I wrote that on the kitchen counter. In ketchup first, because I was still pretending to be FINE. Then in something thicker, something that might have been mustard or maybe toothpaste once because I had run out of FINE.
You think you live in a box, don’t you? Four walls. One door. Two windows. Containment. Lies.
You live in your flesh armoured bone-mech that your electro-pudding-self pilots and you don’t EVEN KNOW IT.
Sweet summer child.
I can see them now. The way the corners pulse if you look long enough. They’ve been watching forever. Tentacles, not always visible—just impressions at first, bruises on the paint where no one touched. Now they’re bold. Curling up through the cracks in the linoleum. Tapping at the glass like polite little fingers that bend in places fingers don’t.
They talk.
Oh, do they talk.
It’s FINE.
They don’t use words, not really, but you hear it. Like wet whispering inside your teeth. Like a song that hates being sung and fights to be unremembered.
They keep telling me, “YOU WERE EMPTY TOO LONG.”
I laughed. Too loud. Scared the neighbors. Emptiness is FINE. Emptiness was comfortable. They keep saying it, keep insisting. Like they’re writing it into me.
Sucks for them. I’m too full already. No room for words. Full. To the brim. Spilling over at times, onto the floor to sploosh and gurgle and evaporate.
I’m FINE.
The mirror was the first to go. Too honest; it knew too much and it kept telling me things. I smashed it with the chair leg I found on the roof. Didn’t stop the reflection, though. Didn’t stop it from watching back. There are tentacles there now too. Writhing behind the cracks like veins in glass. They blink sometimes. They blink at me.
With no eyes. Still.
They’re FINE.
I scratched my answers into the walls. Every surface. Fork, fingernail, teeth when it came to it.
“I’M NOT AFRAID.”
“I DIDN’T INVITE YOU.”
“I DON’T BELONG TO ANYONE.”
The walls replied.
Different handwriting, worse grammar:
“YOU DO. YOU ALWAYS WERE. YOU BELONGED BEFORE YOU WERE BORN.”
I think that was meant to be comforting.
It’s FINE.
WHY DO I HAVE SO MANY ELBOWS?
I tried leaving. Opened the door. But the hallway wasn’t the hallway anymore. It was softer. Breathing. I stepped in and the carpet stuck. Not glue—flesh. Flesh that moved, slow and patient, like it had been waiting for me to stop pretending.
I didn’t know if I had any pretence left in me.
It gripped and clung.
FINE then.
I closed the door again. Slammed it. It laughed. Not the door—the thing behind it.
ineedmorewristsmywristshavebeenreplacedbyanklesandidontlikeitnossireeidon’tlikeitonelittlebitidont.
Now I’m here. Writing this on the floor. My knees ache, but that’s FINE. FINE is over. FINE was always a lie. ineedmorewristsmywrists
have
been
replaced
byanklesandidontlikeitnossiree
idon’tlikeitonelittlebitidont. FINE was the untruth that people wanted to hear me say. To mean. To feel.
I was people once.
They’re closer tonight. I can feel them sliding up my arms as I scratch these letters in, guiding my hand when it shakes too much. Sometimes I let them. It’s easier that way.
They smell like salt and old wood and something sweeter, something like forgiveness and ruin and the way old vinyl tastes when you lick the record as it spins.
I think they love me.
FINE then.
Their problem. Not mine.
One just pressed its tip against my lips. Cold. Patient. Waiting.
I think it wants me to stop writing.
I think it wants me to say “yes.”
You know what? FINE. I might.
I just might.
Because doors don’t close. They breathe.
They’ve been holding their breath for me.
When they exhale, I’m gone.
FINE.