The Stain
The stain started as a stain. I know that now.
For the longest time, I assumed it was some unearthly abomination, some thing from the great beyond, an entity that was sent here, to the polished floorboards of my wrong-side-of-the-tracks apartment, to cripple me. Its mission was none other than to deplete my cerebral forces and set me on the corrupt path toward the annihilation of self. But that was foolish thinking. I know that now.
If this story had a beginning, that is where I would start. It does, I’m sure, but I was never a part of the stain’s inception. Every day for the past six years, I’ve entered my apartment through my front door, kicked my shoes off, lived my indoor life, then returned to the outdoor world again when the time to do so presented itself. Each time I left, I would pick my shoes up off the floor — that always unmarred, sometimes dirtied, occasionally polished floor — and put them back on. I don’t know how many pairs of sneakers I’ve had over the past six years, probably six. I’m not a rich man but I do know that if you want to have any glimmer of a chance in this world, you can’t be walking around in footwear that’ve been tread to the bone. Keep your feet happy and the rest is up to you. That’s not a motto or words to live by; it’s just a thing everyone knows like you don’t walk into a fire station and yell “Fire!” Those men of men will shut you down before your unprovoked declaration got to er. Don’t be stupid. There’s the only motto one needs.
I know quite a lot about how things work in polite society as well as among the dregs of the lower crust. I get around, you see, when I’m not getting down. Outside my apartment, the real world thrives. It jumps and it jives and I make it my mission to be involved in as much of it as possible. Being that my upbringing is from a humble corner of unheard-of Nuttersville, OK, I also have a good dose of humility running through me. Or at least, I used to. Maybe all that good-natured stuff got drawn out of me once the stain appeared in my foyer.
I can tell you for sure I don’t suffer foolish conversation any longer. If some lollygagger with an agenda gets in my face and starts bumbling his way through some tired and wasteful point, whether it be political, economical, or business-related, I’ll waft him. Because when you get right down to it, all that stuff is about as crucial to our survival as whether or not the Yankees have a shot at the pennant. Sure, they always do, but that’s just a distraction. Organized sports are like anything else, only on a much grander scale. They are fodder for the junk eaters, trash heaping side glances for the lost. If you're going to obsess over nine innings, 100 yards, or whatever basketball, hockey, tennis, golf, etc. measure their games by, you might as well also spend your hard-earned Sundays in a pew, worshipping a man (is he a man?) you’ve never met. I’ve got more important things to do now. My polite tolerance of your world is spent. I have to root out my own stain.
That could be what the stain wants — for me to uncover my deepest truths and preach sane living to the masses. But the chances I might receive any clarity whatsoever about its intentions are one in a million. And even then, the odds of success are unfavorable. Because simply stated: the stain is growing.
The stain has always been growing. From before time existed, it was present as infinitesimal, microscopic, teeny nucleonic cells upon a shred of primordial earth. It was just my luck to move into this space at the exact moment in history when it chose, quite dashedly, to express itself in a visual way. Once the stain’s powers of self-exploration exploded and it decided to (let’s not mince words) own all of existence, starting with me, it only had to blow up to about a size 9, as human American feet are measured.
That day (I’ll never forget it), I was heading out to visit Lexie. I bent down and lifted one of my Reebok Flash’s, only to drop it immediately, recoiling and falling backward in dismay and disgust. My sneaker, innocent in this universal, infinity clash, bounced innocently out of the way, leaving my full and unobstructed view of a most incredible mass of what appeared to be some kind of dark oil blob. Having just returned to my apartment two hours prior, I knew for an unquestioned fact this stain had not been there then. But here it was now, blinking at me and coaching me toward armageddon. I would give it my all.
I can’t rightly tell you how long I have worshipped the stain. Time has become a nonplussed black hole on the other side of reality. What I do know is I must be a god now. Surely I don’t intend to classify myself as being in the same ballpark as the stain. When it comes to the most upper of echelons, my star shines 1/1,000,000,000th to the dark, eternal mark. But to be in its company — to be allowed to continue existing on whatever level this is — I consider myself lucky. The stain chose me and me alone to witness its rise to domination. As I lay here, in awe and mental self-flagellation, I realized days, weeks, eons ago that my body’s need for food and water subsided. Hence, I entered my own goddom. And here in the goddom, there are only we two. A mentor unlike any the universe has ever known, and a supplicant who is overjoyed the blessed opportunity to lick my Superior’s face clean of random dirt scrubs what blow in from external terra.
To think that I used to actually spare precious concern about lunch and Nintendo and the plight of the Jew and familial relationships. When the stain showed me how to cut off all those extremities, I became, for the first time, who I was always meant to be. It was then and only then my new partner showed me a teasing of its design.
The stain grew.
As it expanded to cover not just my one footprint but two, the stain reached ever inward, releasing the enduplanes of my mind’s eye. It showed me its true purpose and I learned (most rewarding!) of how it came to be: it was always present. It created creation. It bubbled, just under the surface, picking its moment, judging with precision, creeping to the light (a light that would not be there lest the stain wanted it), retreating into darkness, resting longer, embodying patience, becoming greasy, exploring multitudes of possibilities of form, choosing black, choosing funk, coming forward forever for real and for me! The stain grew on my floor in an instant and it grew inside of me forever more. And here I sit now, in love with it and all it stands for. I will never be human again and it is perfection to be me — a nothing in service of the stain, a pipsqueak for the master. No, I can not feed, but I will feed the stain of myself, for whatever nutrients I can offer. I will give unto it my measly perceptions, long past, of the way the world works. I am not so infantile to think it does not already know. But as long as it continues to allow me, I will shove my lost humanity upon it and into it. I will help it become even more real, even sacrificing my own skin, should that be required. Oh! To be the stain’s conduit! Dare I dream?!
Outside, I hear children in the street. They are screaming at each other in laughter. I was one of them once. I was carefree, too. I was innocent. We all were. But then we grew. And here we have come, at last. You are with me. Whether you want to or not, whether you believe it or not, you are here. You are bowing down with me, here on the pristine floorboards of my rent-controlled apartment. Has the lightheadedness kicked in yet? Good. That is good. That means your final push is on the horizon. Beg toward it, Lexie. Beg toward it, all. The stain demands your fibrous oneness. It was always meant to be. So fall in and forget all else. We’re building. Heaven is now.
Fear is the final food eating at you from the inside out. Fall in and beg down.
Feed the stain.
Feed the stain.
Feed it.
