Fire Eater - A Short Story

 “I’ve never liked eating. I’m often told by my mother that I used to love pickled radish or scrambled eggs or whatever was in front of me at that particular moment. A story I’ve grown tired of. A story… indeed.. a fiction - is exactly what “having a preferred cuisine” is. A mere accessory crafted by people to impart colour into an otherwise dull, grey life. But then again, what is not such fiction? One’s favourite song, style, person, place, moment and so on. What significance do they have other than their arbitrary subjective appraisal (a temporary appraisal at that, for most)? I’ve never understood such an inclination most around me seem to possess.

Regardless, my particular aversion to food, more specifically to the act of eating food, is, unfortunately, a psychosomatic one. Whenever I think about food or eating, a cyclic pattern deeply ingrained in my pathology ensues. At first, especially if I have gone without food for a prolonged duration of time, the thought is pleasant. I have experienced instances, although only once or twice, where my mouth even began salivating. However, the very next second a weight seems to have placed itself at the pit of my stomach. It’s not painful or irritating in the slightest. It’s just there. It is as if my body is telling me “No, it is not worth it.” Of course, as a living animal, my instinct for self preservation overtakes any philosophical observations about human nature and as such I have managed to go on existing without starving myself. But at the same time, as it would seem obvious, I’ve always found it difficult to put on weight.

I write all of this in order to explain why I may have a specific disadvantage when it comes to submitting an essay on the topic “Food and Community”...”

Thus read the first paragraph of the sheet of paper clasped in the gaunt hands of a 19 year old “living animal” named Ken Miranda. Ken was not lying when he wrote down his inability to gain weight. He looked like “death, as imagined by Victorian era white folk” as he thought so himself. The clothes he wore pointed to absolutely no thinking behind the decisions made that morning. The oversized sweater (oversized, not by choice) with a pastel coloured flowery design was constantly at a raging warfare with the neon green spider web design over black, 90’s style cool-kid joggers. In a way, chance herself chose Ken’s outfit. Aside from them, he wore pure leather gloves as he could not go without them hugging his hands. They got cold very often as of course, the leather did what his lack-of-skin could not. So yes, he was not lying - if only understating the details of his physicality. In fact, lying wasn’t something Ken ever really did. He found the act to be a complete bother. To him, there was nothing so significant enough to make up a lie about. It was no moral sentiment. He had no moral sentiments. It was purely a practical one. Practical, that was what Ken was. 

Ken re-read a few sentences of his essay for his English Lit class before walking down the treads that connected the benches to the lecturer’s table in the spacious and lively lecture hall. Ken disliked English Lit classes. However, as per the peculiar rules of the university, he was forced to elect between Literature and Political Philosophy. He chose, according to himself, the lesser evil. After placing his paper atop a stack on the lecturer’s table, Ken looked up and around the hall - at the handful of students left behind. They were hurriedly scribbling down their own Structuralist essays about “Food and Community”, just as Ken had completed doing so only 5 minutes prior. Ken’s surveillance, however, was not one of triumph or glee, nor was it objectless. He was looking for an anomaly. An anomaly, not to nature as such, but to his perception of the world. 

“Why would she be here? Didn’t she say she loves lit classes? We won’t find her jotting up a last minute essay…” 

“I’m not looking for her.”

“Sure.. and I’m Jesus Christ with Leukemia.”

“I heard her quite distinctive giggle a little earlier.” 

“Oh so now we have profiled her “distinctive giggle”, have we?”

“You know we’ve always indulged in people watching.”

She was, indeed, present in the room. Seated just amidst the only source of noise other than the scratching of pen on paper, a young girl with wild auburn hair was unsuccessfully trying to write in her own ledger. She sat in the middle of 3 other students, who too, tried concentrating on writing but ultimately had given up and now engaged openly in chatter.

“I thought we declared romance to be a scam.”

“It is, but honestly, I don’t know why you even brought that subject up right now.”

“Oh really, we don’t?”

The girl sprang up suddenly, muttering something to the group before seating herself by the lower corner of the room. Now, with a stern, but cutely serious expression, like when a child tries to imitate their parents’ expression while working, she continues to write in a tempo, not too fast nor too slow. Ken watched her as she tapped into a state of deep concentration. She was no longer aware of the movements of her hands. They were invisible to her. They did not exist. It was as if her thoughts were directly being plastered down on the paper.

After a few minutes she stopped. She brought the back end of her pen to her cheeks and plunged it into her soft pillowy flesh, as if to create artificial dimples. As a result her lips contorted a half smile, as it spread to the point where her pen now resided. She was deep in contemplation of what she had written down. 

“Attack! Now that she’s all alone and vulnerable!!” shouted JC.

“The fuck are you on about?”

“This is a textbook teenage crush. We’re focusing on mundane details that we will keep rethinking about.”

“Not a crush. I just think she’s interesting.”

