Untitled Shitpost

“For man seeks not riches but flees from his plunder. For all punishment cruel, backs broken down by burden and brutality, village huts torn asunder and burned to wheat stems and mud in the endless fog, a throng of wails in the empty night at the volley, all are nothing more than the swells of a man swept forward by his desperate need for separation.

 

What separation, you may ask?” I had not asked.

He motioned towards me, lurching forward, creeping across the marble floors as if to leave his stain embedded in every crack and boundary that might ever try to leave this place.

 

He didn’t wait for my response. No, he couldn’t wait for my response. Patience and her virtuous siblings can only be abstained for so long from one’s upbringing before they can no longer be taught. No, from a certain unfortunate point they must float as untied threads in the rushing cascades of the ego, frayed and spindling. And so he pushed forward without regard in his charming manner, convoluted but charming nonetheless.

 

“The first warlord to tame iron burns the primitive forest tribes to their roots. Of what care has he for gold when he fears the dark of the forest? A bullet pierces through camouflage and rags while oil, blood, and men spill at the feet of post-modern mongols, but do they rejoice for the glory that waits on their shores? When our Lords, the aristocrats and politicians, billionaires and presidents, dictators and Khans pushed us down, beneath the rot, do you think they did it to see the skies?

Was it childlike whimsy that led their eyes to the cosmos, to Circinus? Did they run their fingers across the stars in admiration, out of ambition?”

 

His laughter filled the open chamber as it had done the nights before, his chortles striking and squelching against the old marble like wet mud on riot shields. He twisted to face me.

 

“My dear boy,” he moved towards me.

 

“Speak to me truthfully,” I felt his warmth reek on my shoulder, but I didn’t shy away.

 

“This ravenous beast that chased our forefathers from out of the farms into factories, that built bridges to Botein and Orion, did it hunger for progress? Or escape? Did that first primate grip stone and envision a dynasty, or did he simply find a better way to eradicate his kin, to stand as a victor?”

 

I glanced at the clock and I knew he would start to crumble now. “Look upon my city, my father’s city.”

As if on cue, I heard the city cry out. It gasped. It groaned. I heard the sewage and muck pulsing through its rusted veins, scraping against every depleted organ as the refuse swarmed towards open air. The lakes surrounding SH had long since turned to filth, but this never stopped the fresh litter of grime and detritus from rushing to their forefather’s embrace. The creaking of old concrete as it bent and twisted from years and years and years of decay almost seemed to scrape and tap against the smudged window, moaning to be let inside.

 

As the haggard whimpering of our dying world echoed through his palace, I watched him sag to the floor. He crumbled in on himself, his fervor weighing now too heavy.

 

“My city. My city,” he murmured to himself as he slid from his heap towards his throne. A container is a more apt description as the throne held him in rather than up, each edge and layer of his being slipping through its handles and cushions.

 

“They didn’t chase the heavens. They ran from hell.”

And with an exhale he slipped inside of himself, not to emerge until the numbers on the old analog display read twelve, and he would say these things to me again, as he had done every day before.

 

I closed my notes and stood from the marble floor. There were only a few scratches that had found their way onto my log pages, a stark difference from when I had first stepped foot into SH. I felt my nose wrinkling, mirroring the cracks in the walls as I turned and made my way to the door. You would think with all of the world’s modern technologies and the homeostatic nature of our human vessels, I would get used to the smell of this place. Unfortunately, it seems the human body (and the nose in particular), even with the support of nasal plugs, can only be so resilient.

 

He was still murmuring to himself when I opened the main door and made my way towards my royal quarters. Taking a peek inside, you would see quite possibly the most decrepit bedroom from SF in the West to NP in the East, but he referred to them as the “royal quarters.” The habit stuck. Just like the habit of saying “preposterous” or the habit of swinging this way and that when I began a long, drawn-out oratory to no one but the pests in the walls, as if I had always been looking for an excuse to express myself as a Holly-Wood E-Leet from decades past with overdrawn pause and crescendoing movements, maybe even an accent thrown in here and there.

 

His mannerisms bled into my habits just like the stench. I couldn’t tell if I resented it.

 

I shook my head and opened the door to my roo- my royal quarters just as my receiver started beeping.

