Fluids

by May Leitz

I mean to say that I’m giddy lately. The mirror disagrees. Yesterday’s makeup smeared from having two fingers in my mouth. Don’t worry, they weren’t mine, Dad. My ass is sore and red under these shorts. I love days when I can just look like shit, but as my dad once told me: “It’s better to be ready for an opportunity and not have one than to have an opportunity and not be prepared.”

I’m going to do it. I can visualize the shower. The water could so efficiently run down my blonde hair and clean this sheen off my skin. I imagine scrubbing myself, shaving. Sometimes I wonder if I’m the one I’m attracted to and not anyone else. This gives dating myself a whole lot more meaning. Maybe I could make it literal.

People slip and fall in their bathrooms and die all the time. I’m next, you know. It’s my destiny as it is yours and as it is all of ours. If you slip and fall and die in the bathroom after reading this, then you’re a fucking idiot. I have warned you thoroughly at this point. Anyways, this is my mind. I see death everywhere. What can I say? I’m curious.

I tried to kill myself when I was seventeen, like everyone else. My dad caught me with a knife and laughed at me. I guess he thought I couldn’t give myself all the essential cuts because I was a girl. Not realizing that I’d been cutting myself for years: he just never saw my legs. Bitch.

There’s something so magical and powerful about disappointing your parents.

It cleans and fixes you, putting back together what you try so hard to destroy. It feels so good to put yourself back together, but only because it feels terrific to take yourself apart. I’m like a doll.

Or maybe it's more about giving people room to doubt. They have to wonder if you’re an actual person. You can’t assume everyone else is as honest as you are.

Mostly when I think of myself, I see this big abyss where my past used to be.

I’m sorry, Dahlia. I’m stuck in the fetal position on my bed with my phone close enough to my face to feel its heat. I’m the bitch here. The world isn’t like it used to be, and asking for it to be the same is asking for suffering. The time of appearances is truly over. We’re only souls now.

Majority are mean, self involved, empty souls.

Dahlia sounds like a sad person who secretly wants to be satisfied. She comes across as the kind of person who could have a happy disposition if she ever looked up from the floor. She’s just like me. We need to start looking at each other and not at the ground, and then we’ll make it.

I understand that it’s self-destructive, but I forgot how not to self-destruct.

Shower. Washing my hair and rinsing my hair and washing my face, and why am I washing at all? For whom? Myself? I’m so tired of the moments I see myself followed quickly by myself turning into a shapeless mass. Where am I anymore? Am I dead? Did I die, and is this all that’s left of me now? I want to die, but I think I’m already dead.

It’s happening, and I’m hopeless. It’s happening, and I’m useless.

You feel like that to me. Talking to you feels like dancing with Dahmer.

I learn that if you smoke enough DMT, you can break through to a dimension of wizards and elf people that teach how to control reality.

I realize that AI will destroy us if it hasn’t already started to.

I learn that there’s a fetish online for bald men to stick their heads in women’s vaginas.

IS THIS WHAT I THINK IT IS?!

I suspect that every small town has an open secret about the one creepy guy that loves to kill drifters. I’m a drifter, but I could only be so lucky.

We’re all envious of the dead.

Perhaps this is love, after all. I don’t know the requirements of love, but I imagine running away together under any circumstances is pretty romantic.

I should only ever want to die in the place that I want to give my body to. Taking from the land would be wrong.

The planet was filled with beautiful animals that called humans friends, and that relationship was an infinite ying-yang of carbon delivery and re-delivery. The cycle continued forever, and it felt lovely to be a part of such a beautiful world regardless of the conditions of my birth.

The Devil screams and screams and screams, and I jump on top of him, and I look in his face, and I say, “I’m the Devil now.”

And then I feel the Devil in me give me control back. I feel myself again. My name is Lauren, and I’m the biggest sweetheart you've ever met in your whole life. Everyone loves me. I have someone over every other night. I have a girlfriend. Her name is Dahlia, and she’s the most beautiful woman God ever created.

I look through the mirror at the bloody mess of living death lying on the floor, and I can’t help but cry. I fucked up her birthday.

I’m ready for my light to dim too. I don’t want to be reincarnated. I don’t want to be a baby again. I want to be nothing. I want to be nothing!

But the truth is, I love myself. I have always loved myself. I don’t need love because I don’t have an anonymous villain, and I don’t need rescuing. I can fend for myself. I am the villain. I wear the black hat with pride. I don’t need anything but myself. I

I’m so tired of love because it isn’t close enough. I deserve more than anyone can give me. I deserve everything. I deserve the end. I deserve their demise.

If someone loves me, they’ll give me that willingly. When someone dies for me, and they beg me for it, then I’ll know they love me.

I consider showing her this miracle too, but then I remember my ethics. This is not about her. This is about my experience, my pleasure, my enjoyment.

She gets nervous and tries to keep them closed, but I’m persistent. You have to force people to get what they want.

I could kill anyone I wanted. I could kill everyone. I could destroy the world. Only then will I allow myself to die.

I crash on the curb and lie down and get my first honest look at the night’s sky. It’s incredible up there tonight. My celestial home is with me now, and I feel more at peace with myself. I am a cosmic being from space sent here to experience this earth’s love, growth, and beauty. I should consider myself the luckiest.

I know a demon cannot fall in love with their vessel, but I feel love and pride in who I am. I feel the beauty of seeing myself for the first time, and it overcomes me.

The food and water come, and I’m scared to try it. I reach my hand out for the water, but then the crystal droplets on the outside speak to me and say that it’s okay. I

Water is a miracle too.

I stare through the fly and try to find its soul and consciousness, but then I see this disgusting abyss. There’s an endless darkness ever-present inside her like a snake. She’s a creature that carries the abyss within her.

I cry because it’s over, but I also cry because even though I never really loved her, she loved me. She loved me with her whole heart, and she let that love destroy her. It killed her and so many others. Maybe they deserved to die, maybe she deserved to die, but she was born to raise hell. She was the last person anyone should ever meet accidentally, and yet I have to thank her.