Pop's Gesture of Kindness

I had a cold. This was when Covid had just begun to make news headlines, so in reality I probably had that. Lots of people had the same suspicious cold around that time and felt the same way about going out, so being careless about it didn't make anyone a bad person yet. I was not a bad person for it. I had to tell myself this, that I wasn't a bad person, for anything that I'd ever done.

Just another lonely bachelor in Januaryish of 2020, cussing all day and breaking the washing machine frequently, and experimenting with rare fruits for their elusive neurological benefits and addicted to tinder, and dedicated to my pointless arts. Just another human on the Earth. I told myself I wasn't a bad person for these things. I was nineteen. All nineteen-year-olds are the same. I was on Mucinex DM this Januaryish day.

I was cooking pizza.

Nothing really felt heavy in the air, which was fuzzy and distant. Pizza was the only thing on the agenda, because I was moderately wired from the Mucinex DM and thought I should eat a tasty thing or else something bad might happen.

I'm a non-dairy pescatarian now, but for continuity- the pizza in this story was double pepperoni and extra cheese with a cheese filled crust. Simply the smell of the house with the thing eventually cooking probably gave me acne and a tumultuous stomach, and kept me blind to the feeling that animals and their bi-products are not meant to be tasty to me.

Anyways,

This memory begins with me walking to the freezer to get the pizza. I don't remember this part.

And all of a sudden I stood back across the room slapping the box down on the counter! ...Because I had no emotional connection to spatial reasoning. I misjudged time and space, thus the slapping; Mucinex DM's a dissociative drug. I didn't care one bit about the slap. I opened the box and read the instructions twenty times or so. All the while, my dog Pop was getting pets in my dad's lap in the nearby TV room.

I had to free the pizza from the plastic wrap inside of the box. It was the same as me, some meat enclosed in a layer of translucent reality fabric. Mizz pizza was trapped from feeling the humanity of the world and I was obligated to give her due liberty. This was a task for the biggest knife in the kitchen-- which just so happened to be at the top of the knife pile. Lucky me.

The knife was one of those weirdly shaped specialty bread cutting knives. You can imagine the funky shape on your own, just know that it was long and serrated.

I heard some distant laughter from the TV, and my dad laughing too, and then Pop jumping off the couch and shaking or stretching or something. Sweet Pop. He had probably sensed I was making something to eat and come to lick the spare cheese up.

"Oh shih. Godda throw out this box away," I said, probably, miscalculating the order of operations--destined to forget the instructions on the box again once it was in the trash- and also talking weird because the mouth was an exotic tool for my cough-syrupy brain to use.

I carried all of the things to the trashcan back across the room. My handful contained the box, the covered pizza, and the knife. The pizza was half freed, and the knife was sticking out of it one foot long, wobbling looser with every mindless stomp I took to the trashcan.

It wasn't going to fall. It never even crossed my mind that it could.

But it did...

And in my hyperreflexic spasm I launched everything else into the air in order to catch the knife.

I slapped the knife around in the air, and pursed my lips. I was in my battle stance, slapping thing dangerous thing around in the air. I saw Pop inching closer with his tail wagging, expecting some food. I had to catch this thing before he got to me. He's so little and naive.

He approached some more, I flailed some more, the knife threatened and spun some more.

It's time in the air was about to expire, the knife's general orientation was tilting into a nosedive. It was going down. But Pop was coming.

And then I caught it, slightly below nipple altitude. Pop was safe, walking over to sniff the blood drips on the floor. The way I caught it was not so fortunate for me however.

Let's look at the playback: In it's nosedive, the entirely of this long knife sliced straight through the webbing between the middle and ring finger of my right hand. The handle had been a stopper against my fingers, preventing it from continuing its fall.

This was punishment. I was a bad person after all and my kitchen was judge.

I had to bury my everlasting and vague guilt into the dissociation, it was my only option because right now was for living or dying.

I looked at the situation, watched my blood drip down the blade for a split second, and with my left hand picked up the pizza so Pop didn't get sick from eating a whole pizza. I walked over to the TV room, knife still in hand.

"Hey Daah, look how I still caugh this knife at least I caugh it," or something, I said.

He was concerned and told me to go wash it out and that he'd be right there.

I followed my blood trail back to the kitchen. Pop was already licking it up. My dad followed me.

"POP. OUT."

"No stay Pahp! daaah... he cuh stay." The cough medicine was feeling heavier in my mind since my blood rate had changed.

"I guess, alright that's fine. Go wash that out in the sink! NO Pop! Stop licking that!"

"No he fine. We'll're bloodbruhrs."

My dad laughed. My blood was a safe substance for Pop to lick. There wasn't that much of it I don't think, either. Plus my dad was too busy helping me to stop him in that moment.

