Don’t go to sleep…
by Precipitate8
Some people believe dreams are a result of the subconscious attempting to make sense of reality. Pray to god that is not true….
The door gave way to a dimly lit room in which two women were sitting naked, side by side, but in an aerobically submissive position; they were on all fours and their abdomens faced upward toward the ceiling, and their buttocks didn’t touch the ground. They both silently turned their gaze to me, and smiled cheerfully. Simultaneously, they each took one hand, reached into their vaginas up to their elbows, and extracted their hearts. They had beautiful, healthy hearts which were still clearly connected to their cardio-vascular system by the imposing aorta and the subordinate vena cava, and the hearts were still beating, and you could even see the aorta pulse. As you could imagine, I was quite smitten by the exhibition, but I felt they should have their privacy.
Besides, I’m hungry.
“What…do you….have for me….to eat?
A disgruntled patron raves at the Taco Bell counter, “I’m not talking to you, I said- I want to see the manager!”
“Yes sir…Is there a problem?”
“Your god damn right there’s a problem. When I purchased this meal I was not offered any hot sauce and was forced to eat this entire entree with a blandness not seen since Jesus first offered his body to his fellow cannibals. This is an American establishment and you’ve got to follow the American way. By God, how are people supposed to eat hot sauce with their meal unless they’re told to do so? Obviously you people don’t know the first thing about American Society…Reminds me of my stint in Vietnam…”
The manager begs an interruption, “Perhaps we could compensate you with something free off our menu. A free chilito perhaps?”
“Well, hrrumph, that’s… that’s more like it.”
Taking the translation literally, the manager pulls down his pants to reveal a curiously, but appropriately circumcised, mexican penis to which the customer bent over to consume with a vindictive appetite.
“On behalf of all our staff, we want you to know that you are a valued customer and it has been a pleasure to serve you.”
II.
For two months now I’ve been sleep shifting in close proximity to over twenty soulless bodies. It hasn’t bothered me, I’ve slept as well as I ever have, until now. There is always an aromatic disturbance for the first couple of months– bathing becomes severely impractical, semen stains start to build up in sailors clothing, and the real essentialists neglect oral hygiene. You get used to it though. I’ve heard that some people try to explore their true selves by immersion in sensory deprivation tanks, blocking out everything except for their thoughts. I don’t buy it. These men know themselves better than anyone because of the over sensitizing nature of their environments. They know what things break their minds and have touched the basic evil that is pervasive in everyone’s secret convictions.
Insanity is the price of self-affirmation.
The two-thirds point of a sub mission is always the most disquieting time, for me at least. For the next month, every man on this boat will be forced to examine his own demonic humanity and glorify it in some artistic fashion regardless of the presuppositioned ethics he once had. It’s going to start any day now; testicular tension is compressing our living space–and two days of silent running hasn’t helped. It’s too dangerous to sleep.
Tapped on the shoulder to get my eyes opened and a piece of paper in the face. Work shift. About fucking time. I’ve been lying here with my eyes closed for six hours, pretending to sleep, nauseated with insomnia.
“Time to do your part for your country, mate,” Jonah whispered to me.
“Aye, aye.”
Best to humor Jonah. He tends to get really stressed out inside. That’s why we call him Jonah– don’t remember what his real name is– don’t fucking care. Before a group is granted sub duty, the Navy tests their intestinal worms for claustrophobia and nobody really passes, but submarines wouldn’t be as intriguing if they was controlled by remote. An instrument of war must have an organic aspect to fulfill the aesthetic cravings of its old, wrinkled, warriors. The Navy prefers medicine capsules of steel packed with red meat for their protein supplements.
Jonah had been incubating for about a month when he went through his “exit” stage. Most people do, most people scramble about trying to undo door locks, unseal hatches–trying to escape, ignoring the millions of gallons of ocean just waiting to protrude and take your life. Jonah did. Innocence created his illusion.
There is an area in the belly of the ship that is not often monitored because there is nothing to see but boxes and garbage. It is here that Jonah impelled his whale to release him. In some sense, Jonah was more in touch with reality than the rest of them in that he at least knew he was under water. It took six crew members to restrain him and three more to put out the fire.
Thanks to five sessions of professional therapy, or kicking the mild drug use, or getting a stable relationship with a woman, or the extra time spent in training (no one really knows the official cause of his reparation), Jonah was able to overcome his fear of the inside. The only thing anyone really knew about Jonah’s ability to serve sub duty is that it had nothing to do with the fact that his father was an admiral. Inbred greatness…
The next day, my complexion was in a strange state of affairs. There weren’t many tell-tale signs like pimples or black heads–my skin was like an ageing calico carpet. Intimate relations could feel it though. It was oily…just underneath the skin.
I decided to at least clean up the constituents I could see, so…closed in on the mirror and squeezed one on the cheek with the tips of my fingers. It erupted and expelled a little more pus than expected and gave a satisfying sense of accomplishment. Pulling fingers away to find another popper, I noticed that the area immediately surrounding the former zit had excreted large amounts of yellowish ooze. This excretion spread to the rest of my face instantaneously, scaring me shitless. I stepped back staring into the mirror trying to slow down my pulse. My entire face was covered in centimeter thick creamy urine tinted frosting. I calmed and was pleased…it meant I could clean out my face good and proper. With a wet wash cloth I removed the gunk and it came off slow on account of it being so sticky and oily. Not to say that the actual event wasn’t still bothersome. It was like all of my pores just up and committed suicide, releasing their internal organs to the surface of my face. As if a race of people suddenly realized that life– the essence of creating rather than releasing– was evil, and found extinction their only progression. I was cleaning off a civilization from this face– empty streets of aluminum cans and broken bottles, a world of terrible weather where the gutters always oozed a viscous fluid. I rinsed the face and planned to guard it from future corruptions. There were going to be changes– I could sense a redshift in the air.
