Brain Curd #446
Brain Curds are barely-edited fiction, poetry, or just about anything else - drafted in a day or less. Is it falling apart, or is it coming together?
Part 63 of an experiment in progress. Refer to case logs.
If this is death, it’s boring. How many times must I watch myself die before I can finally rest?
First, I slit my own wrists and bled out. Then I got devoured by timeflies as a little kid. And now, trapped in a coma, I had a seizure. And despite seeing all of this happen, despite remembering every moment of it, none of these people were really me.
I mean, one of them has to be, right? I have to be my inner child, or the teenager I’m becoming, or the woman I’m supposed to be. I have to be one of them or I’m nothing at all - just a recording, or worse, a tape head playing back a recording, an interchangeable tool to translate something meaningful into something to be understood. But I don’t really understand any of it.
Sure, on a logical level I can recall what they experienced. I can remember the strain of eviction; I can remember when he moved in with his aunt and uncle and that his father was not invited to join them; I can remember the pounding heartbeat in his chest as he demanded his father be allowed to sleep on the couch and was still told ‘no’ just as well as I can remember the sensation of packing a backpack with essentials but two minutes later.
I can remember the hum of electrical transformers as Trevor and his father slept under the refuge of a bridge and the imprint of a zipper on my face when I awoke before the sun. But I didn’t want to. I didn’t want to remember any of it, not without a chance to change it, yet no matter what I did it all ended exactly the same: darkness, cold, starting over again. Every beat was all just as inevitable as any other and the unyielding tide dragged me deeper into the current.
Surely I’ll be born again any minute, but with any luck I won’t know it. If I can’t change what happened anyway, I deserve the comfort of ignorance. At least that way, maybe I’ll make it to my death all in one piece.
~
I jolted awake as if falling, and fell out of bed to match it. I took the deepest breath of my life as I reached out to the wall and my mattress. Tangible. I could see them, I could touch them, I could smell them, and all the pieces fit together. I was back in my bedroom at my grandparents’ house. I tripped over myself to get to my dresser and pulled out the bottom drawer, searching frantically for it, throwing articles of clothing all about the room until at the bottom of the drawer I saw it: the butterfly hair clip.
A tear ran down my face as I held it in my hands. The cool metal warmed at my touch until it matched my own temperature. For a moment, my toe didn’t hurt. Nothing did.
I tried to stand up, but the blood all rushed to my feet and the room spun. I aimed for the bed as I passed out.
Penned 2025.07.30
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