Susan Smith Nash
Leper Farm
(An audio version of this work can be found at https://soundcloud.com/beyondutopia/leper-farm-susan-smith-nash)
Work had gotten difficult. Shannon Wolfberry had taken the job with Southwest Star Energy Corporation to see how oil and gas operations in the Eagle Ford play might be affecting the ecosystem.
She did not realize she had stepped into the middle of an epidemic.
They said they were trapping armadillos to keep them from infecting humans.
“Infecting humans with what?” asked Shannon. Her medium-short, slightly wavy dark blonde hair swirled in the hot wind. She wore a slightly threadbare cotton t-shirt with a faded stencil of a suffragette.
No one was around to answer. To the side of the road was an armadillo carcass. Judging by its fading stench, it had already passed from maggoty bloat to desiccation / mummification under the vast, cloudless but con-trailed western skies.
“So you’re trapping the armadillos and quarantining them here to avoid being infected by something… but what?” she continued.
“The stink and rot of reality?” she asked. “Or simply the rage of being inconvenienced? You hit the armadillo. You get some gut-splatter on your car. Or, you’re dented. You have to smell the death and see the dent. That’s maddening.”
“You’re inconvenienced. And, you’ve killed him.” Shannon touched the scab on her forearm. She called it her inkless tattoo. Others would call it cutting. Shannon had a problem with that. She needed to cut, but she could not tell you why.
“Humanity. Hah!” Picked up a blazing hot rock from the dry, hard, “desert pavement” covered with evenly distributed weathered cobblestones. An armadillo had been burrowing nearby.
She scratched the surface of the scab. She had no feeling there.
*************
Shannon had taken the job because she loved the wild, hard prairie. Drought, however, had turned it sub-Sahara, Texas style, which meant it was big, cowboy, and liked to bluster about things it knew nothing about --like easy oil riches and indefatigable aquifers named after vanquished Plains Indian heroes.
"You need to just crawl off and die, Missy," hissed something under a creosote bush.
Shannon agreed.
Gutteral hissing. The buzz of a Western diamondback rattlesnake. The words again:
“You need to crawl off …”
But then the voice of her mother intruded. It was nonsensical vaguely biblical babble: a dream where you've received a letter, but you never can quite get the words to form coherent sentences, even though you try, try, try.
Words from the waking dream:
"Mother-Mom where are you? Where Is Mother, Mother Is. God Is Love God Is Love Love Is God Love Is a God God Is Is Is Is God God God Mother Mother Mother Love"
When you awaken, you find you've lost your ability to believe that you are capable of forming a coherent thought.
"Crawl off and die, Missy!"
The creosote bush rattled and hissed again as though it would burst into flame. A sun convulsed is life black-clotted by blood and/or spilled wine, as though a darker, oxidized hue signified long, luscious flagellation stripes against the tender skin you once called hope or dreams or peace.
A small armadillo emerged from the creosote bush, making its way cautiously, unevenly onto the desert pavement.
Shannon leapt out of the way, her startled scramble disturbing the quiet hunt of a nearby snake.
The little armadillo that limped out from under the creosote bush was just out of its pup-years, and dewy-eyed to boot. Its snout was strangely petite, its thin tongue flicker-like sweet and gentle. The little armadillo pup tried to frisk about, and “swaggle upon waggle.”
“I think I’ll call you Jeoffry,” said Shannon. She reflected that Christopher Smart wrote Jubilate Agno from St. Luke’s asylum for the insane where his only companion was his dear little cat, Jeoffrey. Were things so different in 1760? What was different was shunned, locked away, “quarantined” while waiting for a “cure” (death).
… but the classic armadillo "scurry-forth" was just not a possibility for the little thing. It ambled, wobbled, and then mewled in pain.
Shannon crouched down for a better look.
"Crawl and die, Missy!"
She quickly wished she could. The little guy was missing a paw, and a relatively large chunk of its protective bony plate seemed about to detach from the skin below. Leaning forward a bit more, Shannon could see the large white discolored skin, the loose, nerve-damaged extremities.
This little armadillo was suffering from leprosy.
Leprosy: ugly, disfiguring.
Leprosy: socially and physically maiming
Leprosy: the disease of extremes / of extremities
********
Armadillos are used in leprosy research because their body temperatures are just right for them to contract the most virulent form of the disease.
Very “little bear,” as in Goldilocks and the Three Bears. The more humans and animals interact, the more both suffer.
