shadows on the wall. meat on the slab. twenty fingers in his mouth. hears a voice screaming out. AaaAAAaAAAAaaaaAAAAh!!!! every morning the specimen examines a fibrous ring stamped on his stomach. the cicatrix was painless at first. now it throbs. aches. not always. however enough to be aware. the only white coat -- at least in nearby existence -- wasn’t able to explain how a scar like that could just appear. no injury. much less while the patient slept. was he sure he wasn’t slashed by a schitzo? the specimen said yes, but familiar strangers visited him in his dreams. the white coat said most people don’t have dreams. only cancer. supplies were close to nonexistent. if there’s no pain, don’t worry. if symptoms do appear, it’s likely too late. do you have any loved ones left? it was standard procedure to ask.
the specimen rises with no digestive issues or pain at his side. there’s always an ambient nausea. he rolls out of his soiled mattress, then lifts himself off the ground. makeshift chimes sway at even his gentlest motions. the lines of dirt encircling his bed are unphased. his shortwave radio continues to buzz under his lumpy comfortable enough pillow. they hadn’t visited last night. it is still very dark out. sun only breaks out for minutes at a time. his body jolts at the start of every dim morning. he already hears the experiment rummaging. this lovely home was built brick by brick with plastic smushed into cubes. they live in an igloo among fields of black wheat. their stools and table are made from corroded metal beams and repurposed wood held together with whatever sticky substances and screws they could scavenge. there are no windows. the only door was once the side of a school bus. the experiment and the specimen are old enough to not think about their age. they don’t think about much outside of daily responsibilities. from dusk ‘till dusk, the experiment sifts colorful water through a strainer. after hours of work, she can turn a bucket into a drinkable glass. the specimen eats his dose of morning slop, kisses her goodbye, then steps outside, where his capsule shaped pod is already hovering with expectation.
levitating through the dust, the porcelain white pod expels a sweet grease smell. through the pod’s peephole, the specimen stares out at the darkened grain and at abandoned towers and ruinous structures. today, he can even spot the faint outline of sun. still above him, but tucked under a sulfurous veil. on mornings after he’d been taken by those familiar strangers, the specimen sinks into his seat, fighting the squeezing in his guts instead of looking out. in either circumstance, century old media plays through the pod’s crappy speaker. dissociative noise. he wishes for quiet. on its course to the slop farm, the pod is pelted with stones. brain rot congregates by the colorful pond. they chant words outsiders don’t understand and point to things no one else sees and pour vibrant ripples over one another’s bodies. most of their faces have pieces of skin picked off. he can’t spot those finer details. not through a peephole. he simply sees figures flailing in shade.
having been spared a visitation, he fears one is due. the lair of the familiar strangers seems close enough to home to still sense it. yet distant so to be a space he couldn’t share. over a slow trickle of nights he’s had the experiment stay awake to observe. whenever they came, she’d find herself drooling from the best rest of her life. it was impossible to fight unconsciousness. meanwhile, the specimen’s world becomes bound to the corners of his eyes. every other appendage loses sensation. no hot nor cold. stings. pangs. even the nausea is gone. he learned to fawn. enjoy the freedom of not fighting life’s forward motion. it was hard to stay cognizant in this state between states. while they tinkered over him, adorn in sable robes, the specimen could see pools of black where eyes should be. shoulders where one might expect them. even their fingers had the same shape as his. only much steadier. and beyond them, beyond them is an endless red. with an arched ceiling stretching beyond what one’s eyes perceive. in the center of this celestial mausoleum a large uvula thumps with wetness.
the specimen yawns. his scar stretches wide. he winces on the way out the pod. at the slop farm his ruler is the factory itself. he doesn’t question how it got erected. as institutions crumbled, more and more chose freedom over safety. even at the height of robotic advancement, a pound of flesh is still required.. being made of meat and bones makes it easier to contort to tight crevices. throughout their various stages of boil and churn, emulsifiers and chemical runoff gunk up between the cogs and under large vats. the specimen is paid two servings of slop per day. a pixelated voice tells him where to scour. he doesn’t know where the other slop goes or what the ingredients are. it tastes slightly umami -- a word he doesn’t know. roaming the mechanized halls, the specimen polishes off mysterious streaks in the floor, then takes a blow torch to the most scrub resistant sludge. he loves the responsibility. it keeps him from thinking about the familiar strangers. his dread can be a painful plaque. why him? he had nothing to gain. does the experiment believe how serious this is? he wouldn’t wish them on her. it wasn’t all bad. he liked knowing they kept tabs. on exhausting days he couldn’t wait to be back among the stars. two portions of slop already simmer in his return pod. those have kept the experiment and him alive. that matters a lot. the colorful river is on fire. even from afar he admires its blazing glory.
at their macroplastic abode, the experiment is on her final rounds of filtration. color has coagulated along the rims of her strainers. he kisses her hello before plopping down beside. without washing their hands, they dig into the slop, chasing dry curds down with whatever water has been reclaimed. more than enough tonight. the experiment’s biceps are two hardened lumps covered in smaller red bug bites. the specimen has strong adductors. most of the time they sleep across the dome from each other. the familiar strangers have never hurt the experiment, but he does not like them getting too close. the experiment tells the specimen about how nice the sun’s purplish light was today. she worries about what could be going on in his sleep, but also dwells on whether he is imagining things. the scar could be stress. they take turns flipping through images from old car manuals and hit things with a steel slugger. mementos found at nearby abandonments. the experiment says she has been going to the pillars of wheat to tidy up their soil. while doing so she swears to have seen the tiniest morsel of green beginning to grow.
after she falls asleep, the specimen massages the experiment’s forehead, leaving behind an oily little mark. he creeps through the darkness back to his cavity. when the familiar strangers first arrived, it was hard to come up with a defense. he had little light, education, and no useful tools. these days it was hard to know if even the white coat was knowledgeable. in a world with no answers, the specimen became skeptical of himself too. still calling these abductions dreams despite the evidence on his stomach. he laid out maps of dirt. set up noise makers. never has a speck been disturbed. he barricaded himself. wasted batteries he’d found in the clutches of a dead man. there were never enough scrap or shine to keep them away. bound and numb was always how he found himself. could they move like echos? is that how they hijack his body? to block them out, the specimen lets dead air buzz into his skull. some being howls from miles away. then loudly whimpers. then nothing. tonight he decides to rest in total silence.
aAAmfhffhf… flavorless goo pours down his gullet. he strains his eyes not knowing if they’re widening. the dangling bulb palpitates. slime drips off its red bell. give in. let loose. for whatever reason he feels a little more lucid. enough to give one of the familiar strangers a pleading look. how could the specimen expect to see anything but indifference staring back? they reach out and raise the specimen’s skull so he can now see: a fleshly pump latched to his belly, squirming atop his anemic limbs. his torso quivers as the parasite nestles into his core, suckling at what’s left. he needs to pull himself off that putrid slab. he pushes enough to start to feel firmness back under his feet. now his palms begin to recognize the malleable surface they grip. he begins to spit. yet with the slightest bit of power the familiar strangers pull him back to submission. this is their desired position. his vision lost in immeasurable cerise. waiting to return home through that hole on his stomach.
-- plasticbagger is in his anti capitalist era. "Oumuamua" is inspired by the 9th track of his 2023 album DOSTOEVSKY, which can streamed here. his next audio project, . (a single grain of sand), will be out this June.