I Will Rise Read Online Free PDF

out.
    “Sir?” Daddy as strength.
    “Are you all right?” Mommy as concern.
    “Mommy?” Kid as fright.
    “Thannnnk youuu. Um finnnnne.” Me as complete. Total. Body humming like a loving machine, sugary, sappy, all soft and wet and gooey. Newborn. Baby babble. I don’t think I will ever be able to pull away from the delirious, encapsulating joy inside my head and this thought makes me smile. This is where I want to be forever, not living life but dreaming it. Not physical, hurting, wishing, praying. Not dying. Nothing. Just here clumped up inside pretending to be part of something bigger.
    At long last, Daddy removes his hand and the connection is severed. The rush peters and the lights dim. I drain out, but flitters of care and the residual confirmation that I matter, really matter, in some way to somebody, remains. Vision flickers back statically as I realign and see the distressed faces of my benefactors as a globular jumble. The family organ seems to breathe a collective sigh of relief as my eyes flood with being. A weak smile paints my lips.
    * * *
    I get to work twenty minutes late. My boss gives me this look and the slick bastard manages to break me down without a word. Dropping my head I stare at my grimy shoes and hurry off to join Jose stuffing jumbo prawns with Brie.
    Mr. Shithead (he has a name, but I’ve long stopped using it) paces about, hands locked behind his back like a gestapo general, encouraging his staff of scrambling servers and illegal kitchen help to move their fucking asses. For the most part he purposefully avoids me, snaking his well-oiled eyes past mine without missing a beat. I try to catch his gaze, partly to mess with him, partly for acknowledgment. I may be a fuckup, but I’m here in three dimensions and the way his eyes cruise past as if I were nothing more than wallpaper irks me to no end. When I finally lock him up, the tension between us becomes almost visible as twin laser beams of distaste shoot from one pair of eyes to the other. I don’t hate my boss. I don’t think he hates me. But, then again, I could be wrong.
    My left hand—precise, machinelike, controlled—flays prawn after prawn. The blue, veined underbelly of prawn number eighteen (I work fast) comes apart. I glob it with Brie and then it’s off to Jose to be breaded and placed on a metal storing sheet.
    Somewhere between my flaying/stuffing and the handoff to Jose, the prawn begins to lose its very prawn-ness. My eyes widen as the prawn elongates, thickening, bulbous, grotesque. All prawny attributes have stretched beyond recognition, rippling, developing and ripening. My jaw drops. Before me, what used to be a jumbo prawn is a Mr. Shithead fetus, embryo, baby-thing, squirming, growing, slick with bluish placenta, hurriedly becoming a chubby Mr. Shithead toddler and then, fast, fast, fast, as if viewing a time-lapsed film, an awkward, pimply Mr. Shithead teen. Finally, after much contorting, Mr. Shithead the adult emerges, naked, hairy, floating in midair, impossibly balanced upon Jose’s outstretched hand. Like the prawn, he is slit from throat to pubis.
    Layers of fatty goop and intestine rope about, steaming, spilling over and out. The Brie, resembling infection, pseudo-pus, goes from white to pink to overwhelming red and dissolves within the wet chaos. Each visible organ links up to another and fuck me if Mr. Shithead’s insides don’t look happy.
    Coming unglued I snatch the Mr. Shithead prawn back from Jose and dice it into violent bits. My knife work is thorough; all that remains of the prawn is a bluish paste smeared across the cutting board. Jose raises his eyebrows, shakes his head and looks at me like I am crazy.
    Every member of the kitchen staff speaks Spanish. No English (save for the chef) excepting an odd word here or there. I only speak English. I don’t know Spanish from French or Portuguese or Nonsense. Jose knows this. Hector knows this. The one called Primo knows this. They all know this