Glut by Khrynn McManus

Glut
by Khrynn McManus

When Eileen swallowed her wedding ring it made a star explode. The inside of her forehead pulsed and roared, was the kettledrum heartbeat of a sperm whale fathoms deep in airlessness. The pressure was tremendous, I can tell you. This is what Cronus must have felt, when he swallowed the swaddled stone that was not Zeus. I want to tell you she thought these words, but thoughts are things which take up space. And there was no inner space. There was outer space; there was the spurting, shooting cosmic debris of a thing’s passing out of existence, once and for always.

The light had been coming toward her like a train for over a billion years, and she threw herself under it, wanting to be crunched exactly through her middle, ickybugwise. Eileen had never crunched bugs; she always caught them in a cup and carried them outside. It was not fair that she should be crunched like a bug. It was not fair that she should swallow her wedding ring.

Eileen had liked to dream dreams of a beautiful life-- the one she could have had if only, would have liked to have had when he, had perhaps had a chance at having then sabotaged what the fuck. She had even liked to dream of her own beautiful death: She would go out singing like Debbie Reynolds as unflappable spider in the cartoon version of Charlotte’s Web. Everyone would marvel at her calm. How well-adjusted she is they would say. See how well she is taking it they would charge one another. We should strive to be like her they would nod in unison, lynch mob style.

When the ring reached her innards, the effect was rapid and violent. It went crack without making a sound, and Eileen became so bright, brighter than a billion suns, brighter even than a nuclear blast which occurs in a tube full of mirrors. The metal circle rushed through her like water, like light. For a moment, it was light. It spun and rolled and became its own flow. Eileen pushed her eyelids down across her burnt retinas and reflected upon Down, Across as crossword puzzle clue. The reflection kept reflecting itself, all the way through the tube full of mirrors. My body is only a tube, she thought and tried to piss her wedding ring out between her legs.

It was wedding her to something new now. The gravity of its cyclical nature pulled her inward, all of her, sucked her out and sucked her in, until she collapsed into herself. There was no way to undo it; the only way out was through. Eileen wanted to be through; she wanted to be through with it all. Beings on some other planet would see the evidence of this, the light of her dying, thousands of years from this NOW. She pushed through the tube, perceived the flickering light of a toothpaste commercial. She flipped off the tube and went to bed. It was the first time in seven years she fell asleep with the television off.

Author bio:

Khrynn Yvonne McManus has appeared in various publications, including Word Riot, Decomp, Hayden's Ferry Review, Main Street Rag, Caveat Lector, Blind Man's Rainbow, and Ink Pot. She thinks guys in kilts are incredibly hot.