Hysteria is the control mechanism for the primadonna treatment. The party gets too noisy, you feel claustrophobic, delimited, drowning in random perfumes, voices, limbs everywhere. Too many people, brushing your body as they saunter by, their sweat mingling with yours, altogether too human. You stumble up the stairs, to a room long forgotten to you, your nursery. My Little Ponies neigh at your breakdown and Mom isn’t here with a story and a pat on the head. Shadows form behind dusty pink drapes, except now they’re real, not merely phantasms of infancy. Your overtaxed body crumbles. Below, at the third circle of purgatory, bass guitar drowns out the urgent, orgasmic thrashings of your appendages against six inches of aged lumber. This is raw hysteria. You are lying on the floor like a marionette, thrown by a child in a fit of rage. Limbs awkwardly piled in a heap of bones, sinew, muscle, and skin. Like carved cryptic symbols, a primeval way of communicating your feelings, narrow strips of bare wood surround your quivering hands with flakes of lacquer wedged underneath broken nails. Your thrashings embed slivers of parquet into soft, pampered flesh. Tears are leaking out from underneath your face tinted by swirls of black mascara, slowly soaking into the crevices of the floor. Hysteria is glamorous. Like drops of mercury, pearl beads from a torn necklace have congregated by your parted mouth, caked with viscous ruby Chanel lipstick, almost the same rich hue as the blood drying in the crescent-shaped bite marks on your lower lip. Chewing, gnawing on your words, tongue in cheek, while screams flail against the padded walls of your teeth. Maybe if you stay here no one will notice your desertion, claiming irritation with the paparazzi and repulsion with cream-of-the-crop society. Just loll on the cold parquet and play ping-pong with the pearls against the mud-caked sole of your stiletto; the needle-like broken heel jutting at an angle. They will find you later, when your tears start seeping underneath the door. When the salty, diluted anger, mixed with plaster, starts to dribble from the ceiling downstairs into the crystal ashtray or maybe into a glass of champagne with cigarette butts floating in the overpriced bubbly ; the urine of high-class individuals. Maybe then they will put you in the tub, immerse you in ice, and numb your nerves, making the capillaries contract spasmodically, turning the flesh a translucent lapis-lazuli. Perhaps they will send you to a cryonics facility, waking you in the future, a new, rested, rejuvenated self. But until then, envisage mutely draining a cup of absinthe, absorbing the chill of the floor. Until then, experience madness, experience – hysteria.
Author notes
Username: Rika
In a list
A contest entry
- ♥ PROSE ♥ by love tank x.
850 points, ended June 16, 2007, 17 entries
Gold trophy winner
• next poem in this contest, remove from contest
Please tell me what you think
Comments
1 - 6 of 6
-
Wow, I just found this while I was strolling through Hollow Silence, and I must say it has to be one of the most brilliant things I've ever read on this site!Absolutely wonderful, and the words, they just pour over you. It really feels like a while novel in itself, with the many feelings and thoughts that are produced. I loved it. Completely loved it.
This is brilliant work, and congrats on the gold, even though it was quite awhile ago. Still, I'm glad I found this. Amazing.
Thank you for writing this! It was beautiful!
-
No lie--this is AMAZING [for a lack of a better word].
Your vocabulary is awesome, and the whole thing just kept me on the edge of my seat. I couldn't peel my eyes away from it. I actually read it out loud to myself =]
"My Little Ponies neigh at your breakdown and Mom isn’t here with a story and a pat on the head. Shadows form behind dusty pink drapes, except now they’re real, not merely phantasms of infancy. Your overtaxed body crumbles. Below, at the third circle of purgatory, bass guitar drowns out the urgent, orgasmic thrashings of your appendages against six inches of aged lumber. This is raw hysteria. You are lying on the floor like a marionette, thrown by a child in a fit of rage. Limbs awkwardly piled in a heap of bones, sinew, muscle, and skin."
Wow, this is definitely one of my favorite entries.
Wonderful job!! Thank you for entering
-
-
I'm glad that you liked my entry, it's actually the first paragraph of a book that I've been trying to write for some time, mostly an experimental project.
I appreciate the good feedback and will most definitely return the favor when I get the chance to.
-
-
"Hysteria is glamorous."
All eyes are on the fuck-up with tear streaked mascara and the rain drenched white dress barely hanging onto her skeleton frame. The drunkest girl at the party, screaming and clawing is always the center of attention.
"the urine of high-class individuals."
Delicious metaphor.
Like winkwink said, this has an excellent detached tone, yet mixed with a seemlingly intimate knowledge of this person...if that at all makes sense, lol. Every word just oozed this feeling of tragic and hopeless sexuality.
-
-
Dear, your comments are wonderfully full of insight. I do appreciate them and I will sit my ass down and make a decent comment on some of your work.
-
-
phantasms=good word
I think between "fit of rage" and "Limbs awkwardly piled" a comma might be appropriate rather than a period. However, when I read it as such, it sounds a little long. Hmm...don't know.
Maybe a comma after "underneath your face".
This is such a good write. It's sort of detached. Excellent second-person narration technique-not many people can do it as well as you have.
I like the sarcasm in this piece; it is inserted well into the flow of the story. Wonderful job on the descriptions; they vividly promote the upper-class theme of the story, from lacquer to Chanel and pearls
Adding your comment:
1 - 6 of 6
