I am Matthew

I two prong mine throat tube when Mom wails and head the toilet basin south. There is love. I throng and spin. The shower head pulled off-wall snap snap and Mom’s face hugged bloody. The bruised girl comes and sobs and I rub at hers shoulder there there. Daddy, boo hoo, Daddy huhn. Mom’s lips blood wet, kissed. When the van comes it is white and so are the men but the side says “County Hospital”, they are not for me. Mom kick kicks me-like and I wave bye bye, Karefree Mom, and look at the stiffened Foot and touch the joint floppy. I am alone. I am Matthew Kennicott.

I slept in the bathtub with an ice bag on mine lap-head. The bare foot slept sitting in the corner, half-eyed, watching. The pyjama trouser hung wet and destewed and the ice prevented cockblood. Purple pain spheres woke me. Numb nuts. Tricky Matty window make break and I was away out wet clothed. The man watched me leave, mouthed the bang tube. Flash.

Mom’s fisting the door face again. Foot’s home and lies unfaced on the couch. White head-ribboned. Mom cries and I think of the goose, the badger, the hedgehog, Foot rot. I scowl at Mikey as he points and licks a toffee apple upmeward pah Mikey, BAH BAH! Pane slap. Scraping the varnish Mom, Matty Matty! Matty!. My face stings but I am not finished my story yet.

Matty commando sneaky boy. The sign said Fandora, N.M. 2 miles. I thumbed. Dusky. Thumb weary and dangling, stiff arm atrophy ceps crooked spined and squeaky knee bolt, I waited. I walked. The sign said “Fandora has moved. Please go to www.fandoracity.com for more details.” HE laughed in the distance I thought and I sullied mine pant, bellowed the cheeks wet. The asphalt browned around mine ankles and I footprinted sewage away. I found a potato sack and ate the blacky tubers. I wore the sack and hurled the pant. Special forces Matty. I thronged the empty houses and shirted, panted and shoed. I showered under no water and sang grace before meals with no food. I danced and I remembered HIM. I got mine. 24 Yenkle Drive. I slept in a dusty bed and dreamed of our 365 24 home and Foot’s caved face front. It grins open holed methrough and I am swallowed and pass the wrecky corpse rot of the badger I threw. Inside I am tied by the pain hose and Mom digs hair from Dr. Spinach’s place and all the while she calls for me to come back. Downstairs there was grey on the TV and I watched me grey and plucky. I ate popcorn from an empty bowl. When I phoned for 24 hours the dead line said “you are, Matty, you are” and I rebroke the mirror with the receiver.
New pant shirt shoe thumbing made easy. I left my home once again in search of love and 24 hours and carried an empty suitcase. She left me at Finger, N.M. after I harangued mine pocket giggly. Population 3,300.
“You gotta have money for a ticket” said the beard.
“I got mine” Matty grin gape
I up-palmed and showed him the no money I had found at no. 24. I showed him my suitcase.
“I am Matthew Kennicott!” I called through his window “I am the Mayor of Fandora and I demand passage to Albuquerque N.M.!”
I took the nothing he handed me in exchange for my no money and waited for my train. I fingered and wobbled it in front of me for the train-man to see. Special K. The sign said Albuquerque N.M. 3.15, platform 2. My cabin had a toilet and a sink. I bolted sat and slept. In the dream, darkened, I peer into mine head to find the ache that pings mine medulla and I find HIM peering also, he is bigger. Dr. Spinach laughs as Mrs. Lunt limps Matty-like in mine eyes and Principle Ear faces the corner, mine ear, and Mom kneels in front of his pant flick tonguing mine drum.
The voice woke me knocking and I remembered the Barnacle bus station.
“Hey, you fall in?”
The me in the mirror was bleeding from ear to eye, two teeth were toilet floored and mine fingers were raw. The voice stopped.

When the rocking ended and the squeaky roll was done the window said Albuquerque, N.M. I thought of Mom and Foot, my brother, HIM and my 24 hours. I lept for home from the belly of the bringer and the lady asked me if I was OK.
“I got mine” mouth shake, and I handed her mine toilet teeth, bloody.
“For offal”
I went for my 24 hours.
Forehead the crack pane and knuckle wrap the temple! “I am Matthew Kennicott! I am search for love and the sign says…”
(The 24 hour Mart has moved, please go to www.24hourmarts.com for more details)
They drove me home red blue and flashing, 24 hour windows boarded and mine face slashed, screaming and kick kick. I am Matthew Kennicott. I am home. I am.

