The machines in my daughter’s bedroom kept their rhythm for weeks. Beep. Beep. Nothing changed that I could prove.
Then last week I sat beside her bed, rambling about whatever came to mind. Regrets from her childhood. When I said I was sorry, her cheek was wet. One tear. I thought it was a fluke. Then another when I started crying.
That’s not reflex. That’s her in there.
I told them about the timing, but they said it’s just static. Nothing meaningful.
Cortical, they said. Frontal lobe damage. Too long without oxygen. That’s why she needs assistance with a dozen functions. Her body’s an empty temple.
There have been other signs. Sometimes her eyes track me across the room. Her hand grips mine. The machines don’t register it, but I know.
It’s not coming from her brain. The gut has more nerves than the spinal cord. It came first in evolution. First in the womb. It doesn’t lie like the brain does. All signal. No filter.
I found the method online. I’ve got the pig on ice in the tub. I split it perfectly in half. If it’s off-center, the signal can distort or linger.
I remove her feeding tube and take her half of the pig’s gut, cleaned, inverted, and sleeved into a short length of silicone tubing. I guide the length through the stoma and press the mucosal side against the lining of her intestine. It holds with pressure alone, but I seal the entry with surgical tape and gauze, tight enough to maintain contact.
My half isn’t so easy. I start with the ketamine. Vet supply stuff I ordered months ago. I didn’t take it early enough and I’m already shaking when it starts to kick in. I rub lidocaine cream along the site until it numbs. I didn’t wear gloves. Stupid. My hands are tingling. I wait until the buzz dies down, then make a vertical incision just left of my navel, deep enough to open the subcutaneous fat.
The second cut goes deeper. I go slow to reach the small intestine without perforating it. Just close enough to expose the gut wall and press the segment flush. There’s a hot sting, too deep. Mostly just pressure.
It doesn’t hurt the way I thought it would.
I unpack my half of the pig’s gut and press the mucosal side to the open tissue, stuff it just deep enough to reach, and wrap the site in gauze and medical tape.
There’s no on button, but slowly it begins. Static floods in.
At first, I think the sinking feeling in my stomach is just my body adjusting. The signal stabilizing. Then it turns. A jagged ball of something screaming. It slams inside me. Clawing. Expanding. Hunting for the edges. My hands jolt on their own. It pushes against everything. Trying to get out.
I claw harder. I howl.
Pain sharpens. I lock on it. Focus. My hand is inside. I have to tear it out.
The ball swells past what I can hold. I’m trapped in animal terror. My nails slip. It convulses, and my body follows. I’m vibrating. My left hand jerks in the gash, pulling it wider with each spasm. Heat floods the tape, spreads down my side. I drop forward, my forehead pressed to the carpet. There’s nowhere to go.
It’s not moving anymore. It’s everywhere at once, hitting over and over, pounding every corner of my insides. The ball becomes a hot halo. A terrible holy figure-eight. It’s not mine. I’m a conduit.
I gather my arms in, close around the heat, and let it shake through me. Each hit sparks. I’m raw wire now, but I stay with it. Stop fighting. Let it sink deeper, into the parts I’ve never touched. If it’s hers, I’ll sit with it and let it break me if it has to.
I reach for something from my brain. Anything solid. I grab at the cut. Focus on the sequence.
You start at the snout, you drift. Bone’s too thin. One wrong chop and you’re off-center.
Start at the ass, and there’s too much space. You wander.
It’s the sternum.
Flip the pig on its back. Stand over it, facing ass-ways. Bring the axe down through the sternum. Keep chopping, through the chest and out the snout.
Either turn the pig around or turn around. Line up with the gash. Chop from belly to ass.
That’s how you keep it centered.
The way the ribs gave under the handle. How clean it split.
The halo sears a final fit and stalls before it settles. The heat flattens and spreads. I feel the pressure shift into arrangement. The halo’s patterned now, rolling like smoke. It blooms all around me, kaleidoscopic pink sectioned with darker threads. With each breath, the shape tilts. Not a ball anymore.
Always her. Never separate.
A flat beep cuts through. A wet patter on the floor.
I open my eyes, and hers are open too.
Everything else is gone.
Austin Goodmanson writes about connection deprivation and the blur between belief and delusion. He lives in Florida.
Image: iowafarmbureau.com
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Heavy Feather Review 