“Right. We find her interesting so we go out of our way to avoid her for almost two weeks until she notices and approaches us about it. Noted.”

“We’ve been over this. I don’t care about her or her plays.”

“Come on, stop lying to yourself. You’re already schizo enough, once you start lying to yourself there’s nothing left for us.”

“I was… intimidated.”

“Intimidated.”

***

Around four months ago, Ken had found himself at the college auditorium, looking for one of his data analysis professors, an Oscar Rasada. He had missed the submission of a compilation project by two weeks and Prof. Rasada had asked him to find him at lunch hour to discuss his actions, or in this case, the lack thereof. 

Rasada was a typical straight forward academician, someone whom Ken had looked upon favourably as his lectures were never too difficult nor too boring. However, Ken did find the fact of Rasada being in the auditorium peculiar. He never had judged Rasada to be a man of theatre. Theatre was for the hysterics, Ken had concluded after a few visits to the local theatre with his cousin who was a fanatic for drama.

“Both the people involved in the production and the performance of theatre, must embody an "excess ". An excess of energy and of emotion. Is this not what we call madness? It is this “excess” that is exuded during the performance - that the audiences consume. The audiences, therefore must be people heavily lacking of what the producers have an excess of. Whether it be a lack or an excess of energy and emotion, both parties, the producers and the consumers of theatre (and most forms of art), are deeply mentally unstable..” so went his essay on Theatre he had to write in the first semester centred around Shakespeare. An essay Ken had regretted when Prof. Durand had paraphrased parts of it in one of her rants against apathy in the young. She was notorious for getting hung up on tangents and going off course. Coincidentally, just as Ken’s stream of thought landed on Durand, Ken found her and Rasada seated right at the front row. He approached them, meticulously unzipping his backpack and taking out a folder which contained the compilation project completed and neatly arranged.

Upon seeing Ken through his peripheral vision, Rasada’s eyes widened in a flurry of recollection. It was obvious he had forgotten about Ken. He was like that.

“Had any trouble finding me Mr. Miranda? Maria here dragged me along to watch… what was it called again?”

“Saint Joan, what the hell…I’ve told you this a hundred times already.”

“Right, well there is a reason I teach numbers and code.”

Ken could guess as to what had happened by that point. A listless middle-aged Rasada was violently shaken and dragged into cheering on young hysterics by the ever-so-zealous young literature professor. The realisation made Ken’s eyelids drop half way as his gaze shifted from a sorry Rasada to the lively Durand. 

“I mean, he didn’t tell me he was intending to meet with you, Ken. I bet he forgot about you anyway.” Said Durand with her mouth widened into a smile, expecting a clap back.

“Well anyway, here is the project professor. The submission date slipped my mind, I apologise.”

“Slipped your mind by what now? Two weeks?” 

“Things came up.”

“Like what, Kennie Boy?” interjected Durand with a smug, yet interested look on her face - emphasising the O in Boy. 

“Why would she call us that?”

“I don’t know, she’s a bitch.”

“Do I have to tell you? What are you, my mother?” 

Rasada let out a nasal chuckle. “Well anyway, could you please leave it at my desk at the office? It’s on the way to the lunch hall, I presume you haven’t had lunch yet?”

“The boy eats?” Durand sarcastically. 

“If we had a rope or a knife…”

Ken looked at Durand with an unimpressed grimace. Suddenly, a spark of regret zapped her.

“Well now, Kenny boy, forgive your dearest professor, will ya. Didn’t mean nothing by it.”

Ken shook his head a few centimetres as a gesture of forgiveness, with his lips still forming an opening to reveal his white teeth. He felt embarrassed.

“God she’s insufferable.”

“Get the fuck out of here, Let us.” voiced JC.

With an inward sigh Ken began to zip his backpack that had been open all this time as he started back to the entrance of the Auditorium. The seats were mostly engulfed in darkness . The stage was the only part which was lit. Suddenly a ferocious flurry of mumbled yelling enveloped the hall. Ken looked over his shoulder. He saw that Durand had sprang up from her seat and was striding for the backstage. Rasada however, was only up on his feet by that point, performing a miniscule back stretch before starting for the backstage as well. 

“Are you so fucking incompetent as to not even cut up the holes for the helmet? Why the absolute fuck did you even join the fucking play if you don’t give a fuck? Does it look like nobody here gives a fuck? Come here and I’ll clean your fucking eyeballs with my bare fucking hands so that you can look again…”

The shrillness of the voice and the obvious attempt at adding as many “fuck”s to their sentences so as to seem authoritative and intimidating made Ken form an amused smile on his face. The voice continued, maintaining the same level of pitch and volume. From what ken could make out from the barrage of more “fuck”s, the person being yelled at either did a half-assed job on the work they were given, possibly not doing it altogether.

“Oh boy, aren’t we lucky we aren’t in the troupe.”

“No, not really. I’m already quite aware of how I am. I wouldn’t have joined in a million years anyway.”