*********
The little armadillo whispered: The more you numb, the more you die.
Shannon thoughts were shouts: (Don't you mean it to be reflexive? The more you numb YOURSELF, the more you die INSIDE?)
NO! I don't mean that at all, said the little guy.
The more you numb, the more you die.
**********
That night, Shannon heard an armored rat squeal the words she had just shouted in her dreams to the person who had, after many years, finally pierced the bony emotional carapace she had successfully emplaced around her.
Why did talk to me at all? Why did you lead me on? Why did you? You knew I was different, but you talked to me anyway, and you were nice to me. Don’t you know that was a mistake? That hurt.
But now I do not hurt, and that’s even worse.
Take my insensate skin and just push it into the fire that burns everything I hate about myself; the shame, the inadequacy, the sloth, the age, the body, the running, sweating panting desperation -- just take it and turn it into pure pain. Make me feel again. Do whatever it takes.
She shook her fist at him. She screamed so hard and loud her vocal chords felt as though they would rupture and spray blood whenever and wherever she exhaled her baleful imprecations.
Shannon did not understand it when he sat back, inhaled his cigarette slowly, and laughed… but barely … just under his breath.
He kissed her.
She screamed.
They breathed deep blood and smoke and abandon (finally); the final words to be carved in smooth hard granite somewhere in the middle of a cracked-earth prairie; the body a parched vessel of desire.
***************
Shannon sat in the linoleum-lined classroom, watched the PowerPoint slides flash across the screen, and felt her mind drift off to a place where there was nothing but cottonwood fuzz and soft, dry rot in the core of the massive yet drought-felled trees: the sycamores, the catalpas, the weird, water-seeking willows.
"Leprosy is a politically-incorrect term: call it Hansen's Disease," droned the instructor. He had hairs sprouting from his ears, his slim stooped build was blonde, wood-like.
"People used to be afraid of Hansen-disease sufferers."
"You mean LEPERS," thought Shannon.
"I am sure they were a scary sight. Imagine thin paupers dressed in rags, missing arms, feet, entire legs -- and, their skin discolored and ugly to boot," said the instructor. He was a thin man in jeans and tooled cowboy boots who sported a paunch and a strange little goatee.
"Dawn of the Dead," thought Shannon.
"What you do if you were a self-respecting pillar of your community in Jerusalem around the time of Jesus of Nazareth and you encountered into a person suffering from Hansen's?" asked the instructor.
“I suspect I would think that their outer condition reflected some sort of spiritual reality within,” said Shannon.
She unconsciously picked at the scab on her arm which would eventually result in a disfiguring scar. Shannon defended it as art. The art of overwhelming spiritual malaise; the ephemeral a rainbow-sheened shifting and unstable zeitgeist…
"Extremely ugly!" thought Shannon as she envisioned zombies missing eyes, teeth, feet, hands, and an ear or two.
"They were feared and shunned -- which was understandable given that Hansen's disease, in its most virulent form, is very contagious."
"Leprosy likes human-level body temp, right?" asked Shannon.
The professor paused and responded.
“No. Armadillos are about ten degrees cooler than humans.”
He returned to the narrative about the lepers whose arms and legs seemed to spontaneously rot and then fall off. Were they re-animated corpses? Very easy to believe.
"No one understood that the reason they lost their limbs was because they injured themselves --- basically because the disease causes neurological damage resulting in a loss of sensation in the extremities. The reason why you see missing limbs is because the neurological damage results in extreme injury to the extremities. You'd be surprised how much you can hurt yourself if you lose your ability to feel."
Shannon raised her hand. She was uncharacteristically bold. She had to know.
"Dr. Shlavavitz, can I catch leprosy from an armadillo, even if I have not touched one?"
Dr. Shlavavitz seemed relieved to have the focus turned on something besides his slides.
“Yes. If you eat an armadillo or root around in dirt where the armadillo has urinated, defecated, or otherwise left body fluids, you can catch leprosy. If that happens, seek help. Otherwise, look forward to a lifetime of localized and very inconvenient numbness, painful tests and procedures, social isolation, and fear.”
“Lovely,” said Shannon. She said it sarcastically to balance the mood in the place. Most seemed to understand that she was simply talking to herself.
************
“Rosa Luxembourg.”
The memory of the significance of her namesake was already peeling slightly underneath. No one could possibly live up to it.
“Rosa Luxembourg Wolfberry.” The nurse’s voice was crisp, annoying.
