If it weren't for her rather apathetic stance on general cleanliness, the squirrel’s compulsive neuroticism would be absolute, and so the thin layer of dust on most everything in a house much too spacious to be tended to by two working adults provides regular reassurance that she hasn't gone completely off the deep end. There are however exceptions. most obviously; the rectangular, dust free, areas from which one can clearly glean where the furniture stood yesterday, but also the top of a tall bookshelf, not visible from the ground for a person of normal stature, but undoubtedly polished to a shine, because on top of this shelf, the only one that is never moved, lies the ancient one's gun, and while he has never used it and doesn't think that he ever will use it, he sure as shit is dedicated to making absolutely fucking certain that it is there prepped and ready to end a son of a bitch, should he ever have to. The ancient one, of course, hates guns and will always firmly hold the position that they are an unjustifiable danger and that nobody should be allowed to own them. He says this despite such laws already applying to everyone not in possession of a weapons permit. Laws which the shelf gun is in blatant violation of. “How could it be illegal now when it’s been handed down the family tree for so long?”, dad will ask, like this isn’t the weakest excuse imaginable. Like it doesn’t garner critique of his moral integrity by all members of the household, regardless of whether they agree with him or not each and every time. That's just how he is, unchanging, robust, like an old tree. Ancient. The gun has left this spot only once, when Lawrence took it into the forest to kill himself. He never came back, but Lo did. Lo returned the next day, with the weapon and all the bullets within it. New name, new personality, old body. The suffering and sudden rise of Lo Fensterer. Squirrel unsurprisingly flipped her shit and demanded that we got rid of the damn thing immediately, but dad went on a long rant about trusting his sons to make the right choices and Lo, with the charisma he inexplicably acquired in that forest, insisted that one could very easily take one's life by other means. That the part of him that wanted to be dead already was. Mom’s mental state wasn't exactly improved, but apart from some privacy violations over the following weeks, things carried on normally for everyone except the kid formerly known as Lawrence, who soon became one of the most popular and probably influential people in town, before leaving for college in Drunnig, leading to Vincent and me calling him "the good one" in self-deprecation. I feel myself almost falling backwards as my vision blacks out for a second. Urgent reminder of the thing that drew me through the living room before getting stuck mentally on an overly dustless shelf. Hunger. Cell-gnawing hunger where you can feel the desire of your gut to pump stomach acid into the rest of your system and digest what other organs you have on offer. What do I have on offer? The fridge swings open to reveal a family-sized serving of fuck-all apart from some beer cans and the cabinet isn’t much better. Whatever dad apparently had for lunch must have been all that was left. My stomach growls as terror begins to rise within me. A completely useless microwave displays the current time as 13:08 which means that my last meal was 24 x 2 + I don’t know, 15? Almost three days ago. My hands are trembling, making it impossible to draw and the encroaching threat of simply passing out, revealing to the squirrel that I was not in fact at school becomes ever more imminent by the minute. Ahhhh this is bad. What the ancient one ate must have been the dinner they set aside for me yesterday. Vi plundered Lo’s strange supply of party food, and the squirrel won’t bring home groceries until 10:00 at the earliest, at which point I will be thoroughly dead, stiff from rigor mortis and maggot ridden. A decomposing corpse in the kitchen, providing gruesome spectacle for all those who believe their stomach capable of handling such sights without surrendering their contents in an unprepossessing manner that would undoubtedly be deemed disrespectful of the dead. The consideration of this scenario is of course completely useless beyond its ability to distract me from the only remaining course of action. Sunlight shines in through the window and people, some walking their dogs, some bracing the dangers of the outside on their own, can be heard, making my horrific last resort more tangible than I would like it to be. For a moment far longer than I would prefer to admit, I reconsider death as a viable alternative. The door opens. I exit. One foot finds its place in front of its counterpart as I try to anchor my breathing to the rhythm of my steps rather than the beat of my heart, which has still not abandoned the idea of terminating my physical existence here and now, by way of causing one of my arteries to explode. Admirable commitment. I change sidewalks whenever anyone so much as enters my field of view, until I begin to worry that my excessive amount of switching might be seen as suspicious and draw attention. A stray empath might be able to intuit my predicament from a casual glance if I fail to project an image of cool detachment while proceeding toward my goal in a rectilinear manner. The pavement twists and turns, spirals into chaos and only occasionally (in that adrenalin rushed semi-second of almost eating shit) re-collapses into a straight line. Straight ahead. Head out. Headache. Maybe it’s me that’s spiraling. Unspooling along the path, waiting for the string to run out so I can be free. Another dent in the world layer - another almost trip - almost death - skip a beat - stop. Another breath and the brief clarity that follows along with the anxiety inspiring tingling in my chest. The feeling of lungs. Having them. Each alveolae separately coming into contact with who knows how many molecules, colliding, absorbing, compressing, uncomfortably undulating fluid. Too much sensation entirely. And yet there’s a break, there’s a disconnect, a whole which is broken or perhaps many inconciliable fragments attempting to be one and failing. Attempting to be me. Like the world layer, another topology which is textured wrong. My hands don’t feel anything at all, or at least that which they sense feels unreal and detached. As they dangle to my sides, I have to look down from time to time to convince myself they’re still here, that I didn’t forget them. That I didn’t forget… where was I going? Shopping. Food. Sustenance. Somewhere in this area must be a place where produce fill the shelves. Things that could be made to fill me. Emptiness is certainly the term for it. An excess of emptiness internally and thus an unbearable abundance of reality externally through a complete lack of filter functions. There is just so much noise, so many body parts to coordinate and feel or to be aware of not feeling. So much world to be taxonomized and yet a complete inability to do so. To do anything. Even walk. The pavement keeps escaping the length of my legs. Pulling away and breaking the flow of my gait. Oh god, did she look at me? I can’t do this. Need to switch need to switch need to- I repress the urge and continue forward. Ten meters. Five. One. The woman passes by me close enough for us to smell each other. My mind turns blank to escape the moment’s horror. I throw up into a hedge. The sun is relentless and there appear do still be dogs in need of walking on this day. After a good ten minutes of convincing myself that it is safe to look at my phone, I take a deep breath and do so. 13:34. Did I take a wrong turn? There must be a store somewhere. It’s definitely too late to turn back, I’d have to… A phone breaks, a body collapses in the midday sun.