Satan Burger by Iii Carlton Mellick Page B

when looking in the mirror, there’s no way, because eyelids only jerk when they are closed, and not a single person out there can see with closed eyelids.  Well, I am seeing this performance now, but I don’t actually consider myself a single person out there, so I don’t count.
    It’s interesting to see your own eyelids jerk, I tell you, because they are jerking in response to certain thoughts – thoughts that bring out emotions powerful enough to twitch-jerk the lids.  And usually when you watch this happen to yourself, the emotional thought hits you twice as hard and makes your entire being twitch-jerk.  But this time my entire being did not jerk, which means I’m becoming alien to my emotional thoughts.  I think this is a bad thing.
    I look again and find that my complete body is hardly familiar to me, almost a stranger.  So many years of neglect that I’ve turned sour-soggy and ill without realizing. I can’t bear to go back inside of myself anymore.  And the worst part is – I know I have to in order to survive.
    This will never change.

    After a lot of convincing, I go inside my body - back to the rolling world.  I touch my stranger flesh and become sick.  Best not to think about it; I’m always too aware of my defects.  Better to ignore . . . Then I get a sick spell from a giant whirlpool-waver on the autocar’s eel-skin interior, so I change to the outside.
    I crack my knees to the pavement, cough-cough, choke my vision away . . .  My voice croaks . . . a short groan . . . Then I relax.  Relaxation is the key.  The spell sifts to a mild swirl, all pacific inside.
    I am at a gas station, the gas hose still inside of the gas tank, glunking-glunking it full.  The emergency lights are going blink , questioning their purpose.  And their purpose, of course, is to make you ask it questions.
    "Where did everyone go?" I ask the emergency lights.
    The lights say, "Blink-blink, blink-blink."
    Then I notice the whole gas station is empty. The lights are all gone.  Only the bright flickers above the gas pumps and the lights that say "Please pay inside" brighten my walk, but it is dark inside the store, nobody there, and all the surrounding buildings are dark and empty too.  The street lights also seem to be burned out.  It’s like the whole town is saying, "Sorry, we’re out of service."
    Coldly silent .
    The silence is muscular.  It is a force that has eaten away all forms of sound, excluding my breath, my footsteps, and the blinkers.  Like Mr. Death is creeping, stalking me.  All signs of life have been taken away as well, stored inside of Earth’s closet beneath the surface, and the dusty emptiness that is usually in Earth’s closet is here with me now, along with plenty of closet skeletons.
    Silence is the first stage of slipping into oblivion, objects just stop making sounds for you.  Here are the other four stages:  nothing will be smelled or tasted, nothing will be felt, nothing will be seen, and nothing will be thought.
    Richard Stein said that oblivion is the worst possible thing that can happen to an individual, worse than going to hell.  He said there is little difference between reincarnation and oblivion because in both cases you lose all your memories, and it’s better to go into damnation and keep those memories than have them forgotten permanently.
    He also goes on to say that Alzheimer’s is the worst possible disease you can get since it erases all of your memories, which do not return even after you die.  People that go into oblivion are usually the people that have a bad case of Alzheimer’s.  So, word of advice: if you know you’re going to have this disease in the future, it’s a good idea to kill yourself now, before it comes.  Sure you’ll go to hell for committing self-murder, but it’s better than nothing .
    I feel the oblivion all around me.  Maybe it has taken my friends and all of the other people in the town to it’s home - to nowhere .  And it has