Holy Autism Batman!

I am slowly making all of my poetry/collage art pieces available on Redbubble. They're available on a few pieces, but I think they'd be best as the art prints that Redbubble makes. These are most of the ones uploaded now, but I'm working on uploading all of them.

An excerpt from the book I'm working on! Feedback welcome! (don't ask if I'm actually gonna be able to finish this thing, your guess is as good as mine)

The warmth is always the best part. It is splattered around our bodies and the room. Flowing out and over my hands, flooding my brain, seeping into my bones. She’s so beautiful like this, spread open for me; I can see all of her. The way the intestines twist together, weaving around the abdomen like snakes in a burrow. Their weight is heavenly in my hands, wet and warm. She is stunning like this, and I have the perfect place to display her. 

There is something wrong with me. It looks so beautiful; spread out near the river bank, intestines hung around the shrubs like tinsel, throat slit cleanly, though there’s not enough blood for it all to have been done here. Something is wrong with me. I should leave; I should call someone. Instead, I step closer. I want to touch it; I want to pull the skin back further, expose more meat and bones, see the path of veins and nerves through the body. I need to. I step closer, kneeling beside it and narrowly avoiding staining my one pair of jeans. The slice up the abdomen is impossibly neat. I could slide my hand into the opening and feel how the organs fit together in the space, though I’m sure they have shifted a bit to fill the space left by the intestines. The body is pale, with a dusting of freckles and a few light stretch marks, unblemished other than the wounds on its stomach and neck. And the face - her face - that reminder, that this was a girl, 16 or 17, I’ve seen her at the local high school, now here nude, eviscerated, and exposed in a small wooded area beside the highway, brings me back for a sickening moment. The gore seems to have a magnetic pull on me as I dig my claws into my skin and force myself to stand. I must keep moving. The birds have gone silent. I can not remember where I am. There is no wind. I must keep moving. 

There is a storage shed behind the library that they have forgotten about. It’s small and cluttered, but it has a cot and power from the main building. I think Bea knows I stay out here, but neither of us mention it. She has been my best friend since I was six. I walked into the Locust Public Library in awe of all the different worlds contained in one building. Beatrice Favor had been the library manager for five years at that point. It was always practically deserted, so she had plenty of time to entertain a child who had just finished her first chapter book and was eager to find another place to escape into. We have spent almost every afternoon together since then. I have no idea what she thinks of me. 

“Sorry. I was… distracted.” She just nods. In the ten years I’ve been officially working with Bea, I’ve only been late a handful of times. She never bothered to say much to me about it.

After dropping my bag in the back room, I can start my favorite part of the day, sorting and reshelving. I start around the local history section. Very few of these books can actually be checked out, but they get pulled off the shelves quite often. Mostly genealogy buffs looking for more information about great-grandpa. The monotonous rhythm of sliding books into their proper place soothes me. I almost forget about my morning. The body in the bushes. I’ve never seen anything like it in person before. But god, I’ve dreamt about it. Such a wonderful shade of red. It felt like artistry. It felt vile. She was just a girl. She will always be a girl. The clarity that I find in the library allows me to consider what I hadn’t before. Who is responsible? Finding the body had felt like a wonderful gift and vomit-inducing curse just for me, but it wasn’t. Someone killed that girl. He sliced her open and dropped her in the brush. I will never see her walking to lunch again. Why? It was one of the most beautiful, brutal scenes I have ever seen, but it didn’t appear that her actual death was particularly violent. It was methodical. Detached. It was what I would like to do. 

A woman is in the library with a little girl, about five years old. She comes in to use the computers often. The girl usually grabs a storybook from the children’s section and sits with who I presume to be her mother. Twice, I have used our puppets to act out her chosen fairytale with her. Today, she is screaming. The woman looks exhausted and embarrassed. The sound is piercing into my brain. I can not think about anything else. I can not see anything but the girl. Her face is red with anguish. 

The red is spreading, pouring forth from her like a fountain. She is still screaming. Is anyone else? They must be. The third time my hand brings the girl’s head down, I hear it. She is cracking, splitting open. I can feel her skull shifting. I don't know where her mother is. I don't know where anyone is. I can only see my hands gripping the girl's hair. I can only hear my own heavy breathing and the girl's gurgles through the blood. The girl’s brain is on the table, the computers, her sweater, my hands. 

I turn to look at her four times as I leave the library. The girl is still there. Still screaming, red-faced in her mother's arms. My hands are clean.