To be lost

I want to be lost

I just want to be on an alien planet, (you don't need to excuse sadness, it is its own horrible punishment) fighting for my life. Or something else.

I want to explore another galaxy on a spaceship with only a few close people.

I want to live in a cavernous vastness beneath the ground of the earth, building my own home, and then abandoning it.

I want to leap from this window and fly to the moon.

I want to be a space marine.

I want to be a dragon, an elf.

Everything.

(You are a fantastic, wild creature, who somehow was inexplicably inspired to stay with me)

If I were young as once I was

(It's not easy to go on adventures)

And dreams and death as distant then

(An empty tank)

Hunger to escape

(I meant it in the best possible way)

I need someone to go with me, not to another country. I need someone to go with me to the stars.

(Who would you take with you, on your ship to the stars?)

You would be the captain's lover, obviously.

Smelly would probably be my first mate.

Nong my seneschal.

Frenchie my technician.

Ryan my chaplain.

Bnc the crazy hermit.

Anthea the abandoned orphan who hates this whole idea.

(I love stars)

I just want

so bad

to explore the galaxy

to travel the stars, find new worlds,

imagine

jumping out of the warp

staring out of the bridge

a whole new world

hanging in space

a smile on your face

and adventure singing through your heart.

(The world is too small for us)

Goodnight, my love.

