56) My clothes have been reduced to rags, torn apart by the world. Garments that once had color are now shades of dark grey, like wet ash, with darker brown shit accents and dull green streaks. I have reinvented camouflage. Good for me. My boots have split open at the soles. Only my backpack retains a bit of bright shine. My hair is matted, and clumps come off should I try to pass a hand through. I've not seen my face for weeks. God knows its condition and color scheme, for my body has secreted a greasy paste the texture of rhino horn over my back and chest, broken through by tunneling parasites. I am comforted that something lives off of me. Life finds a way, I often say. Back to reality. My sutures are inflamed. Welts weep. My feet and hands are curling to cudgels of an ebony cast, while all nails of the same are hard mustard-hued ripples as though impressed upon by trilobites. I seem to be rotting and encysting at the same time. Not that I am other than what I've ever been, it is that I am more of it, and less, it's true. Hardly matters. It is not as though I have a future. I should be glad for the shiver of sentience Dr. Creep runs through me, even if it feels more like drowning in tar, or favorably compares to the pitiful life of the cranefly, born without a mouth, no way to sample the world, to eat or drink or rest, given a few days of egg-laying spasms till starved.
I have only mimicked the behaviors of men. I believe that suggests envy. Yes, I have desired their banquets by the pool, a fat pig turning on the spit, and the stuffed chairs in libraries, their beds softer than clover, overlain with goose down coverlets and satin. I know something of their styles of copulation, its variation and quality, from pictures anyway. I would not know how to begin to do such things! The Doctor is a cruel hoaxster. I suppose it is his fault he gave me eyes but mine that I see. To his credit I have enjoyed wine, and all the clawing at air for support as I happily stumbled. The list of his credits is quite short. Yet, I must remember, I am not meant to compose; I level. The day of revenge is closing. I can sense it down my petrifying spine.
And on so excessive a day of mentation I come upon a valley of horses. Just the thing to break a morose spell. I've seen many horses out here. Of all sizes and herd formations. They are rarely alone. There is nothing solitary about them though I have seen them singly with a rider. I am sure their life is hard but all they want to do, beyond the grazing, is frolic. They sometimes fight but soon turn to play, clearly their highest activity in life.
But as happened a day or two before (I've become quite the historian) people intrude. The valley echoes with the roar of trucks. The horses elude them, run as one animal. How can men do a thing to them, I laugh to my internals. I love running, as well. I understand their joy. But then I see the men have added a helicopter to the mix. The noise produces panic and agitation in the herd when it hovers close to them. They scatter. Fragmented, the men can now easily choose two here, one there, to pluck. Which they do. Horses tumble in tangles of rope. Others fall at the rifle shot. So, it is not hard to outthink a thing in fear, not for the men chasing horses, not for me to smite men. Again, I descend. I will interfere. I interfere. Everything dies by my indifferent agency. Though the remove be great, men die, the trucks seize, and the helicopter, emiting dainty circles of exhaust, smashes to the ground. But I cannot direct what I do. I cannot select. The horses die, too. The valley empties of play. There is death all around me. I am filled with shame and repulsion for what I am.
To bury the vision, I run from that awful valley, I run in remembrance of horses. I run toward gloomy clouds gathering. I hear the thunder, feel it shudder through the hell of me. I see lightning among the peaks. I climb fast. I enter a summit clearing. I stand. I wait for punishment. I am struck. I fall. So this is pain. I stand up. I am struck again. My shoes are blown away. Smoke pours off of me. I stand again. I am hurt. More. But I cannot die. How sick I am of death, every death but my own. Dr. Creep, end the misery of me.
There is an end only to the storm. The sun reemerges. N...N...North.
I thought my sorrow could not be greater but even my parasites have died.