Welcome to my thoughts

The Stranger -

When you were a child, you were fond of dolls. You loved playing with them. Now, the thought makes you roll your eyes. You insist that’s not you anymore, that you’re mature now, grown up and elegant

But it was you, once upon a time. You stare in the mirror and you can’t recognise the face that stares back. It’s too lanky, too pale, too sad. The smile wrinkles have all but faded, leaving behind a mask sullen and sulky.

Your skin feels unnatural on your flesh, and you can’t quite remember it ever feeling good. You smile all wrong now, but you don’t know what right even is anymore

You take personality quizzes to find out who you are, but you can’t quite seem to understand ? INFP one tells you and another INTJ. A fourth calls you a Slytherin and a fifth tells you that your spirit animal is a rabbit

You’re scared, but you don’t know of what. You feel like crying, but you don’t know why. You’re not you, anymore, and you’re not quite sure what you’ve become

One day, you come to your mother, and beg her to tell you who- what - you are

She smiled genially, and says “That’s just what it means to grow up”

The Flesh -

You don’t think you’re quite right. You don’t think you’re wrong. Your mother told you that God made you, and God doesn’t make mistakes, so there’s no way you can be wrong, right ?

But that doesn’t change the fact that when you catch sight of your breasts in the mirror, all you feel like doing is chopping them off.

You hate your body. You hate your meat. It rots on your bones like stinking piles of pig flesh. You just want to strip it away

You are a man, but the world thinks you are a woman. You are meat, but the world thinks you are human

You hurt. You are a man. You are meat. You are meat and that’s so much better than being a woman that you almost feel like crying

When you tell your mother that, she looks at you like you’ve killed her daughter. You resist the urge to tell her that you have, that her daughter has been dead for years.

That you’ve spent all this time wearing the meat-shape of a woman, dragging it around like Achilles dragged Hector about the walls of Troy, even as it decayed and grew heavier and heavier, until you were sure your back would break, should you have to carry it for even a second longer

You are meat. A man is meat. A woman is meat. And you are meat too. Meat is meat. And you have never felt happier than you do hearing that fact

The Stranger -

You know your mother doesn’t smile like that. Her face has never been so waxen. Her eyes are glassy and empty. Her skin fits loosely on her face, like a mask of human skin draped over the featureless head of a shapeless mannequin

You know her voice doesn’t quite sound like that, but you can’t remember what it DOES sound like. It sounds the way metal tastes, rust stabbing into your tongue, bitter and unnatural and oh-so-strange

Your father seems distant, ever since your mother returned from her walk in the jungle. He looks at her with a strange fear, like he’s looking at a stranger that’s broken into his home

She doesn’t sleep. Before she changed, you had spent nearly every night in her bed, too afraid to sleep alone. This time, when you went to visit her, you found her lying in bed, back rigid and straight, eyes wide open, staring at the ceiling, that waxy, mannequin smile still affixed to her face

You sleep alone now. It’s still scary, but it’s better than that

She smiles too much now. She hums, too, strange, calliope-like tunes that swoops and rises with a pulsing, off-tune beat, resonating off your very ribs

There’s a family in your driveway. They have a child with them. It looks like you. It isn’t you. Your father is there, but he’s also standing beside you, eyes wide with terror.

The only one missing is your mother

There’s music in the forest. There’s songs and circuses and clowns

You don’t remember who you are, anymore. You don’t remember if you even are anything, anymore. Your face is not your own. Your skin is not your own.

And you can’t stop smiling

The Flesh :

Meat is meat is meat. A human is as good as swine. The blade cuts through flesh all the same

The smell of blood fills the air with its choking, pungent stench, and you can’t quite tell if it’s human or animal. You don’t particularly care

The blade falls. The meat screams. Its face is twisted in pain, but you continue cutting. Its flanks quiver, and you find yourself wondering if they taste as good as they look

You are hungry. You have been hungry. You think you will always be hungry

The blade falls. And you frown as the whisper-thin strands of white that are all that keeping your meat puffing and walking tell you that you feel pain

You look down, and notice that you’ve accidentally chopped through your own fingers. Your index lies a few centimetres away from your palm, in its own little pool of blood, cleanly severed

Oh well, you shrug, popping it in your mouth, chewing as you continue cutting up the meat’s loins. Meat is meat is meat is me. Waste not, want not

The electrified meat thrashes again, prompting yet another frown. My, those little sparks are really putting in the work, huh ? You roll your eyes and bring your cleaver down again

This time, it doesn’t move.

You reach over and pop something in your mouth. When it squeaks, you realize it’s a rat. Shrugging, you continue chewing, before swallowing and reaching for an eye

Meat is meat is meat. And meat shouldn’t be wasted on life