“You are” one said, as he stroked mine head, backseated.

Mom yips and screeches Matty Matty bangs and scrapes and is silent. I give in. I open the door and she is kneeling with bloody fingers, red and wet teary. Downstairs Foot’s face is red through the ribbons that were white and he is statued, purple. Mom stands behind me and gibbers mouth noise from her neck skin. Foot rot, blood mouthed, baby Matty torn.

When I turn Mom’s hand is on mine shoulder.

We left the piss-stop and the sweaty kids backhind. I was darkened again. My ear on the bag box floor gave humming drum-ear and I slept. I dreamed that I had left her at the piss-stop and she was dark with the sweaty boy. I awoke because a bighandman had me plucked and I was side-roaded, screamed at. The sign said “deer crossing” and all I saw on my Albuquerque bus was the licence plate and a kid’s meaty crack. Deer-Crossing N.M? Just then a deer crossed and a truck like Foot’s swerved, tree’d smoked and spat. When the sirens came closer I watched from a bush and poke picked at my patch. Foot face steering wheeled blooded screen crack. The deer looked for all the torn gazelles and snapped badgers, he laughed. In the silence that eventuallied I scuttled carward. Matty Crossing. A broken goose flopped over the back seat of Foot’s truck bled and I key-turned chinning my bicep. Mattmobile 2. At 30 mph I was the smoking Albuquerque meteor, red and bluesmoke and speeding me her.
“HAROOO SMOKING ALBUQUERQUE METEOR MATTY” out-window lip flip.
Tongue lap the ear hole open mouthed face wind, and cheeks inflated and mutating. The eye-patch long gone.
The lights approached me like a rising spotty dark sun, I yelped and yukked and cried homebound. The sign said Two, CO. and I stopped the truck and it shuddered thankfully. The pointy boys were indoors and away and Uncle Sheriff was invisible. I left Two, CO for the second time and watched the lights of the slaughterhouse dim in mine rearview and the screams of the pigs I wristed away. The smell stayed and mixed with the bird decay, floppy goose stiff then.
When foot wrapped his truck snugly about the tree the lights did gash. The darkness grew like solid bread-rot and even when I glued the cigarette lighter to the hood with chew gum, it remained uncut. I made camp by truck rolling under a tree and sleeping, smeggy bird pillow. I dreamed of Two and all of my new friends I never met. HE culls in the S-house and she watched Dr. Spinach watch. They grin and speak, blood bathed and glisten green. Mom puts her hand through the back of Foot’s head to decompress his crash-face and when it rises it is toothless. Mom puts them in his pockets and he pays for offal with them. She eats and Dr. Spinach gets the mirror. I awoke blood-cocked and sticky stink headed. The mirror.
The goose was dehead when I again woke and a cat sat nearby batting and chew chew. Key turning produced petrol whimpers and fading car speak. I gave love to the truck, love the metal travel box and I hopwalked into the woods.
I was the Live Big! escapee pioneer and I sliced the woods with mine hand edge and they bled.
The children screamed at the farm yard when I flapped at them, Matty blood hand spraying and yipping happy Me ooh ooh. He wore britches and no shoes and carried a bang tube like our boys of the war. He fed me stew.
The children skirted the wife and they huddled. I thought of her and Mom and skirts and when the stew hit my lap, it ran from the trouser tent like steamy rain.

I am swollen, puffy glandularwise. Shirt torn like the flag and my blood will not clot. I feel I resemble HIM. The HIM that's the HE in ME.
A boy with sweaty eyes and his jaw wired shut leans over me and says hello with liquid breakfast breath. He asks to twang mine hinge. He does it and I think he steals mine bolt. He runs awayward and another boy emerges from behind a pile of tires and meets him over thereward, looks in Wire Mouth's hands, then meward. Where am I?
Spinach is probably thinking, He was so close.
HE is probably thinking, He is mine forever.
I am thinking they are wrong about me. I am Matthew, and I am on the run. I have lived big and gotten mine, and still theys come for me. They don't see how I am love. Only one person sees it, feels it, tastes it in her wads and jerky. She is 24 hours, and I have cocked her smell before.
I will find her, and when I do I will say, I am Matthew, and I am the nice guy inside this mess.