The yelling stopped, but was instantly followed by a billow of shouts, gasps and other typically dramatic reactions. All of a sudden Ken saw a blonde boy dressed in robes fly in backwards from the side curtains and land on his back, creating a somewhat loud thud sound as he hit the wooden flooring of the stage. Subsequently came out the originator of whatever led the blonde boy to find himself almost on his back. In an armlock of 2 students, all wearing medieval European costumes, was the girl, clearly supposed to be Joan of Arc.

“Who’s that?”

“I think she’s in English Lit..  name… Carmella?”

“Oh calm-y down there, Carmie.” Rushed in Durand.

A sense of repulsion ran down Ken’s spine upon hearing her. Durand placed her left hand on Carmella’s shoulder and the right caressed her cheek as if to console her.

“Right…she was so loud and angry that her cheeks were throbbing from pain.”

“God, I hate them.”

An uninterested Rasada entered the stage and helped the blonde boy back on his feet before asking him if he was alright in a lowered voice. 

“Ma’am, this absolute fuck needs to be kicked off the troupe. We’ve worked so intensely hard for the play and this utter failure of a human being, who intentionally took on all the responsibility for the props and set design, has the gall to show up with a sorry-ass apology cuz…” The expression “sorry-ass apology” made Ken break out a snigger that was heard by, at least the blonde boy as he looked back and formed a weak smile before seemingly realising his position and springing his head back to the professor. This did not go unnoticed by Carmella, who now stood with her mouth slightly agape. Her eyebrows subtly stressed toward each other and her skin folded a soft triangle between them. Ken could not help but shrug a little.

“Ugh.. shouldn’t have done that now huh.. Let’s get out of here now, we’ve lingered long enough.”

 

Ken couldn’t move, however, as the girl now peered right at him. Although her lips stood tightly closed her right eyelid now appeared to have opened up completely as opposed to her right, which stayed like how it was. This expression bit at Ken’s stomach. He hugged his torso with his forearms as if to protect it from an unseen threat. His heart rate sprang up. Suddenly a teardrop came running down the girl’s left eye. It followed a perfectly straight line down her smooth cheeks. The droplet, although moved normally, as a liquid should, looked as if it was boiling. The warm tinted stage lighting, the girl’s curly auburn hair that stood fiercely in chaos like the flame of a fire, her tawny skin glistening in the harsh lights and the boundless anger within her deeply terrified Ken. He wanted to curl up like a fetus, even bringing his knee up a little. His hands turned stone cold even through his leather gloves. He felt as if he was a prey who had dared to stare into the beast’s gaping mouth. He was afraid her sheer existence would devour him. Would penetrate his flesh with a thousand burning arrows. 

“She’s crazy, let’s get the fuck out.”

Ken could not think. Ken could not move. Ken felt this was the end. 

“Hey there sweetie, c-come on. Let’s sit down, and talk this through okay. We’ll think of something. I-I’ll get some students to help you guys out with the sets. Come on..” Durand softly dragged Carmie, who’s wild eyes seemed to have returned to their normalcy.

“What the fuck was that…”

“She is not human.”

“Woah there… scared that we made a girl cry? I mean it wasn’t even us, that girl’s insane.”

“Insane indeed. I don’t think anyone can out-insane her.”

“Exactly. Now let’s get the fuck out of this clownhouse.”

Now that Carmella was made aware of Ken’s existence, Ken predicted that she’d try to approach him as he did somewhat play a role in putting her in, what Ken thought to be, a vulnerable situation. This was not good for him. For the following few weeks Ken made sure to attend English Lit on time. He found out that Carmella Davis was a 2nd year majoring in performance arts by eavesdropping around people she often hung out with.

“It’s strategic overhearing.”

“And I’m Jesus Christ with Leukemia.”

She was a secretary of the college’s Students Union which often got in trouble with the faculty. She took Literature, Art History and Gender studies as Electives and was an active member in the Theatre Troupe. Her life was, as it seemed to Ken, one hell of that mad “excess”. All this information made Ken even more repulsed by her. So he did everything in his power to be inconspicuous in the spaces she frequented, to blend in with the background. 

“We’re planning out our outfits now? In the past 18 years we have never done this.”

“I’m not planning… just not wearing any eye-catching clothes is all.”

“That’s not the point… why are we taking the task of avoiding her this seriously? We don’t care about crazy people on the streets, why care about some emotional bitch we once saw at the theatre?”

“You’re right.”

“We can just tell her to fuck off. Besides, if she goes all haywire, nothing’s stopping us from just walking away…”

***

“Heya. Heard your name’s Ken… you go to the theatre often?”

Ken was totally caught off guard. His heart seemed to stop, his eyes widened and he desperately wanted to cry. 

“Why is she here? It's the usual time..”

“Just walk away.”

Ken tried to pretend someone or something else had caught his apparently narrow area of attention. However Carmella suddenly dove and caught him by the sleeve.