Shannon stood up and walked to the door.
“I go by ‘Shannon,’” she said.
“Sure. Fine.”
****************
“You don't get it. The shell -- the bony plates, the external carapace -- does not protect. It simply makes the fleshly underflesh all the more sensitive and easily pierced.”
"I don't believe you."
"When was the last time you wore a mask?"
"I never wear masks. They make my face itch."
"As well they should. The better you are at building a mask, the more likely it is you'll die slowly, stupidly, and surrounded by those who love your false self and not you at all (in other words, alone).
"But my mask protects me, keeps me from feeling."
"The more you numb, the more you die."
*********************
Shannon saw her little leprous mammalian charges, and she reflected on how it was that they were able to get a disease that usually only afflicts human beings.
"They are warm-blooded, warm-hearted. It makes them susceptible to the most virulent form of leprosy that exists on the face of the earth."
Shannon was silent for a moment, then asked a question.
"Can humans catch leprosy from armadillos?"
She was not surprised by the answer.
"Absolutely yes."
***********************
"Your job is to care for the animals," said Dr. K. When Shannon unfocused her eyes and gazed out onto the cracked, dry, drought-stricken earth, she saw it move like the floor of the Holy Rat Temple, the Karni Mata, in western Rajasthan, India. Admittedly, it was a little early in the game for jouissance, but Shannon was ready for it. In India, she suffered the entire duration from mild dysentery brought on by saffron, dahl, and piles of aromatic spices and/or Lacan's Imaginary Order.
"When the holy rats ran across my legs and up my inner thighs, they spoke to me with their clicks, squeals, and squeaks. I erased my language, and I was one again with The Impossible," said Shannon.
"They bit me and I felt God."
If not a rat, perhaps a cigarette searing into her inner thigh or on the top of her left foot would do the trick?
You have to feel to be able to feel pain. The worst thing in the world is to lose your ability to feel pain -- to go numb.. physical / psychological numbness...
But this was west Texas, and she saw no rats, animals with shiny, bony plates covering their backs, heads, legs, and tails, and long -- infinitely long and sharp -- claws for digging (and fighting).
Shannon had taken the job back when she still thought armadillos were cute and needed to be rescued before being flattened by 20-ton long-haul trucks loaded up with dogfood or flammable liquids.
Embrace Your Inner Leper
be-moiled (dabbed with dirt)
blood-boltered -- smeared with blood
the waftage (passage)
wailful (lamentable)
well-wondered (marvellously gifted)
sooth (truth)
serpigo (cutaneous disease)
stigmatical (deformed)
sumpter (a horse that carries provisions on a journey)
surcease (to cease)
*********************
Neuropathic> pain due to damage and/or dysfunction of nerves; can be peripheral or central with respect to the central nervous system. You may have neuropathic pain if you have diabetic neuropathy, postherpetic zoster pain, thalamic pain syndrome, or trigeminal neuralgia. You may have neuropathic and nociceptive pain at the same time if you’ve had trauma that damages tissue and nerves, deep burns, or external nerve compression from tumors or sciatica.
Nociceptive> pain when tissue is damaged and intact neurons report it. Nociceptive pain can be sharp, dull, or aching: somatic or visceral. Nociceptive pain can radiate, especially visceral pain, but it will not be in a direct nerve distribution. Nociceptive pain is generally responsive to NSAIDs (nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs) and opioids.
******************************
Armadillos have a strong dog paddle, and can even go quite a distance underwater, walking along the bottom of streams andponds. They can hold their breath for four to six minutes at a time. When they need to cross larger bodies of water, they swim across. Because their heavy shell makes it hard for them to float, they gulp air into their intestines to make them more buoyant.
The pain kept Shannon doing a metaphysical dog-paddle toward shore. When and if she reached the shore, it was possible she would not even know it. All she knew is that she needed to keep the pain going in order to keep dog-paddling. The worst was on its way, though..
She had already started to be unable to feel pain; the numbness was spreading. What could she do? Up the ante. Cut harder, deeper, in more obvious places, she ordered herself.
It was no use.
Leprosy had set in. Consciousness was futile. The world was a leper farm.
“I’m not actually traveling anywhere any more, you realize,” she said.
The dead armadillo that had reached the side of the road, the fruited shore, said nothing. Love will do the trick. Jouissance might help. But his snout had fallen off just before he died, at the precise moment when he had his divine revelation. He tried, but all that came out were snaps, grunts, and snuffles.
