malfunction

His entire body was aching, like he wasn't put together correctly.

His eyes were too large for their sockets, feeling like they were bulging in his face and pressing back against his brain, and he wanted to claw them out so that he could shave them down and then press them back in.

His neck was twisted on wrong to his skull, the screw threads jarring against each other because they weren't lined up, and he wanted to remove his head so he could set it back on straight.

His back was stiff and stuck as if with dried glue, and he wanted to bend himself so far backwards that it would break, crack at every joint till the connections between each vertebra were so loose that he could curl himself like a snake.

His fingers were grating at the knuckles like nails on a chalkboard, and he wanted to take them in his teeth and pull them out of their joints so he could chew on the ends of the bone till they were smooth from gnawing and lubricated with saliva so they'd slide easily back in.

The tendons in his knees were pinched under his kneecaps like the cap of a pen pinching the skin of a palm to blistering, and he wanted to remove his patella and straighten out the tendons like strings in an old grand piano before replacing the lid of bone.

The muscles of his calves were cramping, wires drawn painfully tight, tight enough to be a tourniquet, and he wanted to slice away his skin so he could unhook his muscles from whatever was pulling them so that there'd be some slack.

Almost everything ached, and if it didn't ache then it throbbed.

He thought that maybe, if he could take himself apart, he could put himself back together so everything fit.