“Excuse me, I think I saw you at the theatre a few days ago.”

“Tell her to fuck off.”

“Sure, yeah uh hi, I was there to submit my assignment. I don’t like theatre.”

“Oh. Why is that?”

“What the fuck are we doing here?”

Carmella took on a surprised yet inquisitive facial expression. Looking at her face reminded Ken of the horror he saw in it two weeks ago which caused him to reflexively look away.

“It’s just fucking insanity. People spouting bullshit and other people eating it up, calling it “cathartic”... It’s utterly repulsive. And.. and people who do theatre are even worse.” Ken gave out a nervous chuckle. “They want to play pretend and dance around the stage with their silly costumes and make up and the public labels it 'art’ and pays them…” Ken was desperately grasping for the sharpest words to attack her with. He was desperate to fight back her presence. “It’s childish, no, that would be insulting to the children… they contribute more to society than you fucks…”

Carmella’s face now had a peculiar mixture of the expression of being provoked and a confused smile.

“I mean.. I.. first off, you’re wrong on so many levels, but I am surprised you have such strong feelings about hating theatre. I’ve been watching you from time to time, you know? and you seemed to be almost a perfect non-person with no interests, convictions or, well, a backbone frankly. A perfect nobody… it seems I was wrong though… you are a perfect nobody with misinformed, shallow criticisms of the centuries-old tradition of theatre.”

This response severely confused Ken. This was not what he was expecting. Carmella’s barrage of insults and swear words at the blonde boy stemmed from her love for theatre… there was no real malice toward the boy himself. Here, however, that was not the case. She was not defending theatre nor was she attacking his criticisms. She was attacking him. 

After taking a moment to recollect himself and process the situation, Ken pulled back a chair and swiftly sat on it. His gloved hands had begun to tremble a little.

“Okay… well.. You’re right…”

“What do you mean I’m right? You’re okay with that? With… With being a fuck-all non-person? To.. t-to wither away in the background?”

Carmella looked angry. Properly angry. That old expression was beginning to make a return.

“Tell her to fuck off, for fucks sake.”

“Why the fuck do you care anyway? See, this is exactly what I mean… you folk think everything is theatre. Everyone’s a character and everything needs to be dramatic and has to have that stupid old three act structure. It makes me want to vomit.”

The expression died down upon hearing Ken’s retaliation. 

“What do you do in your free time?”

“What the fuck is she on about, we need to get the fuck away.”

“Nothing… I’m a non-person, remember?”

“Hm.. so you do non things? You non read, non sing, non hang out with friends, non watch movies, non eat?”

“She’s really starting to get on my nerves.”

“We can just walk away right now..”

Ken took off his left glove and wiped his forehead. The sensation of his thin skin barely acting as a wall between his hand and his bare skull caught him off-guard. He pulled his hand away for an instant before continuing the caress.

“Look, what do you want from me?”

“Nothing.. I want no thing from a no body… just socializing, that’s all”

“Well.. nice to meet you I guess.”

“Really? Is it really “nice” to meet me?”

“Nope.”

Carmella’s eyes lit up.

A group of 4, whom Ken knew were here, entered the mostly empty hall. They were chattering among themselves.

“Ey Carmie! What’s up, did Durand have some work for you? Why’d you dip?” Carmella suddenly looked toward the 4. Ken took the chance to put his glove back on, get up and hunt for another seat farther away. 

***

Carmella got up, paper in hand and her pen lodged behind her ear. She had tied her naturally curly hair into a ponytail so that it would not fall in between her and her writing. She walked over to the lecturer’s table and placed her paper atop the stack, all while keeping her eyes on what she had written. Ken had returned to his place only a row behind Carmella’s new place. He had his phone out, and was trying not to draw Carmella’s attention although he had accepted his visibility to her.

“Well what are we waiting here for? Let’s get going… Do you want her to come talk to you?”

Ken got up, back-pack on one shoulder. The ferocity with which he stood up caused his chair to fling back with a screech. A screech that wasn’t loud by any standard, however , upon hearing it, Carmella jumped a millimetre. She looked up toward Ken.

“Was she… reading my essay?”

“Ugh, that bitch.”

Ken’s eyes narrowed into a squint. 

Carmella walked a few steps to the side of the table, all while Ken’s eyes stayed stubbornly on her. Although it was discernible her destination was her seat, she looked aloof of it, as if she was deep in thought. She stopped right in front of the entrance door and suddenly looked up at Ken.

“The stuff about your eating condition, is all of that true?”

Ken felt a few pairs of eyes, possibly Carmella’s friends’ on his back. He was irritated that she’d blurted it out so loudly.

“Why did you read my essay, it’s not for you.”

“Just tell me if it's true or not.”

“No… it’s not true, I just wanted an excuse to not put in the effort for a proper essay.”