I stood over the sink and pulled the knife out in a horrible method that probably made the wound deeper.

"Ohh... [disappointment] no, Grady... why'd you take it out like that?!"

I placed the knife carefully in the right partition of the sink, sticking up because the idea, for some reason, had still not occurred to me that this was a dangerous object. My dad rushed around behind me getting paper towels and bandaids and iodine.

I turned the left partition of the sink on and watched the water flow through the chasm in my hand. It was so squeaky clean, and so pink. The water was so red. I was feeling the water in places that water should usually not be. The guilt that I had been feeling all along switched forms, taking on a feeling of mortal terror. I was in a human body, a vessel on route to inevitable destruction. I felt my body as much as I did the water. They were made of the same stuff after all [most likely containing bacteria, 100% atoms, molecules, the universe].

"I will faint soone."

"Please don't do that."

I really was going to faint very soon. I always get that way when something is on the wrong side of my skin. It's not my fault.

Pop was still licking the floor around the room; I heard his licks happening at a constant rate. One lick per second and a half. My dad hustled up with accruing first aid materials because he knew I was going to fall soon.

I was not meant to be inside of a human vessel! Nor to have organs that each make up a separate piece of myself. I should not have ever become a being made of smaller beings such as cells and bacteria and layers and layers of inerts, all composed of atoms! It's all wrong!

I was losing consciousness, so the rest of this is only what a well trained detective would've been able to conclude, and as much of what my dad could notice. It all happened so quickly.

In the beginning of my fainting, my dad's hands were busy with rolling up some paper towels, so he was not able to immediately catch me.

First my chin hit the knife which was sticking up out of the sink. It was like a cartoon character stepping on a rake. The handle hit my forehead, and the knife leaped into the left sink partition.

I am generally petite, but I felt quite gravitationally dense from the inside as this kitchen beat-down persisted.

My body had turned into a rag doll at this point, and down I did continue. Now leaning forward, my neck dragged itself off the edge of the counter, until it was my chin doing the dragging. My face scraped every sharp contour of cheap wooden cabinet as I slunk to the side. My cheekbone got hung up on the corner of the dishwasher, actually opening it all the way to the floor. My dad was holding me now, helping guide my body also to the floor. I did not hit my head there on the floor.

I don't know for certain if I was thinking about anything at all when all that was happening. Aside from the dread or guilt or something. I don't remember it though. I was fainting. That's all there was.

I regained consciousness to my dad holding pressure on my hand while simultaneously dabbing the blood off my face. He was looking to see how serious the wounds were.

"I feel sa cool rie now."

I felt cool as in stupendous, but also cool, from the ground's temperature and as in the rush of blood back to my head.

My dad did a sympathy chuckle, a nervous one.

"Ihtreally is nice down heeya." I was experiencing pure bliss. A bad thing had happened to me, which was exactly what I wanted. I got what I deserved for doing whatever my elusive guilt originated from [being nineteen(?)] and now I could be calm and let the blood swirl around in me.

I stretched my body out on the ground in all of its peace, and turned my head to the left. Pop was still licking. I saw him from my sideways vision. He sensed me looking then started wagging his tail and licking faster.

He looked up at me. His whole body was wagging. He looked so grateful and lucky, like an ugly person who was fortunate enough to perform cunnilingus.

I reached out my good arm to wiggle my fingers at him. I smiled at him with my fucked up face.

There Pop was, on the floor same as me except standing, interacting with a bi-product of my body that I felt so distant from. Well no longer did I feel distant from it, because the little guy that I loved most thought it was the best thing ever at the moment.

Somebody out there loves my blood and doesn't wanna see it go to waste.

"Can u get me pillow dad?"

I decided to stay like that for a few minutes. It was comfortable and present. Pop eventually came over to me and started licking me. I was bandaged up, he was just licking my unharmed regions of skin. I don't care if it was because deep down he wanted to eat me alive. I think he loves me. He had his crazy tooth-missing smile going on too. Then he laid by my side. My dad finished cleaning everything up.

"Are you guys gonna lay there for a while?"

All was well. Everything was right in my little world.

"Yet."

The next day I did not eat any more of the cough syrup. I took Pop on a walk, and talked in a manner that made sense again.

The wound on my hand took a really long time to heal. A couple months. I had a cool scar on my cheekbone from the dishwasher, which eventually became blotted out by just enough acne. What a shame.

I am more careful around knives.

I am biologically connected to Pop. We are blood brothers now.

I am thankful for my body, and the stuff inside.

I am thankful for my dad.

I am thankful for my dog.

I am thankful for primal moments of simply being on Earth.