ROTGUT (ROTGUTVERSE)

by H.S. Wolfe

there. I shouldn’t have been so presumptuous. He can’t love me when I’m like this. Babs tried her best to smooth things over, explaining to me that Hawthorne was just like that. What the fuck does that even mean? My intense and irrational reaction solidified me as the bad guy in the situation, my diagnosis thrown in my face. It almost ripped our band apart, and practice became a nightmare. Maybe I’m just like this.

During that time I had to block Hawthorne’s number and delete my social media profiles. A complete detox, where I still thought about him while I paced my room, snarled at my own heart.

Like I said, I would have never have tried to fuck Seven, but that was before. Now, I’m stumbling home from Hawthorne’s house after losing track of time while getting railed on every surface of his house by his older brother.

I can’t be responsible for nearly breaking up our band twice. Someone else should get a turn.

I like my callouses, like the way they make my hands look. The only downside is it’s hard not to chew them. Every once in a while I get the urge to let my teeth sink down into them. I bet I could rip them off in one go.

Heat rises to my cheeks. I know Hawthorne will blame me for ruining the secret this time, making heart eyes at the back of his head so often that I’ve lost tempo before. Other times,it’s because I’m glaring daggers, trying to make his head explode. He doesn’t give a shit about me.

“Do you want me to stay?” As soon as it leaves my mouth, I know I’ve said the wrong thing. “Don’t care, can if you want to.” He turns back to what he was doing, the conversation over. I am not wanted. I’m a warm body with laughably low self esteem. If I stay, I will briefly get what I want, the dopamine rush bubbling over, making me fall over myself the next time and the time after that. It’s better if I just go, let things fizzle out, but there is a desperate creature inside of me.

“Fuck, I missed you.” His voice is low, nearly a whine. You mean you missed my insides.

I’ve stopped reaching out first to anyone who isn’t in Cluster Headache. It took almost no time for people I thought I was close with to fade out of my life all together.

He’s tied his hair back into a bun, reminding me that I’m absolutely, uselessly driven by my cunt because I have the urge to suck him off again.

I’m starved for human contact. I need it like water. If he would let me, I’d crack open his chest, part his ribs so I could climb in, chew his arteries up and rearrange them into a nest for myself. I would crawl under his skin, a warm blanket for me while I burrow into his muscles. I’d hide behind his molars, or the crevice of his eye. Every gentle touch he affords me tonight reminds me that I’m hungry. Starving for so much I will never have. I settle for scraps thrown to the floor, picking bones clean.

He gasps for breath, smacks the palm of his hand against my thigh, I can’t help but tease him for a moment longer before letting up, lifting my hips and letting the mess he made inside of me slide back out, onto his stomach, onto the couch. “God dammit,” Hawthorne curses me. Whatever, we should share the load.

“I can’t drive!” I yell, which was a terrible idea. I retch again, but nothing comes out. “You’re a fucking loser!” he yells back, except it's muffled, and sounds more like yourhuh fuhing loser. I know. God do I know.

A cozy sanctuary away from everything else. Until I gave up. At some point I went from surviving to just floating between my days like a ghost, my energy and executive function nowhere to be found. I’ll get around to organizing that bookshelf, I’ll get around to putting those boxes away, I’ll get around to it, I swear. Thinking about it makes me feel unwell.

Talking only works if someone will listen, and I’ve been yelling longer than I can remember.

Can’t I just forgive? Move on? As if my frontal lobe wasn’t permanently turned into a hot bowl of mashed potatoes.

I didn’t like most of what she had to say, and I don’t have much interest in getting better anyways. It’s not my fault my childhood was garbage, or that my brain is wrong, o...

My thoughts chase each other’s tails, dogs snapping at the end of their leashes at one another. I want out of my kennel, I want to bite and lash out. My therapist's voice rings through my head. Who are you really mad at? I’m mad at everyone, and especially mad at myself.

The common factor in everyone who has been cruel to me, is me after all.

It is far too easy to dismantle myself.

I don’t know why they keep grabbing for me when they know I can’t retract my thorns.

“I don’t feel good.” My voice is small. I can’t stay with him, especially when he’s like this. I can’t be around anyone. I want to remember this moment, that he’s proud of me, let it snag in my thorns and stay there, take it home and curl around it while I let my guts seep out and dry, cake me to the floor where I belong.

The pain is unimaginable as he buries his arm up to the elbow inside of me, hand snaking its way up through my rib cage, pushing tissue and viscera out of his way, until he can grip the beating muscle of my heart. “You have it,” I sob, choking on the mucus in my throat. “You already have it, please just let me go.” I’m begging. He beams, squeezing it harder.