Leper Farm
(An audio version of this work can be found at https://soundcloud.com/beyondutopia/leper-farm-susan-smith-nash)
Work had gotten difficult. Shannon Wolfberry had taken the job with Southwest Star Energy Corporation to see how oil and gas operations in the Eagle Ford play might be affecting the ecosystem.
She did not realize she had stepped into the middle of an epidemic.
They said they were trapping armadillos to keep them from infecting humans.
“Infecting humans with what?” asked Shannon. Her medium-short, slightly wavy dark blonde hair swirled in the hot wind. She wore a slightly threadbare cotton t-shirt with a faded stencil of a suffragette.
No one was around to answer. To the side of the road was an armadillo carcass. Judging by its fading stench, it had already passed from maggoty bloat to desiccation / mummification under the vast, cloudless but con-trailed western skies.
“So you’re trapping the armadillos and quarantining them here to avoid being infected by something… but what?” she continued.
“The stink and rot of reality?” she asked. “Or simply the rage of being inconvenienced? You hit the armadillo. You get some gut-splatter on your car. Or, you’re dented. You have to smell the death and see the dent. That’s maddening.”
“You’re inconvenienced. And, you’ve killed him.” Shannon touched the scab on her forearm. She called it her inkless tattoo. Others would call it cutting. Shannon had a problem with that. She needed to cut, but she could not tell you why.
“Humanity. Hah!” Picked up a blazing hot rock from the dry, hard, “desert pavement” covered with evenly distributed weathered cobblestones. An armadillo had been burrowing nearby.
She scratched the surface of the scab. She had no feeling there.
*************
Shannon had taken the job because she loved the wild, hard prairie. Drought, however, had turned it sub-Sahara, Texas style, which meant it was big, cowboy, and liked to bluster about things it knew nothing about --like easy oil riches and indefatigable aquifers named after vanquished Plains Indian heroes.
"You need to just crawl off and die, Missy," hissed something under a creosote bush.
Shannon agreed.
Gutteral hissing. The buzz of a Western diamondback rattlesnake. The words again:
“You need to crawl off …”
But then the voice of her mother intruded. It was nonsensical vaguely biblical babble: a dream where you've received a letter, but you never can quite get the words to form coherent sentences, even though you try, try, try.
Words from the waking dream:
"Mother-Mom where are you? Where Is Mother, Mother Is. God Is Love God Is Love Love Is God Love Is a God God Is Is Is Is God God God Mother Mother Mother Love"
When you awaken, you find you've lost your ability to believe that you are capable of forming a coherent thought.
"Crawl off and die, Missy!"
The creosote bush rattled and hissed again as though it would burst into flame. A sun convulsed is life black-clotted by blood and/or spilled wine, as though a darker, oxidized hue signified long, luscious flagellation stripes against the tender skin you once called hope or dreams or peace.
A small armadillo emerged from the creosote bush, making its way cautiously, unevenly onto the desert pavement.
Shannon leapt out of the way, her startled scramble disturbing the quiet hunt of a nearby snake.
The little armadillo that limped out from under the creosote bush was just out of its pup-years, and dewy-eyed to boot. Its snout was strangely petite, its thin tongue flicker-like sweet and gentle. The little armadillo pup tried to frisk about, and “swaggle upon waggle.”
“I think I’ll call you Jeoffry,” said Shannon. She reflected that Christopher Smart wrote Jubilate Agno from St. Luke’s asylum for the insane where his only companion was his dear little cat, Jeoffrey. Were things so different in 1760? What was different was shunned, locked away, “quarantined” while waiting for a “cure” (death).
… but the classic armadillo "scurry-forth" was just not a possibility for the little thing. It ambled, wobbled, and then mewled in pain.
Shannon crouched down for a better look.
"Crawl and die, Missy!"
She quickly wished she could. The little guy was missing a paw, and a relatively large chunk of its protective bony plate seemed about to detach from the skin below. Leaning forward a bit more, Shannon could see the large white discolored skin, the loose, nerve-damaged extremities.
This little armadillo was suffering from leprosy.
Leprosy: ugly, disfiguring.
Leprosy: socially and physically maiming
Leprosy: the disease of extremes / of extremities
********
Armadillos are used in leprosy research because their body temperatures are just right for them to contract the most virulent form of the disease.
Very “little bear,” as in Goldilocks and the Three Bears. The more humans and animals interact, the more both suffer.
