square waves

However frightening, at least the man in pink was not moving very fast.

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When out running alone but for his dog, she could hear her thoughts. It was only in this instance and when using his bathroom that she could really hear them. They’d begin downloading instantly right after she turned the lock, pulled down her pants and took a seat. Right after she’d close the front door, click the lead and start chasing nothing down the street. 

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Many words and feelings, not based on fact or how the world actually works, signalled instantly through her body. The bulk of the words were formed like questions with no answers, taking a different speed and force; depending on what exactly she wasn't sure. These illogical half thoughts played out in cycles too, like half sung lyrics or the shipping forecast on repeat but incorrect. Most of the clearer ideas she could hear were completely false, but they felt true and more importantly they felt good, so she continued to follow them through to action. 

However frightening, at least the man in pink was not moving very fast. His rhythm was strangely constant and his face expressionless. As he padded closer still, so her fear grew large until somehow - incredibly - he swept straight past. She then found herself fleeing in the same direction as the pink man, escaping whatever it was he was so afraid of, together.

The man, hearing her gain close behind, looked back in panic and broke his record for the month.

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It took a few more running humans to realise that she was the only threat and was, effectively, chasing them all. She began to understand why the man in pink would run, with no fear or reason and she started to do it herself. Because it felt good. 

When her boyfriend would take her gently by the shoulder to steer her from the road or pull her closer towards him at the bar, it would feel safe and correct. But his direction would be wrong. He would lead them away from food - the fish that she would otherwise catch and eat would be just within her reach after an easterly wind for example, yet he would pull her north west towards The Anglers Arms. He would often nudge her, unconsciously, away from where she needed and wanted to be as an animal in much the same way she would find herself pulling his dog by the neck. Neatly pulled from a discarded bone or another dog, she’d take them home towards a tin can of reconstituted meat paste and a cold can of fermented apples for herself. 

As a human, she thinks it correct. Enjoys it in fact. As a human, she takes great and blissful pleasure in ignoring cold hard truth and choosing, instead, a very complex and somewhat slow avenue of self destruction. She found it fascinating. 

She didn’t want to stop experiencing these differences until she felt that the slipstream of thoughts would eventually meet the mouth of the ocean. She wanted, consciously or otherwise, to keep following all the silly ideas until she fell over the side and back into her old life under water, where everything was true and everything made sense and everything had a reason. That would be the logical conclusion to this flow of nonsense and chasing. 

But the thoughts simply became drier, the cycles never reaching any conclusion, the slipstream never reaching a mouth to any body of water that she understood. Each day would end in the middle of a story, from the mouth of a shirted man, of a catastrophe she could do nothing about. Each day she wondered if the disaster would conclude, if it would at least try to mimic the life cycle of all living beings and end. But in its place there’d appear a new half story beginning from the middle, from the mouth of a shirted woman with no ending of the last story to speak of.   

She quickly became aware of her stomach and hips; how once their mass would transport her across land and buoy her on sea, and how badly she wanted to deflate them now. Watching the fisherman neatly scrape away beautiful tufts of hair from his face and nose, she began to question the fur on her fatty flesh. She followed this question through to action without an answer in between, dragging his razor along her limbs and in the crook of her shoulders and in the guilt ridden crease of her inner thighs. This space that she had never once thought of before became a cupped-paw-holdall for morbid, furious shame and curiosity. She pulled out hair after hair from its root, wincing with satisfaction and realising she might run faster tomorrow. She might run faster with the other shiny men and women towards nothing and bollards and circle back home again towards her lumpy reflection.  

Fixated on her new physical failings, she successfully managed to ignore innate and practical truths about the world. Like how 96% of the planet’s living creatures live in the ocean and the real reason she had hair and fat in specific places. Circling further and further into the dry ground, slicing up the pavement with his dog’s nails, she finally discovered a way out and up. It was instant she would tell you, and it was incredible. Mostly, in fact, because it was.