Meat

Chinese culture is a strange thing indeed. She found out, the day her First came tearing, screaming and mewling out from her womb, tiny unformed fingers clawing at her insides. The doctors and nurses crowded round, strange and deformed in her pain-fuelled haze, babbling things that she could not hear. She remembered shuddering, drenched in itching sweat that turned her light-pink hospital gown into a shade of carmine red. She let the congratulations wash over her, the excited exclamations of her husband pulling her from much-needed sleep, needling at her, drawing her mind long and tired. She took her turn of clutching the baby, cooing softly at it as quickly as she could, before she passed it on, swallowing down the rising vomit that clogged her throat, attempting to right the spinning room through sheer force of will. Then, it was thrown onto her lap.
Her scream of disgust pierced the sterile operating room, jolting the sleeping child into its first wails. She looked up, searching for the source of this outrage, and her eyes met two beady pupils staring at her, behind a surgical mask. He was a short man, dressed in hospital blue, his long fingers steepled together at his waist, his eyebrows suggesting a smile hidden behind the white of the cotton mask. A long silence dominated the room, broken only by the insistent crying of the newborn flesh, and the low hum of the air-conditioning. Eyes travelled back down to the red, pulsing mass of bloody flesh in her lap, and then back again to the shrivelled doctor standing at the foot of her bed.
-Eat. Is good for you.
-But… Why is it raw?
-Just eat! Is good for you, and the baby.
Ryan just stood there, forced grin frozen on his face. He said nothing. He wouldn’t. He actually believed in this Chinese nonsense. He reached out, a claw swimming through the open space between her and him, and grabbed her hand. He squeezed it, once. Her other hand shook as it edged towards the battered metal plate, slipped slightly in the pooling blood, and finally managed to clasp around the oozing organ, picking it up. It squelched in her grasp. Small showers of blood dripped from it, slipping from the cracks between her fingers and back into the plate, merging with the symphony of expectant silence in the operating room.
It smelled disgusting. Loathsome. It smelled of fresh blood, of rotten flesh, of old torn clothes soaked in vinegar. It smelled like fresh fish gutted and smashed with a spoon. It took all of her willpower to not throw up there and then, to keep the vomit hidden deep within her throat, to gulp it down. Eyes were watching. Waiting. She had to do it. She had to. For the baby.
Her mouth opened. An inch. Two inches. It edged closer and closer, she could’ve sworn it pulsed in her hands, once, as it neared her teeth. The stench invaded her nostrils, piercing inwards like a jagged spear, and she gagged, lurching forward. The piece of flesh squelched again, popping from her grasp to splash down on the plate, throwing rivulets of blood up onto her face, allowing her the sensation of cold liquid snaking their way down her cheeks. Still, no mercy, nothing but the same waiting silence.
She picked it up and held it against her face. Her tears of disgust mingled with the blood coursing down her cheeks. She looked at the lump of flesh that had forced her to do this, and she found that she hated it. How strange. And, as she experienced this new emotion, almost unknowingly, unwittingly, she bit into the placenta.
She had known by now what it was, she’d known all along that she had to eat it, that it was customary. She had wished it wasn’t, upon finding out, that she had a say in the matter. Placentophagia, the practice of eating the placenta, was purported to help stem postpartum depression, contract the uterus after birth, and give back to her the life source that she had shelled out. The doctor had said so. She still didn’t want to. She had thought it would have been disgusting.
It wasn’t. As her teeth pierced the livid, red flesh of the organ, breaking apart stretched skin and into the pliable flesh beneath, she instead experienced ecstasy. Her mind broke behind waves of pleasure flooding into her nerves centres, arcing lightning burst through her mouth and into her brain as the perfect taste filled her taste buds. She had found heaven, found it in the organ of her own child, in what was essentially part of herself. All thoughts of cannibalism faded away beneath the rising tide of blood choking her throat, and all her disgust was drowned in the apex of the moment. She was complete, once again. Hungrily, she wolfed down the rest of the placenta, each bite sending shudders and shivers down her spine, causing orgasmic delight to wrack her weak, tired body. By the end, she could barely move, but the smile that was plastered across her face threatened to tear it in half. She had never felt better.
The erupting cheer faded into the background. Everything did.
She felt ashamed afterwards, of course, as Ryan joked with her about how she looked like she really enjoyed the after-labour meal. She hadn’t dared to tell him that she had. She didn’t tell any of them of the mind-blowing spikes that had lodged themselves in her chest, that sparked her fire and drove her insane. She couldn’t. Instead, she just smiled and nodded, joked back with her husband, throwing small talk around the room as she tried to erase the memory from her mind, to forget the pleasure that she had experienced, to drive the hunger away.
But it came back, a few weeks later, tearing at her insides with pure, maddening desire. She wanted, she fucking needed it, more badly than she had ever needed anything. She drew into herself, trying to control her urges, to chain the beast, but it was useless. Ryan thought she was suffering post-natal depression, had asked kindly about it. What could she say? Her silence continued.
It went on like this, for days, weeks. She cradled her child absently, ignoring its cries as she screamed inside, drowning out the piercing wails with her own desperate pleas for the madness, the hunger to stop. It went on, until one day she could take it no more.
She found herself alone that day, Ryan must had gone out for drinks with his buddies. She was alone with the baby, feeding it her precious milk, enduring the needling pain jabbing her breast as the hungry child tore into her nipple. Her life-giving fluids spurted out sporadically, tiny drops flecking the chin of the hungering monster, minute amounts of blood bitten from tender flesh mingling in with the milk. She stared at the child, transfixed, as she wondered. What if her hunger… what if? She had no time to think, the scraping against the back of her head had started again, the aching of her jaws and the tightness in her chest. She reached out with her left hand, her right still clutching the baby, holding it against herself, trapping it with nowhere for it to run. Her fingers closed about the fleshy, tender leg of her child, pulling it upwards with agonizing slowness. The baby continued to suck at her, to drain from her.
She wondered, for a brief moment, if it was a sort of poetic justice, as her teeth bit into the milky-white skin, her canines puncturing the epidermis, and flesh found its way into her mouth. The baby began to scream, pain driving its tiny mind wild, but she wouldn’t let go. She couldn’t. Her teeth were already halfway in, the lower jaw resting lightly against the puckered portion of the baby’s meat. She couldn’t do anything except bite harder and harder, her stained yellow teeth turning red as blood flooded her throat, filled her mouth. Her eyes watered, her grip tightened. The wriggling lump of flesh bawled, thrashing about, but it couldn’t escape her. Finally, her teeth met, parting aside prepubescent flesh with a squelch in order to hit the other half with a soft click. She tore her prize free from the baby, chewing with a furiousness born from desperation. She chewed and chewed, the blood spurting out of her mouth and onto her chin, dribbling in frothing bubbles onto her dress. She chewed until she realized… this wasn’t what she needed. In horror, it dawned upon her what lay in her mouth, what the bubbling mass of pink that rolled about her tongue actually was, and she screamed, for the first time, out loud.
She had explained afterwards that a wild stray dog had bit the baby while she had brought it downstairs to the void deck, and that the blood on her dress was from her rushing the baby to the hospital. She had cried, tears streaming down blood-stained cheeks, in Ryan’s arms, sobbing her heart out in what Ryan thought to be relief, but she knew to be frustration. She needed something else, something more. She needed what she had tasted before, what she had grown to hunger for. She needed the placenta, the prime cut.
She tried looking for it, searching online. It only came back with animal placentas, pills and dried facsimiles that she found no interest in, no desire for. She bought slabs of raw meat, hid it from Ryan, from her baby, who now lay in the cot recovering. Wolfed them down in the sink. Spat them out into the bin. It was no use. She needed the real thing.
And that’s why she found herself where she was now, sneaking into the hospital at 2 in the morning, drifting along the hallways with furtive glances cast behind her. Turn left. Two turns right. The maternity ward is just ahead. She made it there without anyone noticing, against all her wishes, all her hopes, she hadn’t been caught. She imagined what it would have been like if she had bumped into a nurse, if they had found her. The relief would have washed over her, the madness and darkness evaporated beneath the soothing touch of humanity, suffocated by the constricting knots of the straitjacket. But no, instead, she found herself at the door, whorls of laminated wood staring back at her as her fingers rested against the knob. She walked in.
Ryan thought she was having a night out, watching a movie and taking a break from watching the kid. He was at home, dozing off at the TV, rocking the cradle once every few minutes. And here she was, holding a pillow above the face of some woman she didn’t know, pressing it down as hands clawed at her. The woman’s body, young and lithe except for the distended belly possessing her spawn, struggled and bucked under her grip, but she held on, a strength that could come only from insane hunger pressing down her arms. The monitor rattled on the table, unplugged cord scattering about the floor, the bed shivered with the dying woman’s convulsions. Her grip upon the pillow softened as the woman struggled less and less, until finally, the flailing hands fell limply against the sides of the bed. The room was silent, except for her panting, interspersed with mumbled apologies and hungry growls.
Her hand gripped the scalpel, tightly, pilfered from a small room adjacent. Her knuckles were white, barely visible in the dark room, trembling as her fingers dug into her palm. She moved closer to the corpse. Her hand touched upon the protruding belly, feeling about. Thud. She felt something move, with a jolt. The spawn. The woman’s larvae. It still lived. She was supposed to feel remorse now, as if one life taken was fine, but two had crossed an invisible line. She was supposed to hate herself.
Instead, she raised the scalpel high, cheek-burning smile splitting her face in two, frame shivering in anticipation. And she plunged it down, as she prepared to dine once again.

