(2025)
CLEAN UP IN AISLE NINE
I tease everything, because everything touches first. I veer into the bread aisle, rubbing body over an entire wall of loaves. Dissected bread, as dull as a corpse. Unattractive. But the jams beside, begging to be stuffed, to be dipped. Running over the sticky jars makes my left hand jerk. Blueberry pulp clings to the back wall, daring me to squeeze it to burst, then suck on my sweet fingers. Through the dying nuts, a pinch—skin sinking, a pressed-in cheek of a corpse, already starting to rot. Under the deli heat lamps: that undercooked chicken butt. My index finger pushes into the hole of the plastic bag wrapping it, right up to the bulging, oil-dripping anus. The deliberately long thumbnail drives anal piercing into the chicken breast. Pull it back out, the grains of rice soaked in yesterday’s curry still stuck beneath the nail, and put it into my mouth—an anus untouched by garlic juice, an unqualified ass. I feel sorry for it. Today I’ll take it with me, tear into it, chew it into a pulp, turn it into mush, spit it out, swallow it back, spit it out again, swallow again, spit again, swallow again.
The jam jar goes first, whole, sliding down the gullet. Then the chicken, flesh over bone. Jam to the left, chicken to the right. I need more storage. So I expand myself. Hard fruit candies pushed through the navel slot. Then candy wrappers. Then the $9.8 organic grass-fed beef short ribs. Then a box of corner-shelf cheese crackers. Then the family-size sour-cream-and-onion chips.
A cart crashes. A woman’s mouth opens. Wide, white, mute. Her eyes lock onto the oil-leaking from my mouth, glinting under lights like a worm freshly crawled out of chicken skin. My grin rips wider, cheeks twitching, lips splitting, oil seeping through the cracks. I can’t make her leave. I open my mouth and bite her ear. Alas, I can only take one ear at a time. I shift and bite her lips. She bites back at my lips, her hands moving over my stomach in a slow, knowing rub. Bone, glass, syrup, chicken-skin membrane—she knows what’s stored inside, knows it’s all shifting, crowding, knows one more press and something will spill out of my mouth or nose. Alas, I have no choice but to digest her. I swallow her tongue whole. So she can’t report my theft.
Look up. A camera above, and the person on the monitor is watching me—no, watching you. Blood and oil at the corner of the mouth flare disgustingly on the screen. I know you’re watching me, you obedient shoplifter. I’m talking about you. Don’t look away. You think I don’t know about the bones, the glass, the syrup in your stomach? You think you’re just looking at me? You well-behaved pervert, dressed properly every day, standing here, standing on the train, sitting in the library, sitting in the classroom, sitting here, there, everywhere I look, your shadow is there. All your tiny gestures I’ve seen every one of them: in your navel, hard candies, organic ribs, sour-cream-and-onion chips. So look at me, and I’d spit in your face if I could reach you. But I can’t—so just stand there, watch me, as I cum all my scorn over you.
The guard on monitor lifts a hand. Wave, gun, blessing. A signal. Greeting or warning? He’s calling you. Look at you, flinch, twitch, pants sliding halfway down in fear. You climb the shelf. Shove the monitor—screen, wires, signal, the guard—straight into your throat. He freezes mid-gesture, hand raised, stuck. Only then do you dare to move. You pass him. The door opens too slowly, dragging you, grinding you, squeezing your already cramped insides. And you don’t even dare make a sound. Your body is pure noise now, because inside you the monitor keeps playing, looping, buzzing, refusing to shut up.
The announcement spikes, not from the ceiling, from your stomach: CLEAN UP IN AISLE NINE. Your stomach repeats it. You can’t even control a single organ in your body. You can’t stop. If you stop, the sound from the monitor inside you will leak out your back. They’ll call in a pack of cashiers pretending to be police. They’ll pin you down, rip you open, pull out whatever’s inside—the woman’s tongue, the monitor, or whatever else you’ve been eaten. You’re not ready for that.
The bulge under your ribs is not breath. It’s inventory. Cans and bottles knocking inside your rib cage. Crackers wedged between the bones. A jam jar near your heart, you know exactly where it sits. Sugar leaks through your cracks. Labels peel in your stomach acid. Your breath reeks of detergent and meat. You try to hold it back. You fail. You vomit. The vomit is full of glass, probably from a broken jam jar, and a hand. You lift it from the stomach acid. It’s the hand that guard raised. He didn’t report you. You’d already taken in his hand. So you swallow it back down. All the way.
A box of cereal presses against your sternum. The chest swells. The rhythm is wrong. Swollen and wet. Perhaps it's the woman's tongue licking the cereal and making saliva. You let it. The body can’t tell if you’re breathing or clearing space for storage. You unzip your coat halfway, air hits the ribs, echoes back. Jam dripping. Short ribs thawing. How much have you taken in? Everything already swollen, already damp. You’re going to have to throw it all up again, aren’t you? Push the hand and tongue welling up in your throat back down. Now, lift your chin. Smile at the people passing by. It hurts when you laugh—wider. The jam is leaking sugar into the bloodstream. You can taste fruit at the back of your throat. Movement helps. The inside settles enough. You walk faster. The weight moves with you. The spine bends. The ribs creak. The torso feels like a bag about to split. And you won’t stop, because those cashiers are watching you.
Now, out of the parking lot, cross the Roosevelt intersection, cutting into the alley beside Dunkin’. A bank ahead. Left glance, red exchange rates across the display scrolling. You look up, see yourself, sitting at the entrance in a perfect suit. You stagger in, vomiting and diarrhea streaming, and swallow that suit-clad of you. He exits the alley, crosses Roosevelt, walks into the parking lot, hearing the monitor inside his chest stuck on repeat—CLEANUP IN NINE, CLEAN UP IN NINE. Then, before even reachingJewelOsco, he throws up everything. He scoops the vomit back into himself, and walks into JewelOsco. He walks fast. He’s walking while masturbating.