It takes me fifteen seconds to pull the heavy smock off of myself. We are in a deep and pervasive darkness because this hallway has no windows; we have no light but the flickering candles and Tabi is in a hurry to clear away everything to get a sense of what's going on. By the time I have my hands free, the rat is gone and so are all the body parts and the knife, and finally when I can use sign language again, Tabi is already trying to talk to me. "I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm so sorry," he signs. "I'm glad we stopped. You came to that conclusion on your own."
I am shaking so much—my body is alight with pain and terror. I can't breathe. I am still staring at the rat getting its ears cut off and I don't think it was real, it wasn't real. "The lights," I sign, in one clumsy motion.
"Something with the power lines, perhaps—it must be the storm." He brings one hand up and—is there blood?—and wipes away the powder off my forehead with a cloth. He hurls the smock into the laundry basket and looks me in the eyes, he tries to reach me from whatever pit I'm in. "Stay here a moment. I will get us a bigger light."
And I don't listen to him.
I give him one long, stiff look, and then I pick up one of the shitty dollar store candles to serve as my guide. And I stand up on wobbly legs, and I leave.
The moment is over.
I pass through the foyer on my way; I have a limp of mind and body. I can hardly walk.
Emily is attacking the skylight. No sun can be seen from here; the room is cast in a muted pale blue of an upside-down ocean, and shadows upon shadows form in the corners where the faint light cannot reach. I think Tabi is surely right about this. The rain has grown so torrential that it has brought down a piece of infrastructure someplace, someplace else in Michigan. Tabi's home is fed by a turbine in the basement which is powered by electricity which is generated by a dam miles away, even though I have never seen those things. There is no view by which I can verify how Euclidean this place is.
Something does not want me to stay in the foyer. Instead I retreat as far as my body and mind can retreat, which is to my bedroom. It is not my bedroom. It is not anybody's bedroom.
But it is dark and feels safe, so it is where I go.
And when I reach it, the door feels heavier than ever. I have to lean physically against the door and push my weight into it—I have to go slack and I feel like crying, but finally it gives way, and my hands are so, so shaky. I slam it shut behind me and snuff out the candle and in a matter of seconds I have scurried over to the bed to flop on top of it.
The comforter is my sea.
I can salvage this, says a dime-sized voice in a soda can in a grocery bag in a trash bag in a trashcan in a dump truck in an ocean. And the waves roll over each other until the voice is shattered and then it calls out again, I can salvage this, and waves upon waves of turbulent tropical air collide supernova into the seafoam, and the voice is drowned and killed and dies and dies and dies and then it says, I can salvage this, again, and again, and again.
I am sitting here in my bedroom.
It's not mine but it feels safe.
My legs buckle when I stand, and my stomach toils when I lay down, so I sit as a statue on the edge of the bed. My skirt unfurls rough over my legs and rolls of sweat saturate the fabric and my head is so sick, so sick, so awfully turbulent at the moment, and swirling with thoughts, and Emily is
attacking the window.
Where am I?
And the same voice calls out, I can salvage this. And I am stuck to the window once again and hypnotized and, maybe, if I stayed staring at the rainfall against the window long enough, I would forget all about Him for a few hours again, because it would leak out the back of my skull. I can salvage this. What can you fucking salvage, you sack of shit? You are a traumatized little piece of grime on the side of my cranial cavity—you are words shaped like hatred and injury and failure. I am so upset at myself. This is the sort of mood that makes people cut their own heads off.
Who am I angry at? Where is this anger going? The rat, the rat, the rat. I am aimless.
For what feels like forever I am just staring staring staring at the window, and in the window there are imprints of raindrops, which appear and disappear and rocket forward with so much force, and then His house rejects it like it's nothing. And in spite of His house providing such shelter, I feel cold again.
Cold deep inside of me like blood. And I am not just staring at the window, my eyes are still back there, I am still staring at the rat. It can't see me. It can't see anything. It is sinking into a deprivation tank.
I can salvage this.
Who is that knocking at the side of my head?
It isn't somebody new, I realize. All of a sudden I realize it is nobody new.
