Creation

It has been several years now and the darkness puts up a stage for the memories. With inward eyes I play and shout and gallop and study and cry and I follow her downstairs my mother and I do not know what is about to happen so I dive welcome into her arms Mother your touch is so warm it's heating up. Hush child. I love you. You have ruined my life and I still love you isn't that selfless of me you ungrateful shit. Yes it is mother. I love you mother and I'm sorry. It's really hot could you please let me go but by then the fire has begun to consume her and she screams but I am not alarmed save for the heat because I know someone will come to calm her down but fool they have already been slain and once the fires consume her I will be alone. I should have struggled but I didn't because I didn’t want her to hurt me If only if only if only. By the time the firemen get to me the forge of the gods has fused her cloak and my skin her protection from the fire. Her embrace forever on my skin. Even the greatest doctors in the country could not have sorted out my charred skin and I did not have the greatest doctors in the country but only bumbling fools who tried their hardest. Steady now I'm sorry steady now. Can you hear me? Can you move your head to tell if you can hear me? ...Good sirs was that motion all the nerves burnt away nothing but pain down to the bone I'd give him a week now come along my vocal cords burnt out my larynx and my mouth my tongue the pain my precious tongue I tried to die. I'm sorry. An incision in the throat. Food slides down again but it’s not food for no taste crosses my tongue a substance just fills my stomach and I am tormented with the worst delusions of what it could be. But I do not ask her. What could I ask that would pierce through this numb misery? I try to tell her how much it hurts but the fire’s ghost eats my words and spits out only smoke through the incision. She coos in the hole that was once my ear… Quiet down I’ve got food for you don’t you see? It is very filling isn’t it she giggles. I feel rat droppings sliding down they leave slime in their wake that sticks oh the fluffiness of rice on my tongue my mother’s milk the fullness of meat they fade into the abyss in my mouth that I myself have made. To throw away my last gift such an ungrateful child. Now her fingers trace across my body. She is climbing onto the bed and speaking in fuzz. My mother warned me of her during paranoid nights she told me she was cursed my caretaker unfit to be a mother never to be pure for her soul was caked in shit disobedient whore the man he left her for she is barren impure in the end I got the last laugh she is far away and she is dying, poor, crawling with pestilence; take heed my child the golden one who ruined me for this will be your fate should you disobey. The sound of hammers clanging. Dogs are barking I keep hearing them rabid beasts chewing at me get away help help I can’t move anything but I can feel them eating me up please help anyone she’s gone mad and now her hand has gone there this numb tingling which is the work of evil spirits and now she whispers something going on top whispering I love you panting of the beasts my head caving into itself easy now. I’m so sorry our weeping spirit. Help. It hurts. Just let her be please. Can’t you hear me or feel me twitching under your hips are you that ignorant am I that inanimate? They didn’t realize it was my skin they were removing did they never question why the bleeding wouldn’t stop I am vulnerable and I am so alone. Instead of skin a numb stinging either bandages or cloth. Oh shit what’s coming from his mouth. Women screaming as they are devoured by rabid dogs. We need… We need… I’ve never seen something like this before. He’s going to live, poor kid… scalpel— does he have any relatives? Not anymore… It’s in the remnants of my mouth my stinging non-lips my empty face a wriggling fragment of my tongue drenched in acid. Here… Here… A hand upon my heart. Such sweet hands I feel through pain’s imprint. She doesn’t know how much she hurts me does she take my wheezing for cheers of joy (do I take them for cries of pain? I am just trying to moan…) Her skin is soft and for that I hate her. Had I limbs save these dead lumps I would have killed her. She an unclean creature has been sent to torture me I was a horrible son and now I am in hell. Help. Help hush now child oh you’re so sweet hey. Poor kid’s going to live. What is it? I’m sorry. I can’t tell what’s going on please quiet down the sound of hammers. I love you. Hush ah ah bark the dogs. You have been such a gift into my life I feel something shifting my mother’s embrace is she still fucking me? It hurts. The pain of her hips reverberating across time it is so warm. I love her. Hey. You’ve been such a gift. The doctors told me there is just nothing there just a hole not even a barren cavern but I don’t believe them because here (pain) can you feel him squirming? He’ll be so proud of you you pulled me out of misery I love you I hope you know that despite everything I’m sorry we can spend all day together with what they pay me to care for you though I’d do it for free oh what’s that you’re gasping for (with those shriveled phantasmal lips) here it goes inside the pressure of her breast it’s warm like her embrace and it sends my entire body into pain feel him feel him from these swollen lumps of flesh I will teach him not to fear you and I will care for him you wonderful thing let’s get some air in here it’s rather hot out forever maybe I’ll write another poem right here hm? Maybe it’ll be about you? We’ll see. Help. I know you must hate me for chaining you here. I feel her hands around my throat thumbs pressing into the incision the entire rotten structure collapsing in on itself. I know you’re cursed you sinful whore. Never to be a mother your sin. My mother’s embrace around my neck. My tongue sliding down my throat. My father’s shoe’s embrace. My little brother gone into the fire my other sisters too this whore please help me I love her. Whose dogs are barking at this hour? Poor kid. She is writing pretty poetry.