 

“Hey, on time as always Hans,” Von P’s voice scratched out the receiver.

“I swear, it still blows my mind how he just kind of, passes out like that at the same time every night. Guess it makes scheduling these calls easier,” Von chuckled. “Did we figure out what that is yet? Is it Amensia?” The scrapes in his voice had grown harsher.

 

“Sounds like you’re catching a little bit of a cold over there, Von. You sure you don’t want to step out the cocoon for a little bit?” I slipped out of my body suit, closing my eyes and sighing to relish the crinkling of the plastic fibers.

 

“I would rather sell my first left finger,” his voice sputtered quickly, “and believe me I’ve sold my first, fourth and third right finger so I know exactly what type of consequences we’re talking about here. And two and-a-half toes, can’t forget about those!”

 

I could hear him typing frantically through the phone and imagined the empty cans of Mogwai cluttering the floor of his isolated work chamber. He would probably stay suspended in there for a few more nights, excavating every frame and corner of my recordings, trying to find any new angles, lines and limericks to smear into his newest project.

 

“This footage is incredible, I swear. Come on, this shit just sells itself, no pun intended,” he laughed to himself as he typed away. “Anything new today or is it the same separation and distinction shpeal?” I heard him pause in eager anticipation, running his gnarled hand over his balding head as I blew out my nostril plugs into a disposal bag by the door and inhaled deeply.

 

The experience is irreplaceable. The city smell stung and burned and twisted, thrashing around my nostrils like a rodent bleeding out, the death throes of immortal vermin. But it was growing strangely familiar.

 

“He was really into warlord talk today,” I gasped out, reeling as the city smell filled me.

 

Maybe it was just the physical relief of not having 3-inch plastic prongs embedded inside of my nose, but it was almost a comfort to feel the stink’s intensity, its liveliness. I would need to insert another set of prongs before an hour passed, the scientists had been very adamant about that in all of the old records that we had dug up before my journey to SH. Nevertheless, I left the fresh pack unopened on my desk. My first few days here, I could not live without them. These days, as crazy as it feels, I almost resent them.

 

I heard Von yammering on as I pulled out my seat and reached for a drink. My hand hovered over one of the shiny red cans of Mogwai that Von had so kindly forced me to take before settling on an Aqua capsule. What kind of boss would he be if he didn’t at least try to build new bad habits for me after all?

 

Extra Mog! 0% Dog, Frog, And Grog!

The words on the packaging screamed at me as I slowly twisted and popped the Aqua capsule open.

 

“Warlord stuff, understood. That’s real flavorful. Real quick, I love this line right here,” Von yammered, his frenzy creeping up. I heard one of the recordings I had sent play in the background.

 

“Is it not their place to serve? Is it not my place to stand? Is it not divinity that placed them beneath me? Apart from me?“

 

Von erupted into laughter from his end of the phone.

 

“Can you believe this shmuck? Has he ever taken a look in the mirror? Taken a good whiff of himself?” Von’s laughter broke through the receiver again before he continued.

 

“Yea, they’ll love that. The hardest part about this masterpiece is going to be what to title it! Filth and it’s Folly? A Tale of Two Shits? A Tale of Too Shitty? God the choices are endless,” he spilled over with laughter again. I could almost smell the acid on his breath, see the haze in his eyes.

 

“Yea,” I murmured back. I waited as his guttural barks slowly came to a halt. There was a slight pause.

 

“You know, Hans,” Von started, a twinge of hostility had crept into his tone.

 

“You’ve been awfully quiet these last few days. Almost sounds like you’re not invested in what we’re doing here, like you don’t think it’s worth your time.”

 

I sighed. “Look Von, I jus-“

 

“What’s the matter Hans?” He interrupted.

“You think you could think of something better? Unimpressed with how the big boys do business?”

 

I stayed quiet and leaned back, listening to the rain strike against the rotten stones.

What a prick I thought to myself as I took a sip of the Aqua. I imagined crushing cans of Mogwai on his bald head, pushing his face into the stains that covered the work chamber, maybe breaking a comm screen or two. The thought lingered as he continued.

 

“Or maybe it’s something else? Maybe our little pretty-boy reporter might be having some radical and steamy, dare I say, sensual opinion shifts about the Star of our show?” He paused, and just like that he erupted again.

