Post by Addy A on Jan 24, 2020 15:03:19 GMT -5
At Night
Flop finds himself strapped to a gurney in a brightly lit room. Standing over him are two men in surgical masks that give themselves the appearance of medical professionals. If that is in fact true, well that is entirely up to you to decide. Flop is covered by a surgical gown and it can only be assumed that his naked underneath said gown. He struggles against his restraints. The two ‘doctor’s’ engage in a conversation over the top of Flop, while he struggles. The ‘doctor’ on the right of Flop initiates the chatter.
“Этот человек - идеальный кандидат на эти лекарства.”
“Почему ты так говоришь?”
“Посмотри на него. Он чертовски дурак.”
“Что произойдет, если он умрет?”
“Гребаная американская мразь. Мать Россия правит ими всеми.”
The pair engage in a hearty chortle, while the one on the right takes a syringe off the table next to him. His associate holds Flop’s arm down while some form of serum is injected into his arm.
“Это сделает нас богатыми, мой друг.”
Flops stops struggling and drifts off into the land of nighty-night. The two men reposition themselves behind the gurney and push Flop out into the hallway and he lays motionless on the gurney dreaming of fluffy white clouds and rainbows.
Later that Night
Brilliant white hides a certain darkness that can only be felt but not seen. Flop has been left unrestrained in the hallway. He snaps bolts upright, looking around he sees a pile of body bags stacked high along the wall. He jumps off the gurney and runs down the brightly lit hallway into the tunnel of endless white fluorescence.
Strange things happened in the night...
The room is dim, lacking all basic human furnishings. The darkening of this inner sanctum is intentional, a sort of den that exists in the oppressive absence of light. There are books everywhere, entire stacks of them that line the walls, creating wobbly towers of literature. Everything smells like old paper here, dust and must and thousands of pages that contain so many fictional dreamscapes. Flop has read them all. Never enough. They barely whet his voracious mental appetite.
He’s present in his disordered library, just a sweat-soaked torso in the shadows beyond the binding of books. His fingers grip a steel bar that hangs down from the ceiling, his body poised in a flexed arm hang. There should be signs of exertion. There should be muscles trembling. There should be some semblance of discomfort in his eyes. But…there are none of these things.
He holds his body in midair, poised and frozen in place, as still as a mannequin or a freshly embalmed corpse. Little streams of perspiration drip down the grooves of his abdominals, but this is the only thing that betrays the fact that a living, breathing human being is suspended in this position. He is silent.
He is motionless. He is flesh that has transcended the laws of flesh.
Flop falls, landing catlike across the hardwood floor. He rises to his full height, his bones cracking and settling into place. A curtain of dark, wet hair obscures his eyes. Only the barest slivers of blue manage to permeate that curtain. He begins to weave through narrow corridors comprised of books all stacked together, his fingertips reaching out to graze across familiar titles. We view his progress from behind, noticing a spiral design on the back of his neck. At first glance, we think it’s a tattoo…but closer inspection shows it to be something carved into his skin via ritualistic scarification.
He exits a winding corridor, approaching a section of wall. There are numerous flash cards plastered to the wall from top to bottom. Each card bears handwriting in a neat, sharp script. Each card bears a name.
FPV.
Pleasant.
Jones.
Collins.
Scott.
McMorris.
The names continue, the entire wall decorated in name after name after name in a circular pattern on the wall. Every single name on the APW roster.
Flop’s eyes eat up the cards, hungry for those names, seeking to devour. He stands there for a moment, simply staring. Suddenly…his eyes close. Those cold, barren soul-windows give themselves over to the blackness behind his eyelids.
His right hand rises and his index finger begins to twirl. The digit moves in a hypnotic circle, drawing lazy loops through the air, the fingertip passing across name after name. Finally the twirling stops and the finger stabs forward with violent intensity, the choice perfectly random, perfectly unplanned.
Flop opens his eyes. Flop drinks in the name. Flop makes his choice…
We focus on his mouth, thin lips pulling back from two rows of perfect white teeth. The name is hidden behind those teeth, unspoken in the depths of his throat.
Every story needs a prologue.
His finger grinds down harder against the chosen name. We continue to view his mouth, teeth gritted together in something like pleasure.
It starts with you… Jason.
We need a narrative, don’t we? Without an individualistic story, we are just bees in the hive. Faceless. Pointless. Dreams within dreams. Let me tell you about me. Insight is important. If you know about me, it makes things easier.
I grew up in a slumping, musty orphanage on a crooked street in a broken city. I have no one in my life that would resemble kin. My coming of age saw me leave the orphanage and the crooked street and the broken city. I wandered through this labyrinthine life working odd jobs and living in cramped little rooms.
Call me Flop.
We need a narrative, don’t we? Let me tell you about me. It makes things easier.
I grew up in a rambling mansion on a prosperous estate. My mother and father provided me with every luxury my little mind could dare imagine. I have multitudes of siblings, my family expansive, like so many heads on the serpentine hydra.
Call me Flop.
We need a narrative, don’t we? Let me tell you about me. It makes things easier.
I grew up in the penal system. I’ve been transferred from correctional facility to correctional facility. My first friend was a common roach that crept out of a chipped section of wall in my cell. We’d wax poetic late into the night. I once made a rudimentary shiv out of a loose bolt from my cot. I used it to open up my cellmate’s femoral artery while he was sleeping. He was bloodless when they found him. I prefer solitude…
Call me Flop.
You must understand your narrative, my new friend. You must understand the story you are trying to tell and how our stories intertwine like the threads of a silken spiderweb. Your story is a new story, but is a tale that has been well told - the glamourous movie star - full of narcissism and bravado. My story is a true story - the cannibal. Not literal, Jason. Metaphorical. You think I will devour you the moment you step in the ring, and I will. But, stop. Pause for a moment and realise that I devoured your ego all along the way when we played our little games on social media.
Do you know why I chose you, Jason?
You don't?
I intend to make you special.
Good night Jason.
In the “Hospital”
Two medical professionals stand over the empty gurney where Flop once laid.
“Он живет.”
“Он сбежал.”
“Что произойдет, когда сыворотка истощится?”
“Не знаю. Мы должны найти американскую мразь.”
They run. They run like ordinary men who have lost possession of a demon. Down into the endless fluorescence chasing the man lost.
