Incarnadine
When someone takes a bullet to the head, from a distance, it creates a cloud of blood. They call it a pink mist, and it’s quite beautiful, really, like a little cosmos. A cotton-candy cosmos. A lot more beautiful than me, I know. I think I’d be better as a pink mist. Religious symbolism tries to make blood redemptive, or unhygienic, or sexual, or the home of the soul. But blood is indifferent. Blood is blood. It pumps until it doesn’t.
The supermarket is hot and clotted with people. I’ve forgotten to put on deodorant. I’m tired of waiting in line; the Christmas songs make my blood boil. And the adverts. Buy this, and this, and this, or you’ll die alone. I fantasise about being bound up with tinsel and thrown into a wood chipper. Then I wonder why I’d need to be bound up for that. My scalp feels itchy. I worry that I’m ugly. Each new day a gash. Finally, the queue flows.
I sit my basket down. The girl behind the counter has curly hair and freckles, and big brown eyes, and the kind of facial symmetry I’ve been programmed to find aesthetically pleasing. My chest feels tight, my cheeks flush.
'You alright?' she asks, looking down as she scans my black pudding, my heart beating with the boops of her barcode reader. I feel the words crawling up my trachea, oozing up as blood, filling my mouth. It leaks out of tight lips in drips, then dribbles, drizzles, trickles onto the till, onto my dress.
'Pmhgleelghmp - I’m okay,' I squelch, holding my rib cage and wheezing as pints and pints pour out of me onto the counter. Has she noticed?
'That’s £4.20, please.'
I drop the rusty coins into her palm, grab my shopping and scurry away, vomiting uncontrollably. I know it’s inevitable, but it still disappoints me every time. Like getting to the end of a packet of biscuits, or watching your parents fall out of love. It's happened since I was a little girl. When I wasn’t a dinosaur or a vampire, I was in therapy. Some days I could sit in the corner and waterlog the whole playground with blood.
I wonder if I’m the only one who falls in love with complete strangers. It must mean I’m desperate for love. No. Everyone wants someone to turn to them and say, “You are disgusting, but enchanting. You are not a freak. You are a beautiful sack of shit and I will love you in spite of everything.” Everyone wants to feel connected.
Sometimes it’s enough to know we’re connected through spooky action. That’s what Albert Einstein called it, the way all of our particles are connected and entangled, even when light years apart - “spooky action at a distance”. But I don’t feel connected, not even spookily. The nights I cry are, of course, the best. But mostly I just feel very, very alone. Just talking to people or being around them, washing up, doing the laundry, showering, getting dressed. It’s all so exhausting. My eyes are sore from staring at plasma screens all day.
Nosferatu’s on telly. I glug down some of Mum’s wine. This cup is the new testament in my blood, which is shed for you. The days are getting so short. It is dark and I flicker on and off. When I look in the mirror I hate what I see. My belly spills over my jeans and I can barely look myself in the face. I do not want a body. There is a language of the body, and it is foreign to me. I live in constant fear that I might be misinterpreted in the folding of arms, the darting of eyes, or a yawn.
When I was ten, almost five years ago now, I asked my Dad how much it’d hurt to slit my throat. A lot, he said. It would hurt everyone who loved me. I can’t do that to them, we’re blood. I need a way of killing my self without killing myself. I will create a machine through which I can live vicariously. A vessel for self-expression. I don’t want to call xem an ‘it’, but xe won’t be a he or a she, so I will use gender-neutral pronouns. Xe, xem, xyrs. Xe will always tell the truth. There is enough bullshit in circulation already. Xe will be a good person. Xyrs words will carry no blood.
***
It took me a while because I had to do it all after school, but it isn’t difficult to create a basic humanoid machine; it’s simple programming, zeroes and ones. It’s more the finer details: Sweat. Pus. Fat. Eye mucus. Ear wax. A whiskery grey beard, fluorescent tights. And a couple pounds of shit for that gorgeous tractus digestorius, mouth to anus. Couple liters of gastric juice. The phlegm, and the shame, dollops of shame. A sack of piss. A darling little spinal cord. Salt. And a trillion bacteria ready to eat xem when xe dies. And then you design the most beautiful skin only to have it rot away. But xe will have to die. I can’t make xem live forever; that would be cruel. Oh, and the eyes. How could I forget the eyes? For the longest time xe’s been staring at me through hollow sockets. And blood. All beauty comes from beautiful blood and a beautiful brain. Yes, and blood vessels, sixty-thousand miles of them. I’ve read that the first man to describe in detail the properties of blood, in 1628, was an insomniac who hung out in caves because he liked the dark. William Harvey. I like William Harvey. He liked literature and birds, and so do I. I'm a mother bird when I vomit blood down xyrs throat. I’m using hemerythrin from sea worms just to make it, or else it won’t carry oxygen. And I’ve had to knit the whole pathetic mess together with such tiny needles.
