|
"Delirium - Juggernaut of Disease" By: Daphne LeFay Site: LiveJournal - Everlovingmoon A burning sensation in the pit of her stomach woke Matti up. She slowly opened her eyes, adjusted her eyesight to the psychedelic world around her, and willed the bed to stop spinning. She crouched on her knees, slowly pushing herself up, her head hanging low, her shoulders bunched up, with her half long, peroxide blonde hair hanging in dirty strands around her face. After a couple of agonizing minutes, she was able to sit up, and she folded her legs underneath her to sit cross-legged, throwing her head back to loosen the tight muscles. She brought her hands to her face, to touch the alien mask imposed on it. Matti's hand stilled, and Matti remembered. Her fingertips touched the cruel ridges of raised flesh, the raw abyss of her nose, the stitched corners of her mouth, her lips, bleeding still. Jamming a finger in the mistreated flesh, she opened her mouth and tasted a blend of copper and disease as she sucked on her blood. With one finger still jammed into her mouth, and the other one around her own chest, she started rocking back and forth, trying to access her memories, trying to banish them. Salty tears spilled from her eyes and made agonizing trails in the ruins of her face. She cried out to the ceiling, but no sound came from the raw insides of her throat. After her crying subsided and her frail body stopped shaking, she lowered her hands to run them over herself. Instinctively she realized her white flesh was still untainted. Her spidery hands flecked her skin with blood, from her small, pointy breasts over her abdomen, the narrow ridges of her hipbones and her skinny thighs. Through the salty, sticky tears gathering in the corners of her eyes, it became increasingly difficult to open them again, but Matti inhaled and exhaled as deeply as she could and applied a little more physical force. Her eyes pried open and she was looking down on the white sheets and pillows, stained with bright red blood, swirling and wavering elegantly into intricate patterns to any artistic eye. Matti kicked her legs angrily forward, smearing the blood out with her heels, destroying the patterns and breaking their lifelines. Her hands clenched into fists and she felt bile rising in her throat. The sight of blood had always made her sick. Even when she had been 15 and for the first time attempted to pierce her own lobes and it had grossed her out. She'd become used to it, and had for a while thrived on it, but she hated the sight of her own blood now, knowing the disease that cruised through her veins. Concentrating on her breathing and this memory in the fleeting blur of her conscious mind, the throbbing pain in her face slowly started to subside. It numbed to a dull ache, barely noticeable and a strong resolve nestled in her brain, as strong as it had come to her in her delirium. She positioned herself lying on the bed, her head resting on the pillow, her naked frame spread out over the blood stained sheets, her arms flexed to the sides, with her palms up. Staring at the ceiling, she started to count, and slowed her breathing, until nothing was to be heard. Her mutilated face twisted in a wry smile, and she dreamt once more. Earlier Matti had caught herself staring into the mirror as she went through her careful ritual of covering up her face before she pocketed her prized white tabs and going out on the street to make herself a living. It was not as if anyone would give a damn what she looked like. As always, she would be wearing a worn down dress over her jeans and the large scarf over her hair and hiding her face as in a cowl was enough signal to anyone. Yet, she could recall better times. She could recall times she was actually filling out the dress, and the times where her customers were after more than the contents of her jeans pocket. But all of them were aware now, and they did so no longer. And even though she had cursed them time and time again over the last few years, a strange void of missing something had settled into her. Sure enough, she realized what it was. Matilde, as the name given to her by her parents, 20-odd years ago, had always been center of attention wherever she went. She was not extraordinary beautiful, her nicely shaped face adorned with freckles. Her eyes had remained, even till after her childhood, ridiculously big in contrast with her face, giving her an innocent, wide eyed open look, which she always found as being regarded extremely attractive. Early on in her teenage years, her body had started to develop curves and she'd worn them proudly as her mother had taught her. Matti snorted, and shook her head. Her mother wasn't present anymore to watch her, and she should know better than to reminisce on times gone. She left the dump she called her home and wandered out into the streets. The weather was cold, but dry and her breath came out of her mouth in puffs of swirling smoke. The wind rattled her bones, chilling her to the core and she pulled her thin black jacket around her tightly, making her way through the East. The East in London had been where she had grown up, and she had only shortly left it to attempt a study on the other side of the city, but within half a year she had been back, homesick