STILLNESS

There is a man in the hall.

He has been there for 12 hours, 2 minutes and 22 seconds.

How do you know this? There’s a clock on your wrist. A miniature grandfather that waves from its belly. This is your only indicator that time has transpired.

The sun stopped moving outside your window 13 hours, 3 minutes and 33 seconds ago. Rays glare at you as they snake past the blinds. They are not warm. Each is brilliantly bright - and luminous intensity makes for frigid blades.

You cut yourself on one earlier, but your blood is shy. It won’t peek out, won’t paint your face. It boarded up the gash. You felt the planks.

Huddled in the corner, you contemplate. The world vibrates, but you are still as death. Are you… dead? No. You feel your arteries. They are kissing beneath the covers of your ribcage. You are alive.

The silence is stricken by a thudding, thundering knock at your door. It’s a heavy door, built of finely tuned ores and the craftsmanship of the most paranoid men on the planet. This door could tank a warhead and shrug it off. This door has seen more insult than God Himself, and it holds fast regardless.

Is it resolute? Is it spiteful?

These ponderings are plummeted to the backburner as another KNOCK resonates through the aperture’s guardian. The man has large hands - and knuckles that could gore a cow. You don’t remember his name. No one remembers his name.

You shouldn’t have asked for his name.

“G… go away!” You plead, clutching your abdomen. It is swollen.

The voice that rises from your dry lips is slow, structured, a latticework of anxiety personified. You hate hearing your own voice. You wish your secretary was still here. Here to tell the man to pack up, seek another injury on the face of eternity.

Your legs tremble. They are moving again, for the first time in 14 hours, 4 minutes and 44 seconds. Why do they burn so bad? Sore. Awfully sore. Could you even stand anymore?

If you choose to rise, you’ll need to mind your headspace. The tendrils of light poke over the objects of your desk and make themselves cozy above your noggin, where further fracturing of skin they threaten.

A writhing is present now within your stomach. Something shifts, striving to say hello. It pushes your organs around, but none of them burst. You whine and bite your lower lip, stifling a horrid scream. Don’t scream.

Don’t let him hear you scream.

A ghastly THUD collapses against the door, rattling the furniture throughout the room. A lamp falls from its perch and fragments as it impacts the floor, spreading glass seeds.

You need to stand. You need to.

Your legs won’t give rise to an upright posture. They quake beneath the weight of your womb, which stirs only increasingly with the substance of the name.

“F… fuck…” You murmur, terrified at the hill holding you down. You have to remove it.

A double-barreled shotgun is at your side. It is sawed-off. You grasp it firmly, pressing the barrels against the right side of your raised abdomen.

The steel is cold upon your skin.

CRACK.

The shells explode outwards, piercing your surface and penetrating your person deftly. Pellets lodge themselves in your organs and over the growth manifesting among your midsection. But you do not bleed.

Your blood is shy. Your organs can’t be bothered.

You won’t die. Even as your figure quivers and the pain grinds your innards, there is no relief.

Another KNOCK. The door shivers, relaying shimmers of dust as it is disturbed worse than at any point in a history without dates and without births.

The presence that took residence in your interior of fleshy denizens wobbles and subsequently, gradually liquidifies, deflating your stomach. Then your pores burn like so many bonfires on the hills of the lake on July 4th, licking at the darkened sky as so many signals of liveliness.

A pasty, pale material slips out of your every pore and maneuvers into the shape of a frightfully fabricated figure. An entity. A sickly-sweet-smelling… wax mimicry of…

YOU.

Your entire body ought to be gushing blood at this moment, but none dribbles forth. Instead you are filled with holes, top to bottom, exposing your dancing interior in all its functional fondness.

“Pl… pplaaa…” You venture to speak, but your throat is pockmarked. Too airy to form proper syllables, much less express the true measure of the malevolence you desperately desire to escape.

The belly swings still, true to the progress of existence - despite the blindingly blades and their ill temperament. 15 hours, 55 minutes and 55 seconds.

What came of your womb forms a jagged smile, inching down to meet your face. You are unable to shift your weight. You are unable to look away. Your holey orbs gaze back at the product of the name.

You shouldn’t have asked his name.

KNOCK.

KNOCK.

KNOCK.

The glue of the aperture maintains its stance, permitting no persona to creep on this interaction. The impacts of hands rend not the ore.

The writhing mass of pasty you pecks your forehead prettily. You experience a lightning of sensation, your whole person collapsing finally into a state of destabilization.

Your heart nearly pumps out of your chest as it catches up to the injury, and your pores become spouts of bubbling red. Your form shrinks and your consciousness wanes, while you unravel - undressing inside out to greet your end of days.

A single, signature sight graces your fading being:

The paste is now a person…

and that person is fleeting.

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