Leech-Child

What a great time it must have been to be at the creation of the world. You would have had everything in front of you, no walls to hold you back, and you could’ve flapped your arms and flown through the mist of the unformed earth, uncaring, unburdened, alone… I can see two women, floating as if they were weightless. Never for me; I am always beneath them… Unlike my joyful predecessors I can only manage a few shambling paces, after which I collapse in a heap. My bones are too malformed for anything more. They are so twisted that I no longer resemble a human, but instead some grotesque lump of flesh, whose extremities and face blend into its swollen body, giving it the appearance of some vile leech.

My predecessors saw this and resented me. That is why they installed a window in my cell, out of which I can see throngs of people passing through the city. Obviously I wish to join them and it hurts so much. They treat me worse than you could ever imagine. I would be satisfied if they saw me and recoiled, it would be heaven to be seen at all. It’s been so long since someone else has deigned to see me. Occasionally a bowl of plain rice appears while I am sleeping— does someone leave it for me? …My jaw is sunken in, I cannot chew, I must shove it down my throat with these lumps of hands…

At night evil spirits come to me and torment me. They offer me normality in exchange for something: Defile this many women, slaughter this many men, mutilate their children like this, like that… I cry out instantly that I accept but this is where the real torment lies: They leave me, jeering, as soon as they hear my cries, and the deal has been done but how am I to hold up my end of the bargain? I cannot exact revenge with this body and they know it and that is why they offer me these deals, because it brings them great joy to see me in pain— isn’t this already enough?! I curse my ancestors who have forsaken me but nothing escapes my cavernous mouth save the warbling of a dying animal.

I dream about swimming through the city, like my forebears did before the world’s birth, until I come upon a pair of lovers— faceless lovers, kissing outside my window, paying no attention to me, never for me to kiss with these hanging jowls— and then I find a sudden strength inside me, and with my lumps (which suddenly calcify) I bludgeon the man’s skull in, take the screaming woman into my arms, begin to insert myself inside her— starting from the head, I press myself in, my lumpy body, my stumps of legs, and I start contorting, liquefying, until I find that I now wear her flesh as if it were my own.

…It is happening again. They taunt me and I am crying out, begging to kill, begging to maim, and now I beg to die but my lungs keep pumping and heart keeps beating and the bowls of rice never cease; had I the dexterity I would have jabbed my pen through my melted skull… It is a struggle to write, I must clutch the pen between my hand-things and scribble violently upon the page— it hurts, it hurts greatly, I want to die but I cannot stop existing, not as this immobile thing… Tonight they are out there, as two women outside my window, one forcing herself upon the other— I can hear their moans, they do not recognize me, they do not care, they do not care that it should be me out there, as is nature’s due, that perhaps their kiss is needed to transform a vile thing like me into a handsome prince to save them, to save the world, but they do not notice, they don’t want to notice, they proceed into the filth where I dwell and I am still there and I am watching…

…Slowly I find myself well out of bed. My arms and legs have retracted into myself, my misshapen joints are gone. I crawl with ease, into the bathroom, into the toilet… down the drain… I am at work in the sewers now, at the creation of the world, bearing witness to divine beings pulling themselves out of the muck while I, their child, am left trapped in between… I crawl up alongside them. They do not notice me but that is all the better, now. I slobber over one of their ankles, this is my first taste of woman… My jawless maw expands. Serrated ranks of teeth claw up her beautiful legs, her dirty fingers, and finally engulf her head, out of which a gurgling scream is emitted… She is digested in seconds. The other one comes next. I laugh. What use have I now for the city? I crawl beneath the evening mist, back into the sewers…

Cassie Margalit is a writer whose works have previously been featured in A Thin Slice of Anxiety Press, Litmora Literary Magazine, and The Cafe Irreal. In a poor imitation of Pynchon, she tries and fails to not write too much about herself.