“Which if you are. I beg you to please do it. I would offer you a bonus honestly. It’s a tale as old as time! A soft tender city boy falls for the big bad hunk in charge!” His cackles grew louder with every word.

 

“‘Power Corrupts, but with a Twist.’ Or how about ’50 Shades of Brow-“

 

“Von, I am begging you not to say whatever you are about to say,” I sputtered. The downpour outside was slowing to a light shower and I watched the grime streak down the murky glass. I prayed for the calm as I downed the rest of my Aqua.

 

“Alright alright. I’ll settle down. I’m just saying that if you ever needed some extra courage or motivation to confess any feelings you might be having, I know for a fact I packed a couple of Mogwai’s there for you. I know you’re not a drinker, but from an entertainment standpoint, this would be revolutionary and I would make sure you were well taken care of for your sacrifice. It would be a 90-10 split obviously, but it would do great things for your career,” he chuckled and the line went still for a moment.

 

I imagined his lined and rusty face amongst the broken screens again. The glass shards would tickle his forehead and cheeks and the bleeding wouldn’t start yet. Just for a second. I heard Von clear his throat.

 

“Hey Hans, obviously I joke around and whatnot, but you know we gotta keep’em happy right? I don’t need to tell you what kind of things they can do to you and me. You literally see it every day, what they can do to us, what they’ve already done to us,” he swallowed and I heard him wipe his lip. New droplets had stopped forming against the glass. I watched them dribble down in tight and slippery paths, leaving behind deep streaks of oil, a birthmark of their origin and a disgustingly beautiful emphasis on Von’s point.

 

“You know, I see it in your footage. I heard about what our lovely Lords did to the entire East Coast, and I’ve seen footage of the leftovers there too. I know this is real, even if it feels like it’s impossible for people to be,” he took a sudden pause and sighed. It was like I could hear the studio in his brain popping in an old reel of film to broadcast over every nook and cranny of his dying cerebral cinema.

 

“For people to be changed like… this.” He gulped. “I need you to remember that there is literally nothing that they can’t do to you. What you’re seeing over there, that’s your ass and more importantly, it could be my ass if we fuck this up. Do you copy? Comprende? Capeesh?”

 

I let the silence hang for a bit. I looked over again at the nose plugs, waiting to be torn open. I could hear Von breathing heavily, knowing the Mogwai had him completely.

 

“Yeah yeah, of course, I know. I’m the one here aren’t I?” I said as I twisted away from my desk. I could feel the tension settle and I changed the subject.

“Have you figured out your angle for the ending?” He would get back to spiraling if I let him.

 

“Oh yeah,” the squeak of his headrest let me know that he had turned back to the footage, snapping him out of his hazy stupor. “Like I said, it kind of sells itself. I think the garbage he says is funny enough on its own given his condition. You know how much our Lords love the verbiage, the-the-the quaint vocabulary of the pitiful common folk of Terra,” he chuckled.

 

I had known his response was coming, but I still could feel my jaw tensing as I prepared my rebuttal. Was it a sense of artistic integrity? Maybe I just didn’t like seeing someone already on their knees getting kicked. I filled my lungs with another rotten breath before speaking.

 

“Actually Von, If you look at some of the stuff I’m sending over right now, I feel like you could put more of an emotional twist on it. Maybe show some more of his humanity?”

 

All I heard were scratches of static from Von’s end. Even his typing had come to a pause. I took the chance and continued.

 

“I just feel like it’s been a while since we’ve put out more of a human story, and with what we’ve got so far, it wouldn’t be too hard. You could probably splice in some of the records of his upbringing and family history, maybe tie that in with this footage I just sent you. I’ve been recording his sleeping hours too and there’s a lot of –

 

“Hans,” Von paused, “he’s a piece of shit,” and the comm line turned off with a click.

 

The room went silent, save for the constant light tapping of the rain. Von wasn’t wrong about our star. Even after the Lords had left SH to rot, the city had experienced its fair share of brutal rule, during which he and his father had been active participants. Despite his feverish diatribes lamenting the Lords’ punishments upon SH, any rational person could see how actively he had perpetuated the same cycle of degradation from which he was given form. Again, Von wasn’t wrong.

