Status Updates From Ghost Driver

Her legs gave way next. Crumpled to the floor. She screamed but what emerged from the hole of her mouth was thin. More of a gurgle than a scream. There is a pain that no language can touch. Everyone will discover this sooner or later. If you don't already know about this, then you're lucky.

Malory had always been suspicious of people who made their dreams into great rousing narratives and forced you to go ooh and aah as their dreams spilled on and on, getting more and more bombastic, more and more coherent. And in the process, the dream narrator gets puffed up with their little ego boost.

That certain erotic charge that was imparted by the humility of the service industry was no more. But, Malory noted, her vitality was undimmed. It's easy to look healthy and happy in youth, thought Malory viciously. Easier than anything! At that moment, she thought she saw John's arm extend around the waitress' shoulders, but her vision flickered and then she wasn't sure it had happened.

The Institution was like a tumour that had slowly taken over the city, had devoured it by acquiring more and more land, then building more and more austere white cubes with restricted access and sharp corners upon that land. Just like a tumour, The Institution was both educational and parasitical, rebuilding the body's body, as an idea, from the inside out, in such a way that defied the very idea of the body...

It was after months of uneventful sessions that The Therapist finally disclosed to Malory that, in her professional opinion, there was some part of her that was greatly disturbed. Malory shivered with delight to hear it.
Greatly.
A part that did not want to be located, nor observed in his (nefarious) daily business.

Cover image (c) Stanislav Gorb and Jürgen Berger, Max-Planck-Institute, Tübingen, Germany. Scanning electron micrograph. The footpads of a fly magnified 120x, are cover with minute hairs. The hairs both increase the contact area of the fly's foot and secrete a sticky fluid, enabling the fly to walk upside down.