Tension and Resistance

Tension and Resistance
Mark Coleman

I can’t jump, cause I’m gyved. Tied down. Pilloried. Overwhelmed by directionless grief. Laid bare with skin taut, and eyes sunk from half a year of insect sleep. I try to move but I’m stuck on a piece of fly paper. The slightest stretch breaks my legs off. I watch the careless frolicking of others. Mandibles twitching, mustache dripping bile. The sunlight in my eyes carrying the daggers to my heart. Stabbing out the signs of life.
The fish hook of depression pierces every segment of my body. I stare at the images flickering out from the television. The idiot parade that composes the soundtrack to this sedentary life. A drop of sweat sitting in the end of the trough cleft of my nose. The skylights pouring vats of molten lead on my head. Burning through the cigarette paper, and dashing the ash across the floor.
The ashtray and highball glass prisms dancing at my side. I shut my eyes, and sink into such a nauseating nose dive that when I surface again; I’m dry heaving. The smoke choked air breathed in gasps. I’m on the brink of hyperventilation. Fingernails dug into the armchair. Every muscle tightening, face red and head throbbing. Every hair on my body like a dew covered blade of grass. My teeth clenched so hard that I’m afraid they’ll shatter.
Then as soon as it comes, it goes. All that remains is the moisture. I sit back, and my hands loosen with the splinters beneath the nails drawing a minutiae of blood. The television making indistinguishable sounds. Someone rolling around in a semi-epileptic fit on the floor with a contraption between their legs. Absurdity overriding any sexual innuendo. The labia rendered moot in the weight loss voodoo rite.
Pouring myself half a glass of scotch, I try to relax. But my episode, and its counter part on the screen, keeps my body tense. I down the scotch, and a bit of cumulus cloud briefly floats over my eyes. My mind swells, impregnated by a few unhealthy thoughts, then retreats and hides in the corner. Refusing to ruminate after the brief storm of suicide apparatus. Unwilling to process the contours of the anti-sex flooding into my living room.
My eyelids flutter, and I reach for the bottle. On auto-pilot now. Everything devoid of any deeper meaning than what’s immediately perceptible on the surface. The illusion of space on the television not even coming through. Just stickmen running around with slices cut out of their pie chart heads. Babbling what one would assume is infomercial speak despite the half day roman numeral that the clock hands rest on. The lock latch clicking away.
I turn my head towards a snapping sound. Staring into the loll tongued eyes of a mouse with its neck broke in the trap that I set a week ago. My mind snaps back into action, overflowing with sights of gibbets and collapsing floors. Fleshing out the room with track mark pores from which nooses dangle and accusing fingers point. The leathery tail hitting the floor in one last death throe. Protesting certainty and pre-determination.
With a sudden lurch I’m out of my chair, over the trap, and at the knife block. I remove the varying lengths and widths buried in its heart. Laying them across the cutting board. Lifting one, then another. Examining each with a pseudo jeweler’s eye. Running my index along the blades to the tip. I feel out the handles, until I find a fit. I take a few deep breaths. Inhaling through dilated nostrils, exhaling through slightly parted lips. I lift it up in the way that I imagine samurais do before committing hara-kiri.
I plunge it to the hilt in my chest. It takes more strength than I’ve exerted in my entire life to break through the sternum. Both hands slip from the bloodied wooden handle as I fall back against the lip of the sink. My knees give out beneath me, and I collapse onto the kitchen floor.
The puddle begins to form about my frame. Rivulets of red branching out between the tiles. Meeting resistance at the trap, it forms a sort of halo that sends out little diamonds of light that are the twinkling of stars here. The only sound that remains is a revving engine in the street. The cable just went out leaving noiseless static in its wake. An ocean of electric mote, blotting out the barren stolidity of a few unconcerned faces.