My journey went like this, my search for love and 24 hours. Oscar the Facilitator left the horizontal pain hose coiled in the corner of my room underneath the camera in my place. They did not know. The invisible place. I threw it from the unrepaired wall hole where my window-mirror used to show me to me and me. Where I headlonged. I threw my leg over the sill after it and straddled and realised I had not tied the rubbery shower to my bed as intended. I jumped. I limped. I yelped inward. Quiet Matty. Special forces. I dog-rolled into the bushes where I slept for strength, stung by ants and dreaming of HIM and Dr. Spinach. In the dream Dr. Spinach strokes HIS head and calls HIM Matty, Special K. “You are” she says. “I got MINE” he replies and looks down where my severed head sits in his chubby lap. I jumped awake, with a start and poked mine eyeball with a bushthorn. I cautioned the wind and yelped outward for that one. I made a patch from a leaf and the string from mine pyjamas. They fell, exposing the gland. I made braces for the pyjama legs with green branches that I pierced through my t-shirt. They stabbed mine pits from time to place. I was 20 metres from my Live Big! no love cell. Destination: Albuquerque. I heard alarms and screaming, and when I spanked the ears they silenced. I walked. Bush scratch, tree flap, smack flash, scraping the healed Matty face me’d again. I invented a wooden hatchet made from metal I found, I hammered the tree bark, the tree in my way. The axe broke, I walked around. Engines rose and fell as I approached the highway, the Matty tunnel homeward, as they zipped and thronged, as they glided asphaltly, as they passed. Down-embankment-commando-roll-Matty, between the headlights and beep the fucker, horn, hooter, honk. A billboard provided shielding from the glarey light-eyes and in the shiney metal back I saw me. Mine. I knew HE was close behind, but I dared not look. HE would throw mine head meward and recapture the face. I am Matthew Kennicott. I am love. With HIM I am Kennicaught. As I ran along the hard shoulder, my soft leg meat hurled and a semi-hot dog necked me, giggling teen, jerked me, “Jerk!”
Thumb.
In the kennel truck I remembered my first trip to Live Big! and my brother’s bone. I salivated with the dogs and back headed the truck wall. Then cried and the cocker licked salty drink off-face away. The truck threw me at Barnacle, CO and I slept in the gas station toilets. Every so often I would awaken to a “Jesus, you fall in?”. In my dreams I swam in an ocean and she was a mermaid. The current wobbled my floppy leg and the bolt sank, the leg like a pencil between the tricky fingers of a schoolboy. I bashed my bridge on the door frame as the janitor pulled me out by the ankles. Bleeding, I asked him if he had a beard or if it was just oil skin. Smacked, I left. Phone booths have spare quarters, enough in the town of Barnacle over the course of 5 hours to buy a soda, or perhaps some gum. I chewed and removed the stick braces, replacing them with gum that stuck to the leg hair. I swiped at a frog. My pits bled tiny redspots onto mine shirt. They stung when I side-dropped them so walked with arms outstretched like a Matty albatross. I flew flapping, leaping and yuk-yukking. Barnacle, CO. The sign on the bus said Albuquerque, N.M. as it whizzed past. Shitted me. I turned, ran waving, screeching hey hey and was clotheslined by the clothesline, back somersaulted forward, wet ponded. The goldfish sprang up-air and glinted, frozen secondly, winking at me before plooping, ploop, back to watery earth. They kissed mine cheeks. I stole the mac from the line to cover mine dirty pjs and bloody pits. I thumbed again. He left me by the town of Two, CO. Population 547. The rumour was that they were all the same family he said, laughing as he drove away, dusting mine new coat. Some kids laughed and digited the air in mine direction. “That’s mine direction!” I retorted as they left to fetch Uncle Sheriff. I chinned my clavicle and wept into mine chest. I left Two forever, sad to see it go. So sad, so disappointed. Boo hoo, Matty, Boo hoo, Two. Betrayed and skulky, I left, thumbed, walked, thumbed and slept in a ditch. I dreamed of my 24 hours split in Two, 12 12, Matty and HIM half each. I woke rumbling hungry and rumbling rumbling. The garbage van smelled like egg and we rolled along the highway. Matty roadkill. It tipped into the town of Indigo, N.M. Population 3 and a landfill. I clung to the bars of my saviour wheels to see where the next town might be as I did not like my prospects of leaving Indigo without ankley rat bites. Barnacle CO.
Hee hee flappy yuk yukking, Matty the bird boy of Barnacle.
“I AM THE FLAPPING BARNACLE BIRD BOY!” mouth spurt.
The bus said Albuquerque N.M. and I hid in the bag box this time. I slept and dreamed of her in the darkness, and when I awoke she was still there, in the darkness.

