thoughts and things written into the void
fractured
[my thoughts and/or interpretation]
for the zine, my friend and i wrote an introductionary greeting and a disclaimer, which you can find [here].
Content Notes: extensive / graphic body and medical horror, dehumanization, state and police violence, death, gore, mentions of burns
22 moves the(ir) body through the fields, be it farming or battle, past heads of cabbages - lush, green, growing, waiting to be consumed - or heads of soldiers - broken, red, dying, already food for flies and maggots. They collect insects from leaves, one after another, with the same mechanical precision they use when shooting enemies. Their sharp hands reach into earth and flesh with ease, ripping out potatoes or organs. It's all they know, tasks and orders, blood and dirt. They know they shouldn’t care, they weren't built for it, but with each day the feeling in the back of their mind becomes stronger. Stranger. 22 doesn’t know what it means. Feelings are difficult when your mind is as fractured and sewn together like a rag doll.
All of us died yet none of us are dead. They denied us even that.
I was a high school student, struggling between family and school, all while trying to learn the language of our new home. Dad had moved us to this country, allegedly for his job, but turns out he just wanted to be closer to his mistress. Mom found out and divorced him, leaving home a mess, but we all tried our best to heal, to adjust, to fit in. I think we would have been fine, but we never got the chance. We weren't allowed to vote, we had no say in what influenced our lives. They made that decision for us - they made the dynamite, lit and threw it, but it exploded in our faces. It wasn’t fair. We packed our car as full as we could and drove hoping we could stay with family. They stopped us close to the border - not the police, but a group of men holding party flags and bats. First they went for our money, then our belongings, then our lives.
We try to scream, but we no longer have mouths.
22 woke up in a hall, surrounded by medical equipment but with the cold functionality of a factory. A sickly sweet, metallic stench filled the air, but 22 didn't yet know what that meant. (Blood and rot. They would learn. The smell and taste would never leave them again.) Machines and instruments, operating tables and bodies, all in different stages of processing. Most were flayed, their muscles glistening in the harsh light, others were hung up like meat in a butchery - throats open in a red, wide smile, their blood dripping into containers. The signs of uncaring, clinical violence were everywhere, coming closer in the form of a scalpel, carried towards them by cruel and steady hands. It sank in next to their eye. The sound of splitting skin vibrated through their skull, bright lights erupted in their vision - fear and pain filling out their entire being. From behind that, a voice: “The masseter doesn't fit. It can't open its mouth. Let's try a different one.” The scalpel twisted, carving a path from temple to jaw, along the cheekbone and then downwards. Hands gripped the edges of their skin, folding it outward, exposing muscle and metallic bone. The same procedure happened on the other side, opening them up, turning their face into a blooming flower. Their throat wasn't made for screaming, the rest of their body wasn’t finished, and yet, as soon as the muscle detached from their jaw, a sound came out. It erupted out of flesh and metal and bone, ripping through their unfinished form, as sharp as any knife. The wail of the dying, the cry of a newborn.
In their mind we are no more than material, resources to invest in or spend and they don't want us to go to waste. We were useless to them in life so they try to profit from us in death.
I was a social worker, working on an outreach program regarding mental health in the queer community. It was nothing special or groundbreaking, but it was important to me. I wanted to help people, my people. The election changed everything - it changed me. I didn't have the resources to fight or flee. I’m not proud of it, but it was survival, so I adapted. I stopped the program and tried to stay under the radar. Did I become complicit? I don't know. I just know that the dissonance between what I knew was right and what I found myself doing and saying became a permanent nail in my brain - corroding every thought, slowly rotting away at me until there was barely anything left. But it wasn't enough, they still came for me, picked me up with wide, wolfish grins. They thanked me for my work, and said they used it as a target list until the only one left on it was me. It destroyed me, more than any forced labor they tried to make me do. In the end, the shame and guilt was too much and I just stopped.
The agony is still there, still alive, even if everything else is not.
The public doesn’t know where the technology came from, or if it's even technology. Nobody ever heard about it, never read a headline or saw it in the news. Produced in secrecy and in ever growing scales, the results just started to appear one day, patrolling the streets with machine guns. Monstrous looking things carrying out the orders of the actual monsters. They became a sign and instrument of the power and horror the new regime holds. Supposedly unfeeling and uncaring, 22 and their siblings do their jobs. Sometimes they wonder if the others feel it too, if their sewn together faces hide battlefields as well - riddled with cries for help and voices calling them. Telling them things they are not sure they want to know, hammering away at the barriers and orders that were forced upon them, allowing 22 to question and think for themself.
Do you know how cold it is without skin?
