shape of raindrops but when asked about their names or who they are, they fall silent.

You are walking in the middle of a crowd of people; suddenly you stop, turn around and there's no one around you at all. You're standing in a narrow hallway and you can see no end to it. You put one foot ahead of another because there's really nothing else you can do.

She looks at me, her face utterly devoid of emotion and holds out her palm to me. WE'RE ALL MAD HERE, written in faded black ink. She continues licking the ink on her translucent skin.

There's a mirror in front of me and I see you in it; or rather, you see me. And I realize that we're the same person after all. And all the people walking in circles, with their zombie-smiles and their apparent lack of sound minds are more clones of me.

Then the dream would start all over again.

When Love Dies

"It's a stillborn," the doctor says, mopping his forehead with a spotted kerchief. "I'm sorry." And he genuinely does seem so.

We would not look at each other. Instead, we fixed our eyes at the mass of bloody flesh in my hands, in our hands. I am looking at it with all my remaining energy, as if I could electric-shock it into living and pulsing again, as if we did not feel the wet coldness seeping through our fingers. It is stiff already, our dead love, rotting and decaying away in our hands until it finally disintegrates. Now it is just my hand in his, the drying blood the sole indication that we had any love between us at all.

At night we sleep together one last time, his knees fitting in the back of mine and his chest cushioning my back. We are both trembling and sobbing quietly, because we know, know with absolute and uncanny certainty that a single escaped cry would break us down and tear us apart. My hair is soaked with his tears.

It is no use trying again. How many loves have we revived only to lose them in the end? How many times have I felt the doctor's shiny scalpel slit through the thin skin of my chest, and through the scarred muscles of my heart - reaching deep into the center of it, only to remove my gasping love, deformed and grotesque, as it is? How many times have he dug the graves to bury our loves?

No more.

No more.

He Said, She Said

You said you like my dress, because it's so long and so red and it goes on forever. It's an amaranthine river that flows from the blades of my shoulders to the ground. The scarlet train pools around my feet like blood. Or ketchup.

You said you like my skin. Milky white and luminescent behind the crimson silk. Touch it then, I whisper. Trace it with your finger but be gentle, and soft. My skin is so thin it will break at the slightest pressure, and the red would come out of me, and I will die. Trust me, darling, I'll die. 

And I said, tell me more. What else do you love about me? I'm hungry and greedy and I want so much more out of you. So spill. 

So you said:  I love how you get all these crazy stories in your head and demand that I listen to all of them. I love the muscle on your thigh that occasionally twitches when you sleep.I love the warmth of your body, and I drink it every night, and it burns as it goes down my throat. Like brandy. I love your sing-song voice, lilting and fluctuating with every syllable of your words. I love our little arguments and how they always end with you in my arms. I love how you carry your pillow around and bury your head in it and sniff it and tell me that it smells like me. Or I smell like it. I love your insanity and paranoia and obsessiveness and do-you-really-want-me-to-continue-because-it-can-really-take-the-whole-night. 

Well then, I replied, you can write it all down and draw little random hearts on the paper, or you can shut up and kiss me. 

Happy Belated Birthday, Cheeyi

It has become a routine that has to be done daily - a ritual, almost. She stands in front of the floor-to-ceiling mirror with a basin of water in one hand and a small towel in another. She forces herself to look into the mirror and suppresses the disgust and utter horror as she wets the towel and dabs at her face (if it can still pass as a face).

The softness of the towel on her skin is delicious. Slowly, gently and with a deftness that could only hint at regularity, she removes the flakes of skin from her purulent flesh. The pinkish, raw sinewy muscles on her face contracts when she opens her mouth. The foul-smelling pus that flows down her throat is carefully cleaned.

She lifts up a rubber mask from her dresser and puts it on, careful to secure the edges. Make-up is applied to make her face more realistic, more natural. At best, she looked as though she had had a bad plastic surgery, at worst the bleeding is too heavy to put on a fake face at all. She looks at herself proudly, admiring the face that her own hands had produced.

He wouldn't recognize her now. No, she had been beautiful once and he had been the devil. If she had known better she wouldn't have made the deal with him but he had been so charming, so alluring. Let me love you and let me be with you and I'll give you anything. Anything. Well, he did. He let her love him and let her be with him and he wanted her face.

But you know what they say, a deal's a deal and he got her goddamned face. She hopes he does it justice. Pretty faces are hard to come by, after all.


P.S. Hope you don't mind I wrote dark stuff for your birthday. =)

Take My Heart

When I die, promise you'll retrieve my heart before it deliquesces in my body. You have ten minutes. Shatter my ribs and reach into my chest. There you shall find my heart, silent and rigid, but do not be fooled. It may lie limp and dead, but it will bite your fingers off at first chance. Do not fret.

Sing it a ballad. You may stroke it gently once it grows docile. It will purr and squirm under your touch. Now (and you must be quick and firm), seize it tight and wrench it out from its nest of veins and capillaries. Do not worry if it gasps and moans. Stretch it as thin as you can but take care not to tear it. When it is flat, dry it in the sun and tie it around your wrist.

