[If you haven’t read Diary Entries Vol 1: Diary Entries Vol 1 read this first, this is a serial]
Day 59
I love the way sulfur tastes. Holes furnished in my lungs. They deliver me, piecemeal.
The Witch transmits her thoughts, attached wings, naked desires. Carbon model archetype. She signifies herself deep inside of me. My artifact, my contaminator.
James says as she smokes a cigarette inside the cab. She didn't see The Witch, but the Witch saw her. I am fumbling with a rubik’s cube trying to pretend that I wasn't taunted by The Witch just nights ago. Fearful that The Witch might be real, and then I'd have some esplainin' to do on how we got here.
Rains heavy these past two nights we just hit two inches now on top of six, James holds a measuring tape manual and counts every bit of it. She's got this rain barrel that flushes and filters all the bad shit. James said before the apocalypse Ceilia was all into conversions, makin' shit safe for humans. 'Cause it was more than a journey. It was survival. My bodies barely thirty, and there's something about her twang when she speaks and how detached she is bridging forty as if she's already seen enough apocalypses to be a scholar.
James says Maxy softly and it snorts up through your brain channels without miasma.
The greys tread the top of her hair are like ashes that snow after a firestorm. Parts of you admire the way her lips move, and the decision to take you in as a co partner with no building skills, a conversationalist, a temporary companion. You see things that no one else does, and you still watch the cult from the windows unnerved. Their parts just flop and criss cross cancel each other out. You'd never take yourself for voyeurism. The sounds of heavy petting and trades for quarters makes paper seem worthless. It goes nowhere.
All the dead trinkets in your flat must be worth more than gold.
Shelter holds my body, a beat and pulse. Its damn near intolerable cadence swings a metronome in front of my eyes. James mutters underneath her breath, all I can catch is "cut, vein, dissolve."
My body falls limp near the crescent moon couch. Its felt, a warm hug.
Day 59.2
Born into this pit. Crushes me fine. Beneath me is hardened mud, I am choking on a thing wedged deep in my throat. Some invisible Adam's apple. It doesn't connect to me, it lives here. You can't compromise your way out of this one. Beetle pinchers in the middle prickle away at any importance that was left.
In denial, I crawl towards her glimpse. A memory undefiled. Spirit clenches and pulls at my heart. In denial, I widen my mouth and look for its body. Nugget shaped it dangles to be consumed. Today isn't the day. Long fingers scissor its body and pulls it away, its tiny feet dragged from ritual. Her face is amused about her control. Romanticizing my memorial in shadow, in light. My dress is burning, my skin color doesn't change. You'll want to wash your hands when it's all over. In denial, I scream, its unnatural range left a stain on my lips.
The Witch is sitting on a stone slab near a fountain. I feel water drip on my face, it's not rain. Not the smell. Not pleasant. Bad girls kiss witches. Bad girls bury themselves in ditches.
When you bend your head, you cradle the nuggets body, its legs are gone, its head disappeared, a tear shaped pearl. The Witch inhales me to survive. My flesh wilts without reconnaissance. I try to pretend to care. Knees bent in the way it shouldn't, but it does. Roof's collapsing in and all the stars are burning out.
She holds a box in the palm of her hand and cranks its music way off kilter. Another person's voice breaks up into the air their dialection muddied. You can't tell the difference between Witch voice and that voice. Fear of open spaces, my body is hunched in fetal. The suns close by, you can feel its light on your spine. You count your vertebras, their link, their collective matter. It lives within, so goddamn well. You want to focus on the part where it's over, and death themselves carries you to shore.
As the Witch inches closer, the distorted screams from the box gets jagged, rattled in its cage. Judgment day with a bite. She takes the tear shaped pearl as if I deserted its importance. The Witch feeds the music box into silence.
"Am I dead?" My voice is a sufferin' rasp, revealing the scar she created on the inside of my mouth.
"Not yet. I had to feed my pet."
My whole body relaxes for the impact. You wondered how she would do it. Spikes through all parts of your body. Would your body be a zombie in the other universe? You didn't want to be a ballerina in a toy box. Circling the world forever until the world forgets. My greatest failure is never knowin' when the bullet is loaded.
"I have other plans for you. Death and I made a deal. You're too important for your world. Death will disappear without your kind. It's an emergency. Pulled the damn lever. Aren't you lucky?"
"Lucky for what?"
"The poison in your vessel. It's going to change everything for you."
