Do Not Breathe [Bully Writing Experiment #1]
Breathing just makes you zen, and zen doesn’t help one iota. Deep-breathing is being underwater, shallow breathing is running head first into a wall while being ass-raped by an ape wearing a Russel mask.
This is not good. This is not survival. This is wasting away to the fingernail on chalkboard sounds of your mother’s voice and shame. This is taking a mallet for the team that is the Smith-family reputation. This is playing nice with a man that months ago you’d tied to a chair and had called you a hero.
The trick is to hold your breath. Hold your breath and sink deep in the chair as if you’re already dying, and if you’re at this point anyway? The edges of your vision begin to blur. Your eyes cross and the world becomes an indiscernible blur. Your shoulders, for the first time in eons, relax without the assistance of injections and pills. They sink as the air rises in your lungs. If this continues, eventually the blur stops having colors, and you’ve spaced out enough that the world becomes a tunnel; where the blur began, blackness creeps in.
All of this visual world-erasing lets the voices drop away, fade into a background that’s at least ten miles away. This is not zen as in peace. This is not meditation as in relaxation. This is gone as in dissociation.
Mother and Father Smith are gingerbread cookies because little Gary Smith once imagined biting off their heads, and decided that was what they would taste like. Since then, their faces had disappeared into a permanent blurring of the edges. Non-existence except in voices and hand gestures. Mother Smith twisting her necklace when she would rather be crying. Father Smith clenching fists in his lap when he would rather be any place else but this. They jitter and fidget too, but he’s the one with pills for that. With a solution to his problems.
They would be stale gingerbread cookies, with none of the pleasant spice but all of the remaining bitterness. This was the realization of a five-year old Gary. An eight year old Gary thought about putting them back in the oven. A ten year old Gary was told to be on medication. A thirteen year old Gary was actually made to take it.
The problem with holding your breath and crossing your eyes is that even if someone doesn’t notice, a sudden movement refocuses your eyes whether you want it to or not. Like a folder shoved jerkingly in front of you. It’s filled with room assignments, the conditions of probation, and a class schedule. All the things that anyone could want and hope for, if they wanted a slow and steady suicide scheme.
Blink. Shake head. Come back to earth and try hard not to glare at the eyes above the goalpost. Try to keep bile down when promising to play nice.
Whatever you do, breathe as little as possible.
This is not good. This is not survival. This is wasting away to the fingernail on chalkboard sounds of your mother’s voice and shame. This is taking a mallet for the team that is the Smith-family reputation. This is playing nice with a man that months ago you’d tied to a chair and had called you a hero.
The trick is to hold your breath. Hold your breath and sink deep in the chair as if you’re already dying, and if you’re at this point anyway? The edges of your vision begin to blur. Your eyes cross and the world becomes an indiscernible blur. Your shoulders, for the first time in eons, relax without the assistance of injections and pills. They sink as the air rises in your lungs. If this continues, eventually the blur stops having colors, and you’ve spaced out enough that the world becomes a tunnel; where the blur began, blackness creeps in.
All of this visual world-erasing lets the voices drop away, fade into a background that’s at least ten miles away. This is not zen as in peace. This is not meditation as in relaxation. This is gone as in dissociation.
Mother and Father Smith are gingerbread cookies because little Gary Smith once imagined biting off their heads, and decided that was what they would taste like. Since then, their faces had disappeared into a permanent blurring of the edges. Non-existence except in voices and hand gestures. Mother Smith twisting her necklace when she would rather be crying. Father Smith clenching fists in his lap when he would rather be any place else but this. They jitter and fidget too, but he’s the one with pills for that. With a solution to his problems.
They would be stale gingerbread cookies, with none of the pleasant spice but all of the remaining bitterness. This was the realization of a five-year old Gary. An eight year old Gary thought about putting them back in the oven. A ten year old Gary was told to be on medication. A thirteen year old Gary was actually made to take it.
The problem with holding your breath and crossing your eyes is that even if someone doesn’t notice, a sudden movement refocuses your eyes whether you want it to or not. Like a folder shoved jerkingly in front of you. It’s filled with room assignments, the conditions of probation, and a class schedule. All the things that anyone could want and hope for, if they wanted a slow and steady suicide scheme.
Blink. Shake head. Come back to earth and try hard not to glare at the eyes above the goalpost. Try to keep bile down when promising to play nice.
Whatever you do, breathe as little as possible.