*********
The little armadillo whispered: The more you numb, the more you die.
Shannon thoughts were shouts: (Don't you mean it to be reflexive? The more you numb YOURSELF, the more you die INSIDE?)
NO! I don't mean that at all, said the little guy.
The more you numb, the more you die.
**********
That night, Shannon heard an armored rat squeal the words she had just shouted in her dreams to the person who had, after many years, finally pierced the bony emotional carapace she had successfully emplaced around her.
Why did talk to me at all? Why did you lead me on? Why did you? You knew I was different, but you talked to me anyway, and you were nice to me. Don’t you know that was a mistake? That hurt.
But now I do not hurt, and that’s even worse.
Take my insensate skin and just push it into the fire that burns everything I hate about myself; the shame, the inadequacy, the sloth, the age, the body, the running, sweating panting desperation -- just take it and turn it into pure pain. Make me feel again. Do whatever it takes.
She shook her fist at him. She screamed so hard and loud her vocal chords felt as though they would rupture and spray blood whenever and wherever she exhaled her baleful imprecations.
Shannon did not understand it when he sat back, inhaled his cigarette slowly, and laughed… but barely … just under his breath.
He kissed her.
She screamed.
They breathed deep blood and smoke and abandon (finally); the final words to be carved in smooth hard granite somewhere in the middle of a cracked-earth prairie; the body a parched vessel of desire.
***************
Shannon sat in the linoleum-lined classroom, watched the PowerPoint slides flash across the screen, and felt her mind drift off to a place where there was nothing but cottonwood fuzz and soft, dry rot in the core of the massive yet drought-felled trees: the sycamores, the catalpas, the weird, water-seeking willows.
"Leprosy is a politically-incorrect term: call it Hansen's Disease," droned the instructor. He had hairs sprouting from his ears, his slim stooped build was blonde, wood-like.
"People used to be afraid of Hansen-disease sufferers."
"You mean LEPERS," thought Shannon.
"I am sure they were a scary sight. Imagine thin paupers dressed in rags, missing arms, feet, entire legs -- and, their skin discolored and ugly to boot," said the instructor. He was a thin man in jeans and tooled cowboy boots who sported a paunch and a strange little goatee.
"Dawn of the Dead," thought Shannon.
"What you do if you were a self-respecting pillar of your community in Jerusalem around the time of Jesus of Nazareth and you encountered into a person suffering from Hansen's?" asked the instructor.
“I suspect I would think that their outer condition reflected some sort of spiritual reality within,” said Shannon.
She unconsciously picked at the scab on her arm which would eventually result in a disfiguring scar. Shannon defended it as art. The art of overwhelming spiritual malaise; the ephemeral a rainbow-sheened shifting and unstable zeitgeist…
"Extremely ugly!" thought Shannon as she envisioned zombies missing eyes, teeth, feet, hands, and an ear or two.
"They were feared and shunned -- which was understandable given that Hansen's disease, in its most virulent form, is very contagious."
"Leprosy likes human-level body temp, right?" asked Shannon.
The professor paused and responded.
“No. Armadillos are about ten degrees cooler than humans.”
He returned to the narrative about the lepers whose arms and legs seemed to spontaneously rot and then fall off. Were they re-animated corpses? Very easy to believe.
"No one understood that the reason they lost their limbs was because they injured themselves --- basically because the disease causes neurological damage resulting in a loss of sensation in the extremities. The reason why you see missing limbs is because the neurological damage results in extreme injury to the extremities. You'd be surprised how much you can hurt yourself if you lose your ability to feel."
Shannon raised her hand. She was uncharacteristically bold. She had to know.
"Dr. Shlavavitz, can I catch leprosy from an armadillo, even if I have not touched one?"
Dr. Shlavavitz seemed relieved to have the focus turned on something besides his slides.
“Yes. If you eat an armadillo or root around in dirt where the armadillo has urinated, defecated, or otherwise left body fluids, you can catch leprosy. If that happens, seek help. Otherwise, look forward to a lifetime of localized and very inconvenient numbness, painful tests and procedures, social isolation, and fear.”
“Lovely,” said Shannon. She said it sarcastically to balance the mood in the place. Most seemed to understand that she was simply talking to herself.
************
“Rosa Luxembourg.”
The memory of the significance of her namesake was already peeling slightly underneath. No one could possibly live up to it.
“Rosa Luxembourg Wolfberry.” The nurse’s voice was crisp, annoying.