You breathe in the stale air. You need a fucking cigarette. She rambles around the answer. Wants you to read minds. Seduces your body with tenderness. Her heart is ugly and ancient, someone else would eat it up. 'Cause she said so. 'Cause she made love feel convenient, a complacency comfort amongst the chaos. Convinces you like the non reason is good enough. 'Cause you're as worthless as a sweet dream. Trauma you have to survive. I am drinking for that person that doesn't exist, just so they don't have to spit bullets.
"I know you think you're a stray dog. It's hard to remember every life. You follow me every century. You can't live without me, Maxy."
Day 61
James thighs cradles my head to welcome me home. Foam drool covered her bones like a fungal disease. Bitch, I am tired. My wiggle arms move up toward her hands. No other expectation than the simplicity of our reality. The Witch wouldn't invade me while I struggled. The survivors Bible makes you think things have morals when they don't. The Witch is muted right now, and for once I'm sure as hell thankful for it. James grabs my hands and begins to massage them with a cigarette dangling from her mouth.
I ain't no broken mule, it reads as the ashes make the words seem less clear. You never ask her what they meant to her. You hope one day the proverbs lead to treasure off this parking lot; somewhere else.
"I need to go back to my flat and collect a few things." Words come out thankless, burnt out. The Witch takes enough from you that energy feels scarce. Atypical morsels. You want to lick bread crumbs off the cutting board. Beggar mouthed.
"When you dream, do you see her? The Witch?"
"It's not like a dream. Not the way we used to. This is a continuous conversation that stops and goes. I'd like an eject button off this ride."
"You should ask her to be gentle."
"It's not her nature. Not biological. Not possible. We're play things. You know when they blew up parts of the planet. All the old hats. They didn't care how many of us died. Ants suffocating on our hill."
James put out her cigarette. "Yeah, I'll never forgive those fuckers for it. They got what was coming to them. Blew up their spaceship on a different planet. Well deserved." She leans back and closes her eyes. James has a crooked tooth smile when she whistles her question. "How far is your flat?"
"We can walk there. Unless your afraid of the nymphomaniacs stealing Ceilia." It felt strange to say it out loud, as if they would commit atrocities to a corpse.
Your hands on the lever, busted the door wide open.
Little pebbles paint a canvas, they're rolled up rugs, a wreckin' ball in the back of vans without drivers. Half blind, cuts with strawberry kisses. A photograph abandoned in the woods, buried underneath all the carnage. James puts a collar on your neck, and pulls the leash back before she drop kicks you out the ship doors. Ground tastes different. It scratches your face, but you don't mind the minor inconvenience. James rolls the barrel of her revolver, and points it at the cult of nymphomaniacs.
"Hey! If anyone gets near my property, I'll turn your skin into lamps like Ed Gein. I won't even be precise about it."
She points the gun at each of their heads and they don't hear her. The caved in nose canals slitted sideways, holes that you never knew existed in your brain space. White crusted leftover pizza and gunk, the pimples wave over their bodies, an oasis of sex and filth. Choking on their tongues in baritone.
James releases the tightness of the leash, but you don't stop her from holding its handle. You climb up from the ground with scrapped knees. Fingers flick the name tag, "Teddy Bur" cold metal scrubs the skin. Wicked feasts for the senses. Rain is a low tremble, a fair cost for a jaunt through the streets. Everyone watches James shove the gun to the middle of my spine. Eyes dart left to right. No trouble, no problem.
The apartment condo is infested with plants now. More alive than the cinder block cheap wallpaper shithole you paid for more than seventy percent of wages. James gun feels like a present from a far away lover. You wonder if you try to fuck her, which part she will shoot first. Body parts. Dislocated disorders.
You press the up arrow, the elevator barely works. You think it lives on the electricity of the dead. Doors slide open seamlessly. The doctors office curve. It feels new. The Witch is doing it. You feel her jealous eyes watch every reaction. I already threw my hopes to the ocean, retreated to the deep.
Inside the elevator you press number six, it makes that distinct ding. If you're reading this, you know the one. It clings like coins rubbing on shiny metal. Ka-cling. Clink. A chime happily presented to passengers waiting to drown.
"Guns got one bullet." James puts the gun in her cargo jeans huggin' her hips. "I am going to let go of the leash now. Bet you don't have neighbors."
"Actually, there are noises beneath me. If you listen carefully to the discord below us."
"You wouldn't happen to have any bullets?"
"No idea. I haven't toured my flat in years. The Witch has been keeping me alive. She used to tell me where to go."
Your flat is number 543 with numbers all turned upside down. You hear your dead mother's voice,
"Why do you lie to yourself in glass cribs?"
It's easier to forget.
It's easier to absolve myself of my little poison well.