The flat hedgehog was buried under a bush with purple berries that made Kendra Kinney sick. I thought of Hairy Lou. Black Lincoln cried and tried to bugle through his fist, but only snotted on his knuckles. Jungle Dan tutted and clucked as he de-spined mine chest with tweezers. The blooded sweater hung from the tree. Each hedgehoggy spike was placed in the hole with the flattened spongerat. Dan plasti-cuffed me to the tree when I began screeching and knuckle-rapping at mine temples. The salty eye-water dripped on mine chest as I chinned it, and into the spikeholes. An eyeball stuck to mine jaw. Somewhere in the forest I heard HIM laughing meward. I still miss HIM. When I closed mine eyes HE was fat again and smiled with HIS arms around our President who gurned bullets, and my brother, who pointed to his knee and kissed a picture of my 24 Hours. Black Lincoln fainted onto the tiny grave when he bugled for too long with snot clogged nostril holes. Babalu covered him with dirt.

Oscar showers the forest dirt from mine torso, laughing, and the horizontal jet-flume pings mine gland. But I do not move or snarl. I want my window-mirror back. I want to go home. I think of Mom, HIM, of her, and the hedgehog.

I am love. I just wanted to hug it.

We are finally at the mountain place for nature. The bus driver looks out his window away from us as we walk out the bus and Yes, please, thank you him. As we walk, Jungle Dan digits trees and rocks and explains the science that they are. He finger arrows birdward, too. Kendra Kinney asks about angels and if theirs wings are feathery and flotationous like the "spotted tree finch" and he says maybe.
"Do angels lay eggs with baby angels in them?" asks Kendra Kinney.
"I don't think so."
"Angel eggs are what you eat at breakfast, stupid. You eat baby angels," says Babalu.
"No, that's not true," says Jungle Dan.
Black Lincoln starts to cry. Babalu dances round him throwing nature dirt in hims face and sings "Fatty boobalatty, fatty boobalatty" over and over.
Jungle Dan fingers his cheek fur and mutters, Dammit.
I am the good kid. I am love. To Jungle Dan I will help to supervise thems who are not like me, mine, me, yes, me.
I hobble Jungle Danward and throat open mine mouth hole but his arm tube swings back meward, elbowballs mine faceflesh socket of nose and toothed lipside red and bleeding. I shake. I fall into nature.
Jungle Dan and the others stand over me.
"Can you hear me, Matty?" says the beard. "Jesus."
I feel kind of funny.
Kendra Kinney pulls on mine cheeks and says it is time for me to smile like an angel. Smile, she says, and makes hers arms into wings. Black Lincoln cries. Babalu runs away into nature. Behind them, walking usward, I hear footsteps. Loud feet clomps. Between Jungle Dan's knees I see HIM coming. HE is like me but I am not ME.
"MMMMATTHEW!"
HE is bent forward with his sausage hands on his hammy thighs, his head right between the knees of Jungle Dan.
"OH MATTHEW, I WANT TO PLAY, PLAY, PLAY WITH YOU TODAY, PLAY LIKE WE USED TO, MATTHEW, LIKE WE USED TO PLAY."
I shut mine eyes from HIM. I think of mom and Foot and Spinach and You Are.
"MATTHEW?"
"I got mine."

"What'd he say?"

"YOU KNOW I DON'T LIKE THAT GAME, MATTHEW."
"spittlecockwadsbiglivedmehfuhmehfuhme- me- me- me- NO, NOT ME! NOT ME!"
"YES, MATTHEW. YOU CAN DO IT. KIDS CAN DO IT."
"hackenso- gheen- fooggg- NO. ME, ME, ME, HIM!"

"Matty?"

I open mine eyes. Above I see the beard. Below, kneeward, there is HIM.
"THERE YOU ARE!"
I cackleweenthrash, flop fishly up and down. I growl and hear an "OOOF!" With mine ex-legcannons I hand my knees, pull open the cannons and lunge Danward. With mine horsepower I Reebok pump hims knees and watch the bony flesh masses crinklecrash HIMward. Jungle Dan screams. The face of HIM smiles til the end. HE knows what I am doing. HE watches ME until I am me, and I cacklewail headwrist mine brow when the head of HIM blows and goops and disappears. There is a strong sausage smell.
Jungle Dan rubs his knees.
"I guess I deserved that," he says, lifting me up. "Here, let's get you a towel for that ugly gash."
"Heeng," I say and spit out blood.
I am Matthew, and I feel OK.