I personify memory as somebody with a lot on its mind, in a manner of speaking. Memory is always onto bigger and better things. Memory is the sort of person to start getting into cults as soon as college gets boring—does that paint a picture? And memory as of late has been trying to make its own way of fixing me out of thin air. I can salvage this, it has been saying. I can give you the tools to start healing. And for a little while earlier today it made me forget all about Him, about His touch. It made me read Djiban. It made me open my eyes and see the rat getting its ears cut off. Was that real?
Memory has been trying to tell me something in particular.
Here is what my memory has to say—
—and please—
—pay attention:
Months ago we discovered a dead animal in the cistern which boils the water which makes the coffee. And at the time it had become such a deteriorated thing I didn't know what to make of it. Of course I have never really seen animals around His house because it is very well-kempt, but when I strain I can start to recall other strange shapes of beasts in the halls, in the cupboards. And this particular time reminds me of all those other things that I've forgotten—it was a significant and centralizing thing. It is the node at the center of it all: a small thing died in the boiler and rotted and turned into mush. Then again nothing comes into His house that he does not allow.
So I think it would be not unreasonable to think that He keeps animals for all sorts of reasons. After all, this ritual required one. A little rat had its body torn apart to change mine. I wasted that much.
And that day... with the dead thing in the cistern... obviously is very significant if I am mentioning it, if my memory is mentioning it. And there were many other things that day that felt significant—it was one time I can recall Him telling me about how the Room below His house works, how it collects dust, how it collects things that got forgotten. A place called Lone Star Lanes is significant because, like many things that day, it hurt me very bad to think about.
Of course because, as I am now being reminded, Lone Star Lanes is a bowling alley in Austin, Texas where I used to bowl. And my memory lost track of it for a while. Another thing leaked out of my head.
And there is something else significant about that day—
—that day I was terrified of Him—
—that day He lied to me.
Or maybe something close to lying.
He told me, using His hands and His head to form a series of gestures known as American Sign Language, that we slept for multiple nights. And time after time that day I asked Him if he told the truth about that, if there was something odd about the nights.
And He would not admit it. Not a bit.
But I am so certain He meant it. I am so certain He slipped up and simply would not admit it—this is a thing that He has never done, a lie that He would never
except
for every other time
when this happened.
Of course.
And Emily is attacking the window and I am freezing fucking cold, drooling refrigerant instead of saliva. My hands tremble at this thought—all the many times when I have rolled over this fucking wave in the ocean. Memory is so, so tired. So tired. Midnight shift at Seven Eleven. I cannot possibly count the number of times He has accidentally told me that we sleep multiple nights—a little slip, a little tic. I cannot possibly count the number of times I have forgotten information and He has assured me that nothing's wrong. I have had Him explain to me so many so many so many times what the ritual is. We have tried to do it so many times but I have retracted each time and then soon enough He is back insisting, we should try it, we should try it. Did you see any of those? You did not. And He has told me many times many times many times what magic and the occult means, and it slowly slips away. And memory just lets it slip away because it is so tired, so much fog in those eyes. What the fuck is weighing me down?
I erase everything, I blast it clean, I wash it clean in nuclear hellfire, so that I can get to the good parts
and His wool
and all those times, all those singularly terrible times He has told me He loves me. He loves me. He loves me. And I have never said that I am not sure if I love Him.
I am not sure if I love Him.
And so many times so many times so many times I have thought about him in a dreamlike state at the end of every hallway. He is coming closer to me in the dark. And I keep thinking about that rat, that rat, that poor little thing, having its ears cut out, its body dissected—and He is coming closer to me, coming closer, coming closer, at the end of every hallway. After that night with the animal in the cistern and Lone Star Lanes and the spot where did I end up? Where did I go? And I am thinking about the rat again and His gentle hands, his surgeon's hands without a shake at all, tearing it apart, and
And the lights dim and
And so many times
I
I felt
the Room above His house
and
- - -
The screaming is aimless and confused.
I am crying, crying, crying, endless tears of disoriented agony, just grief, like the world has been stripped away from me. Snot wells up in my nose and my throat hurts, and then I think about it again and pain wells up in all my veins and I am forced violently to yelp out—to yell—to express something, anything, to push out air before I'm forced to breathe up the sobs again.