for the well known streets and the raw manner of the East people. Well, that and some other things. Matti headed straight for her usual place and hoped her customers would show up quickly. She did not really feel like hanging out in the cold for too long. Approaching the steps where she usually dealt with her business, she lengthened her paces and stalked to a small corner in between two empty houses, with the roof of one of them hanging over turning it dark and perfect, although ridiculously stereotype. But the kind of customers she had liked that, anyway. The first two were relatively new. They had hung about her for months before they had actually approached her and only this morning they had called her privately. After exchanging some empty chatter, Matti expertly, inconspicuously, produced two white tabs from her jeans pocket, and handed them over. She stuffed the bundle of twenty pound bills in her other pocket and after the exchange they chattered some more, but she noticed they were in a hurry to go, and they parted. She knew that was because they were new. They would learn how to go about differently, soon. If they came back. She shrugged. Not her problem. There were more than enough others. Shivering in the cold, she stamped her feet to keep warm. She wondered if she should wait for a longer time. It was not very likely anything was going to happen anytime soon. Making her decision, she turned on her heels and wanted to head back to her pad, when she noticed a striking figure making his way towards her. His composure, the way he walked, his clothes, everything spoke to her. She froze. Within a couple of seconds, the man, in his early thirties, slightly receding hairline, expensive, tailored clothes adorning his athletic body, halted in front of her. "Matilde," he said, as if it was a pleasant surprise to run into her here. "What do you want here?" she shot back, recovering, remembering who she was, and pulling her coat tight about her, indignantly, as she noticed him measuring her up. "Well, I hoped you hadn't changed your habits, and you don't seem to have." He smiled. "Don't worry though; I just want something from you easily provided." Smiling, he extended his hand and patted her jeans pocket. She did not react, simply slowed her breathing. He gave her a devious look and let his fingers slide over a sensitive area. Even through her dress and her jeans, the touch burned. He pulled his hand back and used it to tug on his tie. "How was your mother's funeral?" he asked casually. "I am sorry I could not be there." "I bet you are," she whispered back, barely controlling her anger. "Yes, I know. And I am sorry," he taunted her. "After all, if we had gotten round to getting married, you would kind of have been my daughter." Her eyes shot up to him. "Asshole." she muttered under her breath, then spoke up. "Are we doing business?" The corners of his mouth curled up, as cruelly as she had thought it when he had done it for the first time she saw him. "Oh, yes." He pulled something out his coat and offered it to her, enclosing it in his palm with his fingers so she could not see. He knew how it was done. Her hands went to her own pockets. She chose the pocket where she had just shoved the bills into and fumbled under them for a small white tab, enclosed in its protective plastic envelope. The only one she kept specifically in that pocket, and had done for quite some time. She clasped his hand and they exchanged. In a fluent motion, he let the tab disappear into his coat and looked at her directly. Swiftly, before she could pull back, he cupped her chin. "So good to see you. You're a real daughter of your mother, you know," he added, taking another look at her. "You look so alike." Hot tears burned in Matti's eyes and throat, yet she said nothing, just looked defiantly. "See you," he told her, with amusement lurking in his eyes and tugging at the corners of his mouth, and he stalked of. With little satisfaction, Matti thought automatically that he was making the same mistake as the boys earlier on. And with grave satisfaction, she knew he would not come back to her for this kind of business, anyway. She started to retrace her way back home, but she wouldn't trace it fully. Now, she had other plans. Robert. Thinking his name, feeling it in her mind, it all felt disgusting. She reached for the last tab she was carrying and popped the acid in her mouth, to get rid of the nasty taste. She savored the taste and was, as every time, even after all previous ones, excited with the feel of it sliding through her throat and nestling in her, and taking effect slowly. She walked about for half an hour, feeling her heart beating faster and faster as she was used to, until it hammered in her chest with the rhythm of her feet. Her vision narrowed, turning everything at the fringes into long shadows, slipping in and out of her vision at a sickening speed. The familiar rush of the delirium came over her, and she decided she was ready. Matti's thoughts ran through her scenario continually as she made her way out of the East, into the richer parts of London. She knew the way by heart and did not need to look anywhere out of her narrow, straightforward vision, self imposed by the acid, limiting her visually as well as mentally