Author S. K. Nicholas

In the back room, the place where I break myself, she ties me to a chair and pours wax on my chest while making me watch old snuff films. Her favourite involves an Indonesian thief being beheaded. It’s a bit shakey, but the look in his eyes has never left me. There are others, mainly machete attacks in Brazil and Peru with the occasional montage of torture from Syria. Sometimes there’s a soundtrack of rainfall, but it’s mostly just screams. Looking through the window, my eyes drift to those that pass by, but I don’t really see them. Chewing my nails while trying to decide what words should come next, she gets on all fours and spreads herself, but a body is just a body and nothing more. There’s no beauty in the human form, only decay. What interests me is witnessing the fledgling attempts at escape by those that have chosen to walk a different path. I read their words, and despite the distance between us, I know our souls are made of the same stuff. Those that seek fame and adulation are to be detested; if possible, they should be set alight and left to burn beneath a hating sun. Time has no interest in the cult of celebrity. It lasts for mere seconds, and then rots for all eternity. It’s worshiped by those so desperately lacking in substance, and worse still, by those that don’t even realise it. Placing her lips on mine, she tells me that I think too much, but I don’t think enough. Lighting a cigarette and slipping it between my fingers, she dissolves out of sight as I sit contemplating my lack of self. Examining the lines on the palms of my hands, so many images flicker through my brain, but none of them have any meaning. They excite for a while, but underneath it all, they leave me cold. The body as a vessel; a damned passenger for the hell of opulence and savagery.