Heck Yeah Tumblr Challenges 20 Day Writing Challenge

Day Six - “Write a funny story.” Even though I’ve never written anything funny in my life.

This is actually extremely not funny, but for some reason I thought blatant, unprovoked anger is funny.

Title: funny

“In a way, we are all but prisoners in our own human bodies…”

I don’t know, I read that somewhere. Just occurred to me now, lying here, in a fucking paper dress with tubes jutting out of my face holes.

I always hated hospitals, too. It’s like a cruel punishment, just being in this faded blue room with nothing to do—or say, in my case. There’s a fucking television in the left hand corner, too. What a joke.

I’m telling you, if there’s a God or a greater being or whatever the fuck, he’s got a sick sense of humor. There’s no way this could be anything but a joke. But whoever’s behind it, doesn’t know when to let it the fuck go. It’s been a good six months. A little more time, and I will have surpassed a fetus’ time in utero.

Shit, I bet the fetus has more to do in the womb than me in my fully developed, functional yet useless body.

I stare at the opposite wall, all day, watching the light from the window change position as the day, as time, as my fucking life, slowly passes by. When the blinds are down, the light comes through and projects the thin lines of yellow and shadowed blue, and I’m just the damned baby in the crib looking through the bars. Or a criminal in a prison. Either way, no difference to me. Babies, criminals.

But I’m not so much a criminal, since that kind of implies that I did something wrong to get here.

I didn’t do shit. I was on my way driving to work and got hit by a Hostess truck.

Where’s the justice in any of it? A young woman, prime of her life, with a semi-solid job as an intern at semi-legitimate art gallery supporting an “it-will-do” kind of apartment. Me, having all that, and a boyfriend—and how hard is it to find a decent one of those in a city like New York?—who luckily validates the fact that I maybe, just maybe, could be attractive.

Me, I’m dying. And I’m not talking the “well, everyone’s dying slowly” kind of dying. I’m actually dying. Or I better be, because I don’t think I can stand being a fucking vegetable anymore. Coma was nice, since nobody bothered me and I was kind of just on autopilot for a while. But waking up to this shit? Goddamn it, if I hear another relative talk about how I grunted in response and that it must mean I’m coming back, I will fucking find a way to off myself. I probably grunted because you were squeezing my hand too tight, you fucking moron.

“Coming back,” isn’t that great? Like I’ve gone somewhere. I’m right fucking here. Thinking. Breathing. Hi. My name’s Judice. Remember? I swear, sometimes it’s like they think I’m the one who’s forgotten. Idiots.

I hear the door open and I know it’s that stupid nurse, coming to check that the robots keeping me alive are doing their jobs. I wish she wouldn’t.

“Good morning,” she chirps, the cheeriest piece of shit ever.

‘Morning, cunt.

“How are you feeling today?” she asks, earnest.

Fucking Hell, even if I could answer, I’d say I felt like an asshole for staring at a wall all day, thinking about how much I hate the state of affairs. But no, really, thanks so much for asking, how sensitive of you.

I’m kind of glad I don’t grunt, either. I’m not much of a fan of sounding like a caveman. I was a lady once.

I’m also glad that my diaper’s not full, so I don’t have to deal with that bullshit with her for the time being, ‘cos that is just one of those things that will never be acceptable. I’d say it’s almost worst than rape, but since I’ve never experienced rape, I couldn’t really tell you which is worse.

“You’re looking pretty good, today,” she comments, smiling, her big front teeth coming out like twin-door refrigerators.

Wish I could say the same for you, babe. Is there a discount on the Kenmore fridges at Best Buy? I’m guessing that’s why she’s not a pornstar nurse, but a real one instead. She has that look. Vacant, obedient, and pretty. I bet she’s not into the unflattering purple scrubs.

Then she does what I absolutely hate.

“Look how lovely you are!”

She shoves a fucking mirror in my face.

Oh good, I’m so lucky that clear tubes in my nostrils are “in” this season. And who doesn’t get hot from a woman with her tongue lolling out, and a mouth guard to clamp down on? Nobody I know!

I grunt. And I look fucking fabulous doing it.

“Good!” the pornstar nurse cries out, like it’s a fucking triumph.

I look at my own dead fucking eyes and really wish that I can just beat myself up in some alternate universe. Because the zombie I see in the mirror? I would judge the shit out of her. She’s pale and has stringy dark hair that’s been poorly managed but retains some kind of semblance of neatness, just because it’s tucked behind Dumbo’s ears.