Carmella’s eyes twitched. She didn’t believe him. Of course, his physicality betrayed his story. And he knew this.

“Uhh.. I-I’m anorexic,” blurted out Ken.

“What the FUCK did we just say?”

Now, Carmella's face took on a seriously inquisitive expression. She realised something didn’t make sense.

“Why not just say that in your essay then?”

“B-because I’m…  embarrassed.”

The word “embarrassed” left Ken’s mouth in a bizarre manner.

“You don’t seem so embarrassed now..”

“What are we doing here… We need to seriously get our act together.”

Suddenly, as if a lightning strike, the entrance door Carmella was standing only a few centimetres away from, ferociously flung wide open. It seemed that Durand had hurled her shoulder at the door as she opened it. She seemed vexed. However, whatever her vexation was, vanished the very next second as she heard a crackly thud and a brief screech. She quickly flung the door back shut to reveal Carmella sitting on the floor, legs out front, clasping an outpour of blood from her nose.

“Oh, Carmie, you're bleeding like hell here!” Durand exclaimed with a shaky voice.

 

The brown Fisherman’s sweater she was wearing started to darken in colour as her blood flowed down and drenched her clothing. Durand got on her knees, right beside Carmella and put one of her arms behind her head as if to inspect the damage done.

“Oh, dear Carmie, it looks broken… uhh, SOMEONE, GET THE NURSE! THE BLEEDING WON’T STOP!”

Carmella moved her hand that was trying to stop the blood, as if she had given up. She opened her mouth weakly to substitute her broken nose. Ken noticed that she was breathing deeply, he could almost imagine her diaphragm contracting and her ribs pushing out as her lungs expanded to let the air in. He peered at her mouth. The blood had even begun to flow in. Her white teeth now sprinkled with spots of dispersed red dots.

“No ma’am, I’m ok-” Carmella’s speech was blocked off with a sharp pain.

Durand suddenly plunged her hands inside her cardigan pockets and pulled out a plastic box with the length of her hand. She opened it erratically and pulled out a soft looking microfiber cloth, dropping the pair of glasses she occasionally wore while reading in the process. She then wiped some of the blood near Carmella’s nostrils; however, the sheer force with which the blood flowed seemed to overpower Durand’s ability to wipe. Instead of clearing out, all she managed to do was smear her soft cheeks in red. “Has anyone gone to get the nurse yet?” Durand asked with perhaps the most serious expression Ken had ever seen of her, on her face. 

“Maybe we should go over and give her a hand?”

Ken did not move. He was transfixed at the sight of Carmella’s slightly agape lips, glistening as it was covered in smooth, almost honey-like blood. Ken was even getting aroused. He could feel the crotch area of his pants tightening. Carmella’s eyes, droopy, perhaps from the loss of blood, looked at Ken as if she wanted to say something, but ultimately her face remained static as she had no more energy left to do anything. Ken’s gaze now dropped to her petite neck. He looked at the outline of her larynx subtly bulging out. It sprang up and down as Carmella swallowed, what Ken would imagine, a bit of her own blood mixed with her saliva. Ken was so enthralled by what was happening that he did not notice that her friends had all run down and were all gathered by her side.

“Oh, Carmie… Hang right in there, alright?”

Just then, the university nurse flew down from behind Ken. He probably had entered from the door atop the incline. He went into the group and knelt right in front of Carmella, which broke Ken’s gaze. He tried tip-toeing and craning his neck to get a better look, but the sublimely blood-drenched portrait could not be regained. He collected his bag and quickly walked out through the same door the nurse had rushed in through.

***

Carmella and her bloody ordeal had devoured Ken’s entire day. He proceeded with his usual routine as if on autopilot, with his mind still fixated upon the image of the girl in her plight. She, in that snapshot, was a blood drenched goddess, her wild fiery hair forming a divine halo, her nose pouring down the very essence of life and her mouth viciously sucking in everything and her throat delivering them to their inevitable ends. He could hear JC’s complaints and sighs as the non-verbal part of his mind kept recreating that image.

“For Christ’s sake we need to get our shit together… We cannot let her consume you… this is insane.. Utterly and absolutely fucked..”

His own inner voice ceased. All his mind now cared about was that image and it made him restless. Laying in bed, he adjusted and re adjusted his positioning, randomly scratched his thin layer of skin at the slightest sensation and could barely keep his eyelids fixed shut. He wanted to go back to that moment, to that scene, to that image of her and he wanted to stay there. He wanted to be one with that image, to be consumed, to be burned whole by blood. Blood.

The walls collapsed as they transmuted into blood. The blood covered the floor. Ken’s ankles were submerged in it. He looked around. A void. It was a vast, ever expanding ocean of three inch deep blood. Ken ran frantically. His arms flailed as he struggled to pull his knees eyes each time he raised them in his run. There was no end to it, no walls, no exits.

“Is this what we wished for? A world of blood?”