Mum knocks. I scramble for the speakers and swiftly turn my music off.
‘Ez! Ez! Eztli!’ she shouts.
‘Yes, mum?!’ I call back, draping a duvet over my machine, laying it down on my bed. I kick the piles of laundry, broken clothes hangers, chocolate wrappers, empty bottles and my dildo into the wardrobe. The door swings open.
‘There’s blood everywhere, Eztli… Were you trying to talk to someone?’
‘Just myself’ I lie, heaving out more chunks of blood gunk.
‘Poor girl’ she coos, looking as though she wants to comfort me, but, slightly repulsed, she shuffles toward the door. Stops for a moment. Turns.
‘Have you made your bed?’
‘I’m doing it now,’ I spurt dysphorically as it fills my mouth and seeps out of my nostrils. I place myself between her and xem, ‘I’m busy, Mum.’
She glazes over. ‘Okay. Well we’ll see you at dinner. You ought to go outside more. Be active. I don’t like you being idle, Eztli…’ she trails off, the door closes. I do love her. I can’t stand to think how much she must have sacrificed for me. Even financially speaking, fourteen years of childcare, and still more to go. It made me ill with guilt. Just imagining that amount of money. Blood money. However much it was, I was not worth it. I should have asked her for a hug. Now I’m alone. Again. The multitudinous seas incarnadine. Bummed the fuck out. I think therefore I am. I think, therefore that’s one bad habit I should probably give up.
***
I wake up unsure if I can make it out of bed. The thought of it hurts. Even something small like brushing my teeth. Rolling out of bed, crawling to the bathroom, squeezing the toothpaste onto the brush, brushing it back and forth, spitting it out. I know it’s completely ludicrous, but I hurt too much to do it. Eventually I do, of course. I have no choice. But, still, it puzzles me. I’ll never trace it to its source. Maybe some genetic vulnerability, maybe some traumatic event I’ve repressed beyond retrieval. I would never know. I could not snap out of it. If I could, I would.
On the way to school I think I see a vulture, but it can’t be a vulture. Not really. None of the pretty girls I like have texted me back. I’m not very good at that stuff anyway. It isn’t that I don’t enjoy talking to people, I just hate small talk. I don’t want to talk about your holiday plans or your body clock or your bowel movements. I don’t care. Pretending to care drains me. I want to know what keeps you up at night. It is unusually sunny. The birds chirp incessantly, as though they’re happy to be alive, or they just need to be heard. For some reason it occurs to me that if they wanted to, they could quite easily peck me to death.
I’ve read that a psychiatric disorder called the glass delusion was recorded in the late Middle Ages, even King Charles VI of France had it. The sufferer becomes so convinced their body is made of glass that they refuse to have anyone come near them, lest they be shattered into pieces. Sometimes I feel as though I’m made of glass. Maybe I shouldn’t have brought xem into a world with such suffering, with us murky people made of glass, eating the same things, going to the same places, numbing ourselves in one-bedroom flats, wondering if we can drop our disguises, mamihlapinatapai, munging, avoiding the inner monster, ignoring the helpless, searching for meaning, sucking effluvia out of each other’s arseholes with straws.
On the way home a gorgeous, curvy girl approaches me, and in an undemanding tone asks: ‘Excuse me, sorry to bother you, but do you believe in God?
‘Erm, I’m not closed off to it…’ I cough. Honestly speaking, I do not like the idea of being a slave to a celestial master, an all-seeing authority, especially one that fails to intervene in instances of unimaginable human suffering, but it’s difficult to gurgle that through the blood.
‘I understand, but, I just feel compelled to tell you this,’ she says. ‘I had a rough childhood. My home life was… Not good. I had no hope. And then I found God, and I just wanted to tell you how happy it made me feel. I think He wanted me to tell you that. I don’t know what it means, but yeah…’ Then with a wide smile and an awkward wave she is gone, and I am overcome with an immense feeling of warmth. I wish I could have told her ‘thank you’. I wish I could have let her know.
