By Fortune Aganbi

They visit me every time. Sometimes it’s the man. Sometimes it’s the woman. Sometimes it’s the Thing that restricts my airflow and squeezes my navel. Sometimes it’s a song that sings darkness, reminding me I’m in the future, perhaps somewhere in 2050.

They all fuck me. The man fucks me in the ass, and I usually hear him say, “You are good for something, believe it, believe it.” I’m gasping for air and trying to breathe through the powerful thrusts. I sometimes enjoy it because I moan when I don’t want to. Weird because I’m a man, and I’m not supposed to moan when another man – The Man – fucks me. The woman likes my penis. She straddles me in the darkness, and she is usually quiet. Her pussy is wet and tight. She wants me quiet too because whenever I make a noise, she slaps me. Not a sharp slap…but there is the sting that pinches my cheek. Then there is the Thing.

The Thing is different.

It hates me so much that even my room is accustomed to the smell of its hate. And the song. The song is my elixir. It’s like the smell of coffee on rainy dawns when you sit close to your window, staring at the metamorphosis of time, wondering if your depression will ever go away. The song makes me happy, even though it’s sustained by darkness. And darkness is beautiful.

Jeffery, I know I should be asking how you are, but I already know you are not okay. I want to write about small things, but is there ever anything that is truly small? I feel possessed. I am. I know that this body does not belong to me alone. There are just other people and things inside here that come and go whenever they please.

Do you know that my landlord shits every Saturday night at the back of this place on the short path that leads to the trash pit? I have never seen him do it. I know. Every Sunday morning, it’s sitting there fresh, and he never talks about it. Neither do the neighbors. But he talks about everything else. The water. The power. Compound maintenance. But never the strange shit that people see when they go to dump waste in the trash pit. There is something tied to it, I know. But I’m wondering if I have anything to do with it too. Because he looks at me strangely, or is he the man that visits me?

Last night, the Thing, the man, and the woman visited me. This has never happened since the visits began. They never visited me on the same night. Jeff, I could have died. The woman wanted to straddle me as usual, but the Thing consumed her with its hate. And when the man turned me over so he could fuck me, the Thing smashed him against the wall and his skull burst open and his blood painted the color of the night. There was no song. Oh, how I yearned for the song, but it never came.

The Thing squeezed my navel and burned my tongue with its touch. It said I belonged to it. It punished me for having the man and the woman inside me. It used a razor to create marks on my thighs. It tied my stomach, so I could not breathe properly. It said, “You are mine, and I am yours. Do not mind your brother who calls you mentally ill. I can get rid of him if you want me to. I can destroy his letters.”

I told the Thing that I did not want you hurt, Jeff. I said to it that I enjoy reading your letters even though you call me mad in them, even though you say my head is incorrect.

The Thing got angry and made me dig my fingers into the skin of my breasts and scratched and scratched till I drew blood. The Thing hates me so much.

I woke up this morning feeling like a dying man. A nurse came to my room and screamed when she saw me. She said, “Oh my God Emmanuel, what have you done to yourself?!” She hurried away and returned 5 minutes later with a syringe in her hand.

I have never seen that nurse before and I am still wondering where she came from and why she was in my room.

As I write this, my landlord is looking at me through the window and I don’t even know why.