Death Knell + Outtakes
Note: I read Naked Lunch and said "hey, I could do that!" This is a compilation of things I've been writing since around October up until when I cut it all together in January. I cut up pieces of the paper and taped them into one long strip, then rewrote them into something in a normal format.
The content of this story is based in memories and dreams.
Death Knell
You see everything revealed to you as if it were a dream.
Things move in and out of your vision and you are a passive observer. You are not there, the people around you are not real, they don't see you. You were supposed to die today. They were going to euthanize you. Had a disease or something. You don't remember but for some reason you're here another day. At least physically. Your mind is elsewhere. You woke up panicking but she calmed you back down, pulled you into the right reality; a glimpse into another life. It was your last day today and you didn't want to go. You couldn't leave your life behind.
The phantom hands wrap around you as you lie alone in bed. Loneliness never hurt so much. Your dress tangles beneath you. You can feel the caress because you've felt it before, from real hands on your real body, but you don't deserve that anymore, not after you threw it all away.
You miss her but you'll see her soon. Your hands shake from excitement or excess or something. They need to put you down. But you know full well how the thought of that makes you feel.
The world is goo you see through and at a snail's pace but the days keep slipping by. One, seven, fourteen, thirty. The world never stops, new work just comes to take its place. Your mouth is numb and dry and your hands cannot stop shaking. Your time is almost up, just as it is already in another life.
Colder now than before but still manageable. The trees run orange and it's the first time you've really noticed but fall is in full swing and all along the ground there are red leaves and orange leaves and yellow leaves among the sticks for the fire. It's a dry night and it wouldn't rain for another day.
A couple press against glass in ecstasy above a porch on the walk to the house of the party. It's later now and it's pitch black and things move by you with the grace and speed of a slideshow and you tug your coat a little tighter. You had brought a big one to fit more beers than human hands could carry.
You don't drink, no not you, you slide from place to place. It's a freezing cold night and fishnets allow wind to rip through you. Your skirt goes everywhere and outlines things you'd rather people not see. Constant reminders that you'll never be real. No but you see her and you pick her up you're so happy, you swing her around you've never even hugged her before, all it takes is a few drinks and your true colors come out. You speak with a soft voice you strut and not walk, you jump and squeal. Sliding around with your vision lagging behind you you cannot seem to see straight but you know you can't rub your eyes because it would ruin your makeup and even in your state, this matters to you.
In the dark you lived for yourself, under the cool blanket of nighttime and snow you would drive with no communication, nothing but the road and your music and your empty mind. You were with her, for how much longer you could never tell, but for now you could only ignore the problems between you, the chasm that would only grow in the time to come.
You could still lie to people and tell them you abstained.
Your home was no longer your home, your place being miles away from you, and even then you had no place to call your own, no place to set your head after a long day. Just a room with a bed and blankets, here and out there. You detach from yourself. You are no longer yourself and you know this and you try to ignore it but you'll find that you can't. But the road, in all its stretches, its winding trails going off into the distant blackened treeline, the road eases you. You are calm and with nobody to answer to, you go, somewhere. The interior of the car falls away and you can feel the wind on your face, nipping at you. You can reach your hands out and feel the mist from the freshly-fallen snow kicking up beneath you, the mounds and mounds and mounds of it on all sides. You had no time but all the time in the world. The clock kept ticking…
You couldn't go on living like that anymore.
Late nights surrounded by loved ones. The ones who really matter to you. The ones who have been with you forever and will be with you for longer. Loud and chaotic, that's where you told them about you, finally the real you, on display for the first time. They knew you had been hiding from them all along, and they saw you no different.
You went crazy that week. You shaved your head on Monday, years of the same thing gone within minutes, and at that point you had no clue what the hell you were so you knew you liked it but didn't know why, but you will soon, you will.
You remember these nights long past like dreams. Drunken haze over memories of cutting, blood pouring from your chest from your hands, pooling in the fibers of your shirt and dripping onto the floor. The only ones who knew were the ones who cared the least. The sun has since set on that one. He's dead, buried. You'll never see him again but in photos and memories. You wish you never knew him.
From under the snowladen sky you walk along the same routes. Your time is never ending and you like it that way. You won't go away your mind will haunt these places long after even your body in this world goes away. You pull at your hair and tears stream but you don't know why they do what they do, it happens independent of any conscious thought on your end.
Tentpole moments. Flashing by you like film strips, spinning always spinning. You never thought you would make it this far but you know that you're living on borrowed time. You just wonder when that time will be up.
Heather Buxsel
2026
OUTTAKES
Self doubt, self hatred, familiar feelings, the rope ties tighter and the people, they are pushed to the side, one isolates themselves from the world, one leaves in their own way, stuck in the prison of their skull, biding their time until the axe comes down, when the life they fought so hard to keep is taken by their own hand. Swings in emotions, social control. Bunker up in a safe spot and hold on for dear life. Watch as life, this thing foreign to you passes by around your glass prison. Snow falls on the people below, blown about by the violent gusts from the north, and you, safe, comfortable, alone. Maybe safe isn't the right word. Safe for now. You are your own worst enemy. Your mind can kill you in more ways than anyone else in your life. Your mind is not a weapon, your mind is an assassin, waiting for the right moment to strike. It is not on your side and never has been.
Somewhere, like a cancer, your mind has lost hope, working its way from the back to the front, the way the cold seeps in when it's below freezing: from the nape to the nose. Feels like death. Hands grabbing you and choking you. Making you submit. In the winter everything falls and we will all fall with it. The unrelenting entropic force that surrounds us all, invisible until the actions of it are seen and affect those around it. It has always and will always be there.
Neon floods your eyes and discolors the bone-white snow. Someone sleeps on a vent outside a church. Carts full of clothing that will never be warm enough for the flesh-ripping winds sit next to the people who collected them, who could be alive or dead and nobody would be able to tell and nobody would care enough to check.
In the morning the world is untouched by the corrupting hand that rules. The streets are empty. Clouds have left the pale blue sky that sits above, a cornrose wallpaper ceiling. Washed out walls are flat against the melting snow. Biting cold. Worse than before. Melted snow turned to water turned to ice which coats the sidewalks. Thick and muddy, mountains of flash-frozen snow and gravel. Sunlight bleeds into the streets the veins of the living run hot with solar rays, the rotting world beneath mocked by the untouchable cosmos.
Hate pervades. We are all going to go and it's our own fault we have no lives to save other than our own and our lives are not worth being saved. Fear grapples all. Walled-in, chained up, willingly or unwillingly. In the cold and damp we watch as our world breaks apart as time spills away and we wait for whenever the day we speak of, the day when things will return to normal, finally comes. But we've been in this so long we don't know what normal is. Normal is a passing glance. Normal is a half-recalled dream spoken by a mute. Normal is no more.
We think but thinking has gotten us nowhere. The only thoughts worth having are ones to forget. Become one with the surroundings. Submit. Nightmares plague your sleep. It's hard to forget what has been building. The pieces are falling into place and they fit together perfectly. We should have seen this coming. Your eyes bleed and one day they'll put you down. One day you think they will get you too.
Fear binds you. Fear confines you. From your window from your sheltered life you see but do not act. You hate but do not act. The absurd becomes reality. It would almost be funny if it wasn't happening. Find a new home just for it to turn on you.
Nowhere is safe. You can't get out.