The Art of Disappearing Completely

There is a buzz from the flies that feast on the separated milk and water from spoiled iced coffee, what
once started as tiny little fruit flies feeding on my trash and the cores of apples have grown into thick
black flies that rub their hands and flap their wings towards the source of the sickening smell that
permeates the air. My bed sheets are deceptively white despite the mess around me, they bathe in the
yellow light of a bent-out-of-shape lamp and I am the equivalent of a hollowed-out doll slumped against
my pillows left forgotten and feared by the child that once owned me. So small in the grand scheme of
things, but in the arms of those who once held me and the company I used to keep I felt big and bloated
with a belly full of cotton and a head only meant to hold the coffee-coloured yarn hair embedded into a
smooth, cloth scalp.

Despite all of this, I am real. I am flesh. I do not have the luxury of a sewn-over mouth or drawn-on eyes,
and because of this, I speak when my head might as well be filled with thick, white stuffing that feels
cheap and scratchy rather than plush and cloud-like, and my heart aches as I try to remember or read the
discomfort on peoples faces.

The purpose of my flesh is not to be maintained or fawned over. I am not to be taken care of, such
instances will only be met with an unfair hope where I mistake pity for love, and the high that it brings is
only short-lived before my once-raised shoulders will slump. The desire to crawl back to the darkness I
think I can remember from some time when things were easier is not enough, and I am back in bed, and
the sight of the flies feeding on the remnants of my attempts at nourishment and revitalization makes me
crave something to eat. Something to make me feel full in some way, and the carrots I munch on do not
satiate that desire. The sight of their little colony, a community I will never have, makes me crave the
ability to disappear, to be torn apart and dismembered so I am as inhuman as I feel.

The carrot is orange, that much more so compared to the discoloured skin of the hand that holds them.
They have the faintest lines, an indication of identity. They are rounded at the top and not too thick, and as
I bite into them I can hear the snap and the crunch, and until I taste the metallic tang of blood in my
mouth I cannot tell which is the carrot and which is the nimble digit that once held it. They are both
crushed between my teeth and slide down my throat. It isn’t until all five fingers on my left hand are gone
and I am out of carrots, left to snap my thumb off on its own that I realize how unpleasant I taste. My
blood tastes of rust and matches its colour as it lingers on my lips, the bones give an unpleasant crunch
like half-cooked rice and the fat and skin are chewy like sweat-flavoured bubble gum. It slides down my
throat in tandem with my blood, the remnants of it dry at the back of my throat as I finally take a moment
to come up for air, staring down at what now only vaguely resembled my hand. I do not enjoy the taste of
flesh, but I do enjoy that there is less of me.

And so, I feast. My crooked teeth sink into the skin of my arm next, it pulls up like duct tape from a roll,
and through the red that dribbles down against the snow-coloured bedsheets, making them just as tainted
as the rest of my home. I slurp up what I can and try to suck at the sinewy fat, my teeth nip and bite at the
open wound and when that is to no avail they tear up more skin. The taste makes me nauseous, but as I
look in the mirror and see how small that limb has become and how ghostly my skin already looks, I
realize that I can not stop. I have never been struck with such a drive for something I want before, I have
never felt ambition deep within me like I have now, it gurgles and churns in my stomach with each new
discovery I make as I pull at different parts of my arm, the soft skin of my inner forearm goes down much
easier than that of its opposite, the prickles of hair scratching my throat. Before I knew it, the limb was
barely recognizable as blood and bone.

I heave out my breaths, and even in this weakened state it is easier to summon strength than it was before.
I am standing, I am walking like a newborn towards the small kitchenette. I can throw the cupboard door
open and I can throw the sugar and salt to the floor. I slump again but it is with a goal, it is not for
nothing, it is with a sharp kitchen knife, a part of a set that was bought for the same reason the coffee was:
to feel full. But I have never felt more whole than I do right now.

The knife sinks in and tears a straight line from the bottom of my chest to my belly button and the flies
are silent as a cry escapes me. It is just as animalistic and isolated as I have been all along, it is not just
from the knife, and perhaps it even gave me the strength I needed to stretch the rip wide with my one
remaining hand, blood and organs galore unveiled to me like a produce section at a grocery store. I can
see myself so much more clearly now, I can know what I am now. I can reach in and pull until I hear the
rubbery snap and feel something wet and pulsating in my hand, I can stare at what was inside of me all
along through groggy, half-lidded eyes and the sight alone keeps me from gouging out the optics and
slurping them down. I grunt and groan as I dip it into the sugar and feel the varying levels of sweetness
meshing with the other flavours as I tear it apart with a sort of fervour I never thought I had. With each
piece of me I break off and roll in the salt and sugar my stomach feels full but I am disappearing and a
gleeful cackle escapes from me at that knowledge and I tug at whatever shape I can find within me.

I can feel myself growing lesser and lesser, smaller and smaller as I shrink and slump against the floor. I
can’t remember the colours of the tiles as the blood pours out of me, it stains the soft cotton of my pants
and pools around me. For the first time in forever, I can feel the cool breeze of the winter air against my
neck from the open window. I can hear the sounds of the city so much more clearly now. A sense of
satisfaction washes over me as I realize that I am not a doll. I have felt like such because I have tried to be
something worth domesticating my whole life, but I am not a doll. I am an animal. I have escaped my
cage and given way to my one true primal urge: to disappear from the Earth completely.

In three or four weeks when apartment management comes to find me, when the stench has grown foul
and the rent has gone unpaid, they will not recognize me as human. I will be so small, so mangled and
missing anything that vaguely identifies me as human. They will treat me the same as road kill they drive
past on crowded highways. I will not be mourned, I will not have touched anyone’s life in any major way,
and what once seemed so terrifying now feels as freeing as that same breeze I feel in my last moments
and as intensely satisfying as the knowledge that despite not enjoying my journey, I have finally reached
my goal.

I have disappeared, and so has any memory of the evil world around me. A world that pushed an animal
to gnaw its own limb off as some means of escaping its cruel trap.