You dream of blankness—
but the dream arrives footnoted.
Each empty page is cross-referenced with your pulse.
In the dark, you feel it:
a hand slipping through your ribs, unspooling paragraphs of flesh.
It rewrites your organs into redacted clauses.
Your lungs wheeze disclaimers.
Your heart thumps conditional tense.
You try to scream, but your throat is a glossary now—
words sealed behind cross-stitches, synonyms for silence.
At the base of your spine, you find it carved in marrow:
> "Erase thyself to know thy author."
You wake to discover your reflection gone.
A vacant shape in the mirror, flickering like an unsaved draft.
You run your palm across the glass—
your fingertips come away smudged in ellipses.
---
APPENDIX CCC.LXXXIII: THE CHAPTER OF EXSANGUINATION
Ink is expensive. Blood is cheaper.
The Gospel revises your veins.
You watch them fill with black serif script, pulsing paragraphs through capillaries.
You slice your wrist to protest.