The Huntsman and the Wolf

I sometimes wonder why the Wolf howls to the night sky. It seems a foolish act, warning those around him of his nearness, as if he were shouting, “Here I am! Here I am!”. For a silent predator, a creature of quietness, it was uncharacteristic of him to say the least. It was as if for brief moments in the star-lit gloom, a madness would come over him, and he would howl, filled with longing and hopes, with worn-out memories.
A faerie then told me, one day, when I inquired about this strange state of affairs. She was the only one who would speak of it, for though she knew of Wolf’s sadness, she bore no affection for Wolf, and thus did not keep the same unspoken vow of silence that the other animals bore.
It begins thusly:
It was through Fox that Wolf met the Huntsman. Fox had long since been friends with the Huntsman, (having previously made an arrangement with him concerning chickens and trails), and had encouraged Wolf to meet him, to benefit too from knowing a Human. Wolf, being his usual self, had been wary and paranoid, reluctant to meet one who walked so close to the edge of cruelty. Sure enough, when they first met, the Huntsman was skinning a deer he had taken down. The naked carcass filled Wolf with unease. He growled.
“I see before me a killer, not a Huntsman, Fox. This is foolish.”
The Huntsman looked up, offended. Then, pausing for a moment, he smiled.
“Oh? The Wolf calls me a killer? With claws that sharp and teeth that eager? We are the same, Wolf, you and I. The same, but in different bodies.”
Considering this, Wolf too began to smile, for he realized the folly of his own prejudice, his own thoughts.
“True. Tell me, Huntsman, tell me of how you hunt.”
And so it was that the Wolf and the Huntsman sat down, human and beast, beside the warm fireplace of a wooden hut, and talked away the hours of hunting and slaying, the joy and the thrill of their lives. There began a strong friendship, a closeness that could only be bred through affinity.
And all the while, Fox sat by, astonished by the burgeoning friendship, and a little jealous, for she was not the same as Wolf, though she wanted to be, and it shamed her for Huntsman to have found such a closeness with him instead.
Many months passed, and the friendship of the Huntsman and Wolf became the talk of the forest. It was met mostly with disapproval, for Wolf would hunt with the Huntsman, and slowly he began to interact less and less with the other animals.
Then, one day, Wolf stumbled across the Huntsman’s trophy room. In a neat row, there stood, stuffed, three hounds. That was when Wolf knew, he was not the first such friend of the Huntsman, and he was sad indeed. He confronted the Huntsman, that night, growled at what he saw was betrayal, was deception.
Wolf went far away from the Huntsman, and they both ignored each other for days at end. But their loneliness, their silent war ate away at each other, and before long, they met once again, in the forest.
Wolf shook his head at his foolishness, not for being angry at the Huntsman, but instead at what he was about to say.
“I don’t care anymore. Even if you had a hundred hounds before me. I still want to hunt with you. Even if you will leave me, kill me, stuff me.”
“Wolf… the hounds. They attacked me, one night. They thought I was going to leave them. I did what I had to.”
And there, their friendship once again bloomed, but both Wolf and the Huntsman knew - something was wrong. This couldn’t last.
For slowly, Wolf was growing distant from the forest, and all the creatures knew it was the Huntsman that caused him to do so. And none despaired at this more than Fox, Wolf’s best friend. She grew sick with worry, green with jealousy, until her fur began to shrivel and fall and she paced about the forest, unable to tell Wolf her true feelings. But Wolf knew.
And the Huntsman too faced difficulties. For the village knew of his strange friendship with Wolf, and shook their heads at it, warning their children away from his hut. It became cold and lonely, save for the presence of Wolf at its fireplace.
So they met, one last time, amidst the forest. And there, they knew that they would not part on good terms, for that would not be the right parting to have. It was painful. But it was necessary.
And that is why, every once in a while, Wolf howls to the night sky. It is so that some distance away, the Huntsman, sitting at his hut amongst the village children, could look up and know, somewhere, far away, Wolf was crying. “Here I am! Here I am!”.

