Mouth Is Ink I Am Ink
new flash fiction
My hands look wrong. I've been making notes day in and day out about everything I've seen and heard and done. I either do something else or I make notes, none of this “nothing” nonsense. So I've been noting all of this down, because I HAVE to because there's some very pretty music in the surroundings. And that would be an unfitting description too, just “beautiful” really isn't enough to describe it. No one is playing the music on purpose, but there's the sound of drills and birds and wind and ceiling fans and construction. It's all slotting into patterns, all of it is beautiful, and so I HAVE to keep note of it. And I am, and my fingertips have been sawn off for it. Just a tiny bit. Who did it? I don’t know for sure, but I have my suspicions. But anyway, they're just ever so slightly smaller. Unless I’m imagining it and they were always this small, which seems wrong, but maybe I remembered wrong.
The smell of ink wafts across the air. I don’t think it’s that bad, since no one else has mentioned it, but it’s covering every space in the inside of my head. I can't ignore it, my own hands and legs feel unfamiliar next to this ink. And I don't like familiar things or people, I just feel like apologising at the sight. The sight or smell or taste too, I guess. I'm sorry ink. And thank you, ink, for making my arms and legs feel like strangers compared to you, because now I like them more.
See, I'd rather get hit by a car belonging to a stranger than someone I know. And I'd rather gamble my life on a stranger's goodwill than on my best friend’s. It's less baggage that way. And you have less of a responsibility towards strangers. But see the ink? I have obligations towards it now, we are attached now. I KNOW it, I know it and so its behaviour can be predicted. And if I fail to do anything based on those predictions… horrible, horrible of me! And if my predictions are straight-up wrong? Mistake, mistake, mistake no matter what! There's always mistakes no matter what. At least with a stranger I can say I didn't fully know, I'm not as culpable. Ink, ink, ink, my friend, my love, my joy, my life, my– no, I can let you down so easily and you can let ME down so easily and I remember it every time I breathe, every time I try to eat or even simply smell the air!
In my nose, in my throat, my coughing and sneezing turns blue. I don't know how long it's been this way. Days, weeks, months, it's all the same. Other people tell me that time feels strange for them too, but I don't think it's the same. I really don't.
I am stuck in a giddy hell. I can and have and will and am doing everything there is for me to do. I can't not, not “nothing”, never “nothing”, that awful awful familiar “nothing” (a life before of non-events! nothing happened to me, nothing, the ink came from nowhere!), I can only do, I can only be action, I can only act, I can only function, I can only be mechanics, I can only do, I can never stop, I am mechanisms only. This morning, one weeks-long waking dream ended to give rise to another. I slept in between but there was no difference between being awake and asleep. It was going, going, I was going and going no matter what. No real rest, except maybe for my body, and even that is forced to keep up with everything else. Now it's sore. It's not doing a good job. I like my limbs a bit more now, but I still don't like them that much. Such disappointments.
And you know what, there's a pattern. My friends have not seen my face today, and my mouth tastes like ink, and everything hurts? All those things happen at the same time, AND that's happening with the plants dying? My plants died today? Today of all days? On a day where I was a hermit AND all is ink AND all is aching? All at once? Everything COLLAPSING at once? That's not a coincidence. It can't be. It can't. Nothing is coincidence except when it is, which is rare and I know I seldom see it. And actually all of these things are coincidences, rationally speaking, but they CAN'T be, they can't. I'm in the giddy hell, because me and the ink love each other so purely, and the fog of the giddy hell is blue and thick and strange, and through this very fog many patterns emerge. Most of these patterns don't exist. But they're IN MY FACE, they're IN MY EYES, they're IN MY NOSE, they're IN MY THROAT. How can I help myself from believing them in this state? How? How?
And what IS a pattern anyway? If I recognised patterns properly, it would mean I’d recognise my face and I’d recognise everyone else very easily. Familiar things, that’s the reason why we like each other. Comfortable familiarity. But comfort is so suspicious. I don't believe it. I don't. I don't believe you. I love you. I don't believe you. This ink is very very comfortable too, because sometimes choking gets you off and the high is great and then you slowly adjust to the low oxygen and it stops getting you off but hey, now it's comfortable. Now it's comfortable.
It's made its way into my eyes. Mixed in with the tears. I blink and it just spreads the blue across my vision. Everything is ink. Look, my limbs, my limbs. Blue, blue, blue, blue, blue. The ink is so familiar. I'm so familiar. One and the same. Every day is so familiar. All the same, all one big long dream. The days and the ink and the me. All the same, all the same, nothing matters.
No air in my lungs, no oxygen in my face, no pain to be felt any longer, all drowned out by the ink, all blue. All blue.