Then and only then, will I be with you. Always.

Advice For February:

Be nice to people this month. Smile, but take care to ensconce your sharp, jagged teeth. Laugh kindly at people's jokes, but do not spout blood. Speak softly, as to not wake the slumbering demon in the confines of your mind. Ignore your belly, you do not want to eat humans. Keep your hands occupied, try not to pull out your nails when you're nervous. Lock your heart in a jar, it had never been a good influence. Bathe in formaldehyde everyday, or you will be plagued by gnats and maggots. Do not go near the animals, they will shriek and hiss. Eat with a fork and a knife, but do not concentrate too much on the knife - or the fork too for that matter (you don't want to kill somebody). Finally, look into others' eyes with loving kindness and do not let the insanity show.

The Girl Who Had Maggots

Once upon a time, there lived a girl who was in love. And when her love died, she had him encased in the concourse of her mind and would not let him go. Soon, the corpse began to fester and maggots infested her mind.

The maggots originated from the soft tissues of her brain. Slowly, leisurely, they ate her brain as she slept. And sleep she did often. When she cried the maggots wriggled out from the corner of her eyes and slid down her cheeks. Still, she did not notice the maggots because they were clever: eating her brain tiny bit by tiny bit so that she felt nothing. But they were breeding now, and the maggot babies were hard to control. They cried and they wanted more.

One day, she woke up with a splitting headache and was left with no choice but to call the doctor. The doctor came and felt her head and pronounced that a surgery was to be taken place immediately. She consented. And when the doctor had her head cut open, the maggots came squirming and writhing out, their pale white bodies intertwined like lovers'. The doctor gently wiped away the maggots to reveal a moiety of brain left.

The girl died. And so did the maggots.

(not) a love story

It seems that I've gotten used to loving you without having you around. Those bitter days spent longing for you: for your chin resting on top of my head, for your fingers interlaced with mine, for your arm draped around my shoulder; those days are stacked in the darkest corner of my subconscious mind.

Once a while on a rainy day I leaf through the yearnings, the pangs of desire that arched my body and stole my soul - because that's what you do to me.

When a star dies it forms a black hole that sucks everything, even light into its abysmal void. And that's what your absence is like - a black hole, obliterating my innards and my soul, even the light of my life into an event horizon. It sucks and pulls and pulls and sucks until I lie as empty as a shell.

Even if I tried to forget you, even if I have you incarcerated in the dustiest room of my mind, you would've seeped between cracks under doors and through keyholes. And as though in revenge you would've haunted me night and day, with your face imprinted on the back of my lids, so that even in sleep I dreamt of you.

And I would've hated myself for being willing to continue loving you in misery, just for the smallest chance that you would love me too.

The Death of Beksinski

There were days when he could not get out of bed; when he wallowed in his week-old pyjamas, slept in grease and sweat. But who was there to witness his disgrace? He was alone in the studio, surrounded by paintings, sculptures, all by his own hands. They were never judgemental in their gaze - perhaps they were too lost in their own grief, in their own torment that they did not notice. Perhaps they adored him the way children adores their parents.

He wanted to hold a congregation to prove that the old cliché, that every cloud has a silver lining was total bullshit. His son had committed suicide a year after his wife's death. Could people have misinterpreted the message of this cliché? Could it be that the silver lining was originally meant as a strike of lightning that does further damage rather than the equivalent of a rainbow? He had so many questions, so many God damned questions that even God himself could not have answered.

When he painted he created life. He painted skeletons and death and gore but it pulsated with life. He felt the pain in his deformed figures, throbbing in sync with his heart and he wanted to tell the man in his painting, I hear you, I know how you feel.

Often he lost himself in his painting, in the furious stroke of brush, as if he was uncovering rather than painting. He was an archaeologist, removing centuries of dust and sand to reveal pulchritude. He was an anatomist, detailing each human bone with care. He was a murderer, tearing skin off his shrieking victims, watching the blood gush vibrantly red from the wounds.

Life is ironic this way. He was suicidal, manically depressed for most of the time in the duration of six years after his son's death. In the year 2005, he was found dead in his apartment. He was not a victim of suicide, rather, he was stabbed to death with 17 stab wounds.

If he had committed suicide before the incident, would he have died a far more pleasant death? Would he have died peacefully in his sleep after swallowing some pills? Did the thought perhaps flash across his mind as the murderer stabbed him, continuously for seventeen times? Or was he afraid that his blood would splatter across his paintings and ruin them?

It's funny how we sometimes reach our desired destination but with an alternate, less preferred mean of getting there. If he had known that, would he have wished to live instead? Or would he have complied with what fate has in store for him, seeing the pain only as a collateral cost in order to achieve the eternal peace? Was he certain that he would've rejoined his family after his death? Did he have any doubt that he could've been stranded in a void, utterly alone, bodiless, cold, cold to the very core? Or was he just tired of the world, tired of being lonely?

I have so many God damned questions, so many that God himself could not have answered.