hush: a journal of noise

The girls on screen wake up, gastric tracts still their own. I hadn’t seen The Human Centipede. Slap me, you say. This is the part where the lab coat opens. Someone rips the medicine cabinet off the bathroom wall. Something like this always happens at my parties, you say, waving a wooden fetish spoon in figure eights. The guy next to me has a tomato plant with 42 of the cherry variety. If it thinks it’s dying, it wants to bloom faster, he says. I nod. I can’t take my eyes off the slow chase on screen: right, left, right, left. Knees and palms on white tiles. You’re looking at me again, but I pretend not to see. More torment and tutelage. I unsnap my top two pearl snaps. It’s a hot Texas night. My cheek is starting to swell, you say, bemused. I drink Bourbon from a glass measuring cup to seem busy. Could this be worse than Hostel? Cherry guy tries to make small talk, but I’m up and out of myself. I follow the circuitry of crown molding and press through the screen door. I float over a close wreck. A black motorcycle helmet spins like a top near the side of the road. I come to in the bushes, where I’m crouched, my shirt open. You find me. You lead me on all fours to a cot.