The blood began to move. Bubbles and patterns formed as if it was being boiled. It thickened. Ken Lifted his soaked feet but he noticed that the blood was no longer weightless. It thickened. It continued to thicken. He placed his feet back but now it no longer sank to the bottom. The surface was viscous and thick. He panicked as he realised his other leg was now caught within it. He tried to pull it free but it was cemented rigid within. However, as he struggled to pull, he realised that his feet were no longer touching blood or any liquid or semi-liquid for that matter. Its bright crimson had deepened to a meaty maroon.

It was flesh now. The world was flesh.

In Ken’s continued struggle to free his feet, he lost balance and fell backwards. But to his surprise, instead of hitting the meat flooring, he sank further down. As if violently waking up from a dream in which one finds oneself falling, Ken finds himself seated in Rasada’s lecture hall. His violent jerk reaction caused quite a sharp screech sound of the metal legged chair sliding on the tiles but Rasada and the hall remained apathetic to it. He, as usual, kept on with his class. Ken’s violent breathing softened down. All the lights went out. All the usual chattering, clicking, tapping and other permanent ambient sounds of the lecture hall seized in a millisecond. With the sound of a lever being pulled, a spotlight captured Ken. He was still sitting, only the desk, the people, and everything else had disappeared. It was him, his chair and a harsh spotlight originating from the great darkness that surrounded. 

“Systems. Beautiful, aren’t they? There is great elegance and comfort to be found in the sets and matrices that form the complex Systems we owe our civilization, no, our entire existence to… Mr. Miranda, I believe you will share my profound sense of reverence for an independent and whole system that just keeps existing. It is not bothered by the great tragedy of its existence that the old poets romantically lamented about. It does not care about the complexities of its identity. It just keeps going. It is, dare I say, vulgarly uninterested in interest itself. And as such it keeps whole. It does not spill over, it does not waver nor fumble… God.. what I would give…”

Mr. Rasada’s sudden eruption into a melodramatic soliloquy about data systems surprisingly appeared to Ken, natural. He even felt that he anticipated Rasada’s disembodied voice. No, no other voice could exist in that moment. None other was logically capable of entering Ken’s ears. 

“Do we share his profound sense of reverence?”

“I hated the module on systems so fuck no.”

“Oh my Mr. Miranda, I truly am surprised to hear that!”

Ken jumped a millimetre in his chair.

“What about.. What about the chapter on Predictive Analytics? What did you think about that?”

“Well, isn’t that what the project we forgot about was based on? Does he really think we missed the deadline because we were so devoted to it?”

“Huh…”

Rasada sounded sincerely flabbergasted.

“Since it seems you can hear us professor, we do think you are one of the better professors.. Unlike another clumsy airhead woman, your classes aren’t a bother.”

Rasada did not respond. Ken did not know what to do or even what to think.

“But I truly did think you’d understand me Mr. Miranda… You admitted to being a non- person and I must say I couldn't help but feel a little proud when I heard it myself.” 

“To be perfectly clear Mr. Rasada, that was not a statement of identity. We are simply unbothered by such idiotic insults.”

After a brief pause, a pause that felt endless while at the same time non-existent to Ken, Mr. Rasada’s voice returned. He laughed. His pitch was much higher and insane sounding. By the latter half of his brief but unsettling laugh, he broke out to a soft sob.

“Miranda… Ken.. you are…. You’re right.”

Rasada’s hideous mix of crying and laughing continued. 

“Of course he’s right! He’s the worst of them I’ve seen. Honestly Ken I don’t think your problem is pathological, it’s spiritual. For god’s sake care! Care about anything! Give yourself over! I don’t care what to, care about shitting or pissing but care goddamnit!”

“Now this is a woman who’s taken the phrase “Live your life like a movie” to heart huh.. Can’t she go without reducing everything into your cliche romantic third act bullshit?”

“What about you Ken, do you agree with your Jesus friend?”

Ken did not move his mouth nor did he want to engage his mind. However he was not numb nor was he doing this on purpose. It could be likened more to Locked in Syndrome. 

“GODDAMNIT KEN!! FIX YOUR HEART FOR FUCK’S SAKE. This is no way to keep going.”

“Maria…” Rasada’s voice struggled to form words in between his sobbing. “Don’t ruin him.. He’s perfec-”

Durand let out a war cry. It shattered Ken’s eardrums despite him jamming his boney palm into his ears. Ken felt he needed to rip his head off to stop the pain. He felt his ear holes fill with blood. Perfect silence submerged him. The spotlight spanned over a few metres in front of Ken leaving him in the dark. The pool of light now laid on a lecturer’s table. Ken recognised it was Durand’s as it contained stacks of paper and files arranged in the exact same manner it was back when Carmella’s nose broke. 

