Sybil Rain
THIS MUST BE THE PLACE
I want to leave my soul behind and be just a body. But not this body. Any other will do.
I meander into some dull casino. I feel myself go blind practically from the lights and deaf from the screeching plastic noise. There’s no one around. People flicker on and off in this city, all of them together. There are times when I’m fully alone, the only girl left in New Orleans, and times when the rooms are relentlessly populated, the streets crammed with people standing shoulder-to-shoulder, barely moving. I’m sick of both options. Obviously I think of suicide. What keeps me from trying is the definite possibility that the next life is even more boring than this one.
The objects here frustrate me endlessly. The blanket in my room, for instance. When I stroke it the blanket feels scratchy and soft. But the more that I rub the more I can sense another layer deeper down, where the texture is different. Rubbery and firm, like an over-boiled egg. It turns my stomach. But I want to feel it anyway. I often feel I am on the verge of peeling the top layer back and getting to the rubbery texture beneath. I pick away at the edges of things. My blanket, my skin. But it’s like a plastic package you need scissors to open. Again and again you’re about to break through, your thumbnail slipping between the layers, but they won’t pull apart, and there aren’t any scissors.
I go to an ice-cream store and order a custard. I go to a café and order a beignet and coffee.
Sometimes I am grateful for all the cats that follow me around here, but most of the time they annoy me with their incessant mewling. I don’t have anything for you, I tell them. Go away. Maybe they don’t believe me, or maybe they haunt me just to spite me. Maybe they’re waiting for me to die so they can feast on my corpse. Descartes believed animals were automatons, little more than furry robots. What set humans apart was our ability to reason. As if robots can’t do that. I believe we are all of us machines, not just the animals. Why else would we be stuck here? We can think our way up to other planets, but all of those planets will be just like this one. You can’t use your brain to escape. The mind is a trap anyway. It’s just another organ. Your memories trick you into thinking it’s different. Into thinking you’re real. That you matter. That you even exist. But you don’t.
I think all these things as I eat my custard and my beignet. They both taste like sand. I crumble pieces of the beignet and toss them to the cats, who sniff the crumbs but don’t eat them. We’re sitting on a hillside somewhere. In a field. I wish someone would put me in a body bag and carry me to a mausoleum. I could be a statue of an angel. I would love to stand that still. I swear I could be buried alive and wouldn’t even notice the difference.
There are no fungi here. No mushrooms or anything. Nothing decomposes. It always stays the same.
I dump my custard out of its cup and watch it dribble towards the cats. The field is full of golden chrysanthemums. The sun is shining brightly but it’s not a warm day. My arms are covered in cuts that won’t heal. I made the cuts myself, of course, but had I known they wouldn’t close I wouldn’t’ve made them. Or maybe I still would’ve. It’s hard with hypotheticals. I hear a sound like a ringing telephone. It’s actually kind of sweet. Ring-ring-ring. Ring-ring-ring. I find that I like it. I look all around to see where the sound is, but the cats start their crying again. All of them together. Their hideous mewling drowns everything out. I decide to walk somewhere different now. Or perhaps I could just keep on sitting here. I’m sure it doesn’t matter either way.