Cerebral – Salau Anthony
July 30, 2024
drink and become God,
she says as she hands me a plastic cup, covered with shimmering lights and intricate embroidery. her long nails glow in the eerie blackness and i can see horns protruding from her cranium, i look to the far end of the hall and on the porcelain slab I see, the matrimony of germ-coated genitalia, overindulge and the nonpresence of chastity, they are screaming and cheering as the climax approaches, they are all dying and alive and laughing hysterically and drinking from plastic cups, i think the color is cyan, they are filming all these, i look down at myself and I am naked, we are all naked but it does not seem to bother anyone, we are alive and dead and false and true and sinners and saints, there is no isn’t, we are not.
i hold the cup to my lips and the contents shimmer, it smells like urine, dead lilies, ammonia, acid; it is repulsive. i feel disgust, but my face cannot seem to express my thoughts, i feel as though my senses of control and expression have been subdued and are now infinitesimal compared to the vastness of the chaos and pure sensuality that governs this place. she notices my hesitation, and she says
inhibitions are the antithesis of truth, overthought is the funeral of fluidity, docility is the scripture of manipulation, drink
she cups my face in her hands, draws her charcoal colored lips to mine and bites me, pulls my lips apart with her fingers and bites my tongue then bites hers till they draw blood, then she kisses me, soul in soul as our blood mingles, she pulls back and holds the cup to my mouth, my resistance is inexistent now, she empties the contents into me.
i watch myself succumb to her as I drink and i instantly feel a burning sensation travel from my tongue to my intestine, i watch myself crumple to the floor and asphyxiate and cough and spurt blood from my mouth, laughing violently and weeping at the same time. i watch myself grasp and clutch desperately, tugging the skin on my throat and stomach roughly as though i could tear myself open and regurgitate the contents of the cup onto the floor, i watch my ears begin to bleed as the music, melancholia and madness blend into a dissonant shoegaze rhythm, i watch myself groan in agony on the dance floor as my neck begins to distend wetly and my oesophagus comes into view, i watch myself, naked and anguished and abandoned as no one takes any cognisance of me, the music continues, muffled and imperceptible, laughter and sin and agony laying the upbeat tunes which everyone is hypnotized by, i watch myself gasp, my eyes widening with fright at the realization that there is no respite, no regurgitation, no expulsion, no undoing, the chick has killed me and I watch, i watch her stoop down on me and lay her darkened breasts on my gaping, bloodied neck, lights flash at blinding speeds and blend into each other and sounds distort, primary shoegaze, everything becomes oversaturated colour VCR, my vision begins to blur, my weakened breath is all that is audible now, i watch myself breathe my last, i watch myself die.
blood trickles from my mouth in steady spurts and begins to mingle with the substance all over the floor, hail the cycle of impurity, she stands up from me and looks at my lifeless husk, drinks from the cup and walks away, i look down at myself and I am naked, only this time I have a leaf sprawled over my genitalia and this causes people to look at me funny, they judge and murder me with their stares, i ignore this and set down the plastic cup in my hand on the table beside me. trepidation majeure, i walk over to myself to see if I am still breathing and I see that my body is no longer there, charred floor and ashes are now where I previously lay and flowers have begun sprouting from there, i breathe through gasps and hold my head, it hurts. i turn around and see that there is a line forming on the table where I placed my cup and people are taking turns to urinate and spit in my cup. some girls stroke some men until they come and they too spill their seed in my cup. some people stab their chests and spill their blood into my cup. i am nauseated, irate, perplexed, this is all too disconcerting, i should find an exit.
i step outside and the cold breeze blows the leaf away from me, presenting me as unshielded sacrifice to unforgiving blackness, night. i shiver and use my hands to cover myself, i walk away from the party and I can feel my legs giving way underneath my frame, the music is deafening, they are defiling each other and I just died, my eyes feel heavy and my breath smells of acid and urine and burns my nostrils with every exhale, I keep walking and shivering and i mutter to myself, teeth grinding
findahousefindahousewhereamiiamdeadanthony
i am still walking and I see a woman coming in my direction, she looks like she is in her twenties, I can tell that i am revolting to her beholding, i try to talk to her and ask her for her help but she spits in my face and takes to her heels, i clean the spit from my face and eyes and clarity befalls me; everyone but me is clothed. i look around astonished, a red hued light is trained on me from the sky and it threatens to rid me of my vision, everyone has stopped to look at me and if death by gaze were a reality I would have died a second time over, a third time? how many times have I died?
