Short Story - CannRomCom

For the livejournal writing community of which I'm a member, I wrote this short story in the CannRomCom-verse. Sadly, I finished a day after the challenge ended, but I should be able to post it this weekend. I had no idea what to do with the prompts for the longest time, but suddenly, just a couple days ago, I started writing something--and it turned out to be from the POV of CannRomCom MC. Fun!

My prompts were: abide, pitch, "What part of my subconscious do you hail from?" This is the first entry I've put behind a cut, I think. It's longer than what I usually post here



I opened my eyes and looked down at the scribbles on the page. “Well well,” I murmured, “what part of my subconscious do you hail from?” For a moment, the ink-smeared paper kept silent, just another quack idea from Doctor Quack. And then, hand to God, I saw that jumble of squiggles move. It might have been the flickering fluorescent light in the corner that had been driving me nuts for the past thirty seven minutes.

That is, it might have been a flickering light if I had not seen starting seeing flecks of red in the black ink. It started small, just a blot near the upper right-hand corner, but it seeped and then gushed all over the page, flowing wetly down the sides to pool at the bottom of the sheet. Worse than that, I could hear the paper bleed. No flickering light had caused that noise. It was the sound of the bleeding that set me screaming bloody (ha) murder—paper bleeding was a level of weird I maybe could have handled, or at least written off with a half-assed rationalization. I think most people have their own bleeding paper moment once or twice during their lifetime, and hey, they deal with it. They might have nightmares or drink a little too heavily on moonless nights, but they cope.

I knew from experience that bleeding doesn't make noise. I know all about the noises that accompany bleeding, and from my shrink told me, I was shrieking as if it were my blood squirting in great gouts across his desk. A secretary dashed in, wild-eyed and gasping like she'd run a marathon while smoking Cuba's finest, but all I could hear was the bleeding.

It's funny. I remember the scene more clearly I remember what I had for breakfast this morning, but I cannot recall what sound the bleeding paper actually made. Did it gurgle? Hiss? Keen like a dying thing? Rumble?

Eventually, after blowing out the eardrums of everyone in the building, the noise abated and I calmed down enough to talk about it. My shrink asked me what happened, and I replied that the paper was bleeding. It still was bleeding, in fact. He knew better than to argue the logical impossibility of it and let me continue.

“But that wasn't what bothered me,” I continued. Doctor Quack was usually pretty good at keeping a poker face, but at that his eyebrows rose and his forehead crinkled.

“You weren't distressed by the sight of the, ah, bleeding paper?”

“Not the sight of it, no. The sound it made. The... bleeding sound.” Even then, just a couple minutes after I stopped screaming, I had already started to forget whatever noise had driven me bonkers.

He scribbled on his notebook. I'm sure I must have given him material to fill hundreds of notebooks over the years. I used to wonder, and still do on occasion, if he had an entire filing cabinet devoted to my neuroses and what he called my delusions. I really did have neuroses, but he was wrong about the delusions.

“We both know that paper doesn't normally bleed when drawn upon.” Or ever. “Why do you think it bled today?”

Crazy as he doubtless thought I was, I always appreciated that he spoke to me like I was a rational person. I was, but he had no way of knowing that.

“I don't know,” I said slowly. “I...” I closed my eyes and tried to remember the sensation I'd had during the free draw. Something inside me had risen up, had seized control of my arm. It didn't feel like rebellion, though. It felt like a cry from inside a vast and terrible void. “It was him.”

His pen scritched as he cocked his head at me. “Him? The man you devoured years ago?”

I rolled my eyes. “Of course him. The doorman from my building wouldn't have any reason to take over my hand in a desperate plea for help, would he?” I immediately regretted my sarcasm, partly because it impeded my therapeutic process but mostly because of the inevitable lecture that followed.

“Tch. We've talked about how your sarcasm is a defense against vulnerability and how you're completely safe here. Sarcasm only hurts you.”

“And wastes my money,” I muttered. “I know, I know. Sorry. Yes, it was him. He's still there, inside me.” I glanced down at my midsection as if expecting to see his hand burst from my stomach. It would be kind of like Alien in reverse, a human body part thrusting out of a monster. “He's still in pain.”

An understanding flattening of his lips, not really a smile, crossed my shrink's face. “The wrongs we've done to other people stay with us for a long time, sometimes forever. Most people probably don't experience the same thing you've experienced here, but we do dwell, sometimes obsessively, on the injuries we've perpetuated upon others, even when it was an accident or we couldn't have known better.”

Okay, everybody had their problems and the memory of the traumas they had inflicted upon others. Fair enough. “But I ate him.”

He bobbed his head in acknowledgment. “You've also told me that you had no idea that this would occur and that you had no control over your actions. Now, I can't judge whether or not that's true, but I want to ask yourself what you get out of punishing yourself like this.”

“You call this punishing myself? I have no idea what I just did. One minute, I was doing what you said, clearing my mind and letting myself express whatever I was repressing, and the next I'm shouting myself hoarse.” I was protesting, but I could see where he was going with this. He wasn't quite right about who was punishing me here, but there's no way he could have known.

It was him, punishing me. He's always been with me since I ate him in a frenzy I remember mostly as a crimson, pulsing haze. He hurdles through my bloodstream, cozies up in my cells, and pitches in my stomach when I get motion sick. This wasn't the first time he pushed back, but it was definitely the most powerful and the most terrifying.

I started crying. “Okay, fine.” I sniffled and took a shaky couple of breaths. “He's punishing me, or I'm punishing me. Whatever. I want... I want to tell him I'm sorry. I had no idea what would happen when we started... messing around. No one ever warned me.” The tears were coming fast and hot, burning my cheeks as they dripped onto his beige couch. A box of Kleenex appeared under my damp nose, and I took it with murmured thanks.

“Then tell him,” Doctor Quack said, just loud enough for me to hear over my sobs. “He may not know it was an accident. You said you two were close; maybe he would understand.”

The proposition was ludicrous enough that I looked up at him, Kleenex pressed to my nose. “Just like that? Say I'm sorry?” I snorted. “Would you understand, just like that, if somebody you were canoodling with suddenly up and ate you?”

He shrugged. “I don't know. I do know that in my daily life I avoid making judgments about people until I know the circumstances surrounding their decisions to take certain actions. It's often the case that I can never know the circumstances, and so I withhold judgment. If he was the same way, if he was a reasonable person, he might forgive you. Have you considered that?”

I shook my head without replying. Forgive me? Doctor Quack should have been the one sitting in this chair.

Breaking with his usual practice of maintaining a professional distance between us, he leaned forward and held my eyes for a long time before continuing. “You know that, as a scientist, I cannot believe the things you tell me about yourself. I do believe that, whatever you have done, you are a thinking, feeling person and as such, you are entitled to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. That means forgiving yourself and moving on with your life, respecting the life, liberty, and happiness of others as well as your own.”

I could have quibbled; I'm a thinking, feeling monster, and I don't think the Declaration of Independence speaks to somebody in my precise position. Still, the more I thought about his words, the more I liked them. Not a day goes by that they don't float through my brain. I have come to believe that he was basically correct, that I do deserve life, liberty, and happiness.

Unfortunately, everybody else deserves life, liberty, and happiness. When you're a flesh-eating monster whose bloodlust is roused by, well, other kinds of lust, an epiphany like that is good for you soul but hell on your sex life.