Who are you?

Look at you…that thick brushstroke of grease over your brow, trailing down the hook of your nose; those fat, rheumy lids that weep fluid after a night’s unrest; and—oh gosh—what is that? Pits. No, craters, plugged with half-popped grains of salt and cracked black peppercorns, bubbling from the dermis.

Squeeze one, go on.

I want to see the crud and dirt sprout and sprawled, like an earthworm from soggy ground. Oh, but what if it scars? I wouldn’t worry about that; those raised keratin starbursts scourging your cheeks will have a new friend to play with. Not that they’re lonely. They’ve been multiplying like a white mould recently—have you noticed?

You want me to shut up, don’t you, so you can hear yourself think? Have you only just realised? I am your thoughts. I am you: the shavings of dead skin over your scalp, the grime caught deep under your nails, that bad taste at the back of your throat, that loathing, bubbling in the pit of your stomach and the odious acid-froth sat on top like ocean spume.

It’s us. We’re one.

And let me tell you a secret, I’m not going anywhere. I’ve made a nest in the deepest recesses of your mind with tendrils barbed, somewhere deep in the catacombs of crypts and gyrae. You’re not scooping me out so easily…

But you don’t want to really, do you?

I’m your only friend.