I am thinking about all the times He has taken me up through the skylight into the Room above His house, and then surgically removed my parts until I cannot feel anything at all. I am thinking about the times I have been put into a plastic case and forgotten about forever. I don't know how I can remember this.
The dam has broken now—in a tide of steaming gory water I feel my memory expand to fill the whole of a canyon. I am struck with pictures of trauma in crystal-clarity every millisecond. I am thinking about Him taking out my left eyeball—
I am thinking about Him gripping me, holding me like He is going to kiss me, and then He severs my spinal cord—
—right here—
—exactly the spot where I can feel Him from afar. A wound. Right now I am thinking about Him killing me every fucking night of my life by holding my neck and cutting it so that I am immobile.
I am thinking of Him knowing that I will erase it, that my memory will erase it and put it away because His wool, His wool, His wool, His touch, my body and my body and my body, and His house, I wouldn't ever want to leave His house. So my memory—
I can salvage this.
You can't salvage anything. I am dead a thousand times. I am in body bags without eyes.
I can salvage this.
You could have kept me forgetting for a thousand years and get me to the good part and why? Why? and why am I going through this and I think about it again Him
Him
He is tearing out my eyeballs and again he is tearing out my eyeballs and my nasal cavity and I can feel him ripping it out and I can still feel it, he doesn't numb the pain, he lets me feel it, he lets me feel his scalpel against skin, blood, so much endless cold runny blood that doesn't mean anything, and he pulls out my nose, my whole nose, and my tongue, and all the things that tie me to the world, and soon the pain drains away, and so does the world, because all I am thinking about is
Him
all I have for comfort is
Him
in rows and rows and rows of plastic cases and the Room is a dull white forever, and I am crying more than I ever have in my life. I am nothing. I am alone.
I am alone with Him in His house and He does this to me. He is the only person I have ever had to be afraid of and I have spent all this time trusting him. He would never tell a lie.
His wool.
And my heart hurts, hurts, hurts, and I wanted to love Him, I want to love Him, I want my body to be made of the right parts. And he tears out my eyeball and disconnects my arms and legs because they're useless and
and the Room is a dull white forever
and He carries me up into the Room
a dull white forever
a dull white forever
a dull white forever
I am just screaming now, screaming, and this anguish is in every cell of me, completely without language. I don't want this to be real. Please. Please.
The rat is getting its ears lopped off by a paring knife.
And then, after a while of aimless confused screaming and crying and wallowing in anguish, rolling around on the bed in spurts of agonized shock, I begin to feel His presence on the back of my neck.
Obviously I am not thinking straight at this point. Actually no thinking is going on, not on purpose—thoughts just attack me violently and randomly in a cascade of fire, and so it is my body that moves for me, it is my muscular system that makes me hide. It is the same part of me, a subset of my limbic system, which all those times before has had me running from Him during the night. After each night when we are done with our business and my guard is down, I see Him on the other side of a hallway, and I call for Him, and He does not respond.
It is a gentle sort of thing. It is a clinical action. He does not want my brain to mix up intimacy with violence—to see the act of being mutilated as somehow part of our relationship.
Thus the reason he is blank in those moments.
But most nights of course this does not happen because I am in bed sleeping, because I am done; and most nights I receive almost no thought at all that He would do anything to me, and when I awake in the Room it is in a fugue where He hardly needs to convince me of anything. It is little more than a dream, then.
And still my body would like very, very much to hide. So I stop screaming, I creak open the dusty, wide cabinet at the end of the room—for jackets and other things that need to hang up—and I crawl inside, and I shut it after myself. It takes some dexterity that forces me to take a few tries at it. When my hands fumble and I keep accidentally opening the door I can feel the exasperation welling up, the intensity, the feeling of giving up, but then I try again and again and finally fling the door closed after myself and it stays.
And I am still, and I am in the dark. All is blackness except for a spot between both doors of the cabinet where a very, very gentle stream of light peeks in—from outside, but only the smallest bit of sunlight through rainclouds.
And He is here,
crawling along the back of my neck.
