Swans - I Was A Prisoner In Your Skull

…

The internal organs screech, belch and squeeze with each other's vibrations.

Barely a sound can be heard inside the basement filled with machines without any soul, and a man whose soul is nowhere to be found. The work needs to be done, anyway. They only notice when it isn't, but he doesn't need to be noticed. Only his work is enough. Replacing the pieces of a broken engine with the touch of flesh fingers, cold metal stealing the heat away…

— (I'm no doctor, but I'm here to take care.) – The plumber thought to himself, given there is nobody else to share the same guts as him.

Each day, he thinks again in a way to defy time, I look more like a rat, but his thoughts are suddenly brought to an end by the yelling of a pipe spitting steam, creaking like an old maiden's chair. The strings within its chest claims for food, same for payment in hands. The furnace, now feeded by the wood, converts it into energy, heat, and soot, thanks to the work of those who dared to stay in here, like this man.

However, he doesn't feel thankful, or clean enough. Mold grows within a puddle of water coming out the ceiling, from the first floor where footsteps and gossips can be heard. As unpleasant as it its, hard to ignore, unlike the self of said man, if there's one within a filthy Burmecian.

— (They tried, how they tried… We do not treat each other like rats, only when necessary. I am the necessary evil.) – So thinks the plumber. That's not his real name, but still something that yells he's in fact real, that he's here, fixing the machine and losing pieces of himself, including its name and the meaning it used to hold on.

Only diseases hold on his skin, a hand dirtied by muddy water, cleaned by a bowl of soap bubbles, that when fallen on a river, stands on the surface like snow. A deadly, poisonous snow that suffocates the fish and poison the ones who eat it. The milkman doesn't have a name, yet everyone needs milk.

Before men were able to digest animal milk, they puked. Something disgusting became acceptable with time, beyond kisses and chocolate boxes or any other kind of trap to settle down the new generation. He doesn't have none to take its place. Nobody. Only the plumber is here, to fix it all. He doesn't deserve another name, or deserve to be recognized outside the plumber name.

Then, someone upstairs fills in the pipes with dirty water, without knowing that he'll drink the same again, despite the rain falling as always. He hears it coming out the walls, coming inside from a small hole, and asks to himself that nothing lasts forever, yet why does the rain do? He can't hear it and feels joy for all its life. A miserable, pitiful way of living, to make others live better, or make them think they do.

— (...That makeup made the landlord's wife ugly as a dog, smell like one as well.) – The only plumber available for the job thinks while fixing a pipe tight as a neck, silver like that woman's neck too, covered in lead slowly absorbed by the skin, and of those who touched her. Everyone, except himself. It ain't lead or pox covering that face, but that she's asking to die, for sure she is.

All of them, touching and kissing her lips, spreading the disease, all connected like pipes. It's easy to disassemble a pipe, with the right tools. Let the filthy flow out, in a less subtle way. Nothing changes, only the smell, the taste, appearance… Everyone has worn green since they were children. It isn't the same green of trees. A pure green that later dries out and falls on same asphalt a little tree was able to break in. Same for the rats on the streets, who once lived underground. They still do, beneath clouds gray as the tarmac path below burning feet. Naked feet, their tips rotting, creeping eruptions at bottom… yet, all they do is keep dancing at gravesites.

— (Think positive for once in your life.) – Patrick told himself. He still remembers his name, but that doesn't mean a thing. There are no positive things as well. In a way, everyone in this building needs the likes of Patrick. Doesn't need to care for, but needs him.

— (The heart isn't the most important of the organs, a king whose crown of fat subjudges the others, no no… everything is important.) – Patrick continued to hear his own voice, a prisoner in his skull monologuing for all eternity. His only friend, and dearest enemy. – (If the pipes are put in the wrong place, they rot. If wood gets wet, mushrooms grow and rot. If iron rusts, and someone touches and leaves a wound open, its back bends backwards as they suffer from agony and a fatal tetanus. If you cough, that doesn't make you good at poetry, but good at spreading tuberculosis…)

— (Everyone knows that you are fucked up, and that I am fucked up. But does anyone know you are more fucked up than me?) – It never stops. The agony of living, to have an inner voice constantly telling you what to do, what to eat, where to walk to, Patrick does not even feel like himself, but a subordinate of an entity taking control of his life and enjoying his constant suffering.

— (…If you don't wear anything safe, children will be born with gonorrhea, but if their eyes do not get irritated as soon as they are born, maybe they'll do as they get stuck within chimneys filled with soot.) – There's no use for Patrick to ignore his thoughts, as confusing as they are, he's the only one who understands.

— (Mother understood you, but she's no longer here.) – Same voice, but in a different tone. – (Mother… She was filled with soot. All of them. Tight spaces, dark like a room whose windows are made open by blades cutting out their chests. That's how a piece of momma died, because I was born.)

But there is no time for a plumber to mourn at this hour, or to this day. A wrench to twist the loosen bolts, and the job isn't finished yet. It never ends, with the many living upon this filthy warehouse growing more filth everyday.

Outside the basement, lies an ordinary neighborhood with houses made of stone and bizarre architecture. The dragon heads of Burmecia are comforting for some people, gruesome for the children, while in Patrick's view, it's garbage. All garbage. It may be beautiful for someone else, but not forHIM. Church bells and wind chimes ring at a distance, supposedly to bring peace, yet all that is brought to Patrick is the feeling of hard work without recognition.

— Instead of airships in rainy skies, all they got from Lindblum were these riches, the yelling of machines more alive and real than I do. Fixing these machines makes me feel somewhere, yet still far from being real. – Patrick said, as he leaves the warehouses and goes upstairs. As expected, the stairs do not lead to heaven, but that they are tall, even the air gets thin.

Though, not staring at that woman ain't enough for him to ignore the problem. He hears it, and most of all, feels dirty. It comes from the mouth, spitting invisible dices of warm and sickful spit. It's enough to make him run away, but he doesn't. Don't run on the stairs, or else you'll break an arm, so his mother used to say.

— (I'm about to break that woman apart, but I remember a man who beats a woman is a coward. Is that a woman? Or a caricature of one?) – Patrick doesn't have anyone but its mother to give him a clear picture. Used to, given she is now another picture of a skinny and bonafide corpse, rotting below earth. – (At least, she died with dignity, taking care of her son. And here I am, taking care of a whole building, and none of them are related in blood, even when found at the tip of my fingers.)