I have a sister. She does not have a name, and she lives in my mother’s breast. Diabolical conception­— her father, I think, is old scratch. My sister is a pale pink lump of fatty flesh with roots that reach, thirsty, hungry, for juicy lymph nodes, and has already tasted this Edenic fruit of sickness. Poor sister, you grew in the wrong place and much too late. She pointlessly persists, does not know that men and women in harsh, sterile scrubs plan to poison her, irradiate her, starve her. Her birth would kill her, malformed lump, error. Blind limbs extend into squishy, warm, and forever black darkness, and there is a starved desperation in this. Yeah, she must be hungry, but babies cry when they’re hungry, and baby sister is a primitive mass who only knows about struggle.
Feels like this is a dream. I am floating somewhere high above, low earth orbit, there is a blinding white diamond at the edge of the earth and it grows and grows, and in its light I see her down so many miles down below and she’s got her hands around my mother’s neck and my mother has no idea, and I am screaming and screaming but there is no way down, no way to warn her, and it is like this forever and ever. She dies someday and I can feel that too from my cosmically displaced vantage and all I can do is remain. Remain here, lost, cold.

There is a dog who has lived for eleven thousand years I am told. Beings like it, like my sister, are trapped within their wombs and can only spread within. An ancient dog broke free. Is this immortality? Lichdom? A curse more ancient than mankind. Fatal flaw in earth’s code.  Falling, crashing through history. All dead, everyone, poisoned by their own will to live.