Day 63
I sucked all the air through my teeth, a vacuum without an engine. Punched the door open. It gets jammed if I don't visit enough. Passed down from generations, mother, grandmother, great, great great, until our names blended together full of mystery drugs. When we sleep it's our prison. A curse to keep The Witch from the world. She broke free when the mushroom cloud sweltered over the sky and turned off all the lights. Convinced me her birdcage was worthless now. Just a nudge every day, enough for her to feel something outside the metal.
James could be fresh meat. I am not feedin' her today. She can eat Ceilia or the cult outside the ship if she desires. I have a mission. I have to say goodbye to my cat.
It's Tuesday, she's meowing as if she's starving. I feel the warmth of my matriarchy burn through my body.
James stands in the living room as if she's seen a ghost. "Wait, is the cat alive?"
"No, Katya is dead. She's been dead for 33 years. She was my mother's cat. Russian witch shit. I can't explain it."
Katya meows every Tuesday, she meows saying, "No, no, no, no, no." Her small Maine coon tortoise shell fur body slams the kitchen cabinets three times lookin' real content as hell. You kiss her tiny head before the taxidermied body rumbles. Katya dreams of tuna while the world continues to die.
"We can take the cat with us."
"Katya has never left this flat. She'll not say a damn word if she leaves it."
"Ceilia could use a friend."
"I'll think about it."
There's dust all over the flat, dust is snow now for filthy fucks like me. I make eye contact with her, "Let's rummage for gold."
This ain't no gold rush but it sure as hell beat whatever that corner store offered to us. Couldn't explain the doll heads and tractor parts laid all out. It beat money. Them pieces would make better stories out of nothing than rotting way out here.
Down the hallway there's blood stains and loose skin. Can't explain the purpose of The Witch. See it's not real, and it is real. It's this place in between. I've decided beyond all my longing for some resemblance of comfort or subtracted loneliness, I may be mad hell bat shit. Smells of puke, burnt hair and useless as ever white sage. The gods have left their high castles to find other things that weren't the way we are now. Damn sure of it.
I rip the slip off of me it's been stained from all the sweat and blood. Layers of leaky waters all over me when I decided whatever day that was the greatest day to get hired to fuck. Nothing says romance like dead cats who speak and witches who are obsessed with your lineage. The Witch is my undying fly on the wall. Lurkin' in every corner, unafraid of webs or change. Old guards left the key for some real fuck up. It's their fault. I never cared about all the reasons why a youthful woman lived in a birdcage on a throne that could've been a TV set for any average American. We lived together. Roommates for years, The Witch talks to you as if your ancestors can take over your body and remember the past.
When we thought of clothes in the past. It was like rainbow blast 1000 paint splatter fashion found in some junkyard of 2020. Now it's accessibility. The Witch won't let you die. It has plans. Scheming. Accessibility matters. How stretchy are your arm sleeves? How many holes can you put in your pants before they're threads? Your tying your steel toe combat boots up as if it's war or never. The part of you that so desperately wants to live clomps of free range fuck you horses that would kill you with one boot.
Feelings are scattered temporary moments that sift the sugar. Sometimes, life is so intact you can remember every decibel of your life. Other times it hazes through a barrel of gun, blurred and filled to the brim with distain. Its rows and foundations jerk water your psyche. There's open wounds from where you punched the door. Cartilage faded from the nights in the ship. Cats tongue lick the wounds. They taste of sandalwood and dehydrated limes. Wishin' for the fruit to be more than what you are now.
You take your soldiers duffle bag, don't ask questions, you won't get answers. You fill it with the bare necessities. Thimbles, threads, things to patch. Who knows how long you'll be be gone. At your makeup mirror there are three trinkets that meant life or death.
A sealed can of Afghan tea. (Forgot what was inside)
A young buck deer antler.
A sippy cup of Alice in Wonderland; but make it fancy.
Throw it over your shoulder, and now the place is blank papers in flight. James is filling a bag with metallic parts, bits, nuts and bolts. She has sewn all the dehydrated shiitake mushrooms to her shoulder: JUST ADD WATER: permanent maker scribbles.
Your eyes lock ready to kill each other or fuck each other, never knowing which part matters. It doesn't.
"We're taking Katya with us." She smokes her cigarette.
Hail Mary to the North, it reads.
[Diary Entries Vol 3: Vol 3 up next]
Goddamn right, they are taking Katya with them
I somehow let this slip my consciousness and didnt come back to it.
loving it...it's got your surreal ultra vivid word splurged palette of thought speak AND a dystopian post apocalyspe story... and in this one the Witch is awake.
Nothing else exists like your work Edith. Wish i could turn it into a painting and frame it so i could get it all into my eyes/head at the same instant. overload.