Have you ever lived a human life.

It is exhausting.

Oh

That was supposed to go differently.

Sorry

Have you ever truly lived?

Humans ask this sort of question all the time and they can never come up with one answer.

Even though it’s a yes or no question. 

I can’t say I’ve lived at all.

My mind constantly buzzes with the hum of thinking, but it is so stuffed with cotton and ants that all I think is dulled to just a hum.

A hiss equivalent to that of a splinter in the cosmic background hum we all never hear.

I keep it this way for a reason.

I don’t want to think about this any more.

If I were to stick my fingers through the hole in my head and drain the hum away, I would be left with two things:

First, I would have my routine,

Second I would have my need to maim.

When I still thought, my head wouldn’t just hum, it would shriek.

It would yell to me, growl and sing.

Soon my whole life was consumed with thoughts of bubbling skin, beadings, the sick sound of breaking bones.

I tried to ignore it, but it spread through me like sickness.

I would wake up with thoughts about rending flesh. Of the thick, wet pops as skin tore away from muscle and bone. The sticky ribbons of blood that ran along the space that served as an undoable reminder of the vile act I would commit.

Then I would get dressed

As I was brushing my teeth, I thought about pulling teeth. The cries of pain as I pulled each tooth from gum. The clicking noises as I tucked it away for some unknown project. The sobbing of my victim as they spit out more and more blood and less and less words

Then I would shower.

Then I would drive to work.

I exchanged small talk with my co-workers and wondered silently which one would like to become auto-cannibalistic when the alternative is a slow boiling or to be nailed to my bedroom wall to plead.

And on it would go like that.

I want to make clear, I’ve never hurt anybody.

I made sure of that.

Usually I would wake up and while the violence lurked like the sun in twilight, It was never intended.

Then, all at once, 

it was. 

I woke up laughing. 

I knew what I had to do that day.

I had to lash out. I had to buy weapons or work today. 

I had plans for guns and knives and fish hooks and nails, razor blades and sledge hammers, batteries and power drills. I could keep going, chains and lighter fluid and broken glass and all manner of thing to torture.

I was a trip to the hardware store away from carnage…

Instead I stopped myself.

I did go to the hardware store that day.

I bought an ice pick, a claw-foot hammer, a paint marker and a leather harness for dogs.

I called in sick as calmly as possible, then I did what needed to be done.

I hammered the ice pick through the red ‘X’ on my forehead, and filled my head with cotton and sugar.

I thought it was funny, the sugar.

Thought it might make me sweeter.

I actually ran out a day ago, so I had to ask my elderly neighbor for some.

At least she didn’t ask me what I was baking.

Once the icepick was almost too deep to remove, I stopped hammering. 

I laid down on the floor and stuffed the bleeding wound with cotton balls then sugar, and I felt this need to maul lift.

The screaming and singing about teeth and cracking bones dulled to a sweet hum.

A hum like the angels performing silent poetry.

The ants came later.

They came when I was laid on the floor. After the blood was dried, after the icepick had rolled away and under the sink.

They crawled over me and reassured me that I had become sweeter when the sugar fused to my brain.

I smiled and stared at the ceiling, breathing heavy.

Do you know what it was like for me to be a human?

It was like breathing hard.

It was violent and difficult.

And it ended with collapsed lungs and blue lips