I'm in an egg. My weight is supported by a warm, light, gelatinous, clotted substance with fluid consistency, apparently transparent.
The contours of the hard shell which support and enamel my outline, curve and
support my weightless form - "outside" the egg is a bleak
indescribable sphere of biopholy populated by ghouls and monsters, a dystopian ante-world
where Elizabethan queen bees scratch at the window of my soul. Sensations in my
egg are subtly muted. Echoes harangue their ripples in my amniotic sac. Abort
me if thou durst; razors fleck my yolk with toxic rust spots and vengeance
comes in CAPITAL letters. There are no tears in this dimension. I'm assured by
Harry that there will be no let up in weeping once I get to the waiting room on
the other side. So be it. Perhaps I'll discover that I am a centipede or a bug,
then I'll have a motivation to blub and there'll be no end of sobs and
gnashings and then will come awailing, awailing of me teeth. Protect me from
this degenerate hope.
Inside the egg, which is incredibly constricted spatially but anyhow perfectly comfortable, there is a grove of chestnut trees - conker grove - and a bright yellow bicycle. "My toes are warm, I am safe from harm." From the vantage point of a tree of red capillaries which I had climbed searching for chestnuts, I saw a hairy, vicious, angry, day care worker from a nearby watermelon nursery throw the golden chopper over a wall on the canal side of the grove. I climbed down the tree veins apoplectic with resentment and screamed blue venom at this hypocritical trogaladite from the hippie house before scaling the ancient mossy dry stone wall to retrieve the bike from the other side. It was still shiny and alluring. No visible panty lines. Forty quid stuck out of a hole in the wall. It was more than a weeks wages. There was an inherent incongruity in this situation. I took the money. It was easy and pointless and dishonest and impossible at the same time - like selling wind. Now I'm laying in my egg, counting the cash; "safe from harm" - rich, stable, edified, nourished, senseless, complete. Please don't let me be torn from paradise to discover who I am. An earwig, a giant cockroach. A man. The bright yellow chopper didn't have a name. But one day I sprayed it blue and that was the day the rot set in. The yolk yellow forks which formerly dripped with allure and led me on wild adventures, wheelying along river banks and careering down quarry sides at deathly speeds had lost it's immutability and become impotent. Blue as death. My childhood died in a layer of spray paint. The rage I felt when my bike was attacked melted into a measly reciprocal whimper of mindless vandalism. I sprayed my bike a putrid cheesy blue and obliterated it's insane powder yellow beauty. I caked her sunshine in varnish and turned her into dross. It was like an act of unstunned slaughter. I'll never get over the loss. O god the bees - the shell is cracking, there's a leak... I am undone!
Inside the egg, which is incredibly constricted spatially but anyhow perfectly comfortable, there is a grove of chestnut trees - conker grove - and a bright yellow bicycle. "My toes are warm, I am safe from harm." From the vantage point of a tree of red capillaries which I had climbed searching for chestnuts, I saw a hairy, vicious, angry, day care worker from a nearby watermelon nursery throw the golden chopper over a wall on the canal side of the grove. I climbed down the tree veins apoplectic with resentment and screamed blue venom at this hypocritical trogaladite from the hippie house before scaling the ancient mossy dry stone wall to retrieve the bike from the other side. It was still shiny and alluring. No visible panty lines. Forty quid stuck out of a hole in the wall. It was more than a weeks wages. There was an inherent incongruity in this situation. I took the money. It was easy and pointless and dishonest and impossible at the same time - like selling wind. Now I'm laying in my egg, counting the cash; "safe from harm" - rich, stable, edified, nourished, senseless, complete. Please don't let me be torn from paradise to discover who I am. An earwig, a giant cockroach. A man. The bright yellow chopper didn't have a name. But one day I sprayed it blue and that was the day the rot set in. The yolk yellow forks which formerly dripped with allure and led me on wild adventures, wheelying along river banks and careering down quarry sides at deathly speeds had lost it's immutability and become impotent. Blue as death. My childhood died in a layer of spray paint. The rage I felt when my bike was attacked melted into a measly reciprocal whimper of mindless vandalism. I sprayed my bike a putrid cheesy blue and obliterated it's insane powder yellow beauty. I caked her sunshine in varnish and turned her into dross. It was like an act of unstunned slaughter. I'll never get over the loss. O god the bees - the shell is cracking, there's a leak... I am undone!
12/02/18
Illustration by Irina Savina
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