ADAM!
a voice bellows overhead, i look up and staring down at me, an apparition, it is a girl with wings, she is clothed in celestial robes and she wields a flaming sword, her eyes are ablaze with bright amber and her intent is murderous
YOU WERE BANISHED, BUT YOU HAVE DECIDED THAT OBSTINACY IS YOU, WOE TO THE INGRATE
“you have the wrong man!”
i scream, frightened, I forget how to breathe
She descends with unrelenting speed and every person present is suddenly armed with swords and clubs and pitchforks and they chase after me, they curse me and curse themselves for letting me be born, I scamper in the dark and brush past thorns and I wince. i breathe shakily and tears begin to blur my vision, i cry not for me but for them, i call out to the girl that has just entered the party but she closes the door anyway, my tears drop onto my bare skin and they sear my flesh as they create their path, my tears are acid. i stumble over a stone and the mob, led by the angel are only a few inches away now, i close my eyes and let my tears fall, the world becomes inaudible and all I hear are my panicked breaths and the rapid trickle of acid from my eyes, it merges into radio static and i know i will die again, i breathe my last, they are behind me now, the door flings open a few metres ahead of me and my name is whispered, a formless force yanks me towards the door and i am sucked in. and…..
let us pray now,
the woman in the flowing gown says. she has tree branches as hair and her teeth are blacker than death. every member in the congregation is holding a plastic cup, they empty the contents into their mouths and then drop to the ground almost instantly. i look around disoriented, how did I get here? oh, i remember. she invited me to a church program and i obliged because I wanted to be with her
drink, she says, interrupting my thought
“what is it?”
life, she says. trust me
she holds the cup to my lips. this has happened before. i watched myself watch myself watch myself drink something that a woman offered and i experienced an agonising death afterwards. still, i drink.
once again clarity, or obscurity better yet, washes my eyes. everyone but me is naked, my vision has become monochrome pornographic, they begin to pray in monotone, the girl by my side looks at me and flashes her teeth, her smile blackened by the hue of her teeth, the people begin to speak at rapid speeds and some scream spontaneously, bodies are sprawled all over the floor but their eyes are wide open and their mouths are moving rapidly, some piss themselves, the spirit is present, the branch-haired woman drops the microphone and begins to mutter some words that I cannot comprehend, her voice reverberates through the expanse of the darkened hall, her voice is amplified and my eardrums begin to bleed, she is the only one muttering and everything else is deathly quiet, everyone has their eyelids sealed shut but me, the static resumes, the prolonged scratching of nails across chalkboard, she continues speaking the dialect of divine incomprehension, intensified auditory dissonance, cacophony, my ears bleed, my eyewear cracks and shatters and shards of glass scratch my bloodshot pupils but my eyes do not close, they begin to water and burn my flesh, she is still speaking and everyone is quiet but I cannot look away, i am trapped in mental and physical catatonia and my nose begins to bleed, I hear a screeching sound in my ear, radio static, my bowels fold in on themselves and I feel as though I have received innumerable stabs to the gut, she is speaking, television static, she is speaking, cranium dissection, she is speaking, gasoline intestine, she is speaking, i pray for an end to begin but there is no end because it never began, i begin speaking in imperceptible, my lips flutter and my legs begin to move independent of my thought and control, i am approaching the window, her larynx is the amplifier, cacophony of imperceptible, shoegaze majeure, i am dying again, i am alive, my heart beats in unaligned, i am now at the window, gibberish, dying, gaze fixated, she looks at me, I fall.
i watch myself fall out of the window and land head first into stone. my skull splits open on impact and memories roll like film, i walk over to my deathbed and begin to watch the tape, i see myself board the Keke and arrive at the venue, i see myself watch the show in black and white and applaud whenever necessary, i watch myself realise that everyone is naked after drinking what was in the cup, i watch myself enveloped in catatonia and begin to die, I had died before I even conceived the thought of or contemplated living but I did not know that, i watch the tongues cleanse me with consecrated saliva and i watch myself walk over to the window, i watch myself fall out of the window and land head first into stone, the credits roll.
“she tried to save me,” I say
countless others have tried to save you
i look up and I see, standing over me is me, myself, i may be 7 or 8 years old, I can tell by the scar on his(my) stomach, the tape rolls in my head, it was a cloudy evening sometime in the early 2000s and I was playing on the back of that old man’s jalopy. some jagged metal at the rear of the jalopy tore my stomach horizontally and I almost passed out from sheer excruciating agony, the wound looks fresh but he is not in pain, I can tell he emerged from the tape that documented that memory
“you?”
i am you
“i see that”
what did you become?
“what you were scared to become, or scared of becoming”
a monster?
“a god”
a synthesised one. do you know what the cup bears?
how does he know this?
“how do you know this?”
i am both the experience, and the experiencer. i am the painter and the painting. i am the abyss and the flesh, the sinner and the saint, the thought, action and afterthought, the before, the during, the after. the reflection, the mirror and the subject. you are not me.
i am confused
“what do you mean?”
you know
“i do not, i swear”
that is the first inhibition
he stares at me, i do not say a thing
drink and become god? how pathetic. and to think that you preach the gospel of the self
he is angry now, his voice piercing
do you not understand? why do you die over and over? do you not comprehend? why are you spectating all this unbirth and rebirth of yourself? shall you never cease to die?
i am crying now, i am hurting
you are a god
his voice is calmer now
“i am a god”
you are all you need
“i am all I need”
he begins walking back to the tape, it is still rolling
“wait!”
he turns
“how can I be all that I need?”
say no to the chick at the beginning.
he vanishes. the credits roll.
(end).