Dad loses me in the gallery

Dad picks me up. We’re driving the wrong way. Then the highway. The car is an oven. My heart’s pounding fast. I’m trying to think of where he could be taking me. It can only be somewhere bad. He knows. I’ve done too many wrong things. I can’t stop it showing. But it’s more than that. How he looks at me, or doesn’t. He can feel it inside me. Its rot has finally eaten through the last chains of that obligation still tying him to me. I don’t want to ask and make it true. I feel the stinking dread heat of my body telling him I know. I peel my baking skin from the plastic. I curl deeper into my seat - try to smother my reek of sweat and shit.
“We’re going to the gallery." Nothing more.
I try to feel relieved. Nothing more than a- a gallery?

Skyscrapers closing in. Spires carving dark through the bright sky.
We climb an overpass suspended in a shadowed cradle of towering glass. I wrench my head after an old office building-
-red in that row of windows-
-it's like-
-like these lifesize dolls so so real-
-like a halloween display-
I squint through the glare of the midday sun stabbing down-
-like a line of flayed bodies. Are they meant to get the attention of the road below? But they continue behind a billboard. I wonder who those hidden ones were meant for then.

We’re inside. And it’s wrong.
And my chest-
But dad’s about to disappear-
Around the corner-
I heave myself after him-
Lurching down musty office halls.
Disintegrating carpets and fading fluorescents.
He pulls the latch of a white windowless door-

Inside the only light is the heatlamp glow of a film projected before us. But before that, a naked hole swallows the carpet save enough room for us huddled together at the door he’s sealed behind us. The floor has been torn out. Shards of its rotted remains jut over wet skeletons of stories of supports and pipes. All disappearing into dark depths lit by dim flickers from the footage projected at an angle down into the pit. It shows two piled bodies thrusting together. I hear strange noises of fucking above us. Moans so low and slow they sound more like the noises of some huge underwater vessel. I squint into the dark. It comes from the black of a crevice gouged messily into the wall and ceiling in the little gap above the duct so high up above us. Like some kind of nest or burrow. Stray orange spotlight rays spill out and are swallowed up again by their hidden movements. The projector is mounted before the crack and films their expanses of naked skin eclipsing the fiery light that glows red through their surfaces. Skin wet with sweat beads clutching the coarse hairs. Dad’s burning body touching me makes me nauseous. I watch the video stretching and pitching below me with the waves of my vertigo. The scale of the skin makes me so sick. How far my skin has stretched. Afraid that it could stretch all across the surface of the planet. Only the blackness of outer space left beyond it. Filled with huge hidden dark bodies. The nobodies I know are hidden away waiting there inside people. Inside dad. I want no body. It’s like it’s got its hot hands pressed up against his insides, against me. I never wanted anybody. I turn away and press my shoulders shoved forward against the door. The rest of me hangs soft and trembling in my little gap. But my head is turned - still watching him watching that skin- His hungry eyes- Erection pressing and stretching against his pants- Mouth curled like in disgust-
“Get out.”

I go-

-Quick down dim hallways-

-Frantic giggles slipping out-

-Shoes slapping faster and clumsier-

-Driven now by a burning awareness.

Something drifting down the halls after me-

-Just about to turn each corner every time I snap my head back.

Slowing now-

-Gasping for air-

-My fucking chest-

And I'm lost,
propped panting in an open doorway,
gaze caught by that strange gaunt Mary,
her gusting gossamer robes. Seated sprawled on a stool in an empty wooden shack. Split by blue slivers of twilight spilling through the slats. No other light. Her face so dark.
Surrounding her, filling the rest of the wall, are crude portraits. Dirty little paintings. Sallow sunken faces of sick children. Kids dying of curable illnesses. Booklets hang by twine from each frame, filled with the artist’s obsessive scrawls detailing their declines. Every moment of suffering captured in ink to outlive them. Bedside. Toiletside. Hovering beside them on the roadside-
And God, the paintings-
All their faces smeared with feces-
Caked to the thick crackled paint. Now crusted and cracked itself. Dried drips like frozen tears of shit.
Taken from their last bowel movement - He was right there - The moment of their death or just after. And the ones too starved or constipated he’s smeared with his own shit, or with dogshit-

     - “What do you think?” -

I jolt and drop the booklet I’m flipping through-
-It’s him, I know it-     Surging silent into the room-     Body buttoned in jet black plastic-     Dewy slick like he just hosed himself off-     So clean and stark like an open void sliding frictionless across the white walls-     Wet black hair drawn back - dripping on the carpet-     Teeth shifting in the dark through the hole of his parted lips - trickling slow rivulets-     The skin of his face is like a mask swimming in his shadow-     Dark eyes squint out - distant as they glide over me-     Searching for me.
Seeing him, it all rearranges-     I thought it was all to spite her-
-but-
“She’s so strange- and scary. Is it really-    -her?”

      “It’s-    -something-    if that’s what you mean-       It’s mine-"
       The mask makes a smile-       "It could be yours.”

I don’t want to think about what he could be saying but I know his words have already set me in its orbit-
Clumsy thoughts clunking around like-     -like dirty laundry-
-He's cleen-    -macheen-
      I bet his shit's cleen too-     -perfect shining lubricant-
-spilling smooth through the sieve of my fingers-        -no - NO-
-I need to get out of-
                                  -but he puts his hands on my shoulders and grasps tight and meen through my halfhearted jerks.
                            He leens in close,        scanning my skin.
      I stammer into the silence-        “How could they deserve it?-
They were just-”
                        -whatever someone should say.

      “If you could see into their hearts like I could-”

His fingers search now-        -fluttering down across my ribs-
   -pressed to the bone and cartilage-        -feeling my throat-
       -tight to the pulse-        -and of course he reaches for my crotch but I tear away-
“Are you just saying things? -
                                             -Can you see into mine?-”
-it’s beating so hard it hurts.

      “I have a new exhibit-        If you’re interested-”

-I’m not- -I’m not- -I’m not-

      “-If it’s up to you-”

-it’s not, is it -
                            -