"Can't I hide anything from you?" I pout, mostly on purpose but slightly because I actually mean it.
"Oh come on now, don't go there. Don't go changing the subject before you've even had anything to say." She looks at me, arms crossed, eyes narrowed, brow slightly pressed until mini folds of skin wrinkle up somewhere between her right eye and her left. Small enough that you don't really notice unless you're looking right at them, and even then you don't normally notice unless for some reason you do. A lot of things are like that.
I look at those small folds of skin and cross my own arms. "Hmmph," I say, not really a word but more of a sound. I don't want to talk about it. I really don't. In fact, I'd rather chew my own toe off then talk about it. She knows that. She does! That wrinkle of skin, right there, that proves that she does. "Hrrrmm," I express again. Maybe she'll get the idea and go back down to wherever she came from. That place that, well, I'm not quite sure where it is to be honest. She just sort of comes up from there and then disappears back into it, whether I want her to or not.
And, of course, she always has to come at the wrong times. Like now. Why now?
"It's God again, isn't it."
"Oh, shut up!" I snap back. I'm uncomfortable. I don't want to talk about it. She knows this! In fact, God is definitely the absolute last thing I want to even pretend to think about. In fact, now that I'm thinking about it, I'm probably so angry precisely because I don't want to think about it! Think about Him. It. You know, the whole situation surrounding it. Him.
It occurs to me that grammar might be a good skill to learn some day.
"He's a sock puppet you know," she says slyly, mockingly. "People just, you know, poof Him up into their minds, take some of that old glue they used to chew on as a kid and paste their beliefs all over Him." She takes a step to the side. "Kind of like those construction paper monstrosities you see in the kindergarten section of elementary schools. They're all ugly and horribly misshapen, little bits of extras tacked on to the side, some weird marker scribbles in the corner, a freaky attempt at a face in the upper middle." I growl, and she just nods, lip slightly curled in an expression that makes me furious. "God, really, is just as significant as those pasted artworks. Oh, wait!" She lifts a finger, as if a new idea has suddenly struck her. "In fact, less important! Because, obviously, every intelligent person in the world knows He doesn't actually exist. Unlike kindergarten art, you see. Walk into any elementary school and you'll see that exists, plain as day, hanging on the walls. But you can't really walk anywhere and see that God exists." She looks at me for a moment, head cocked slightly to the side, eyes looking painfully masked.
"Grrrmmm," I say, again, more of a sound than a word. She knows she's just making me angry. She knows that I'm feeling those thoughts again, the ones the bubble up from nowhere, that want to gurgle their way up my throat and squeeze their tiny hands through my teeth until they wiggle themselves so far through the cracks that my mouth just bursts open and out they come, spilling like a hypothetical overflowing toilet, spurts of words that when put in the right context would probably make sense but the way they're splashing out just makes them a jumble-
"Haha, ha!" She laughs. She laughs because even though I'm not saying anything, she knows what I want to say. "Oh you're silly," she mocks again, stepping closer. I can feel the anger oozing up my chest, thick and warm and swirling farther up my throat. "You think you can hide yourself from me? Oh, haha, how silly!" She steps close and places one, dainty, dirty, disgusting finger right square on my lips. "You can't hide thoughts from me. I'm you! I'm that part that you always want to ignore, that part that you want to forget about and pretend doesn't exist so that one day, maybe, I'll just disappear and never return." She smiles. "But you know that's not how it works, baby. Oh no. You try to hide things from me, you try to ignore me. But it doesn't work like that. In fact, I'd wager that I can hide your thoughts from you better then you can hide your thoughts from me!"
Oh that fucker. Her face with those wrinkles, that look, oh if I could just take my hands and wrap them tight around her metaphysical neck, and then squeeze-oh it would hurt so bad-squeeze until her little dull eyes pop straight out of her head, and her fingers wilt down the the ground like dying wildflowers, and her blood spurts out of her, pure evil I'm sure, smelling like rotten eggs and the dying piss and shit of babies-
"But then, darling, you'd be dead too you know." She says, simply. "You'd be dead too because as much as you don't want to admit it, I am you and you are me. Every evil thought I have you have too, every good thought that you grasp for is tainted by me." Her eyes narrow. "You can't escape me. Just as you can't escape God you can't escape me. You can't even breathe without Him saying its okay, without him pulling back your tiny little diaphragm, without him letting that oxygen and nitrogen and whatever else the fuck is in the air swoosh into your lungs so that your tiny little red blood cells, created and maintained by His power alone, can carry those essential things into your body and keep you alive."
"You're wrong," I say. No, I spit. I spit it right out of myself, thick and heavy and hot. "God is even stronger than you," I say, the words fumbling out. "Whatever you are, you disgusting thing, whatever you do to me, however I choose to go with you (for everything you do is done by me), God is greater than all of that. ALL of it!" I feel sick, somewhere in my body. It doesn't matter. "I don't care how bound I am by you, you twat, you disgrace, you piece of slime. Because you don't matter! You DON'T! You wish you had power, and you hold on to what you can, a parasite, self-bound, self-destructive, but in the end you have nothing because without God you are nothing and I, with Him, am stronger than YOU."
Her lip curls and her face is unreadable, and really, at the end of it all, what did I even say? Did I even believe myself? Does she believe it? That thick anger is still there, thumping, squirting, roaring. She opens her mouth and then closes it, not because she can't speak, but because she is fading away again, leaking back into that place where she lives deep within myself, that dark place, and hidden place, that place where she sleeps until the time is right...
She'll be back. She always comes back.
I roll over, exhausted.
Sleep.
