Dead Inside

by Chandler Morrison

A candy striper and a toilet scrubber, all in one. Only the finest get to work at the thirty-sixth-best hospital in Ohio. It’s a treasure trove of talent.

Self-awareness really doesn’t mean shit, though. It is, in fact, little more than psychological masturbation, and has about the same net worth as a wad of semen in a handful of crumpled tissues. No cockroach ever desired not to be a cockroach, just because it knew it was a cockroach.

I’m really not a violent creature by nature, but there’s nothing like a wailing infant to drive me to the brink of contemplating homicide.

I’ve never been any kind of athlete or anything, but am I seriously the only person who realizes that infants are the perfect punting shape? If we replaced footballs with babies, I would have been far more successful in high school gym class.

Okay, before I go on, I should warn you that this next part is what most people would consider to be gross or appalling. If you were expecting fifty shades of softcore mommy porn, you’re going to be disappointed. Consider this your goddamn trigger warning.

“Why are you naked.” That’s the only question I’m able to force past my lips, despite the existence of other, more obvious, inquiries. Like, “Why are you eating that dead baby,” or “What the fuck is going on here,” or “Don’t you at least want some sauce to dip that in, or something.”

Cannibalism really isn’t my thing, but there’s nothing wrong with getting a little kinky now and again.

The meaning of it is irrelevant, in the same way the meaning of my aberrant fetish is irrelevant. We are who we are, just as anyone else is. How we got that way isn’t anyone’s business, least of all our own.

“If you like Bukowski, read some Will Self. Start with My Idea of Fun.”

“I envy the ease with which you can dismiss things.” “Envy is wasteful and purposeless.” She smiles, and it is a cold smile, made colder still by the icy, pale-blue lifelessness in her stoned eyes. “Isn’t everything?” This gives me brief pause, and I’m impressed by the shrewdness of her response. It reminds me of why I can tolerate her, why I might even, dare I say it, like her. “Yes,” I say, “I guess it is.”

Emotions gross me out, especially when they’re visible. People gross me out. Especially when they’re visible.

Society defines what’s good and what’s bad, and society doesn’t know the difference between its own anal-beaded asshole and its dick-sucking mouth. Fuck being a good person.

We just need to fuck dead girls and eat babies and feel good about it.

I realize—sort of for the first time, since I don’t usually pay attention to shit like this—that I don’t have a single article of clothing in my wardrobe that isn’t black. I don’t think she’ll mind. I mean, she eats babies.

I mean, I’m not going to kill myself, either, but if I were going to, I think I’d hang myself. I know it’s a cliché, but there’s something kind of poetic about it, don’t you think?” “I don’t know how to tie a noose.” She laughs and says, “It’s just a slipknot.” “I was never a Boy Scout.”

“It’s realistic thinking. No matter how much of an individual you are, no matter how unique and different and nonconformist and antiestablishment, you can’t deny the inescapable effects that society has on everyone, including you and me.”

I want death neither behind, nor ahead, of me, but around me and within me.

“Listen,” she says, “you’ll have your chance at death. You’ll have a whole eternity of chances. But you only get one chance at life, and it’s a very small window.”

“What’s so bad about the light?” “You can see better. And most things aren’t worth looking at.”

“You’re going to eat it. You know you will. You won’t be able to resist it. You’re going to eat your own baby, and then you’re going to go to prison.”