I’m off work. Again. I’m taking a stick day. Can’t walk without one—hell, I can’t walk with one, but I can hobble. Just.

The pain drains. It drains my very existence.

Yet, I write. When I am out of words, I shall be out of life. And when life is out of me, so shall be the pain.

The scummy little shite that lives in my mid-section, dancing his deathless Wexford jig on my right ovary, now has a vat of acid. Too many times a day, said little shite has taken to squeezing my innards with his vice. And no, it’s not a vice-like grip, but an actual vice. (‘Vise,’ if you’re across the pond.) He has a teenyweeny contraption with which he squeezes, and squeezes—and squeezes. He sends torment everywhichfuckinway until I’m left battered, bruised, and in floods both bloody and filled with cry. (One perpetual yelp I’ve been letting loose for the last year or so, but those who should be listening clearly have more serious music to enjoy.)

And now—since last Friday, actually—the shitty little twat has moved on to the acid. Dunno—he must’ve been bored or summat and decided to give a touch more protagony to the puppetsome main character in his one-act play (there are no breaks).

It’s not the happy sort of acid. Neither is it the Gaviscon-fixes-the-problem variety. It’s the type of acid with which you dissolve body parts. The hydrofluoric little fuck likes to pour it into and over every last remaining speck of my already withered ol’ organs. Sometimes, he ups the ante, bringing a jagged dagger into the mix. He takes his blade and just jabs it in, working it around, twisting and manipulating—and he leaves it there. He’s excavating a channel into which the acid can be poured, and via which my existence dwindles along with my energy.

Don’t get me wrong: I might be in a dark, dark place at the moment, but I’m not about to… you know. I’m not built that way (which is surprising, considering certain ‘fun’ parts of my past). But I would quite fancy being out of it for, say, A FEW HOURS. However many hours it takes to cut this bollockingtwatbastard away.

Come on, surgeon: surge.

When he is out of me, so shall be the pain.