Today

I know you readers aren't gonna get any of this, if there are any out there. Please disregard this. It's just me typing out into the void.
Today, I'm living.
And God, everything is so vivid, so wonderful, so scary. I'm on the edge of the cliff, on the rim of the next page, off to the other worlds, ready to explore.
I'm holding on tightly to the things I want, the things I need, the things I desire. The things I think and the things I love.
I'm letting go of the things I love.
Today I cried - no reason, no need. Just cried, and I realized how beautiful those tears were. A rush of emotion through my spine like mercury, rising as the heart heats up, a sudden solar flare in the star hidden inside my chest. Hell, I was listening to music (and no, it wasn't the music or maybe it was, fuck I don't know), and it just went snap. I just went snap.
It felt like mania, like madness, like sadness, and it felt good. Brilliant. Catharsis.
I don't want want anyone to read this, but I need to scream it, shout it. I don't know. I need to tell someone, but there's nobody I want to tell, there's nobody who could know. Faceless ones reading this, mindless circuits processing this, anyone, anything. I cupped tears in my hand today, and they were treasure for seconds, for an eternity in my seat.
Maybe I'm really mad, maybe I'm just making all this up to be myself, be unique. Fuck it. I don't really care. All I care about is right now, I feel divine. Mad. Maybe this is how God feels ALL the time. Is that heaven or hell?
This feels like the base. It feels like rock-bottom of no-reason, I've reached the edge of logic and looped into emotion. So many things have been happening, and I don't really care. I don't see where I'm going, and that's fine with me. I'm scared.
I'm happy.
And right now, I want to throw myself out of my window, I want to fly and I want to die. I want to feel as much as I can, I want my body to tingle, the soul screaming as it cries in exultation. I want to burn something, burn myself, consume and create, destroy and make.
I want to remember and live in the past. I want to kill the future. I want to live the future.
Be the future. Ghosts of old, my shades following me, my past lives flash across my head all calling me, hating me, envying me, shouting at me, crying for me, crying with me. Thank you.
I've touched my raw soul today, I think. If I can think now. This is the stuff stars are made of, not the balls of gas that we see in the sky, not the plastic with stick we see on assignments, not the stars that shine briefly and fade. These are the stars that live forever, in the brightness of their glow.
These stars don't fade, they echo. And scream.
God, I'm so happy right now. And I'm not even on drugs.
It must be madness.
I just want to strip my body of all my bones, float into the sky and ride with the birds, ride on the birds. I want to remember and forget everything in the world. I want to know all for that brief burning moment, and then go mad with ecstasy, explode into a billion stars that will never die. I want to love and cry at the same time. I want to watch myself die, and smile, not in spite or hatred, but in melancholy. Sweet, sweet melancholy that replaces the ambrosia of the Gods. I want people to read me and feel their heartstrings cut, released, so that their hearts float into the sea. I want to wind so tight that I'll snap in two, in three.
I'm done now. I've recovered from that wave. Logic and reason are back, thoughts for my future, for university, for scholarships and application and army and work tomorrow at 8.30am return.
Today, I'm living.

