Whither tumour? Whither growth?

Do you have that dis­ease? Do you have that raging poison in your veins? Will you give it to me? Will you bestow your dread­ful ill­ness upon this feeble mind and body? Will you course through my blood­stream? Will you beat me into sub­mis­sion? Will you fuck me into oblit­er­a­tion rather than simple obli­vion? Will you force my skull back into my head? Will you infect me? Will you? Will you?

I used to be a junkie. I craved. Now I feel clean. Too clean. So pure and vir­tu­ous, so lack­ing in scars and puke and semen and pus that I want to smother myself in shit and fall against barbed wire fences until I pass out.

I feel cheated. They told me that I would feel some­thing. Cheated, I was. They said I would know it like a sud­den, bru­tal, mean­ing­less death. I’ve been cheated. I didn’t even get the shivers. There was no shak­ing, no sweat­ing. I didn’t retch. I didn’t evac­u­ate my bowels in a rush of filth and debase­ment. My bod­ily func­tions retained their per­fect self-control. In short, I didn’t feel. A thing. I didn’t even feel a thing. I didn’t.

Let me kneel. Let me look at myself now. My reflec­tion grows older even more quickly than I do. Take my hair in your hands. Whis­per to me. Give me your hoarse truths, your gut­tural threats and your prom­ises of new hor­rors that will surely befall me. Force my head back. Take me and force me and smash me. Don’t stop until the mir­ror and I crack together into a thou­sand shards or more.

Keep going. I will col­lapse inwards. I will fall out­wards. And I’ll start again.