I am always afraid I’ll end up catching the attention of the Ouroboros.
It never matters how much I clean the keys of the typewriter, no matter whether I use naphtha, or gasoline, or inhibitol, or how thin or thick the brass bristles of the brush are, it can never fully remove the small— infinitesimally small prickles that serve as conductors for the summoning of the Ouroboros.
Some have suggested to move away from the hitting of the hammers and the sliding of the carriage, but it seems they have never realized the Ouroboros isn’t so easily deterred, leaving its contagious caltrop-shaped eggs on the surface of plastirubber keys, on the surface of OLED screens. If the Ouroboros wishes to catch me unaware, it will do so.
The biggest issue of the infection is that you can never tell when you have been infected. It might never happen, of course, but I’ve never been so lucky, so I have to assume that upon the press of the first key, upon the uttering of the first letter of the first word, the Ouroboros has taken hold of my body.
It always begins in a very specific place inside of the head, right above the brows. This is because the tapeworm— The name of the Ouroboros in its larval stage— finds itself a comfortable position inside the subarachnoid cavity of the meninges, pressing into the brain in the same way the hammers press inked meaning into the A4 paper. The migraines caused by the wriggling of the tapeworm are annoying, yes, but more annoying are the constant hammering of the words once written loaded into a gun shot straight into the prefrontal cortex, where the sentences become a paste that is spread over the sulci, forcing an aphasia where the meaning of the text and the meaning of each word that composes it contradict one another. At the time, I don’t recognize the intrusion, and I am forced to crumple the paper, to dismantle the typewriter, break apart the laptop, and clean each piece with intense intent. How I wish I could do this with my own brain, crack it open, remove each fragment of the skull with tweezers, and with these same tweezers excise the worm, but it is not possible. And even if I was able to, the thermal paste would keep it all in place.
Eventually, the machines are put back in place, and the text begins flowing again. It looks alien, a liminal wrongness bordering on uncanny, but I know this is right. I know this is the tapeworm forcing me to do it all over again, and I deny it its happiness. I’ve come to know the tapeworm for but a moment, and I have already come to spurn it. The worm, in turn, spurns me as well. This is where the second stage begins.
The tapeworm, now turned into a platyhelminth— This is its pupal stage— finds the meninges to be unsuitable for its requirements, and with no other choice, chooses to move down, forcing itself through my veins into my stomach. Or perhaps my tripes, or the colon. I can’t be sure. The pain and restlessness feels like it comes from every single part at once. Perhaps it simply finds a cavity within the folds of the mesentery, and lodges itself there, sucking up nutrients, leaving Remington bites and excrement the color of salient thoughts behind, poisoning my insides. This is the most annoying stage, forcing me to move away from the desk, get up from my chair, and take a break. A break that cannot be used to relieve myself, that cannot be used to take a bite, nor for sleep, nor for recreation. The break is used for staring at the ceiling, staring at the walls, staring at the floor. But the walls of my room have turned pure-white, and the floor has become astatine. I can’t even look at the ceiling. My eyes hurt every time I try. The platyhelminth has poisoned me with its venom, and my subjective reality begins spinning in place. I try to resist it, but Kotov dictates that my every try only makes me sicker, less unable to grant myself salvation. The Ouroboros has won this battle, and its victory leads to my emesis, moss and algae and lichen ejected out the offal and into the astatine, iodic reactions coalescing questions that I am compelled to find an answer to. I pick up the moss, the algae, the lichen, and I open my laptop (Not the one for writing. A different one. The platyhelminth wouldn’t commit such a mistake) to search for the taxonomic grouping, any kind of classification that would satisfy the curiosity currently at play.
Drunken Moon Lake, I figure out, and I am immediately filled with an impending sense of doom. The platyhelminth smiles, and I feel it look for the cheapest prices for a flight to Taipei (How many stopovers is that? How far is Taiwan again?) I feel it pack up light, pick up a cap and a white scarf, and before I know it, I am sipping up the water off the shores of a lake I have never seen before in my life. The taste is familiar, because it’s the same as the viscous bile within my stomach, the same moss, the same algae, the same lichen. Disgusting, yet necessary; without the food in my stomach, I wouldn’t upchuck it in the first place. The platyhelminth only wants to tie the loose ends, and that’s when it clicks. I feel trapped within a cycle of my own doing, except it’s not my own doing. Except it is. Except it’s not.