Brilliant

8640 people died yesterday. Approximately 12,622,770,400 people have died over the course of human history. And most importantly, I got 39 points for the International Baccalaureate program. Oh woe is me. 39 points. Darkness, so cold. I feel like I’m falling deep into the broken, drunken sea of black tar that is my soul – and the match that lights it flicking off my feet as they prepare to dance a hempen jig on empty air, beginning t- Hey! Latest issue of Deadpool is out! Fuck yeah, life is great.

Apparently, I’m devastated and near-suicide, but I guess I didn’t get the memo.

Yesterday consisted of receiving my results, looking at them and contemplating them for a few hours, then visiting the comic store and playing Dota 2. People were trying to console me with the fact that 39 could get me into almost any university I wanted, that I did not have to feel like a failure and all that jazz, but it really wasn’t necessary (though it was touching to see how much friends care for you).

I failed. In accordance to the Benjamin Mok rubrics and marking scheme, I failed this time round. Now before you turn away from here in order to prevent exposure to long-winded emotional outbursts and self-gratifying wallows in the filth pits of despair, or worst of all, badly-written poetry, don’t worry. I’m not going to do that. In fact, I’m taking this extremely well. You see, there’s two extremes I can go to now. First, is the obvious one, sinking into long-haired cryptic wall posts on Facebook.

Second, and this is the reason why I’m rejecting the consolation of others, is self-denial. No, I’m not gonna soften the blow of this by labelling it as anything else other than a failure. I did not achieve what I wanted, so I’m not gonna say it was a success – my heart’s desire deserves better treatment than that. Doesn’t matter if it’s good enough to get me into the university I wanted to, it wasn’t what I wanted, and that’s the end of it.

Am I sad? Fuck yeah. I’m quite disappointed. I’m not afraid to admit it. But I’ve been able to distance myself from this emotion, noting in the information that has been given to me, processing it and finally realizing that the time has finally come. People who know me have always known me to give long-winded lectures on the meaning of life and the meaning of living to the fullest. Now it’s time to walk the talk, to practice my preaching. An excerpt from my previous words to someone else:

“Don’t discount the power of failure. Don’t ignore the power of yourself. First, ask yourself, do you fulfill these conditions – 1. You’ve failed. 2. You’re alive. If the answer to the first is no, then either you don’t need to read this, or you may want to reconsider. If the answer to the second is no, then DIE ZOMBIE SCUM. But if the answer to both is yes, then you have once course of action left to you, the same one everybody can take. Keep striving, keep running, don’t stop to look back.

Don’t start the first page of the next chapter with tear-stains on your ink. Don’t start the first painting of the next series with blood on the canvas. Take your failure, process it, learn from it, and then just fuck it – keep walking.

Because the alternative is inaction, is apathy. And that way lies the destruction of all that makes you human.”

So, it’s finally time to do this for myself. And I’m proud to say, I have. I haven’t fallen into self-denial and have rejected neither my emotions, nor my failure. But I haven’t fallen into whinging despair either. I’m still me, I’m still alive. Look back to the start of this post, and you realize, in the same day as me receiving my results, approximately 8000 people can no longer say that. 8000 or so people can no longer strive in this world, they can no longer pick themselves up without the help of a necromancer’s unholy resurrection, they can no longer push forward past the boundaries of themselves and the world.

People tell me, “Be thankful that you don’t live in a third-world country, that you aren’t starving every day.” I think that statement is wrong. I should be thankful for even more than that. I should be thankful that I’m alive right now to continue my journey, that I can keep making footprints in the sand before my time is up. I once told someone else that a person’s circumstances, his wealth, his abilities, his achievements mean nothing to me in comparison to his attitude. To the way he sees life.

Does he give everything for his heart’s desire?

This applies to me too. I will only respect myself if I follow my own principles, and that’s what I plan to do. When I said I will give everything for my heart’s desire, this means even the luxury to wallow in self-pity begging for the sympathetic consolations of others. No time for that. So much to do, so much to experience.

(Doesn’t mean though, that I’m not going to watch cartoons while hugging my tub of Ben and Jerry’s. Nobody, no high-minded principles are gonna take that away from me.)