At the other end of the table stood Durand, dressed the exact same way he saw her last. She was breathing frantically. Her eyes miserably failed to hide hatred as they fixated upon what was in front of her. Ken’s gaze followed to where they pointed. It was Rasada, standing perfectly straight, his head tilted slightly upward. Although his eyelids opened wider than usual, the rest of his face remained perfectly emotionless. There was no sign that he was crying as suggested by Ken’s experience with his disembodied voice. However, as Ken examined further, something was dripping from Rasada’s head. Rasada straightened his head to look directly at the fiery Durand. Ken watched as her rigid and fierce posture softened. Her breathing deepened. With each breath she grew and shrank. She smiled and a few tears escaped her compassionate looking eyes. She held out both her hands. Ken noticed that her right hand had a noticeable amount of blood splatter. Rasada rushed forward into Durand’s arms. They embraced warmly. Durand pulled back and went in for a kiss.

“Fucking shit. I think we’re on drugs.”

The two professors, eyes closed, engaged in a deeply sensual kiss. Rasada’s right hand clasped Durand’s head and was desperately pushing it closer to his face as though he wanted her head to dissolve into his. His left hand slid down to her waist and even lower, which was blocked by the stacks of paper on the table. Suddenly, their slithery kissing stopped as if someone had pushed a pause button. 

It took Ken two whole seconds to realise what had happened. He looked closer at Rasada’s face which was savagely sandwiched between Durand’s aggressive palms. His mouth was open and Durand’s lips bulged inside it. Durand violently pulled her head back and attached to her mouth was, what first registered to Ken, as a fish, perhaps an eel.

However, It was not an eel. It was Rasada’s tongue, pulled right out along with the root. Slimy and clumpy blood and flesh particles dripped off its end. Still entangled in each other’s arms, the two of them spun around as in a waltz, Durand, with Rasada’s tongue hanging out of her mouth. However, before continuing to look at the tongue, which undoubtedly was a spectacle of gore, Ken’s eyes landed on Rasada’s head. Ken had not noticed it before as Rasada never turned his head enough to let his eyes feast. The middle aged man had a deep gash at the side of his head. This, Ken realised, was where the drops of blood he had registered earlier had come from. It was deep enough to reveal a pulsating jelly-like substance vested within. Rasada slowly leaned towards Durand, who, to Ken’s bemusement, had begun chewing on the tongue. Rasada’s lips landed softly on Durand’s neck. He kissed it with reverence. His hands reached for her breasts. They fumbled over them frantically. He shifted from her left to her right and kissed her neck again. He lowered his upper body by an inch as if to inspect Durand’s neck. As if a vulture diving for its prey, his teeth drug into her throat, tearing out her larynx. 

The sheer gore that was unfolding in front of his eyes led Ken to ignore a certain aspect of the space he inhabited, that no was no longer ignorable at this point. 

Fire. Encircling the cannibal academics and Ken himself, was an endless inferno that spanned through all the eyes could comprehend. The fire was encroaching upon Ken. He even felt strands of flame scraping his shins. He looked at the professors to see if they reacted to this new development in their environment and to his surprise, the table, alongside the stack of essays, were already consumed by the fire. However, due to the height that the flames in front of them rose to, he could not see them. 

“This is probably a dream.”

“It’s not a dream.”

“What?”

“This is not a dream.”

“No, I obviously understood what we said… What do we think this is?”

“It’s whatever you say it isn’t.”

“Huh?”

Ken’s legs started running. His right hand stretched out in front as if he was grasping for something. He felt the skin boiling heat with each step but he did not seize his dash. He dived through the tall flame, both arms stretched wide. 

With a harsh tremor, Ken awoke seated on the subway. A dire feeling of disappointment overcame him. He felt cheated. He felt he had been made to run blind on a record player with a false promise of gold at the end of the track.

“Sorry to say, ‘I told ya so’…”

“Shut the fuck up.”

“We’re telling ourselves to shut up… boy we have hit rock bottom haven’t we?”

The train was packed as usual. Packs of college students, miserable looking white collar workers and uncanny faced corpos in suits.

“I think we should get back home and get some rest… we’re in no state to sit in for a lecture.”

Ken smacked the side of his head, hard with his wrist. This caused an old man wearing a dark green Beret to give him a weird look, as if he had taken offence to Ken’s behavior.

“Why’d we do that for? Smile at that guy or he could give us hell.”

Ken stared deep into the man’s eyes. His eyes were perfectly still and his eyelids were stuck to their ceilings. The man awkwardly diverted his head to his phone, which he had been holding in his right hand.

“This is it. We have gone crazy. That crazy bitch has driven us crazy.”

The subway had reached Ken’s station. He quickly slid himself into the crowd of other students that formed in front of the train doors. He pushed his way through the crowd, irritating the ameboid that they had formed together. 

“Turn back now… no good is going to come of this. Why are we ignoring our goddamn selves?”

Ken’s head buzzed about as if looking for something. He removed his gloves and dropped them on the ground with no intent to ever pick them back up.

“Why did we do that for?”

