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While She Is Dying

The old lady is probably dead already and I am doing nothing about it because I am busy resisting Klondike Bars. There are forty Klondike Bars in the freezer. They have taken every bit of my attention. They want my eyes on them. They are naked on the pole.

The old lady is dying from the cancer in her stomach and all I can think of is how I don’t need to eat Klondike Bars but still I walk to the freezer.

I pile the Klondike Bars like a wall in front of the pot pies. The Klondike Bars are protecting the pot pies is what I have decided, although it should’ve been the other way around. I can easily access the Klondike Bars. I do not need to keep myself away from pot pies. But I have already built the wall. It is too late.

My fingers are numb. I press them against my face until I feel blind.

The pot pies do not understand their new protectors. Fearful, they escape behind the ice trays. I scold the wall of Klondike Bars who fold and fall, cowardly ruined child soldiers, scurrying to the recessed corners of my freezer that I can never reach…never clean.

Behind Arm & Hammer boxes crusted, Ziploc baggies full of amorphous iced things they hide. I’m like, fuck them. I cave and dive. My hands curl, fingers coalesce with the cold. I cannot stop. I find them all. I bash my face into the shelves. I bash my face into the shelves. I bash my face into the shelves until I am blind again.

I unwrap each Klondike Bar, methodical. Hard chocolate shell cracking into white cold cream soft I collapse them against my face. Everything against my face because that is where I feel. I sit on the saddest part of the linoleum. The freezer is open and humming. I am unwrapping and crushing, unwrapping and crushing. My face is nonexistent. My face is the open space between hospital beds. My face is melted chocolate and ice cream. The Klondike Bars explain to me why I need to do this. They explain to me why I need to do this.

Fifteen so far. My forehead. My cheeks. My nose. My eyeholes. The sound is very quiet.

Quiet like cancer.

My chest is heavy with chocolate shards and ice cream soup. Silver foil has taken over my legs… quieting their prison break thrashing with their gentle susurrus.

I am not crying tears.

I know she is dying because the party is cancelled. I will not be bringing the Klondike Bars to the party. The party is cancelled.

She is at the hospital probably dying while I press number twenty-four into my face. I cannot breathe anymore. I cannot see or hear. What was my face is burning, I think. I cannot feel. I am made of small squares of chocolate covered ice cream. My entire face is dead. Chimerical. I think I am not here, but I must be because I am crushing the Klondike Bars against my face. For hours, I think, or minutes or decades.

When the thirties start, that is when I choke on them. I shove them into my mouth hole. I push and press them. Now is when I cry. I cry and choke; blind, deaf, dumb while she dies. Chocolate and ice cream rape my lungs. Strangling like a clenched fist in my esophagus. Milkshake puke.

I kill myself with the thirty-third.. I am no longer anywhere. I cannot close my mouth hole. My hands move robotic. If they are my hands at all, they might be claws, or stumps. There is no more party. No Klondike Bars necessary.

I reach forty and fall and fail. The puddle is night. The mess is morning and forever. I have a head full of Klondike Bars. I want to be found this way. I want everyone to know I resisted the Klondike Bars. For her.

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xTx is a writer living in Southern California. You can find her writing in places like PANK, Dogzplot, Thieves Jargon, elimae, decomP and Kill Author. She has a free e-book entitled, Nobody Trusts a Black Magician available at nonpress. She says nothing at notimetosayit.com.

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