I always hated my ears. Didn’t even bother to pierce them, I wanted to hide them so badly. And now this bitch nurse is waving a picture of some ugly, dead-eyed thing with big ears and nothing hair, and has the nerve to claim that it’s me.

This is what Hell must be like. No wait. Maybe it’s better there. All the cool people go there, right?

I’m relieved when she leaves. But also kind of disappointed. Not like I miss her, or anything. I just believe in her incompetence enough that I sometimes fantasize she’ll make a mistake and accidentally kill me. Like, she’ll turn off the machines or something. Or her wide hips will just press a wrong button. Or her huge tit would whip a tube out of my nose. Anything.

But no such luck.

I wake up, or come back to some kind of immobile consciousness when my parents arrive. Their bi-weekly visits. I don’t blame them for not coming every day anymore. It’s been too long, and they have lives. And they’ve always been procrastinators. It’s one of those humbling traits you realize in your parents when you become old enough to conceive their imperfections as not only parents, but people.

“Hello, sweet pea.” Mom’s first to talk, as always. Weirdly naïve and hopeful, even in her wrinkly meat suit, ready to fall apart. I almost want to be impressed.

“How ya doing?” Dad’s never been a conversationalist. In fact, he’s one of the most awkward fuckers I know. Love the man, but Christ, I think we’re both secretly happy that I don’t have to actually answer and he doesn’t have to go farther than “how ya doing.”

“You look so much better today, Judy,” Mom coos in her painfully sweet way. She reaches out and starts to stroke my hair.

I hate it when she does this, not because I hate her, or hate how it makes me feel like I’m seven years old versus twenty-four, I just hate how delusional she’s being about it all. And I know what garbage the doctor’s been telling her about how “anything’s possible.” I appreciate it and all, but at the same time I have to wonder if doctors understand the power of their words over people. Especially someone like my mother.

I’m sure she’s not the first one to cling to her daughter’s life, despite how useless it’s become, just because the doctor said, “anything’s possible.” Two words and it’s fucking fatal to a life that could have been otherwise very healthy, progressive and all around realistic.

Poor Mom.

“Oh, Dick, she looks so pale!”

Dad doesn’t answer and I kind of hate him for it. But then again, I hate Mom for being so worried for no reason. And I hate the nurse for not being more of a klutz. And I hate me for not being able to move my own damned body. Like it has something to do with what I’ve done. Like I had some kind of control over what’s happened to me and what’s going to happen to me.

I used to be a pretty good dancer, too. It was my ace-in-the-hole at the clubs.

“Her lips moved,” Mom says wistfully. She knows by now that it doesn’t mean anything, but even so, there’s something in the way she says it. It kills me. She looks so tired, the skin under her eyes sagging. But her fragile smile is surprisingly persistent.

Dad looks down at the tiles, and I know it’s so he doesn’t have to show Mom how hopeless he feels about it. I can almost see his eyes, glimmering with tears. Poor guy, he’s all ready to throw the towel in for his vegetable of a daughter, and his psycho wife just won’t let it go.

A painful hour passes, and my parents, thankfully, go back to their lives without me. And I’m fucking glad. They need to just forget me. Even I want to fucking forget me. If I could just hop up and leave the living, I’d stomp all over my dead corpse with my wispy soul feet, singing all the way out.

Glory, glory, Hallelujah.

Then it’s Mark and Tammy. God. It’s the worst seeing the two together. It just makes it painfully obvious how stupid they both are. Mark, my beautiful, sexy boyfriend that has the intellectual maturity of a four year old. And Tammy: the cute, hopeful girlfriend with big tits. They walk in cautiously, together, like I’m possessed and the demon inside me is just going to shoot right out of my mouth into their weak, empty brains.

The power of Christ compels you.

They both force themselves to smile and it’s disgusting. Their blind hope is more pathetic than my parents’. At least with my parents, I know that they are obligated to love me unconditionally.

But my boyfriend and best friend? What do they owe me?

“Hi, Judy, how are you?” Tammy’s smiling but her eyes are sad. She was always a terrible liar. Why does she even bother?

“Hey, babe.” Mark stands next to my bed, leaning over to kiss my forehead. Tammy stays a good foot away from the bed.

