Disclaimer: I don't own the series or characters.

A/N: Its little sick, but ok. The story is not what it seems.


Guts

Ok...

Take a long, deep breath...

Take in as much oxygen as you can, then hold your breath. This story should take as long as you're able to hold it. Maybe a little longer. So listen as fast as you can. It was noon, but in space time flows and no one notices. Few minutes until one. Everything was okay, nothing unusual, expect internal temperature. It was cold as hell. So cold, even hell would froze. I could see my breath. Heating system failed for some reason. I sat and drunk the coldness away with the worst alcohol I ever had. Then I realized that someone switched the bottle and I drank denatured alcohol. I kept it for myself. My tongue was burned, when I ate something It tasted like a mud. My vision was fading away, stomach under fire, kidneys in pain and whole body freezing. But still I was able to walk. I knew it would never heal. This was out of my league and I was reaching my limit. Suddenly something came into my vision, I didn't saw it, but I did. What? Shining thing in the middle of the corridor. Scissors. Lying on the floor. I thought it was my imagination, I left the corridor. And I remembered something. I remembered the scar in the middle of my chest. My memorandum of Vicious. I remembered myself lying in the middle of my own guts, crawling before some guys, which left shortly after and then some voice and screaming of the name Spike. When I stopped and thought about what I felt all those weeks...

Nothing, pure blackness.
Spreading endlessly through my mind.

And there in the middle of the black, was...

When I woke up and came back, they never tried to talk about it. With every hour, with every glance on their faces I waited for them to shout at me. To scold me about it. Why did you left? What did you archived? What were you thinking? Were you thinking at all? Those questions were pasted all over their faces. But it never came.

On Mars they have a phrase - The spirit of the stairs. A moment when an idea flash in your mind, but its already too late. Like when someone insults you and you're standing there, everyone watching you. And you say something absolutely stupid, something retarded. Then you leave.
You are walking the stairs and then... idea. The perfect tip-off. And that's the spirit of the stairs.

Unfortunately they don't have any phrases for that stupid things we do in that fatal moments.
For that shit we've truly done.

Shit that's too miserable too notice.
Too low to talk about.

We don't talk about it.

I told no one about the thing I drank, as soon as the blackness left. Still I ate mud, and I was freezing. And the scissors still laid in the corridor. I watched Faye when she walked pass them, not even noticing. Was I the only one seeing these things? Soon we were out of the gas, because Jet forgot it was burning away in functionless heating. Thanks to the gravity ship was slowly advancing towards mars. We were reaching our limits again. I walked around the ship to heat myself, and noticed that scissors. I stopped and realized they were pointing at arrow pointing to the ceiling. There was nothing up there. I scratched my head and let the scissors be. I couldn't touch them. Not even saw them. I was scared to death by just looking at them.

Why the hell scissors?

I wanted to be alone, so I came into corridor leading out in space.

And I heard squeaking outside. Monster? The hatch was opening, both diodes were lit. The picture of fridge being sucked out in space came into my mind. I searched for something to hold on. There was nothing I could reach. The hatch opened. And I was launched out into space. I stopped, something was holding me from behind. The closing hatch got grip on my butt.

Coldness and blackness...

They say you can survive sixty seconds in open space. Then the pressure differences, cold and other things will kill you.

I couldn't hold my breath that long.

I was able to crouch my left leg and half-lifted myself up to reach the emergency switch. The hatch was holding me tight and only way to reach the switch was to free myself. My eardrums were burning, like if someone poured acid inside. I crouched the other leg and pushed myself from the hatch, my jacket ripped... but I was wrong, the push was too strong. I flown away. I almost gave up, but the beating of my heart inside my head... I couldn't give up. I turned around. But the thing I saw through the sparks before my eyes was unreal. Some thick rope was stuck in the middle of the hatch. Some blue or white snake lined with veins here and there. I saw blood flying out of some of these veins, blood was almost black because we were in space. Through its thin skin I could see some half-consumed meal.

Was it Jet or Faye?

There was only one explanation that made sense. It was some space monster... some space snake... which switched my drink placed a scissors and ate my friends. Something what no one ever saw, waited for me in the depths of space only to eat me.

I tried to kick it and get away to the switch... it moved, it was long as my leg. I was only few centimeters from salvation. Through the skin of that space beast I could see some peanuts, corn and big orange marble. Its one of those pills with the extra shot of vitamins I had to eat to heal my wounds. With Omega-3, the fish oil.

It saved my life.

It wasn't snake. It was my colon, which the under pressure disentangled out of my ass. Doctors call it 'prolapse'. All that time I was watching my own guts, stuck in the hatch. I was still flying away from the ship. I still had enough breath, there was just one problem. The whole digestive tract is connected. Ass is just another side of mouth. So if I didn't try to get to the hatch it would continue to tear up my guts until my tongue. I had about 65 kilos so imagine how it could turn me upside down.

I can tell that tearing guts is painless act, at least less painful than skin.The shit in which the food turns in colon is called feces. Upper than that was chyme - soft pellets decorated with corn, peanuts and pea. All these things were flowing around me and I felt like a ingredient in the soup of shit, corn, blood and peanuts. I desperately tried to catch it. If you want to touch your own guts, buy pack of condoms from lamb leather. Take one of them and unpack it. Fill it with peanut butter. Cream it with vaseline and leave it in the water. Try to tear it. Try to stretch it. Its too stiff and elastic. At the same time its too greasy to even catch it.

These condoms weren't from leather. These were normal guts.

Maybe you can imagine what I had to deal with.

I relax for a second, I'm emboweled.

I pull myself up on my own guts, I'm emboweled.

I do nothing, I'm choked up.

I chose between die now, or die a second later.

When Jet with Faye will come, they'll find big twisted fetus, swimming in the space around their ship. Stuck to the hatch with thick rope of my own veins and guts. They'll find me either in this state or folded up in bloody towel half-way to help. With torn leftover of my own gut still leering out of my trouser-leg. Even on Mars they don't have any phrases about this. But Jet once told me a good phrase. Russian phrase. 'I need that as much as teeth in my ass.'

Mne eto nado kak zuby v zadnitse.

Those stories about animals how they bite off their leg when they're caught... well, every coyote would say that few painful bites are better than death.

And even if you're from Russia the teeth in your ass can be handy some day.

If you don't have them there, you have to turn around. Stick one of your arms under your leg and pull the leg towards your face. Then you bend down as close as possible to your butt and click with your teeth few times. When you're out of your breath in the middle of universe, you bite off every obstacle.

Its not a thing you say to a girl on first date. At least if you want to kiss with her. If I told you how it tasted, you would never eat squid again.

I opened the hatch and saved myself.

Its hard to say what disgusted them more, thing what got me into problems, or solution I used to get out. When I came back from hospital, Jet just shook his head and learned how to make half-boiled eggs.
All those shocked people who felt sorry for me...

I needed it as much as teeth in my ass.

Today people often say that I'm fleshless, thin or skinny. On every party I anger the one making stew, because I can't even touch it. It kills me. No more beef in belt peppers. Everything what lays in the gut longer than few hours comes out as food. I can see beans or tuna in the same state as I ate it. Most of you have about one and half meters long colon, I am lucky with my 15 centimeters. From that day I always had 65 kilos. Not even a kilogram more.

We never talked about it.
We never tried to talk about it.

Never.

It was too low.

Now you can breath again.

Because I can't...