I have no sense for how far He is, only how close He is, ever-closer, ever-closer. I cannot tell but can guess when the door to my bedroom opens—right now—and I am making myself small in the closet, and I sniffle involuntarily, and the tears keep streaming down my face in mosaic terror. I have never felt this degree of powerlessness, of being alone. All those times He has grabbed me, He has torn my spine apart, I have felt a warm rolling comfort that He is doing the right thing, that it is somehow something I just don't understand. In this moment I am completely aware of how small and vulnerable I am. I am His sacrificial goat and pose no threat to Him and He is this lofty thing, this thing which has never been in love with me, or at least I have never been on His level. We have never been safe together.
I have always been alone.
Alone.
But His wool—and His wool—His touch, His stomach, His thighs, His penis. And when He calls me 'darling'. And all those nights I have made Him dinner and felt less useless, felt like I am somebody allowed to exist. Why wasn't this real? Why wasn't this real?
He holds me and He gives me a reason to exist and without Him is a world I can't even imagine anymore. And my heartbeat
ba-THUMP
ba-THUMP
as He rolls along my spine closer and closer, I need to take long breaths of agony and pain; what if I want Him to find me? What is any of this? Shock explodes in my face like pepper spray and my jaw goes unhinged again as I am at a loss, and so cold, so cold. Closer and closer and closer until it feels like He is breathing along my neck.
I am alone. He is going to find me as easily as He finds me every night, even though it is not late yet. He will make me forget all about this.
My memory is so, so tired. So heavy are the bags under its eyes.
And the light peering into the cabinet dims.
Dims and then goes dark, as He steps in front of it. And I think my vision is beginning to become psychedelic, because I see a new light, a flickering orangered, which itself reaches forward and—
—and opens the cabinet slow.
And it reveals itself to me.
He floats three inches off the floor, with his hands clasped around a silvery brass candlestick with all the ends lit, and through the gentle flame illuminating his face I can see his eyes. And I see his muted self watching me behind glass.
ba-THUMP
ba-THUMP
and I scream again, and all of me wants to get away.
Legs and arms scrambling, and fur on end, and one of the jackets above me gets torn down by my horns. All the tears come again, all the wailing comes back. All I see in him is that shape—the shape at the end of every hallway. I have nowhere to run.
And Tabi
does not react to this by grabbing me or leaping on me. Instead he retracts like I've hit him with a gust of wind—he floats backwards three inches off the floor until he is no longer filling my vision, nor hardly a bit of it, as he grits his teeth and holds the candlestick close to himself.
And eventually I am done flailing because I am too tired and afraid, and my mouth is craned open in a low, warbly wail. And all I can yell to him is, "Please," and, "don't."
He looks shocked. It feels like mirroring in the worst of ways. I have seen him like this so many times and it is not the agony, the fear, the physical shock I am currently in. I can't process anything or breathe or comprehend or even deal with language, and all my words are made out of ash, and it hurts so much to speak. He, himself, is a wild fucking animal. He is wild because I don't know what to predict anymore.
Or maybe I am losing it and that was what he wanted to avoid.
And I want him to know, all at once, why this is happening. It's not the ritual and it's not him surprising me—it's not my own anxiety and it's not rainfall or Emily and I'm not fucking stupid. So I sign to him, "I know. I know what you do in the Room above the house. I know about it. You kill me. You kill me," and my hands are flailing, and I am nodding furiously to communicate my confidence, and, "please get away from me."
And I have never told Tabi something so strong.
He looks brittle.
In a moment all this room and all this darkness starts to seep onto me like liquid. Tabi's long muzzle and his expression—what always seems to be smiling back—finally fades into a vision of exhaustion.
Exhaustion and powerlessness.
Have I told you how he looks when he feels powerless? All things under his roof are his things to protect, and I am under his roof—and it is his tendency to feel as if he is responsible when I am feeling even a little bit wrong. Out of this context it is cute, it is something pitiable and something I empathize with. It is something that binds us.
Except this is his doing. Unequivocally. It is him. It is his fault.
His hands.
And he lowers slightly, and places the candlestick onto the carpet, where it rests a little wobbly. And he does not seem to regard my tears and exasperation with anything resembling empathy, nor hostility. Tabi is serious and flat.
He signs this to me:
"Darling, you must be aware, then, that this is unhealthy information for you to have. It hurts you extremely badly and you've felt that... for as long as you've been remembering this. I meant to find you earlier with the light."
