prologue speaking in tongues #2
This music is new to us. Your songs were so sibilant before. Hissing horns. Jazz. The sound of trapped gasses escaping a corpse,
the shrill whistle of brass, those coiled intestines. Trumpets. Saxophones. A grotesque display of entrails, whistling in
their pitch.
Now there are no musicians. Tonight, the songs seep out of speakers.
My, how times change. A fresh era of flesh. There is so much lust around us. We smell it. The sweat. The downright decadence
of it all.
We like it here. In this suffocating club. Bodies brush against one another, flesh coalesces, heaving to the beat, moving
in unison. An infernal machine of body parts.
We are alone. We are everyone. Nowhere and everywhere all at once.
We are legion.
A sea of flesh. The oscillating waves form a rhythm. A tidal wave. It reminds us of our world below. Our home. Bodies press
so tightly against one another, pushing and heaving to the syncopated beat, the pulse provides a riptide—a current—for us
to drift.
Who’s to say we can’t hop? Go for a little joyride?
No one will notice. Can’t I have a little fun?
Time to swim . . .
I leave our host. Abandon his body.
Farewell, Sean . . .
I enter the body beside his. Fresh flesh for me.
Let me in . . .
The taste of a new host. The pleasure of our vessels, experiencing their lives, tapping into their memories. Soak up their
sorrow. Simmer in their soul. Their simple existence, their tiny lives, every little experience, it all adds complex textures
of pleasure. Piquancy.
When I enter a vessel, it’s much like opening a vintage bottle of wine. The more these hosts have undergone—the pain, the
heartache—the more it enhances the flavor.
You have to let these vessels breathe. Smooth them out. There can be bitterness. An astringency. Acidity. A lingering finish.
Some can be sweet. Others sour. Every host is different, each filled with complex notes. Every memory, every scar. There are
good years. Others, less so. But the depth of an individual vessel’s vintage, the hardships they’ve endured, leads to a more
pleasurable union.
See. Swirl. Smell. Sop. Savor.
I prefer my hosts who’ve been heartbroken. Who have hurt. Such bruised beauties.
Take this vessel. A medium-bodied merlot. Smooth, velvety textures. Such soft tannins. He’s out for the first time since ending
a five-year relationship. His companion left him for a younger man. Now he has something to prove. To himself. He wants to
find love. That he’s not so alone. How heart-wrenching. To be surrounded by so many and yet still feel so isolated. All he
needs is a little nudge. A push toward decadence.
I can offer him that.
What about her? A full-bodied Syrah. Such forceful flavors. Dark fruit. Peppers and spice. What a good vintage she is. This
fresh hostess has been abandoned by everyone she’s ever opened herself up to. Friends and family. She has so much love to
give and yet everyone she chooses to offer herself up to, a sacrifice of devotion, has spat that love back in her face. She
is here tonight out of loss. There is no hope in her. Just yearning.
This one is bitter. I don’t like this one at all. It leaves an aftertaste.
This one has an earthy undertone. He has improved with age. Time has granted him secondary and tertiary aromas. There is a
spice to him. I like it. I can savor him.
So many notes. So many flavors. So many experiences that I wish to sip.
I am drunk with memories, with experience, I can barely hold ourselves upright. Recollections begin to blur. The room spins.
I should slow down.
I enter the body beside us.
Let me in . . .
Then the body beside hers.
Let me . . .
Then his.
Let . . .
I won’t be tethered to flesh, bound to one body. I want to be free. To drift. Be one with the music. I catch the current,
the very song itself, and flow through every vessel, flesh to flesh to flesh, finding my way around the room and back again,
never staying inside for long, using all this skin as a conduit, a circuit of limbs to travel the expanse of this space.
All it takes is touch. Contact. A simple tap suffices. Grazing skin.
Let me in . . .
Let me . . .
Let . . .
I want more now. More. Need to ride the song as its tempo crescendos, reaching its peak. I drift faster now, faster, picking up momentum from one vessel to the next, and the next, touching him and her, riding the rhythm of the song, driving,
gliding, reaching such speeds as to create an infinite loop, an ouroboros of possession, inhabiting everyone at once. All
of these people, over a hundred vessels, suddenly fastened together by sound.
By me. We are one now, all together. One entity. One tethered possession.
Look how strong we are.
How connected.
It is a blissful experience. Absolute bliss. I wish to ride this skin, all of these bodies, farther and faster until I break
the sound barrier, faster than the speed of light, until I become infinite, until I become—
Our body gives.
The vessel we find ourselves in collapses on the dance floor. The connection breaks.
Snaps.
Everything suddenly goes so cold. Silent in an instant. What’s happened? Where did everyone go? We’re not connected anymore.
The bodies part, a gulf between us and everyone else.
We’re trapped inside this failing body.
We’ve exhausted ourselves. This particular host, new to us, is a dead end. I shouldn’t have slipped in, whoever he his. Now
I’m trapped inside. I can sense it. Corrupted cells. A weak heart. Poison in his bloodstream. He’s sick. Veins laced in narcotics.
His heart . . . it’s failing.
I need to escape.
All eyes are on us. Staring down. The music continues, that throbbing beat pounding down on our temples, a hammer now, bludgeoning
our brain. Not ours.
We can’t speak. No one can hear.
I’m trapped inside. This body—broken. Valves collapsing. Synapses disconnect. So sick. His heartbeat is out of sync with the
song. Their veins constrict, wires slicing.
We are gasping, unable to reach any air. A fish out of water. Our lungs shuttering.
A corroded host. A prison. A cage.
No one offers their hand to us. No one helps. “Jesus, is he ODing?” someone above us asks. We can barely make out the words over the song. “He just puked on my shoes . . .”
Look at their pity. Their disgust. The circuit has severed. The conduit broken, snapped. I can’t escape. Lost on an island
of flesh and bone, surrounded by an ocean.
“Someone call 911,” another shouts.
The bodies drift, dissipate, while I’m stranded. Trapped on this tiny island of a body. Someone, anyone, offer us your hand. Please . . . offer us just a little bit of your skin.
Something to touch.
To escape.