elimination
Chapter Nineteen

I think my stomach has shrunk. I half heartedly stare at my half consumed sustenance in all of its brownish greenish glory. It stares back, the gloppy facial expression of mystery macromolecules. It doesn’t in particularly seem to want to be eaten and I don’t in particularly want to eat it. I would say that we have an agreement and we should both just go on pleasantly existing in our current state. Still my inner voice of reason compels me to eat. I know there is more in that miserable pile of glop than what meets the eye; other unknown chemicals reside there, ones that have been keeping me alive for years. There is something that keeps the females from menstruating, something that helps the medical repair cream work, something to make you stronger, iron, Vitamin D, something to keep you from losing too much heat. Everything we “need” is there except for the dopamine directly dispensed to us in the form of the little pink pills. It seems odd that they bother handing the dopamine pills out at all when they could just put them in our sustenance. I bet it’s all just an elaborate placebo and they don’t do anything at all.

I hate staring at my sustenance. I hate how it looks the same way going in as it does coming out. But it’s better than staring at the cold stony face of 12. 12, who hasn’t been willing to talk to me for the past week. No one has been willing to talk to me for the past week, not Tight Rope, Switch, 12, 14, or anyone. I don’t know what I did wrong. All I know is now I’m alone and now I go to Completion of Assigned Work instead of Bump Nose’s group. I can’t bear to go to Bump Nose’s group. I can’t bear the inexplicable hate in their eyes. I can’t bear to look up from my sustenance and see the hole in the universe where Dagger’s familiar ape like pout used to reside. Every time I look up at that hole I hear the crack of broken ribs.