I was a teacher in a small school for disabled, especially neurodivergent, children. Being autistic myself, I felt uniquely able to provide the help, support and understanding that I wished I had received. It was a hard job, but rewarding and I think I did a lot of good. I loved it, I lived for it, I couldn't just let it end. So after the election, when the state cut our funding, I tried to keep it running anyway: collecting donations, searching for loopholes in local laws, reaching out to every source I knew. I was in tunnel vision, stuck in place, unable and unwilling to let go. I just couldn't, even if it consumed all my energy and left me a burned out, overstimulated mess. Still, it was better than thinking about everything else that was going on, I needed to focus on something. And it worked for a while, even if we had to occupy the building illegally. We stayed until they came to kick us out. They brought a crane and a wrecking ball. I managed to get the children to safety before the building collapsed on top of me.
We try to talk to them of course. To tell them what happened. We don't know how, we just know it hurts. Existing in a frame we were never supposed to be in. Our soft beings are crammed into sharp metal and it cuts us when we try to think. We are nothing more than thought.
I was an anarchist. There were many reasons. Even before the last election, there was a lot going wrong: systematic racism and sexism, corruption and pathologization, a growing number of TERFs and fascists, money going to warmongers and criminals. To only name a few. It all made me so angry, and I channeled that rage into activism, joined and organized protests for anti-fascist and anarchist causes. Then this shitshow happened. We tried to fight, but they came down hard on any left-wing protest and rebellion. It was impossible not to get demotivated when you see friends getting hurt, getting shot, dying for the cause and it didn’t seem to matter one fucking bit. So we had to make it matter. Ideology or revenge, I didn't care. When the police station went up in flames it was a funeral pyre for all those we had lost. It felt good, but we were careless. I wasn't surprised when the remaining police force threw molotov cocktails through our apartment windows a few nights later. We managed to put out some of the fire, but we weren’t fast enough and they had barred the doors.
When passing by a reflective surface, 22 has trouble recognizing themself - they are a mosaic made of people, their eyes mismatched and glazed over white. Eyes are supposed to be the windows to the soul - what does it say when they are different and dead?
They made us watch when they peeled our skin - we felt every tear, every uncaring motion. Have you ever heard the sound of ripping flesh? The wet squelch when layers of tissue part, the soft pop when fibers snap? They pulled and stretched until the skin came off like a glove and was put aside for further processing. Then they opened us up like a gift box, cutting through our muscles with scalpels - for our rib cages they used garden shears. We felt hands digging around in our stomach, ripping out our organs and closing around our hearts. Did they still beat, straining against the blood covered hands? We hope so, we hope they put up a fight. We were still awake when they drowned us in chemical solutions. They filled our mouths, rushed down the windpipes and into the empty cavities that once housed our lungs and entrails. It seeped through our tissue, preserving it from rot, transforming it into something new. When it reached every cell, they lifted us out and we fell apart. Flesh became loose, parting from bone like well cooked chicken. Fat started to melt, running over our exposed tissue like rivers of wax. We became human soup: strands of flesh, clumps of cartilage and bare bones, all swimming in liquified fat and chemical residue.
New job, new orders. They rattle around in their mind but they are not alone anymore - now there are voices arguing against them, getting clearer, growing stronger by the day. 22 is conflicted, and they don’t like the feeling. It’s something they shouldn’t even be able to experience. There is a lot they should do, but don’t - and even more they shouldn’t but do.
First we felt ourselves being taken apart, now we were put together wrong. Our ground up bones were mixed in with the metal that made up the skeleton. It was tall, over 2 meters, with sharp teeth already set in the jaw and fingers sculpted into claws. Placed on and around it were lights next to nerves next to fiberglass. Tendons connecting metal to bone and plastic tubes encased with intestines. Our brain matter, a combination of each of us, pureed then pressed into new form, carefully placed within the skull, then nailed shut. They used our flesh like clay, enveloping the construct and giving it shape. It took hours, a long and disorienting process, our minds mingled and clashed. We screamed together, four voices as one, in defiance and anger and pain. The skin came last. A patchwork out of all of us, different shades, some bits burned black, picked clean of hair, sewn together with wire. They covered our flesh with it, even constructed a face out of our combined features. Everyone is in there, able to recognize parts - the mouth, the nose, the eyes - it's all and none of us. The hair was a nice finishing touch - black wire, planted deep into our flesh, adding protection to the skull and our fragile, fractured brain.
Following orders had been a necessity, something 22 had to do. The compulsion had filled every fiber of their being, forcing them to do what they were told. There had been no room for doubt or choice - now they find themself doubting everything, struggling to choose. It’s a burden. It’s freedom. It’s overwhelming. They reach out for help - they reach inside.
It would be a lie to say we got used to it. This isn’t something you can get used to, but we adapted with time, managed to untangle ourselves far enough to think clearly and each of us for ourself. We are still ”I”s but we learned how to act as one. It took a lot longer to get through to them - to 22. Their part of the brain was hard to reach, the outside completely lost to us but we made ourselves heard. We told them our stories, shared our memories and they listened. We felt their claws start to tremble in pain - or anger. When they finally took their first step out of line, we screamed with joy. When they started to disregard orders, we shouted our encouragement and when they asked us for advice, we answered.