Freaky midweek dinner
This scene is localised entirely in your right index finger.
Image credit: Lindsay Lohan
You look at yourself in the blade. The girl in the serrated reflection is tired. You’re wearing black and naturally your mind teleports you to the 2007 Lindsay Lohan knife-wielding-digicam-jpegs — her magnum opus. You’re called to action as the kettle boils, screams, and steam wets your face. The kitchen feels cool, stale. The basil plant loses another leaf.
The vegetables get a rinse. Probably not enough to erase any lingering pesticide, biocide, regicide… The knife gets a rinse as well — gleaming as though replying, aching, sentient. Steel brutalism plummets in cruel, sweeping angles to form an unforgiving point.
You think that packing lunches is boring, so you decide to arrange them in the colours of the Irish flag. Broccolini, rice, then carrots — resting on a warm bed of seared chicken. You think it to be both economical and shamrock chic.
It was a new knife — unscathed by broccoli, fruit, limbs. It hums as you draw it out. You feel a dull, mechanical beating. Was it your pulse? Maybe. Or perhaps Spotify short circuited and you’re now listening to This Is John Maus.
You may have control over your own cooking but you’ll always eat what you’re fed by the algorithm.
Your eyes lock with the razor's edge. You remember the razor scooter that fucked up your shins in the past and you lose your focus, becoming indignant. The knife does too, apparently, because it pierces your finger as you start chopping the carrots and is almost halfway through by the time you realise. You see red. Your quaint kitchen mutates into a violent Caravaggio. A picture of bloodied domesticity. Blood on the White Walls, on the White Drawers, on the Pink Toaster, on the Pink Kettle! Why is John Maus still playing?
You will never forget that crude crimson spray. Picture the girl everyone regrets inviting to the function, throwing up her eight vodka cranberries into a Merivale toilet bowl, begging for God’s forgiveness and a small McChicken meal.
This scene is localised entirely in your right index finger.
The blood spills, drools, drizzles down your arm in a cruel, wet avalanche. You’re pacified by the fact this whole scenario makes you feel like Lady Macbeth… and Lindsay Lohan.
You shove a 44-gauge banana into your belt so you don’t pass out while you and your mate take an impromptu excursion to RPA in a charcoal grey Kia Rio.
You see a light. Your eyes squint, blinded by divinity.
God? No — Stanmore Maccas.
Parramatta Road flees behind you, as you’re spectated by
carnivorous architecture, gimmick shops, and 480 bus stops,
Leading you to the not-so-pearly gates,
and Royal Prince Alfred’s sterile embrace.