Free The Art of Self-Destruction by Douglas Shoback Page A

itself, around him, his
body centered and focused as electricity pulsated across the walls.
The room expanded and constricted and walls became cages,
wallpapered, brightly painted, desiccated, constructed of wriggling
insects, rusted iron; space became immense, claustrophobic,
normality, surreal, a meadow perhaps or even a moonscape. Whatever
man imagined, eyes closed, smile rapturous. And as the last bits of
electricity crackled slowly to an end, man slowly opened his eyes
and smiled at what he had created and what stood before him.
     
     
Glitch in the Program

     
    He removes his shoe and lifts it to his nose,
sniffing it before closing one eye and staring into the darkness of
leather and stitches. "I knew I should've worn those insoles," he
mutters.
    "Is there a problem?" she says, her voice
light and airy. She is sitting on a dingy bed, her maroon robe
flowing down her body and spreading across the dark bedspread.
    "No, not really." He is standing in front of
her, his faded blue shirt hanging loosely from his thin body, black
slacks the color of coal.
    "You know, it's not like you have to wear it.
Just leave it off." She leans back on her hands, smiling coyly up
at him. He glances at her momentarily, stares back into his shoe,
and then throws it violently against the far wall. The contact
creates a hollow moan, sound waves oscillating into nothingness.
"Piece of crap..." he trails off, staring at the floor. Silence
separates the two for a second. "Is there another problem" she
says, a tone of impatience and annoyance creeping through her
normally neutral personality.
    "My sock has a hole in it."
    "Oh. Well, that is a problem." She flops
prone on the bed, sending a cloud of dust into the air. The fold of
her robe opens slightly, revealing a patch of caramel skin and
invisible hairs. A breeze flows over her, stimulating the hidden
follicles, sending electrons across her nerve endings, chemicals
released into the blood stream and the brain pulsing with
biological pleasure.
    "It's a hole right where the middle toe is."
She watches as Matthew stares at the unclipped nail of his toe,
yellowed and grotesque in the light of the room. The whiteness of
excess growth becoming an attached accessory, a piece of him that
shouldn't be. She wonders if he ever clips those nails or just lets
them break off. She wonders about the pain caused by unclipped
nails; hangnails, itchy and annoying. She's never had a hangnail or
anything close to it. Somewhere within her she wishes she could
experience the pain of a hangnail or a broken nail.
    She doesn't notice the fluid upward movement
of his head and his gaze directed toward her, a look of recognition
and shock hidden behind his eyes.
    "We've met before haven't we?" he asks.
    She jumps, and then lets the normal
indifference take over, "Doubtful. I don't remember you. But I do
have tons of clients." She pauses, accessing her memory banks,
trying to bring up his face, his body, his actions. She can't
remember if there was anything there to begin with. Sighing, she
adds, "Why do you ask?"
    He shakes his head, "It's nothing. Just
thought I met you before is all. You have this familiar way."
    "Don't all women?" she says, a crooked smile
creasing her lips.
    He ignores her, gazing into the corner of the
room at his discarded shoe. It is secluded, almost hiding, wedged
between the intersections of the walls, occluded by shadow. Yet, he
can tell that the dark leather that once mirrored his perfectly
good shoe is starting to turn brown, stained by the decay of the
place. Absorbing the taint.
    Then again, he thinks, it could just be the
lighting. She silently watches Matthew lift his foot with the holey
sock off the floor and balance on one leg, hopping slightly back
and forth to maintain his balance. Balance unmodulated by
electronic stabilizers, only fluid in a biological sac deep within
his ear.
    Finally, he manages to rip the sock from his
foot, snapping it against the bed as the elastic woven into