The third and final stage begins at some point between the emesis and the revelation, when the platyhelminth tires of playing games, and is absorbed into the bloodstream, breaking past any barrier previously placed, and making its way into the right atrium, making short work of any pesky valve in the way. As it is the final stage, it has taken the shape of the prophesied imago: The Ouroboros. And yet, the name isn’t quite right, for there is no head nor tail, only an infinite extension of itself in the shape of a misaligned torus. It has no brain, but it still forms thoughts, nor lungs, but it still breathes. By all accounts, this is the worst stage, yet I’m relieved that, at the very least, it has lost the capabilities of biting into the soft flesh of my self. It has, however, gained the ability of speech, quiet murmurs between murmurs, and I loathe it, for while not the mighty hypnotizer it once was, it speaks using my own voice, my own cadence, my own words, and I am rendered lame against the comments made by this impersonator.
“However, nevertheless, moreover” it spats out straight into my lungs, and I find myself trapped in a room with no windows, where the sunlight could never reach for my head and run his fingers through my hair; where the moonlight could never caress my cheeks. I find myself sitting in a room with only a desk in front of me, with only a typewriter atop. It has no keys, no paper, no ink. A useless piece of junk without a single use, incapable of forming connections anymore. A pitiful sense of forlornness invades me, and I hit a key that simply isn’t there, forming words that truly hold no meaning. One word, then another, then the first, then the second, then the first, a constant cycle of finding the right manner to explain what I feel without presenting the symptoms, evidence gathering dust at the locker, no lock nor key guarding it, but rather a heart too weak to pump anything but crackles of a world that subsumed into itself. I feel lost. I feel trapped. Did I say that before? Have I mentioned it already?
”Is a literary technique where the narration begins at the middle of the story, and there is no beginning, and there is no end, and” it laughs, and though it has no mouth, there is a Cheshire smile that tempts me, pushes me to choke it out, to turn anger into violence, and I accomplish nothing but bleeding over the hammers, élan vital released that intoxicates me and fills me with a sense of purpose. I am being tricked once more.
”Within the argumentative vacuum, all characters, locations, actions and motions are described through retrospection.”
I'm always afraid of the possibility of catching the attention of the Ouroboros, because I know it will happen. Because I know it already happened. Because I give birth to the Ouroboros, through my hubris, through a renewed sense of self-esteem, caught in a net like the Drunk Moon Lake catfish— drunk on moss, on algae, on lichen— and excised from the room with no windows, with only one chair, one desk, one typewriter with keys made of my prefrontal cortex. Filled with ink made of my blood, sweat, and the cerebrospinal fluid that seeps into the meninges, drowning the tapeworm and forcing it out of its hiding hole. Paper made out of strands of black moss that– Wait, no. I used ‘moss’ already.
“Perfect makes practice. Practice makes practice. Practice makes-”
Strands of black, unwashed hair that I vomit out my entrails proudly form the A4 paper that holds the words that hold the sentences that hold the meaning. It gives everything I type the taste of seawater. I’m tired. Tired of writing, tired of thinking, and I look at the work and not a single word appears on it. The keys still thirst, prickles of congealed sweat telling me there has been progress, but the wordless canvas tells me it was all for nothing.
The infection thus reaches the post-final stage. I find myself sitting in front of nothing, answering to no one. My brain does not itch, my tripes do not growl, and my heart stops speaking to me. The Ouroboros, in classical fashion, has ended up devouring itself. Nothing is left behind.
“Well then,” a voice says, and it is mine— Lord I hope it’s mine. I crack my knuckles until they’re bleached white. Until nothing can hide beneath the creases. I take a deep sigh, and I begin typing. First letter of the first word of the first sentence.