Author: Hari Navarro, Staff Writer

There is a house that grows like a jar of cancer-rimmed razors from the very top of my head. I wear it like a hat and when it rains its central courtyard fills with water and makes my skull feel soggy with its burden and my neck hurts and cracks when it twists.

This house is where I was born and into it trickled the very first of my memories or at least those that I have been groomed not to forget.

Pretty things like the man with the buckle-head snake whose tail bound at his knuckles and swung and pirouetted at his thigh. It was vicious and it bit but I used it. I did and it distracted from the stains that bloomed and dripped from the cotton.

I have just boarded and been seated upon the transport and already feel the vibration between my legs as its mighty engines thrum and clamber in anticipation of lift-off.

It has been a long time coming but it will be this craft that finally pulls me away from my home and the creeping wet mould it has sown in the grooves of my mind.

I rest my forehead against my portholes cooling compress and my eyes dart to the side and for an instant in the cursive colours I can see the twin iron doors that lead to the boilers.

I can see the hideous verdant paint that he slashed upon them although he knew there was not enough to finish.

No care. No attention to the little things that matter. Every inch of that house splattered with spittle-lipped hate.

The constantly tinkering craftsman.

I remember the tools he used to hammer and bend and smash and… crack. Such skill as he left just enough of a gap so that the light got in and then froze and split me in two and three.

He pulverized my youth so effortlessly as he tapped his foot in time and ground me away between my tiny thumb and the swollen gorge of his forefinger grasp.

I wish I could forget that tune. Three chords are all you’ll ever need, he said. “Daddy’s lil’ girl ain’t a girl no more…”

I can feel the pincers of that house at One Zero Nine arch and dig into my sides as we power up and away and I finally am to be rid of this filthy mesa of such hopeless hope.

Its time to do the dishes.

The woman in the green knitted top that I think I remember from a pornographic clip about a polo-necked secretary who is surprised by a UPS delivery man screams at my feet.

I am a wet used sack of flesh on the floor and my peeled carcass slumps to the side and the exposed meat of my forehead feels again the cool calm compress on the portal glass and I wonder if I’ll be having the chicken or perhaps maybe the pork.