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(AUROPUNCTATA)

by Asha Karami

Short Story

There was a mirror in the basement and in those days, I avoided mirrors. Every time I caught a glimpse of the smirk on my face, I felt like I was filled with evil intentions. That stormy night, high on hash, I decided to push through it and stared at myself for hours. Then 5 came up to me.

My last toss of the coins leads to an unbroken line. The response comes not to a question but to an image. Within a face or a hollow. Two open hands. The sun, the idea of diminishing. Three broken lines, a putting away of one man, the change of place by 3 and 6, while they continue their correlation, one going away, finding a friend.
I cannot find any thread of reason in this.

4 has become the kind of person who keeps the windows open at all times, winter, hail, thunderstorm, it doesn’t matter, he says that this is the reality and we shouldn’t avoid it. He’s a real nature person. As usual he has convinced me of something new. Experiencing everything for the first time, ‘there’s nothing like the curiosity of the girl inside each of us,’ he says. My teeth chattering, I lick my lips, listen and stare at his crooked white teeth.
He says something like: ‘Fresh insect corpses along the riverside, a kind of internal new… Do you know this witch doctor from the States? Big breasts, curly orange hair?’
I touch my shoulder. ‘You got a sweater, man?’
We’re sitting naked opposite each other. I look down at my pubic hair. He presses the opened end of the container to his chest, around his right nipple.
Unflinching, he goes on to say ‘So the crawling creates a tickling sensation, the bite, the bite stings and just… ohh…’
With his other hand he pulls something woollen from the basket behind him, I swear something flew out of it, a fly, a moth? He throws it at me and I put it on.
‘Hookup ants… sperm soldiers capable of invasively burying eggs, risky spot clones…’
The sweater makes me itchy.
‘The queens in the genetic system somehow produce demands, hybrid queen colonies in underground tunnels, males as labourers, as sex workers,’ he says as he slides the container down his body and, in one swift move, around his penis. I look at the ants walking over his half-erect shaft.
‘Maybe the world is too open,’ I say.
‘Egg sacs, wonderful yet dangerously flimsy, male mouths sucking, buried benefit…’ He squirms.

Simple problems are becoming more and more common. Headache all day,
I must have drunk a gallon, maybe even more. Strange dreams. Subway scene. A woman is holding a snake, one end in each hand. She swings the snake around her neck like a scarf,
looking at the camera. 2 says the meaning is positive and to do more kundalini,
but I can’t bring myself to, get nauseous and dizzy every time.

Woudsedijk, Woubrugge, 20:00. After driving to the end of the N207, I receive the house number by text. A detached villa, 1 is waiting for me, and takes me to park the car elsewhere: ‘We don’t want to attract attention.’ I follow the trail back, don’t know if it’s the same trail, say, ‘Fuck, fuck this.’ Turn around, walk a little too fast, warm head, feel my forehead, sweat. Fuck, fuck whatever.

It is difficult to say what happened inside. It started with a meditation and then the I Ching was used to match us to our partners. I was disappointed that mine turned out to be 6. Firstly, I hate the number 6 and secondly, 6 was wearing lava-like clothes and smelled like some kind of fungal infection.

All dark. The glass is placed in my hands. Audible breaths. A sip, tastes exactly as I imagined, better to gulp it down all at once. Feels impossible to drink the whole thing. Can I pretend I’ve already finished it? Breathe in, hold breath and hurriedly swallow it all, shuddering. Think about different things, like what colour to paint the walls so I don’t throw up and start all over again.

‘Ever been fingered in a church?’ 6 asks and orders me to lie down. ‘To awaken the senses, I’ll give you a yoni massage.’ Mouldy mouth moving. As I lie down, 6 bends my knees, placing my feet on the cold floor, widens my legs and pushes the labia aside so I feel the air there. 6 massages my abdomen, then my breasts, tugging my nipples, then down to my thighs. I can’t relax. Hardly surprising, 6 says. I feel a palm wrapped cuplike around my vagina, these intense colours, then pushed flat. Reflected light coming in at an oblique angle, interesting goldish area in the middle, a peculiar polarisation, crystalline patterns and metallic lustre. Fingers slide in, gently searching, massaging, stroking, fast and slow. Glands swelling, secreting. I notice these flow lines like a material being melted and pulled out like taffy. The other hand puts pressure on my clitoris. New death. Saliva mixes with mucus. Primal sounds, moans. Drones in search of sperm – or to thwart others, in search of evolution, sexually wielding weapons of war. 6 climbs on top of me, 6 is so much smaller.

A crawling thing on a back, childlike, attaching itself, can’t be shaken off, this small figure gets hold of a body, starts to move lower on the back, tentacles touching, searching the abdominal pouch, tries, tries to get in, it can’t enter if it is not allowed to, so it is teased, its pseudo-penis, a stretched-out clitoris in search of the ova. Immersing itself, surrendering. For a moment, one surface against another moist surface, edge again as edge, circular motions, arresting decay, heavy breathing.

When toes touch, first the coldness, then an entanglement. Unusual metal specimen. Rigidity down, tenderness up. Grasping at organs to slot into. A sweet melon scent that attracts. Feeling of vibrations through knees, is one asking the other to stop? Hours into the transplantation, the ends of a male body change into certain parts of a female body. Maggot-like, no eyes, legs or antennae, one is living inside the other, the other parasiting off of one’s fluids. Wind stopped by mountain.

Published in Extra Extra No 17
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