"Please," I sign, but what does it matter?
And Tabi rests gently on the carpet. He reaches ground. "But while we're here I don't want to make you feel like I'll lie to you about any of it. I am almost entirely made out of authenticity, and now if you would like to know anything, we can talk about it once again. And after we talk, you can sew your brain up well enough, and we can go back to our lives as we were."
My hands mimic his. "Back," I sign. It is worthless. My jaw falls open into a long, drawn out wail.
What can I do?
What can I do anymore?
I am alone.
This is the final part of the shock which hits me:
Catatonia. Complete vague disassociation and a loss of it, it, it. Eventually I've fallen out of the closet and I'm just sobbing and drooling and murmuring on the carpet, and... and eventually Tabi is here, too. Eventually his gentle grasp is around me, reaching up around every corner of me. Sometimes an errant thought goes by—I would describe it as driftwood after a storm—about Tabi tearing my eyeballs out, all the ways in which I have lied to myself about him, and I let out another screech, but he holds me, and he holds me, and he holds me. And all I want is to be gone from this moment. At some point I reach out to grab something, and instantly he is there, holding my hand with only his fingers, putting his touch into my heart. I wail again because it reminds me of the Room above his house, the pale white, the loss of sense until I am gone. I feel like I'm falling into a funnel and circling around. Which one of these moments will be stopped by the sensation of
—yank—
and my spinal cord being ruptured? And I am without answers and sob again and shudder so much, so sweaty, so cold, and then I'm erect under my many layers of clothing, and upset and frantic, and panting, and then Tabi envelops me in his wool again, and the soft warmth of the candlelight beside us starts to calm my breathing. And soon ba-thump ba-thump I am panicked again, and a roar comes out of my chest
and so on
and so on
and so on.
Eventually it fades out like evening waves until all these emotions are just soup and exhaustion. My knowledge of myself is destroyed, and soon so are all the physical sensations, my sensory world, by which I experience all the forms of love that my battered self is even capable of. Soon not even his wool is really present in the folds of my mind. It is a passing car.
And after all my limbs explode into stardust and my hope is gone, I decide it would be alright if I asked Tabi some questions.
- - -
Notice the shape of my movements now which resemble a boat on high seas. Back and forth and back and forth to an uncertain rhythm; the carpet is made out of oobleck. And he does not reach out to hold me. I would be worse off if he did, right now. Though often his touch is so nice.
If he touched me and even if I resisted, it would be so nice.
But I am rocking back and forth because my breath is wildly intense, and waves of agony pass through me in a rickety silence. I don't have it in me to scream right now and his eyes bare down on my soul, waiting patient. Tabi is always so patient. I can get through this. Somewhere within me there are things that I don't know and some part of me still, still, still wants answers. How many times have I asked?
Matters of magic and the occult. My head is swimming. I can get through this. I pull up my hands and use raw inertia to communicate.
"Tabi," I sign, fingerspelling his beautiful name I invented, "why do you kill me every night?"
He tilts his head up, but does not face me directly. It's a few degrees to the right, so as to let me see his expression, which is nonetheless inscrutable. "I don't kill you," he signs. As he moves his hands to talk to me it is only half-visible in the candlelight, as the overheads are still out, as Emily lets in only faint glimmers of blue. "At night in the Room above my house I perform a ritual. It isn't meant to hurt you and it isn't really even about you. My love for you is real and endless."
"Why?" I ask again. He didn't say a thing about why.
He shudders. Needs to find the words. I've surprised him with all this and not given him enough time to prepare softer phrases. "Well, you know what I have told you about the things that fall into the Room below my house. Things that get forgotten."
I am staring with so much ferocity and anger. Don't stop. Keep going. Elaborate.
"And I have also told you that I feel stronger in your presence. When your eyes match mine—" and he signs this with a stunning lackadaisical prose, and his eyes are like diamonds in mine, "—it gives me life. In some ways literal life. So truthfully when I mention that thoughts of me will help you, I mean it, but they also help me. Does that make sense?"
Keep going. I am a stonewall. I empty my head of even thoughts because he has his fingers around my brainstem. "And," I sign, empty in meaning.
