Inksmith
Wreck/excerpt
ONE moment there he was heaving sweat through a modern bit of healthy pumping iron. Fit as a fiddle, “In perfect shape, heart of a young lion,” so he’d been told by recent Doctor checkups.
Hot as all get out, outside. Guy got to sweating, suddenly bizarrely so; in a few seconds he was otherworldly drenched. It seemed to him impossible for a man to unilaterally pour saltwater like that. “Surely,” he thought, “something really off’s going on inside me.” He recalled how on Court TV, a forensic person had said “people who are readying for suicide, tend to perspire heavily.” “Lord,” he’d wondered, “is that what I’m up to? “
He stood,
dropped.
Was shattered.
Then lay dying in what was supposed to be his apartment, but which had instantaneously struck him as an abattoir killing floor. Death stepping on his neck, promising to snap and shear at any moment.
In and out of knowing for over three days. He thought, “In my own home! what a shabby bit of atrocity.” Drooling mouth disgusting on the dingy rusted carpet, losing liquids from everywhichway. If he could’ve lifted his head and spread it around, the spittle might have finally brightened up the place.
“Well, fool,” he thought, in your case, “where else would you like it? On the street with everybody out takin’ a fuckin’ walk all over me? In the Hotel lobby where on your best days people take you for a dingy metal stool? In a green cafe? A ‘hep Chelsea bistro? A museum of modern art? Where everyone who’ve always wished you’d just get lost could stop and smile sideways with good riddance? – “Ho! there goes one less piece of pitch. Ugh!”
“All they ever wanted out of me was my luxurious sweat and blood! Then again, who could blame them? I gave it away so foolishly cheap, but, mmm-mmm, it was the really good stuff:” (Wreck suddenly began to sing some Bowie to himself: “…He took it all too far/but boy, could he play guitar…”)
“Go on, Wreck, he then thought, “stab yourself in the heart once more for old times sake; and bleed, all over everybody else’s funtimes, why don’t you? Women who made me for a dildo; men who used me to make them feel better since they didn’t have ’ta be me.
Oh, sure thing, let’s have me die in public . Aaand, why not!? My living’s been a stand-in for everyone else’s filth. Why shouldn’t I go down right bloody here, after all? Hot and so alone?
Yup, just the way I pi’tured it!
Oh, for crying out loud……”