 

“My city, my city. What have I done to my city,” I heard his murmuring crack through my receiver from the microphone I had set in his chamber a week before. I winced, but kept the recording on. He had broken down every night, and I predicted tonight would be no different. I would listen to him rant. I would feel it stir something in me, to know that this broken being at the bottom of the world could still ask to be less.

 

“What good is remorse at the edge of Eclipse? For when Christ rose again, did Pilate fall to his knees? What cruelty deserves pity?” He crooned. I heard him twist and turn. I heard the thud of his vessel hitting marble. I heard his groans as he curled against the pain.

 

I looked over at the Mogwai once more.

Extra Mog! it screamed, seemingly even more excitedly than before.

The rain tapped. He moaned.

 

What the hell I thought and cracked open a can.

 

All I saw was the haze. All I felt was stone. I reached out for everything and anything. I found nothing. But something must have found me. I heard their scuttling beneath me. I heard their murmuring above me. They were too loud to be the pests in the walls. In my confusion, I felt the city smell in my nostrils as it gnashed and twisted. I felt its appetite growing, chewing through the soft tissue in my nasal passages. The smell pushed, expanded, pressed itself against my veins. The scuttling grew louder.

 

I want to know.

 

I couldn’t even respond. My lips had gone numb while my body stretched and churned, a puddle swallowing in on itself. I felt something crawl over my fingers, tiny little legs tracing the lines across my knuckles before skittering off again into nothingness. As the legs scattered, the voices grew louder.

 

I want to know I want to know I want to know

 

Louder. Faster. Rougher. I could do nothing as I felt their approach. The footsteps of an empire ruined, yet clamoring to the last feast in the heart of their dead city. Then a pause. As if to bow their heads in prayer before the bonfire was lit.

 

I want to know you.

 

The vermin pushed its snout down my throat. I gasped. “Help,” I could barely yelp out. The haze only grew thicker.

“HELP” I yanked the words out and felt something spray against my cheeks. The city smell that was desperate to fill me.

 

I want to know love unconditional. To be struck and pushed further and further and further, until the buzzing of bot flies is the beat of angel wings. Until my skin is mulch, my insides clay, yet you still hold me tender.

And you?

 

Sinking its claws into my stomach acid, the city smell pulled its bulbous sides in.

I choked. I barked. It felt like the pores across my body stretched open, calling to the pests in the stonework, rows and rows of wounds and sores that called out in despair.

I want to know the domination of man, to dig my fingers into his soil and extract roots, breath, and all things living. To know lust after the rampage, to hunger for your helplessness, to dance upon the spoils of my conquest, fulfilled.

 

And you?

 

Dried skin. Peeling skin. Burning skin. The city smell hungers for it all.

I still feel it’s mangled fur and grizzled maw spreading me open. “I – I – I”

“I – I”

 

My rebuttal too late. The beast mocked me.

Dead Skin. Lost Skin. Burning. Burning. Burning.

 

I want to see the lines of God. To lift the blade that broke Jericho. To have tempted David into my chambers. To have stoked the first embers of our deep below and rang the bell of the End.

.

And You?

 

Is this what he and all of the others in this city had felt? The all of the Nephilim? Thunder of Ramiel? Had he arched his back against stone and called out like I do now? Had he watched his Father do the same? Had he –

 

I want to know how deep you will go.

I want to know how much you will take.

I want to know where you will start to separate and find yourself in the loam. And You? Where will you start?

“I want to know,” the words barely dribbled out of my writhing husk.

And they were gone.

 

A heaviness closed in and the silence swallowed me. No more did I feel the skittering of brittle thoraxes against stone. No more did I feel the splitting, the lingering fingerprints of Chernobyl against my fractured form. The beast chortled and crawled back up through the dead caverns of my throat, pushing, wrapping its fingers around my torn Adams apple to give a cheeky squeeze before slinking out the way it came.

 

And again.

All I saw was haze. All I felt was stone. I reached out for everything and anything. And all I found was the plastic crinkling of an unopened pack of nose plugs, squeezing into my softness as I slipped further.