Tabi has this forlorn smile on him, plastered weak. "Well, listen, darling."
"In times past I have had other people in my house staying with me. And I have loved every single one of them dearly. They show up for all sorts of reasons, but they always take solace in my presence... and solace is very close to love, it's very close. Sometimes I have many people in the house with me and those are the happiest times in my life, because I am able to caretake people, and in turn they think about me." He pauses. He searches me for understanding and I can't hide it; it is crawling up my spine like a rodent with a toothpick tail and missing ears. "In times past this has been the case but before you arrived I was alone. Alone is a bad thing for me. It's a terrible thing for anyone and so awful for me because I am... weak without people and too sentimental."
He goes on. "Before you were plenty of men who I loved immensely and made me feel very significant to them. Many had gone through some terrible times before meeting me and I provided solace, which is very close to love. But I can't make somebody actually love me." Tabi's eyes sink to meet me. Behind glass is a turning mechanism rolling on without oil. "You know that better than anyone, Euclid."
My heart sings out in this horrible pained song. Bird under pressure. Rocks crashing in. The room is filled with water. It hurts. Can you feel it hurt?
And relentlessly he goes on. "I can't make you love me and I wouldn't like that anyway, because it isn't right. Your mind... your self is still beloved to me. I'm sorry if it ever feels otherwise. That is my fault." He lets that word hang and for some reason I want to hold his hand but his hands are busy speaking to me. "In the Room above the house I do something awful, truly awful, to a version of your body that you won't ever know. Or I suppose I thought that would be the case. This was never supposed to reach you. Everything I ever planned relied on you not ever knowing."
"Why wouldn't I?" I ask. I have fire in me right now and need to spend it before it's snuffed. "Why wouldn't I? I remember everything. It drains out of me but then it's back. And this time I needed to remember."
Tabi swallows spit. It's clear he has an itch. When he signs again, it is peppered in metaphor again—it is art in language. "Imagine a forest, darling, with one hundred trees. Just one hundred and no more. Then imagine that a woodcutter comes along and cuts down the hundred and first tree, the one which doesn't exist. That tree sings out in pain, the pain of a life being snuffed, and then the forest has only one hundred trees still. It has not gained or lost any trees."
And I sign, "But I am there. I am really up there. I can feel what you do to me."
"Yes, well." Tabi stares off a moment. "My hands are fickle memory. One of the times I likely made a mistake and when making you new I did things in the wrong order."
"I remember every time." And this is the worst truth. This is something which hurts to sign out, which makes my limbs ache in abject pain, which makes fear strike me like nails along my spine. "You tell me that I will be protected by my memory but my memory brought it back. It's trying to help me."
"This isn't helping you," he signs, plain and dour. Then he has to take a long pause, to think, to process that he has done this ritual wrong every single time, just a little bit wrong. His breath is slow. "So this was my fault too. I will fix my methods. This won't ever happen again."
The anatomy of an apology is to identify what was done wrongly and to promise you will never ever do it again. My father got very good at this. I'm sorry for mentioning him again. And what Tabi has done is almost an apology.
"Why do you do this to me?" I ask, again. "What happens to the hundred and first tree?"
Tabi shakes his head gently. "I don't think it's good to tell you that. That particular detail would just mean nothing and be harmful. It's for me to bear."
But then even without his words stabbing my language processing center I can see it. I can feel it. I can smell the death in the air all around me all around me, in a torn-out nasal cavity and with eyes that don't exist. I can sense against a numb spine the existence of a plastic case, a body bag, which needs to contain me for as long as I am thinking about him.
I can visualize the rows of me in bags, the rows and rows and rows. How many days have I spent in his house? More than two years. Seven hundred nights and counting. Thinking about Him. Breathing. Barely breathing.
My blood all leaves me at once and I fall over into black.
Tabi holds me as I go limp and I cannot see him and I cannot understand him. And he takes me up to the bed which is not my bed, and I can't stop gasping and sneezing and murmuring and weeping.
I am so tired of this feeling.