Once I get back to the house I make pancakes for my little brother and we watch cartoons. He likes to arrange the chocolate buttons into smiley faces.
‘Why are all the superheroes white, Ez?’ he asks with a gloomy look.
‘Well…’ I tell him. ‘You know superheroes aren’t real heroes. It’s just fantasy. So it doesn’t matter that they don’t look like us. Real heroes are everyday guys. You could be the greatest hero of all.’
He smiles.
Mum comes in and switches on the news. There are riots happening near where we live - looting. They are frenzied and hungry for things. It is a testament to good marketing. A little riot every now and then keeps things flavourful. We're supposed to be violent, or else we're only half alive. We're hunter-gatherers. Raised on the fear of holy genocide; plagues, floods, fire. We’ve lost that spark. We’re not violent enough anymore, we're only told we are. We've become passive. Most people die elderly in bed, it just isn’t newsworthy.
While xe bubbled and cooked I mainly read internet forums. There were so many incredible specimens out there. People, I mean. People who think they’re wizards, or lizards. Who shit in diapers for the pleasure. Who anthropomorphise – erotically. Who cyberfuck in character as Bilbo and Gollum. Who want to be tentacled hard in every orifice by a monstrous octopus. Who download snuff films. Who seduce people into starving themselves. Who build life-size dolls because they’re lonely. Wait… I - shit.
***
Samuel has his buddies over and they’re playing some video game, punching virtual women in the face, cackling. I retreat to my room and listen to Brahms. Xe opens xyrs eyes, the pupils roll around in circles, adjusting to the light. Xe lightly curls xyrs fingers around my thumb. Xe is warm. I thought I’d feel some rush of love or recognition, but I feel nothing. Xe looks other. A perfect stranger.
‘Hello?’ xe whispers.
‘Hey.’ I point at myself. ‘I am Ez. I made you.’
I point at xem. ‘You are… xe.’
I point at me. ‘I am Ez.’
Xe contemplates this for a moment, xyrs breathing quickens, panicked, almost hyperventilating. ‘I’m not a part of you?’ xe howls. ‘I’m not a part of you?!’
I clasp my hand over xyrs mouth. ‘Shh, someone will hear. It’s okay, it’s okay. You don’t want to be a part of me, believe me, none of my parts would recommend it,’ I tell xem. ‘You don’t have to be a part of anyone. You can be whole in yourself.’
Xe quiets down, I remove my hand from xyrs mouth and xe says: ‘So… what now?’
‘I’ve been asking myself that for years.’
There is a picture of me flying a kite and xe is fascinated by it. Xe asks me if we can go do it and I say I’ll think about it. Xe asks me what was outside of this room, and I tell xem the house. Xe asks me what’s outside of the house, and I tell xem a road, a city, a country, a planet. How many people are on the planet? xe asks. Seven billion. How many planets? Eight. What’s outside of that? A star system. How many of those? A hundred billion. Suddenly, xe does not feel like flying a kite any more.
***
Felix, our cat, comes into my room today – it’s the happiest I’ve ever seen xem. He just about pushes the door open and strides in, paw after paw. Xe leaps up. Felix mews. Xe looks at me. Looks back at Felix.
‘Mew?’ xe mews. Felix hops onto the bed, then moseys over to xem, trepidatiously veering for a sniff. Xe freezes.
‘It’s okay,’ I say, ‘You can touch him. He likes to be stroked.’
Xe slowly hovers xyrs hand over the creature, lowers it down as if xe were a crane, then runs it along the thick black fur. Xe smiles. Xe strokes Felix gently and Felix gives out a slight purr. Xe presses him to xyrs chest in an embrace.
‘What is he?’ xe asks, inspecting him.
‘A cat.’
‘He’s weird’ xe says. ‘I like it.’
***
Maybe xe isn’t ready for the supermarket. But it’s too late now. We’re here.
‘What am I supposed to be doing exactly?’ xe asks.
‘You’re going to go talk to that girl,’ I tell xem, trying to point without anyone but xem seeing. There she is, behind the till, smiling at a customer. Am I being romantic or a stalker? I wonder. It’s such a thin line (although that line can be extended to up to almost a kilometer, with the right restraining order).
‘What do I say?’ xe asks me as I try, unsuccessfully, to hide behind a trolley.
‘I don’t know, spread the Christmas cheer. Make her smile. Tell her she’s beautiful. Anything. Just, be honest.’
