Simulacrum

The below could either be a bit of flash fiction, or perhaps be expanded into something larger. 

Mary isn’t right. She knows this. She knows the people she knows know this. It shows – shows on her face, in her voice, in how she moves. She’s out of sorts, off kilter. Waves of dread rise up in her stomach and threaten to overwhelm her. What’s worse is she doesn’t know why.

Sometimes, she feels like she’s coming apart – literally ripping open at the seams. Like she could just wink out of existence at any moment. At other times, she feels like a piece of bad programming – as though she was accidentally written into some computer algorithm and she’ll be erased. Fixed.

This is a new feeling. She’s been sad before, for extended stretches: she remembers this clearly. But now…now. This is different. It’s as if she’s slowly drifting away from reality. She wants someone to explain what’s happening to her. But who? She can’t describe it to anyone. Who would listen? Who would sit and let her tell them she’s afraid she’s disappearing? That, one by one, each part of her is flickering and guttering and going out?

They’d think she was crazy. Maybe she is. Maybe that’s the explanation. Maybe she should be medicated. Maybe that would solve the problem. She decides she’ll go to the doctor. The doctor will tell her how to fix it, how to make herself solid again.

On Monday, she makes the appointment, and on Tuesday, she goes to see the doctor. He’s a middle-aged man, with a paunch and a sympathetic furrow of the brow. He listens to her describing how her life is disintegrating – not just her life, her whole being – and nods as though he knows exactly what she’s talking about. She suspects he doesn’t – how could he, really. She tries to be more emphatic, to be clearer. She raises her left hand to gesticulate, and she realises one of her fingers has disappeared. It’s only for a second – it’s gone and then it’s back – but it’s indisputable. She stops mid-sentence. She doesn’t wait for the doctor to speak. Instead, she runs.

She runs and runs and runs, all the way across town until she reaches her apartment. Sweating and panting, she stares at herself in the bathroom mirror.

“What’s happening to me?” she whispers.

She’s shaking all over and there are tears streaming down her face. She can feel the desperation building inside her. There’s only one thing she can think of doing. Still trembling, she reaches for the razor on the side of the bathtub, and slowly, precisely presses it down against the soft flesh on her upper arm and draws it towards her.

At first, the blood rises to the surface and flows as she hoped it would, proving there is life there. But after a moment or two, it starts to flicker and fade, and any sign of injury disappears with it.

A few days pass. She’s afraid to go outside, afraid to speak, afraid to move. She calls her office to tell them she has the flu, and then she calls the doctor again.

It’s a quiet, grey afternoon. Everything seems to be as it should be when she works up the courage to leave the apartment.

The doctor looks at her gravely.

“You’re a simulacrum,” he says. As though she should know what this means.

“A what?”

“A simulacrum. A cipher. In short, you’re not real,” he says, and sighs heavily. She stares at him, blankly. There’s a long pause and she can see him trying to decide how to explain himself. He sighs again.

“You’re an amalgam of various different people. You were constructed out of pieces of memory.” He pauses again, waiting for her to process the information before he continues.

“Your parents couldn’t conceive, and they didn’t want to adopt. Effectively, you’re a very sophisticated computer programme. You were designed to develop and grow, just like any other child. Your facial features were constructed so as to resemble an approximate genetic mix of your mother and father.” He pauses yet again, watching her, waiting for her to react, but her face is frozen.

“Unfortunately, the technology was relatively untested at the time. You’ve already made it much further than we thought you would.”

“We?” she asks.

“FamiGen. Your creators. Look, there’s not much I can do for you. These are their contact details. Tell them I sent you.” He hands her a white card, with the word FamiGen printed in small black letters, and a phone number underneath.

“They might be able to help you.”