A long time ago, an eternity ago, I was sick like this all the time. Every moment was another incurable symptom and every day was a curse. I've always had this awful sense of claustrophobia, of a fear of lacking options, and right now I have nothing—I have no out, and Tabi would never deliver me an out, not the way I wish he would. Even if I look at it closely, it's hard to like either option.
Stay
or go.
I want him forever; my whole body is falling apart besides Tabi, and all I want to do is hold him, but he is ten thousand miles away and I am made out of mud and at night he does things to me, every night, every night... my vision is failing. Seven hundred and counting. And when he brushes his wool against me I am brought to attention again, and I see his eyes, and we match a form of understanding that hurts me so deep. He can hear my thoughts, of course. His great big ears waggle when they hear new information. He hears the question, too. Stay or go.
And part of me keeps murmuring under its breath,
I want to get out of here.
A thought strikes my head—a hypothetical shaped like three-fingered hands. What if I just held him again and asked him to blast my mind free with pleasure, with sensory bliss, with love of the physical variety? What if I asked him to make my evening all better again? What if I did my usual thing? And I think again to myself, I don't want that again, and instead I sign to him, so weak, so out of place:
"Do we sleep for multiple nights?"
And he stops briefly,
and tells me
"You have asked that so many times, darling. I wish I could give you an answer that satisfied you." And it is this part which hurts the very most. And part of me keeps murmuring under its breath,
I want to get out of here.
Seven hundred and counting. A voice cries out in a wave as it tumbles into a reef, I want to get out of here, and pounds against my psyche like water hammer; all this pent up angst and grief and fear into a rigid, hard ball, racketing, thundering, screaming. The screaming is so so so aimless and if you just give it a direction it will speak, it will cry. He is my whole world and he created me, he created the body I use and he created the person I've sunken into, and he has me by the brainstem, and I'm so scared, and I'm so deeply, unrecoverably alone. And all Tabi can hope for is that I will love him. Why can't I love him? It is something very close. Stop. Stop. Remember that I want to get out of here. Stop falling into the pitfall traps and pay attention. Your brain wants to move. Your brain wants to run. Your brain wants to sprint out of here and forego putting on a jacket and you want to leave him, you want to leave Tabi, and you don't want to end up in the Room above his house anymore, especially if you will never know, you will never feel it. You want his warmth and your body wants his warmth and his hands and his feet and his attention to detail, and his fluffy ears and ignore all that. Ignore it. Fall away from it. Step outside your body for a second.
He is
so
saddening
to look at.
I climb out of bed and put dress shoes on and go to the entrance of His house.
It's a brief affair. I think He is still in shock at this and I am, too. In fact I allow him the opportunity to take me by the neck at this point and cut my spinal column and do what he'd like, but that road isn't taken.
The foyer is dark and so is the entrance. I have not mentioned how to get to the entrance, exactly, but it is Euclidean and it is reachable the same as any other room, even if I cannot exactly remember the route we take, because all the while I am attempting to wall him out, to give him no ground. I feel as if I am breaking up with him but he does not act this way. He does not yell at me. He does not shout in my ear and tell me to listen up, listen through your stupid fucking implant. Tabi is just hovering. He has been in my head with me.
If he stopped me now he would likely calm me down. I would soon sink into his warmth and hold him, and hold him, and hold him. But right now for a split second I am willing to leave.
I ask you to hold a little understanding for him. As carelessly as he regarded that little rat, and as carelessly as he regards the hundred-and-first tree of the forest, Tabi does not stop me from leaving. He reaches the door at the same time as me, and I think I see him crying a quiet sort of cry, as if the thought hasn't really reached him yet. And his hands are fickle memory, see? As they have always been. He is shaky as hell right now and not capable of complex communication. So when he uses sign language, I am certain he means to tell me so many things, he means to say this:
I am so sorry. I want you to stay. I want you to stay, please. Please don't go from me.
But he actually signs, with his two hands:
"If you really are leaving, you ought to know some things."
I am receptive for the moment. I stare at him. I hope I am able to come across as strong, as composed, because I have never felt that way in my life. "Alright."
Tabi is slow in his speech. "If you think of me, I will still be there. But naturally if I were to ever slip your mind again, if you fully forget me, you won't ever be able to return."
And I am unable to stop this force barrelling towards the exit:
"I won't return."