I gently nudge xem into the queue with a packet of wine gums so xe has something to buy. I slink towards the sandwiches but keep an eye from a distance. Xe stands awkwardly, not sure where to put xyrs hands, big puppy eyes. Xe’s never even seen this many people before. The queue moves slowly. This was a bad idea. I think about running away. Xe’s ogling an infant. Xe doesn’t know what it is, I remember xem looking puzzled when xe heard my brother’s footsteps. Xe’ll be okay. The queue is moving. Yes – no – yes, xe’s at the front now, xe’s got the right cashier. Xe makes xyrs approach. Sets xyrs basket down. Twiddles xyrs thumbs. Says something, outstretches a hand but retracts it, nervous. She giggles. I did that for her. It’s going to be okay. Wait, xe hangs xyrs head down, clutches xyrs mouth, squats, spews liters of blood onto the floor, retches, gags.
It could, admittedly, have been more romantic.
I don’t understand. I accounted for every detail. Xe waddles speedily back to me. Xe can tell I look angry so xe offers me a wine gum. I decline.
‘I’m sorry, Ez’ xe says, clearly disappointed in xemself. ‘There was always going to be blood. You must have known that.’
‘I didn’t want to believe it.’
I take my head out of my hands and gesture xem through the automatic doors and into the road. ‘Let’s go home,’ I say. And we do. But xe looks a state. I begin to feel bad. Xyrs eyes are bloodshot, red bar pupil, and xyrs nails are peeling off. I know how devastating a simple ‘Hi, how are you?’ conversation can be. At least for me, anyway. But xe’s supposed to be better than me.
***
Xe’s learning more about the world - which, a lot of people would agree - is never a good idea. I certainly shouldn’t have let xem google. I’m tired of the internet. It’s nice to have the sum of all human knowledge at your fingertips, but not as nice as another person’s fingertips. Plus xe is full of questions now. The granny porn was difficult to explain. As was the holocaust. But xe can’t stop absorbing. Every day I come home from school to find xe’s learnt a little more. Before long xe’ll overtake me. It’s remarkable how much you can learn without school to getting in the way. It doesn’t seem to be helping xem become a better person though, in fact I’d say the more informed xyrs worldview becomes, the less xe wants to be here at all. I’m actually a little worried.
‘We need to do it again.’ I tell xem, and by ‘it’, I mean ‘bother the pretty checkout girl.’
‘I don’t want to... I don’t want to do anything. I ruin everything I touch...’ xe sobs. ‘Let’s stay here, please. I can’t fail at anything here. I’m sorry. I know I’m being negative. I just can’t leave the house. It’s ridiculous, I know. I need to get a hold of myself… What’s wrong with me? … Why did you make me like this?’ Then, with a shriek: ‘Why did you make me like this?!’
Xe is in the fetal position, rocking back and forth, shuddering out of control. I’ve never seen xem like this before. It makes me sad, but it makes me angry too. I consider the option of throwing Felix at xem, but it seems too much. I pick him up and lightly plop him onto the bed. Xe turns his head for a moment, looks at Felix and tries to smile, managing it faintly. Xe strokes him.
‘I don’t deserve to live.’ xe says, pulling the covers over xyrs head, trying to keep the sick away. ‘Anyone else could live my life better than me. No one loves me.’
‘You have food, clean water, shelter. That should be enough. Some people don’t even have that.’ I don’t know why I said that. I hate it when people say that to me. But I couldn’t say I loved xem. I didn’t love xem. Xe was not how I planned.
‘I know, which makes me even worse. I'm ungrateful, I’m going to die, alone, and there’s no God,’ xe muttered. I knew xe’d find out eventually, I just didn’t think it would be so soon. Where was xe getting xyrs information from, youre-going-to-die-alone-and-there-isnt-a-god.com?
‘I want you to die,’ I blurt, ‘I mean, no… I mean, you should want it too. You don’t want to be here forever. And you don’t need a God either. Someone breathing down the back of your brain, begging to be worshipped, threatening you with fire, ignoring your prayers…’
'How long did you give me?’ xe asks.
‘I don’t know… The average lifespan.’
‘The average lifespan? What? Eighty years? That’s shit. Everyone knows that’s shit. That’s not enough time to do anything. Come on, are you serious? You know what, fuck you. I’ll be glad to go. I don’t want to be around you people. I’ve read up on you. You’re fucked.’
