Descartes

Another cold day. Snowing. Another etch for the prolonged winter. I am finishing up my rounds of the day collecting garbage and feeding it to the compactor. I pick up a plastic bin in a cul-de-sac of nice-looking homes and out stumbles a tiny limb jutting out from a shopping bag. I empty the bin before examining my discovery, a grey little limb belonging to a child. I tear away the rest of the bag and see my macabre gift: a blond-haired blue-eyed infant girl. I go back in my truck and grab a nearly empty cooler and stuff the body inside before completing my rounds for the day.

My home–a condemned trailer–reflects an immense ugliness, especially in the falling snow and rain showers. My footsteps in the snow are slightly filled in by the time I arrived home with my package. The hill I walk up every day discourages me from continuing, reminding me that the people and animals that once resided here are long gone. We have a new guest now.

I pull open the door, take my shoes off and leave them on the dirty carpet. As I unzip the cooler I pull up a folding chair to set it into place; facing me and me alone away from my dilapidated surroundings. Rigor mortis has begun to set in the cadaver, giving it the appearance of a realistic doll used in grisly murder reconstructions. I carefully set it on the chair, making sure that it sits in a way where it at least looks like the eyes are affixed on me.

I brush aside some disgusting sheets on my bed and remove my book on Descartes before sitting down facing the empty vessel across from me. I can’t help but hold my face in my hands when emotions can no longer be held and my cries are more like gnarled inarticulate screams. This goes on for several minutes before lifting my head to look into the eyes of the dead little girl. My history leading up to this very moment is unfurled, I reenact the rage and pain in an unintended theatrical way as though I’m fighting invisible monsters. After several hours, I feel I have caught up to myself and look into the thing’s eyes knowing a sense of something I can’t yet describe but I know it isn’t the judgment that fellow man would pass onto me.

When I woke up, still dressed in my work clothes, I made sure to undress in the neighboring room despite the steep drop in temperature. The next day was the same as the last. At home I recall an event from last week where, as I was doing my laundry a dead mouse fell out of my waded pile of clothes. It got a non-reaction from me at the time; I’m used to this casual disgust. But I take it now as an omen, perhaps another gift.

As I’m about to fall asleep I can see my gift slumping over almost falling. The stench doesn’t bother me.

Jingles

The teenage girl on her smartphone keeps streaming as she pulls hard on the steering wheel and her vehicle flips end over end. Her young sister who was a passenger has her head caved in and lays lifeless with eyes glaring up at the sky. The girl continues streaming and zooms in on her formerly living sister as she begs for forgiveness from her viewers.

Cold Play’s Fix You swells in the background:

♫When you try your best but don’t succeed
When you get what you want but not what you need♫   

As the song continues, the image of the product illuminates; a newly announced aspirin.

A Hispanic man and his son are held captive; the father is beaten with a stick and quickly decapitated. His son screams as the head of his father lies beside him. His captors beat the young man with the same stick then proceed to skin him alive starting from the abdomen. The young man seems fully conscious but doesn’t scream as much as you would expect. Not until his torturer plucks his heart from his chest. The boy appears to slowly die and his murderer uses his blade to stake the heart into the body like he’s planting a victory flag. Another man wearing a scarf addresses the camera.

Blink 182’s All the Small Things echoes:

♫Always I’ll know
You’ll be
At my show
Watching
Waiting
Commiserating
Say it aint so
Turn the lights off
Carry me home♫

A can of Coca-Cola looms over the bodies of father and son.

Note: it has been determined that music has a retentiveness for consumers and builds an importance with the brand. This strategy has swept the advertising agencies. Live abortions from China play on billboards to advertise toys. As a result, girls clutch their baby dolls ever-tighter and demand more accessories.