Bitch.

At least Mark is like a puppy that doesn’t understand the severity of anything going on in the world around him and you forgive him for being retarded. I know for a fact that Tammy’s smarter than that, but she still fakes it anyway. Even when I know seeing her best friend getting worse and worse, wasting away in a hospital bed is disgusting to her.

“So um, we went to the museum today…”

When Mark starts visits like this, it’s him trying to start a cute and equally stupid story that there’s no way I can care about. But for some reason, he thinks it’s something I want to hear. He never told me stupid stories when we were together. In fact, he just kind of listened to me and smiled, telling me everything would be fine. And even when I knew in my heart it wasn’t, it was nice just to have a dumbass say that to you.

“…and we went to that exhibit that you wanted to go to and thought of you!” Tammy decides to join in.

Well, thanks, bitch, I’m glad that you two decided to go to an exhibit together that I wanted to go to, but couldn’t, and thought of me. I hope you felt really good about yourselves for doing that, you assholes.

I venture to say that I’m almost hurt. I sincerely think that I would be if not for the crippling hatred I hold for these people.

Please, God, send the dumb, porno nurse in and take me out, please.

“We miss you, Judy. So much,” Mark murmurs. He sounds like he’s getting emotional. Right then, Tammy comes up behind him and rests a hand on his shoulder.

“Mark, it’s going to be okay,” Tammy lies.

Tammy is one of those living examples that just because you’re a nice or sweet person, it doesn’t mean that you’re not a complete bitch. People like Tammy live their lives believing that because they are nice and sweet to certain people, there is no possible way of them being bitches. Bitches lie. Bitches ignore the truth. Bitches judge all things, great and small, and assume that it must be so.

It’s not going to be okay, Tammy. And you know it in your tiny, viscous little heart.

“It’s just so hard seeing her like this,” Mark whispers. And I almost feel bad. Like it’s my problem that my tiny little Prius got ass raped by a huge Hostess truck. Like it’s my fault that I look this shitty. Or that it’s my responsibility to will myself awake or magically transform myself to look peaceful and sleepy like some modern day Snow White.

Damn, I wish I could take responsibility. But accidents aren’t really tragedies, they are God’s way of giving us “obstacles,” in case being human wasn’t already so fucking difficult.

“We need to be strong,” Tammy says encouragingly. “For her.” I want to tear her eyelashes off when she leans in and hugs Mark from behind.

I honestly really just wish that these two can stop pretending that anything they feel about the situation has anything to do with me. Yes, I may be a subject for their feelings to be directed at, but they really don’t have shit to do with me. I’m not making them feel any particular way, I’m not doing anything. Quite literally nothing but functioning.

But these bitches just say shit in relation to me to make themselves feel better. They share some kind of sadness in losing someone in their life and suddenly that shared sadness builds some kind of relationship. And I’m forgotten, in a shit body, in a shit hospital, in a shit world.

Looking at the two emote to each other and hold their bodies close together as if they’re the ones close to falling apart, I watch them and realize that I am living—quite barely—in a shitty sop opera world where shit like this is acceptable, apparently. And I really, really don’t want to live anymore. Because if it’s getting impossible for me to decipher the relationship between reality and TV, I don’t want to live anymore. Are we working off of what we see on TV or do TV soap operas accurately portray the human response to a machine-run vegetable? How scary is that to think about?

I don’t even know.

Mark and Tammy finally leave, holding each other’s hands tightly, whispering to each other about shitty lies like, needing each other during a vulnerable time for both of them. What a selfish way of getting away with admitting that they want to fuck each other.

I’m almost sad.

Almost.

And I’m alone again. For another day.

It’s funny, after all this time, with all my relatives arguing over what to “do” with me, none of them consider what I may want to do with myself. Okay, fine, so I can’t answer them and they can’t read my mind. But it just makes me think that they must not know me at all.

I wonder about this for a while and wish that I could just cry, and cry, and cry, and cry.

Until I start worrying that I’m going to shit myself during the night and have to just sit in a little brown pool for the porno nurse to clean up the next morning.

It already sounds like a standard porno to me.

Hot nurse and the Human Vegetable.

Tags, food play, scat, lesbians, and necrophilia.

That’s one way to go, I guess.

As long as she kills me at the end, I don’t care.

Then I can be free. And move through space, away from everyone, from myself. And just exist for no one and everyone.