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     $$     .d""b. .d""b.                  HOE E'ZINE #1098
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     $$  $$ $$  $$ $$ss$$             "This Story Doesn't Matter"
     $$  $$ $$  $$ $$                          by, Effy
     $$  $$ $$  $$ $$  $$                      06/16/00
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     $$  $$ "TssT" "TssT"

        I was walking down a street, somewhere.  It was sometime near
 midnight, and I was lost.  Walking.  In an unfamiliar city...in a strange,
 foreign place.  But the stars gazed down upon the windows of my eyes and
 reflected back such an instinct that I knew where I finally belonged that
 this cold, unforgiving emptiness called reality was only an option of true
 living.

        The stars reflected off the nearby river like bright, hazy pools of
 urine.  My mind was traveling in circles.  A circle of thought circling
 rapidly around an intensely magnifying center.  The center of my intention,
 creeping up upon me, then hitting me senseless and defenseless.  It's an
 amazing thing to find out you truly have no control left over yourself.
 It makes you peacefully self-destructive.  There is no other way to achieve
 this mentally.  As long as you have control over your emotions, your
 thoughts will be plagued with negativity.  It's common nature among those
 like us. When we finally fuck ourselves up completely, we slowly slip away,
 one by one, into a self-torturous hell called Death or The Dying.

        But I paid little attention to this, as I neared the water.  I
 stopped, and vomited on my shoes without really caring.  Was I drunk, or
 did I do too many drugs?  Am I sick?  What is wrong with me?  Nothing, not
 a thing, is wrong.  That's just what I'm talking about.  Everything in the
 world is wrong with me, but it doesn't, and never will, matter to me again.

        After removing my socks (I had lost my shoes, or had they worn
 themselves off from my endless walking?), and the tattered cloth that used
 to be a shirt, I walked to the edge of the river.  There was a dock that
 extended approximately ten to fifteen feet into the water.  I made my way
 to the end of the dock.  I looked to the sky.  Then I looked at the water.
 Where did I fit in?  It doesn't matter.

        Memories flooded back to me like swirling lollipops.  It was only
 slightly less sweet.  Gratitude is only a lesser attribute of love.  I felt
 gratitude for being able to finally become apathetic after every moment of
 my shitty life.  Gratitude, almost real love.  But only almost.  It'd
 always been almost, hadn't it?  I was so glad I didn't hate myself anymore
 for subconsciously following my own, personal, real-life melodrama.  Every
 other person on the planet deeply despises himself somewhere for it,
 because it's part of the inescapable delusion of reality.  But I could
 conquer it.  I was about to conquer it.  I will let myself go...

        And so I was gone, or so I thought.  I floated in the river on a
 tiny raft that had been tied to the dock.  I figured I'd get run over by a
 barge or something, at least by morning.  Or I would end up baking to death
 in the early August sun.  Or vultures would devour my rasping carcass.
 Perhaps I would suffocate in a pile of my puke.  Maybe I would shit out my
 heart.  What if I drowned in my piss?  The latter is more likely to happen,
 taking into consideration the possibility that I had probably been drinking
 massive doses of hard liquor again.  But no matter the method of demise,
 I was convinced that it was that night that I was destined to die.

        I was one with the stars shining on the lake for a few hours,
 perhaps.  Then the sun came up.  I was completely horrified by the sky's
 newfound light that I pissed myself, again.  I realized had come close to
 the outcome I had most suspected, as I washed the urine off my face and
 body with dirty river water.  I noticed a fish flopping wildly next to me.
 I reached out and somehow, in my still completely deranged state, managed
 to grab it.  Then I ate it.  It was a gar.  It was the best meal ever,
 because the taste had no effect on me whatsoever.  I was numb.  Any person
 who experiences the complete loss of sensation, physical as well as mental,
 can be completely at peace.  Every human emotion is a mental sensation.
 Take those away, and emotion is inevitably erased.  Without emotion or
 physical pain (due to the loss of physical sensation), there is no fear
 of anything, because all of our fears are due to being hurt mentally or
 physically.

        I figured out a way to kill myself.  I would eat myself to death.  I
 would chew away my flesh, bit by bit, until I bled so profusely that I
 would die from the loss.  And I could watch it all intently, my mind
 unfocused on the non-existent pain, and not be mentally disturbed by the
 sight of my own decaying, gangrene infested limbs.  And I could once again
 sense a touch of love for being granted something that no normal person
 could ever experience without the act of self-destruction by years of abuse
 (physical, drug, mental, alcohol, self)...

        My toes were just luscious.  I couldn't feel myself move.  I don't
 even really know how I did it, or how I still do it.  Mysteries of existing
 divinity must not be questioned, for they do not matter.  It doesn't
 matter.  Nothing matters at all.

        I watched the blood trickle down my remaining half of my foot, and I
 smoked a cigarette. I almost missed the feeling of smoking for a second,
 and then dismissed it in a frightened manner.  I did not want anything,
 least of all smoking, to make me question the permanence of my serene state
 of mind.

        I gnawed off a bit more of my bloody stump, and then devoured part
 of my other foot.  I wasn't sure if I still had teeth.  I could've been
 choking right then, for all I knew.  I hoped I would.  But I just kept on
 eating myself.  I had to die sometime, eventually, even if it took getting
 right to my brain.  I wasn't sure exactly how I would eat my own brain, but
 it really didn't matter at all anyway.  I decided to eat my arms lastly
 before my head, that way I could still break off various body parts and eat
 them without having to use my neck to reach them (thus limiting my perfect
 view of the personal spectacle).  I ate my penis just like I would've eaten
 a corndog.  I even drank blood from my colon to wash it down.

        The early afternoon sun shone high in the sky, increasing the
 previous night's temperature threefold.  My bloody, raw, exposed flesh
 seemed to turn a pale shade of reddish brown.  By late afternoon, I was
 almost surprised that no one had found me yet.  I had not even spotted or
 heard a barge.  No boats.  It was still, eerie silence.

        Two days later, I still laid in a grisly pile on the raft.  I had
 eaten off both of my feet, all the way up to the ankle.  My lower torso was
 caved in a bit due to my indulgement of the lean meat of my abdomen.  A
 trail of dried blood came out of my anus (which was torn due to my large
 intestine being shit out).  At this point, I wasn't quite sure if I was
 alive or dead yet, and it actually started to bother me a bit, which
 bothered me a lot.  Nothing should bother me.  Nothing matters.  If I keep
 telling myself it doesn't matter, it will all be ok, because it won't
 matter as long as I keep telling myself that.

        And I'm still telling myself it doesn't matter.  It could've been
 days or even years since my last day on the lake, but it doesn't matter
 how long ago it was.  Even though it doesn't matter, I think I was
 eventually found by someone on the lake, practically carnage, and taken
 somewhere where they cut off the remainder of my libs, stitched up my
 torso, and given a sex change. I am pretty sure of this because I have
 seen the results of it all, which was also long ago, and therefore does
 not matter either but then again just because today is the present does
 not mean that today matters either because in essence neither today nor
 yesterday is important if nothing really mattes at all, right?

        Wait.  Why am I asking you?  You don't matter either.

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 [ (c) HOE E'ZINE -- http://www.hoe.nu        HOE #1098, BY EFFY - 6/16/00 ]