vision-wise. She knew that, and that was the way she wanted it now. This was the one time. She would no sooner have the guts than right now, so why not, she reasoned. She wished that, for dramatic entrance and the like, she could produce something cool to get into the posh flat where she knew Robert had a small apartment, one he solely used for his "unusual" escapades, not risking doing so at his even swankier apartment south of the river. He had done that for all the five years she'd known him, and she doubted he'd changed his ways. Well, the truth of it was that she still owned a spare key to the apartment, of which Robert knew nothing about. Matti bounced up the two sets of stairs, slipped past some women in colorful, thickly padded woolen coats, who were giving her the evil eye. She knew, but didn't care, could hardly notice with the nausea rising up in her as it always did. She just needed to live out this delirium a little longer. She was only slightly disappointed when she didn't meet any resistance gaining access to the apartment- somehow she had thought it would give the entire affair some more drama. But nothing and nobody stood in her way and she found the scene as she had pictured it in her head, more or less. Robert spread out over his couch, splayed out strangely, as he had anticipated feeling weird from the junk, she supposed, but not passing out. For the first time that day, a smile curled around her lips. She left him be for the moment-she had calculated the time she had carefully and knew she didn't need to be in a hurry. In the kitchen she collected the things she needed, the things she knew her mother had left behind gradually in the years of her relationship with Robert. Kitchen knife, nice and sharp for clean cutting, a collection of needles and sowing thread. Going back to the couch, she realized he was in an uncomfortable position for her purpose- she'd need to shift him. She knew that the junk she'd given him had not only made him unconscious, also unable to move and slightly limp. It was going to be hard to roll over the heavy weighted man for her, but she was not going to let something like that stand in her way. With a lot of effort, she managed to get him on his back. She moved to sit on his legs with her legs on either side of him and nearly laughed at the irony- yes, at last she was straddling him then, a year after he had stopped wanting it, for the reason she was about to unleash on him. Since she found it offensive, in a strange way, to either open the buttons of his shirt or to rip it open with her hands, she used the knife. Then she tugged it aside and looked for a nice little spot she could place the incision. Just below the heart she pressed the tip of the knife in the flesh and watched a small crimson droplet appear on the blade. It was actually harder than she had thought. Her hand, for some strange reason, didn't appear to be really steady, nor was his flesh, but she dragged along and opened his skin, deep enough, but not overly dramatic. A little blood swelled from the clean cut and she dabbed it away with some kitchen towel. She reached up to her own face next. The tip of the blade hovered there for a long time. She placed it between her eyebrows, closed her eyes and slowed her breathing. Carefully, she slid it through the scar tissue, following the lines of all the old marks, opening them once more, allowing her life juices to flow out and fall down. When she opened her eyes again and looked down, she was even a bit surprised at the mess it had made. The blood was everywhere, on her clothes, his clothes, the couch. Her blood. It wasn't hard with her hands covered in her own blood as well to mix it with his in the wound on his chest. Matti imagined the cells binding together, her diseased blood attacking him from inside. No matter how long it would take, he would die. He shared it now. He'd exchanged his poisonous bodily fluids with her mother, what he had called his life, but what had killed her. Reason had said her mother had been too old to have a child. Matti didn't care. She had her revenge. Her bodily fluids traded for his. He would find out exactly how poisonous hers were. She took up the thread and needle, and forced herself to stay focused for a little while longer. With expert hand, she sewed the wound up, sealing her blood in with his. After she was done, she used it on herself to repair the worst damage. Her face had been patched up so many times it didn't really matter anymore. Not to her anyway. When she finally put it down, she rested her head back against the couch, exhausted. She realized the acid was past its peak and that the loss of blood was going to put her out soon. Only her strong resolve got her back on her feet and she dragged herself to the bedroom, where she collapsed on spotless white sheets on a four poster bed. Her face was burning now, searing with pain as consciousness rushed back into her and brought back her senses. Matti cried out as stabs of pain from her mutilated face let her whole body burn in rage and agony. She screamed until her throat hurt, and the intended screams were reduced to whimpers. Slowly, the white of the linen stained red. Matti's mouth grew still, and her body stopped shaking gradually. And Matti dreamt. |