 

When I woke, I knew it was over. I felt it in every neuron, proton and membrane. I trudged past my body suit and felt pieces of myself sticking to the stone in a long trail. I didn’t need to look towards the nose plugs to know I would no longer need them. The scientists could not have been clearer. Their old PSA’s flashed before my eyes. Their exaggerated features and whiny voices, the flashing charts and graphs, their conclusion so succinct. Whatever semblance of life I had known was now past me.

 

The Mogwai had been a conduit for my desecration. Perhaps it was written by the Lords as the final act in this brief chapter of cruelty. Maybe it was all part of the show. It had been Von that provided the Mogwai after all. I could see him in his cocoon, cackling to himself and clapping his hands together at another masterpiece for our Lords. He had found the climax, the ending to his hero’s tale. Perhaps it was a fate of my own design, predestined. It mattered not.

 

I slugged out of my quarters. It would soon be his time to wake and I would be there to greet him, now an equal.

 

I heard my own squelching, the squeals of my own form echoing throughout the desolate hallways that led to his chamber. I saw my distorted reflection in the doorknob. A rare blade of sunlight sliced through the large windows. The grand doors swung open and there he was. I could practically recite the words along with him as he spoke.

 

“Welcome, welcome welcome to the glorious realm of Shitcago! ruled of course, by your beloved Supreme Leader, Frederick, the Feces Fascist!”

 

I looked at the literal piece of shit in front of me. There he was, in all of his defecant glory.

 

Well, aren’t you a delectable and succulent looking specimen,” he reached for me as he had done every day before. I let it happen and felt the sting on my right side as he left his mark on me and lurched away chortling to himself.

“I’ve known of your approach for some time, but not even a God such as myself could have painted an image so pure, contours so supple,” he had turned, his arm appendages raised to indicate he would begin his sermon. I had been here before.

 

I want to know how deep you will go.

I heard them. I felt them. In a panic I shifted my gaze throughout the room.

 

“Yes, in the past I often commanded for the finest of femboy feces to be brought to my feet, but now it appears they come willingly. Consensually,” he dragged on, unaware that I was close to imploding.

 

I want to know how much you will take.

They boiled underneath my membrane. They raced through whatever veins and passages now laid in my form. I looked to him, watching as the world shook uncontrollably.

 

“You may call me Frederick, short of course, for Frederick, Feces at the Forefront of the Fourth Reich. While I don’t tell this to everyone, I do believe I had a name before, one more oriental in origin.”

 

Without another thought, I clambered up he stairs as he began to turn, murmuring to himself. I felt the stairs punching into my gut beneath me, their marble corners scraping out pieces of me.

 

“Jin-Suk was it? A silly token not at all indicative of my true form, which you are now blessed enough to see before you.”

 

Without another word I closed our distance and grabbed his girth. My trembling stopped. The voices left me, skittering off once again.

 

“What on -“ he gasped in surprise and I felt him melting between my fingers. I held him, a piece of feces without a face to show content, arms to hold me back, lips to press against, yet I felt nothing but tenderness. For the first time since I had passed underneath the rusted arches at the outskirts of SH, I couldn’t smell a thing.

 

He trembled as I pressed myself on his heap, smothered myself in his mass, reaching deep to uncover the hidden groves and estuaries where his weakness might be found. Where he might allow himself to be, Frederick.

 

I pulled back, swirling my tongue.

 

“W-w-well have you gone mad?” He sputtered out.

 

“Is this chocolate in here?” I asked, ignoring his question. I was in the haze.

“N-no. I believe, that my molecular structure might have been based on dog defecate,” his voice trailed off. “I’m sorry about that,” His colorful bravado and lectures now a fantasy from ages past.

 

“No, you’re not sorry about that.” I felt a smear of him still clung to my lips. “You’re Frederick, Feces Fascist.”

 

I felt his taste coating my tongue. “Dog shit huh?”

 

“Yes,” he hesitated. “I shall demand of the Lords above that this chemical fallacy be chang-“

 

“Don’t.” I interrupted him. “It suits you,” I said and squeezed him against me once more as he squirmed. Because in a world built by separation, where my distinction can only be found in your degradation, where I would reach the stars out of my fear of becoming like you, what else can I do when I see myself in your visage? What else can I do but to follow the ravenous beast that led us here?

 

I want to know love unconditional. I want to know the domination of man. And I will start with you.