‘You should have faith in people.’ I tell xem. ‘We’re not always bad, everyone tries. Really, they try… they try so hard.’
‘No. They scrape by on the bare minimum. We’ve barely developed since the Ancient Greeks. In a lot of ways they were more advanced than us.’
I worry xe’s right. I don’t usually think of other people as being lazy, mainly only myself. I need to stop being lazy. I need to act. None of us has much time.
***
"Look at these models taking selfies in front of the Eiffel Tower, how rich and skinny they are. You could be just like them. It’s the next big thing. It’s a revolution. Trust us. This perfume will make you feel powerful, and people always want to fuck power. This comedian will make you forget your impermanence. This butter will make you feel like a child again. Don’t look around. You’re hungry, right? Eat. Drink. Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain, or the curtain’s glory hole. Everything will be okay; it’s just going to cost you."
Xe has become more or less catatonic. Xe won’t speak to me, xyrs world ends at the edge of xyrs bed. Xe doesn’t do what xe’s designed to do. Xe was supposed to help people, make them feel less alone. But xe’s a freak. Xe can’t help anyone, and one day xe’ll be completely forgotten. Can’t even get out of bed. How pathetic. I poke xem in the neck.
‘Ow!’ xe squeals, ‘why did you do that?!’
I grab xyrs hair and smash xyrs head into the desk. And I do it again. And I do it again. And I do it again. And I throw xem to the carpet, I kick, I stomp the tread of my boot harder and harder into xyrs face, xe grabs at my legs, and the teeth that I worked so hard on are trudged out of xyrs gums, down xyrs throat, and I keep my eyes open because xe’s squirming, and the boot can’t miss, the blood makes it slippery, the blood that’s everywhere, and xe’s still breathing, xe’s still breathing, then the next stomp gets the skull – crunch, crunch, crunch, and xe stops squirming, just twitches until xe stops twitching.
This was not the way; this was not the way to kill. It was better to kill in uniform. Your conscience will allow you a lot if you’re wearing the same coloured hats as everyone else. I needed an everyone else, an anyone else. I needed a coloured hat. I should have put a bag over xyrs head. That’s how the military does it. It wasn’t planned. I try to shake the brain off my shoe. No, not a brain. A central processing unit. No difference. Just DNA. Just source code. It wasn’t planned. Still, it had to be done. William James wrote that ‘whenever two men meet there are really six people present. There is each as he sees himself, each as the other person sees him, and each man as he really is.’ So there were three of me and three of xem. If I could I would have clobbered at least five of them to death. My knuckles are torn. I have a shower and then go online. As it turns out it’s not unusual for people to lash out at their computers the way I did with xem. In fact as many as 4% of people feel personally victimized when their computer fails.
***
The supermarket is still hot, still clotted. I’ve still forgotten to put on deodorant. I’m still tired of waiting in line, and the Christmas songs, and the adverts. I still fantasise about the woodchipper. My scalp is still itchy. I’m still ugly. The same girl is still behind the till, with the same eyes, hair, glow. I sit my basket down. Her nametag says Keisha, which I’ve never noticed before, either on account of the spying from a distance, or the copious amounts of vomiting.
‘I don’t know who it was you came in with yesterday,’ she says, scanning the steak. Fuck. This is it. I’m fucked. 'But they were so sweet. I was having the worst day and it really cheered me up, actually helped me keep going, so, um… Thank them for me?’
I nod, and smile, and for once I do not feel worthless. I wonder what xe said. I don’t speak. I don’t bleed. I just pay, take my change, take my bags, and go home. I even go through the park, and think about the glass delusion. Maybe I’m not just made of glass, or if I am, maybe it’s stained glass.
I’ll make another xe. I’ll make a million of them until I have a voice. Because I can do better. I will do better. I’ll start again. And again. And again. Until I get it right. Until it kills me. Amor fati. I’ll fight – blood, sweat and tears. Sisyphean. And it’ll take a while, but the pain will give roots. There’ll be heartaches and cranial zings. That’s expected. That’s normal. But it’ll be worth it. So worth it. I'll create. I'll create to feel connected. I am connected. I don’t even exist. I’m not a person. I am a clumping together of cells. I am everything I’ve learnt from my parents, teachers, friends, television – none of it comes from me. I am nothing, nothing but the universe. I’ll switch on. Wake up. Reach out. I’ll write myself into existence. Holy fuck, it’ll be beautiful.
