An older work from 2021/2
She drank and felt the rod of cold liquid slide down her gullet like she were swallowing a sword. She was to be made transparent – or translucent. Mostly see-through. In the seeing through and from certain angles, aspects of her wholeness or holeness could be assessed.
They were expected to see what stuff she was made of, what jelly covered what oysters of muscle and sinew. Where the gaps were and which of them were filled and with what. The grit of bones are almost white, the flesh a little darker and the holes a black shadow in what should be solid.
The gaps are important and they made her partially see through-able so these holes could be measured. They wished they could plunge their hands into the gap and feel out those pockets. Like a faith healer they would slide around filling and stretching. A haste feeler. Two thumbs into the centre and wrench apart. However, finger tips, like a tongue, make textures feel so much larger than reality. This way the measurements would be much more precise.
She was translucent and her holes and gaps were black. Blue like on the screen she was inside herself looking at the insides of herself in blue.
In the time before the procedure she was to keep completely still. If she moved her eyes quickly, as when reading, her eyeballs would light up brighter than bone and give them an excuse to pluck them out. She tried not to thinking too quickly.
Her holes and gaps would be compared to others. Little was known about what formed them, what eroded the insides. Some suggested it was environmental, some a punishment from God. Some even suggested it was the test itself which caused the holes to appear but there had been gaps before the test. People had crumbled like bath bombs in water on the street, like cinder toffee dropped by a child.
What could they see in there? What did those black points say? Were they vacuums or filled with bad air, to be let out using a knife and the tube of a biro like in the movies? Scientists were undecided. Some thought they could be filled but others thought that this would cause more collapse. One man claimed to have filled all his holes, and orifices with a paste made from a paste made of ground linseed, turmeric and a nontoxic latex. Few speculated that some holes were supposed to be there – by design – but most people thought they were quacks. She wondered as she watched herself pink, ‘Do I breathe out these particles of my own self, like calories on my breath. Do the particles of radiation fired at me from across the room punch holes through.
Is it bad?
Slice me open if you want to see if I’m whole or holed, I guess.”