I wish

I wish I could say
The things I want to say, but
I fear I'm too late

End of Days, part III

On a dark and dreary street

In the deepest darkest heart

Of the capital of a country

Still reeling from the shock

Of the discovery of its own frailty

On a Christmas night, hid

From the reaches of holiness

Peals of laughter sound

Beneath a railway bridge

Men and women gather

In a tavern, gaily lit

And warmly welcoming

To travellers on this night

Damp and dishevelled

Clapping their arms

Against their sides, they rejoice

Glass of wine in hand,

They greet each other

With kisses and slaps

On the shoulder, as if

In congratulation

For some deed or other

They form circles, smoking,

Drinking and ever laughing

In their hearts, they believe,

They are invincible

Protected by their own mirth

They feel no pain

Shielded by a smeary, bleary

Window, at which I can

Only press my nose

Outside, I am a spirit

Ephemeral as the winter wind

A ghost of a ghost, unseen

And unremarked by revellers

With good cheer in their thoughts

And no room in their hearts

I will lie outside their shield of glass

Forgotten for another year

End of Days, Part II

As you sit breathing in
The foetid urine stink
Of the city evening
You find yourself guilty
For thinking your plight
To be worse than others'
And a million million
Big wet eyes well up
At you in the dark
And give you hell
With the tale of their hell
All broken limbs
And stories of desolation
With no self pity
In their silent song
They weep inside you
You coward
You soft, weak puppy
You coddled child
You remonstrate with yourself
But you know
You'll do the same
Nothing you always do
And time is slipping
More quickly than you'd like
Into the swirling sucking drain
Beneath your feet
And your safe city night
Races on around you
Your snarling serpent train
Winding on and on and on
And you feel the hands
Of a million million million
Doomed denizens of
The same planet as you
Albeit a different world
Begging you to
Pull them free
But you kick them away
Still chained to your own
Pedestrian woes
And in the blink
Of the blink of the
Yellow sulphurous light
You let them go

End of Days, Part I

I have seen the end of our race
Crying men, chasing bloody oil
Their grandiosity not enough
To heal the open wounds
That they have wrought
On ground made unholy
By screaming desperate struggles
To come out on top
And angels themselves have
Ceased to guard these men who
Have no idea of how to gaze
With love on the creation
That they swore was above
All else and worth the fight

They have lost their own salvation
And now they are coming
To snatch it away from the
Shrunken hands of starving
Mothers whose children
Have been sacrificed to the
God of progress

They believe unfailingly
That they will be clean
And the stains that
Soak through their skin
To their very being have
Been hard won
They believe that
They will wash away when
They come to ask for
Their reward and they will be
Children again

But they were never children,
Only prototypes of their savage
Future selves, waiting to
Let loose the greatest devastation
Of an age and drown their
Own wicked emptiness, for they
Were made ready in the womb
To cut the throats of infants and
Never cast a backward eye
On the ruined women they
Left behind, calling them
Collateral damage

I have seen the battle scars
Left by men who would shred
The flesh of weaker mortals
To satisfy their blood lust
From behind the solid walls
Where they give their orders
To the hardened, haunted youth
Brought in from hungry streets
And promised hope
Decried for their vicious ways
By hypocrites whose eyes
See nothing but the feted
Bottom line

Adam Lost, part III

There were other animals besides Monkey and the birds and the little animals he was able to catch and kill. They walked silently among the trees and some of them had big, sharp teeth. Sometimes, they came out of the trees and they would chase him because they wanted to eat him. He remembered some of their faces from pictures he'd seen and he knew they would kill him if they caught him. Once, they came very close. He heard a crash in the trees and all of sudden, one of them was coming right towards him, with big yellow eyes and wide, snapping jaws, full of awful teeth. It was growling, coming closer and closer, ready to take him for its prey. He knew he had to run, but he was afraid and his legs seemed soft and they wouldn't do what he told them. He picked up the sharpstone and threw it as hard as he could at the animal, hitting it above one big yellow eye. Then at last he was running and he ran and ran until he was far away and he couldn't see the animal anymore.

When he stopped, he didn't know the trees or the rocks around him. He was far, far away and he didn't know how to get back. His home, his real home, was long gone, but he had come to love his new one. He had spent a long time making it better, with animal skins to keep him warm and soft dry dirt to sleep on in the little cave where he sheltered from the rain. He had never strayed far because he was afraid of the other animals and he didn't want to be lost again. He dropped down on the hard, cold ground and began to cry. He hadn't cried for a long time, but he was so tired and lost that he couldn't stop himself. He didn't know if Monkey would ever find him or if he would ever find his way back. With a sad, heavy heart, he got up and he began to walk. He wished he knew some bad words so that he could curse the other animal that had caused his sadness, but he couldn't remember any.

For many days, he walked, following the changing trees and the sounds of the animals. Sometimes, he thought he heard the other animal again, but he never saw it. He tried hard to keep from giving in to the terrible aching in his heart, but it would rise and make him want to lie down, and let the other animal come and eat him whole. He had to live on the berries he could find among the roots of the trees because he didn't have the sharpstone anymore and it was like a terrible game. He couldn't remember which ones would make him sick and he grew frightened every time he needed to eat. Days and days and days, he walked, until he thought he would die from his despair. When he stopped to rest, he thought maybe he would be lost forever. It was a long time, but finally, finally, he began to recognise the trees. When he began to see some of the trails he had left and the places where Monkey used to sit and watch him, he thought his heart would burst. He began to cry again, but they were happy tears and he felt glad for the first time in as long as he could remember. Then he could see his little cave and his animal skins and he was home. 

Love

Today, I love you more
My dear
Than ever, I think
Before
I love the dark, curling forest
Of hairs
At the nape of your neck
I love
Your fingernails and eyelashes
I love
The scent of you that
Remains
On my clothes and on
My skin
I love the sweet expanse of
Deep gold
That wraps itself around
Your hands
And arms and feet and fingers
I love
Your lovely mind, my love
And all
The beautiful ways that you
Love me