Could hear their low drone. Animals with fangs made of bamboo and steel, their snouts smeared with matter and blood. Machines that crunched chicken carcasses to pulp. Cancer with teeth and hair in an elderly man’s lower back, crouching like a snickering homunculus. The world was full of terrible things. It was armed, it curled and massed against him, like an enormous wave preparing to break. He could feel these things upon his skin, smell them through his teeth, almost taste them directly through his hands and feet. Indeed, he felt as though his skin were attempting to shuck itself free of him altogether. To be rid of this impossible body. He couldn’t blame it. It’s a terrible thing to be in horror of one’s very self, to be aware of one’s own stench. How did that Psalm go? I am a worm, and no man. A reproach of men, and despised by the people. Something like that. He scratched at himself, from arm to toe to thigh to ribs, seeking spot fires of discomfort and irritation that swarmed across his goosebumped skin.