Shannon stood up and walked to the door.
“I go by ‘Shannon,’” she said.
“Sure. Fine.”
****************
“You don't get it. The shell -- the bony plates, the external carapace -- does not protect. It simply makes the fleshly underflesh all the more sensitive and easily pierced.”
"I don't believe you."
"When was the last time you wore a mask?"
"I never wear masks. They make my face itch."
"As well they should. The better you are at building a mask, the more likely it is you'll die slowly, stupidly, and surrounded by those who love your false self and not you at all (in other words, alone).
"But my mask protects me, keeps me from feeling."
"The more you numb, the more you die."
*********************
Shannon saw her little leprous mammalian charges, and she reflected on how it was that they were able to get a disease that usually only afflicts human beings.
"They are warm-blooded, warm-hearted. It makes them susceptible to the most virulent form of leprosy that exists on the face of the earth."
Shannon was silent for a moment, then asked a question.
"Can humans catch leprosy from armadillos?"
She was not surprised by the answer.
"Absolutely yes."
***********************
"Your job is to care for the animals," said Dr. K. When Shannon unfocused her eyes and gazed out onto the cracked, dry, drought-stricken earth, she saw it move like the floor of the Holy Rat Temple, the Karni Mata, in western Rajasthan, India. Admittedly, it was a little early in the game for jouissance, but Shannon was ready for it. In India, she suffered the entire duration from mild dysentery brought on by saffron, dahl, and piles of aromatic spices and/or Lacan's Imaginary Order.
"When the holy rats ran across my legs and up my inner thighs, they spoke to me with their clicks, squeals, and squeaks. I erased my language, and I was one again with The Impossible," said Shannon.
"They bit me and I felt God."
If not a rat, perhaps a cigarette searing into her inner thigh or on the top of her left foot would do the trick?
You have to feel to be able to feel pain. The worst thing in the world is to lose your ability to feel pain -- to go numb.. physical / psychological numbness...
But this was west Texas, and she saw no rats, animals with shiny, bony plates covering their backs, heads, legs, and tails, and long -- infinitely long and sharp -- claws for digging (and fighting).
Shannon had taken the job back when she still thought armadillos were cute and needed to be rescued before being flattened by 20-ton long-haul trucks loaded up with dogfood or flammable liquids.
Embrace Your Inner Leper
be-moiled (dabbed with dirt)
blood-boltered -- smeared with blood
the waftage (passage)
wailful (lamentable)
well-wondered (marvellously gifted)
sooth (truth)
serpigo (cutaneous disease)
stigmatical (deformed)
sumpter (a horse that carries provisions on a journey)
surcease (to cease)
*********************
Neuropathic> pain due to damage and/or dysfunction of nerves; can be peripheral or central with respect to the central nervous system. You may have neuropathic pain if you have diabetic neuropathy, postherpetic zoster pain, thalamic pain syndrome, or trigeminal neuralgia. You may have neuropathic and nociceptive pain at the same time if you’ve had trauma that damages tissue and nerves, deep burns, or external nerve compression from tumors or sciatica.
Nociceptive> pain when tissue is damaged and intact neurons report it. Nociceptive pain can be sharp, dull, or aching: somatic or visceral. Nociceptive pain can radiate, especially visceral pain, but it will not be in a direct nerve distribution. Nociceptive pain is generally responsive to NSAIDs (nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs) and opioids.
******************************
Armadillos have a strong dog paddle, and can even go quite a distance underwater, walking along the bottom of streams andponds. They can hold their breath for four to six minutes at a time. When they need to cross larger bodies of water, they swim across. Because their heavy shell makes it hard for them to float, they gulp air into their intestines to make them more buoyant.
The pain kept Shannon doing a metaphysical dog-paddle toward shore. When and if she reached the shore, it was possible she would not even know it. All she knew is that she needed to keep the pain going in order to keep dog-paddling. The worst was on its way, though..
She had already started to be unable to feel pain; the numbness was spreading. What could she do? Up the ante. Cut harder, deeper, in more obvious places, she ordered herself.
It was no use.
Leprosy had set in. Consciousness was futile. The world was a leper farm.
“I’m not actually traveling anywhere any more, you realize,” she said.
The dead armadillo that had reached the side of the road, the fruited shore, said nothing. Love will do the trick. Jouissance might help. But his snout had fallen off just before he died, at the precise moment when he had his divine revelation. He tried, but all that came out were snaps, grunts, and snuffles.