He stopped as his eyes caught the sight of two bright orange vests. He rushed towards where the elevators were. One of them was open. It seemed that it was undergoing repairs. One of the orange vests was adorned by a man who stood leaning forward into the dark hole that the elevator doors failed to conceal. He had in his hands, a torch. Behind him stood a woman, the second orange vest. She had a writing pad in her hands and was scribbling something on it. As Ken rushed forward, he realised something that almost stopped him dead in his tracks. However, just after the realisation, his long strided walk turned into a straight up sprint. Ken felt each foot step make contact with the solid ground below. But he did not hear them. No sound entered his ears.

“Where are we going, goddamnit.”

Ken’s sprint came to a sudden end just a few metres before the woman. The sound of Ken’s sudden arrival caught her off guard. Her hand stopped scribbling as she flipped her head to her side to look at the surprising new stimuli. Ken peered into her eyes. She looked around 40 years old. She was shorter than Ken by a few inches. Her eyebrows dove inward in an inquisitive gesture as her lips formed words that fell flatly on Ken’s deaf ears. His eyes shifted sharply to her vest pocket which had a green, crystal-like oblong handle sticking out of it. His hands darted at it and pulled it out. It was a 25 centimetre heavy-duty screw driver. He clasped the handle tightly with both hands, his right one clasping fiercely on his left. In one swift moment, which was faster than what the woman could counter although she did attempt sincerely to disarm Ken, he thrust the screw driver inward towards his skull. It pierced the right side of his forehead, flew right through and re-emerged at the lower back. 

***

Back in his college, now with a complete hole running all the way through his skull and brain, Ken walked the hallway with urgency. As he walked, he could feel the air blow through the hole. It was pleasant. It made him feel he belonged in the space he occupied. He reached Durand’s hall. He entered through the lower level, using both his arms to push the door open. The room was all empty besides one. Carmella stood about midway up the hall’s slant. A small rectangular piece of gauze covered the bridge of her nose. They stared into each other’s eyes. As Ken approached the middle of the room, he noticed that she stood with one leg in front of the other, and her hands held elegantly on either side as if posing for a portrait of a goddess. Her hair was untied and wild as always. Her eyes were wide open and peered down at Ken. Her slightly raised neck posturing made it look as if she was looking down at Ken. Ken took a few steps up towards Carmella. He used his sleeves to wipe the blood surrounding his right eye. Only two levels below where Carmella stood, he stopped. 

Carmella slowly lowered her head to look directly at Ken, all while unwaveringly maintaining eye contact. His lips split slightly apart. She drew air from her mouth. She brought her left hand across to the right end of the tape which sealed the gauze to her nose and peeled it swiftly. Its removal revealed a few millimetre long gash across the thin bridge of her nose, which was now slightly bent towards her right. She dropped the gauze on the floor and formed some words with her lips which Ken could not hear. He was unbothered by this fact though. Her eyebrows softened further and her eyes now took on a warm and welcoming tone. Ken's hands, as if like a puppet’s, caught Carmella’s cheeks and pulled it toward his own for a kiss. Carmella’s body leaned forward and fell inwards as if limp. Her hands slid across Ken’s back, clinging onto him tightly. Ken felt Carmella’s soft and ever-so-supple cheeks. His hands greedily dug in as if he wanted them for his own. Carmella’s arms pulled Ken close and close as if she wanted him to sink into her. Ken felt his heart beating at a speed of 50 mach. He was overwhelmed with frustration. A frustration that her being was barred off due to their materiality. He wanted to be submerged in her being. If she were to burst into a giant membrane of energy, he would hoard all of it up and bury himself in it. Ken’s mouth lips slowly started to slither towards the side. Carmella’s closed eyes began to open a little at this movement. His lips now directly kissed her cheek. His tongue drew circles on it. Ken found the taste arousing.

His teeth dug in.

He clenched his jaws like he’s never done before until he felt his teeth collide. He pulled his head back slightly. He felt resistance as strands of flesh fought Ken for what was already in his mouth. But he won. His tongue carried it to the rows of teeth at the latter end of his mouth. His molars squeezed the flesh down, causing a flood of blood and slimy flesh to burst out. This action caused Ken to be consumed by hunger for the first time in his life. He opened his eyes lividly. Although his right eye was blanketed with a layer of blood, he could still see. In front of him he saw Carmella’s face. Her hands still clasped his back. Her eyes were frozen open. Her eyebrows were as high as they could get into her forehead. Her mouth was slightly open. Ken soared his hand over to her forehead and caressed through her hair until he read behind her head. Her curly wild hair scraped through as his fingers travelled. Carmella’s eyebrows dropped. The tenderness returned to her eyes, warmer than before. Her lips widened into a doting smile. On seeing it, Ken widened his mouth to form a smile. His teeth were deep red.

Carmella’s lips moved outward and back, up and down.  This time, however, he heard what she said.

"You're mine."