Here's a box that needs throwing out. It's made of cardboard, fits in my hand, crisp and clean, perhaps not even worth throwing out. Not that that bit matters, it needs to be thrown out.

The dustbin is quite small, so I take all my small garbage and put it inside the big garbage. All my garbage is boxes and if it's not, I make it boxes. Dustbin only likes boxes, it can't handle anything besides boxes. Anything else gets rejected, including crushed-up boxes (crush into boxes, that's fine; crush into lumps, dustbin vomits).

Before throwing out this little precious cardboard box, I must put a new garbage bag into the dustbin. So I rip a new bag off the roll, gulp, and try to stay steady as I insert the bag.

The walls of the dustbin squirm, and so do the walls of my throat. My throat and the dustbin had an agreement to stay civil with one another, so cause each other minimal trouble. This is that ‘minimal trouble’. That’s why the dustbin only ever takes box trash, too. It was built wrong, so it has stupid ‘needs’ like that, malfunctioning when they’re not met.

Maximal trouble would’ve been like the time someone threw a bunch of juicy, rotting bananas into the dustbin and then the juices got very… for some reason the garbage bag was missing that day. So the walls of the dustbin squirmed and squirmed, and the walls of my throat convulsed. The garbage wasn’t even made into boxes, so that was already awful, and my throat wanted to comfort the dustbin as it weeped at the sheer wrongness but then the bananas were sticking to the walls so vomiting was difficult for the dustbin and then the juice was leaking out into the throat itself and it stank and they were both pulsing and weeping in each other’s embrace and then finally, finally the dustbin managed to vomit. I had to clean its inner walls or else ants would swarm. Then my throat had to let some vomit through, too, so I cleaned both throat and dustbin once again. They held each other, trembling, for hours afterwards (major overreaction, if you ask me).

I still don’t know who threw those bananas in. Though the dustbin is connected to my throat, my throat doesn’t need to be physically close to the dustbin for trash to be thrown in. The connection between the two isn’t entirely physical. Maybe 75% physical? They’re symbiotic creatures (they won’t tell me what benefit they bring one another) and they have been for a very, very long time. The 25% remaining connection is love, pure and simple.

This book was originally published on Royal Road. Check it out there for the real experience.

But maybe not very simple. I don’t understand them enough (or at all), though I’ve been by their sides for all these years. Where do I even come into the picture, having borne witness to their bonds? I’ve seen both of them at their worst and at their best, and much of the time I’ve seen that they can bring out new, beautiful qualities from each other (so I tell myself). I soothe them when things aren’t going so well, and I nurse them back to health when they’re hurt. I’m a well-wisher and I’m a spectator, but is spectating good for me? It’s beautiful, they’re beautiful, beautiful beautiful beautiful– but beauty is supposed to touch you, yet I feel nothing! Am I part of the symbiosis and if I am, who’s soothing me, who’s taking care of me when I’m hurt? When am I ever hurt? How do I know if I’m hurt? Am I numb to everything? I think I might be, because I don’t understand the sensation of pain within myself — it only matters when it’s within someone else — so how would I fix it? Why would I fix it? What am I? Who knows and who cares?

Man, I’m just tired. Most of the time, the dustbin and my throat are pretty quiet. Sometimes I make myself dance to the sound of my peristalsis. I force it, hoping to find joy in the fact that, “see, even that happy couple can feel that motion, thrumming against their walls.” But numbness can envelope the most darling moments and turn them into dull, hollow lumps of gray.

Oh well. It is what it is.

I was throwing away this little cardboard box, yes? Fits in my hand? Yes. I was to throw it away after inserting the garbage bag, but I got so carried away. Why am I throwing this box away, anyway? It’s cute. It’s tiny. It’s like a little baby. Why do I do anything? Why am I alive, why do I exist, why doesn’t it make any sense, and why don’t I feel anything about what I’m doing? No motivation, no drive, no goal, no nothing. Just tiredness and nothingness.

Maybe I could rip out my throat, extract the dustbin, and hand them over to someone who really wants them. It would be a painful procedure, maybe even dangerous if I did it myself. But then at least I’d feel something.