"Matty, do you love yourself?"

Jungle Dan sits with me on the back of ours bus. He doesn't look at to see the trees and mountains out the windows or the towns down below. He looks at me, mine, Matty, Matthew. The me.

"Well, do you?"

He looks down to me and I look up. Hims eyes shade dark under that big hat and I look into his beard.

"I am love?"

He, him, hims hand musses mine hair.

"You are, Matthew. You are."

The bus rumbles and burps and I think it will crash. I hear me thinking this. Over up front Kendra Kinney stands on hers seat and makes wings with her arms. She is flying to the nature walk but not flying right. Black Lincoln is crying. I ask Jungle Dan for I can give a sandwich to Black Lincoln.

"I think that would be very nice, Matthew."

I fish pocketward and fingersplitpeel a flake mayo bread brick. I show Jungle Dan and he says, "Looks good, Matty!"
I Yes, please, thank you and go Black Lincolnward. He looks up at me. Kendra Kinney stops flying.
I sandwich his hand.
"For me?"
"Yes, please, thank you."
He is fat but eats it slow. I look back and Jungle Dan is silent clapping for me.
I am Matthew, and I am love.

HE misses me, HE says when HE visits. Dr. Spinach no longer locks my door and WE walk hand in hand in the Live Big! grounds and HE looks like me, smiling backwards. HE has the smile of an angel. I miss HIM too. Especially when I am awake.

At our morning session I sit in a Live Big! yellow wheelchair that I have covered in black tape and I call it the Maxi now. I give lifts to Babalu and Kendra Kinney for free and use my hinge to twang like a horn. They are mine new friends. Dr. Spinach is wearing the skirt again and I bloodcock when I turn. Leg hair. That is why my hands are plasti-cuffed again. It springs out of neverthelessness and protrudes. Oscar the Facilitator covers my lap with a red blanket and it pulsates. He slaps my head when Spinach fixes the leg slit and whispers “retard” earward.

“Can we talk about the GARIBALDI again, Matthew?”

I do not hear her. I do not hear...

“The GARIBALDI, Matthew”

De-blood. My neck loses power and head flops, cheeks slippy-moist. I struggle with the cuffs with whimper-grunts escape the throat tube.

“Matthew? Matty?…The GARIBALDI”

“I got mine”, I say, and I hear myself crying.

I am with Kendra Kinney again in the south hall, in the kitchen, and we are without supervision. We are to make sandwiches for me and her and Black Lincoln and Babalu, plus some other kids, for a nature walk with picnic that Dr. Spinach has organized. A man called Jungle Dan will take us. He has a beard.
Kendra Kinney face flakes into the mayo and talks to me about angels. I watch her spread the mayo on nine pieces of bread and see hers middle fingers are crooked like claws. She says angels come in all shapes and sizes and that you may not know you're one until you're dead and God tells you. I tell her that I once flied, but she doesn't hear. She is stacking breads, whole wheat rash flakes and mayo bricks, and saying how angels have to live big, too.
I stare at the breads with mayo, sticking together and wet, floppy when she holds them. I take one off the top and start to squeeze. It liquids and goes through my fingers. I take another. I am hardening down there. Almost blooded. Kendra Kinney stops flake mayo spreading and looks at me. Normally I would do something. I would do something now. Can't think what it is.
She stares at me- mine eyes and I- me at hers. I take a bite from the sandwich and "Good, please, thank you". I smile at her. She says I have the smile of an angel.

I am in the south hall with new friends Kendra Kinney, Black Lincoln and Babalu. Dr. Spinach tells me we all like Spiderman and ice cream and that today we will have just that. They are sitting, arms folded, chin-chested and Black Lincoln cries when I enter. "He's a crier," says Babalu. "A big black baby crier." Black Lincoln is fat, too.
"Now, Babalu, we don't talk like that here. Babalu?"
"Yes, Dr. Spinach?"
"Chin?"
"I got mine."
I got mine, too, but it's not my turn. Babalu is the bad kid today. I start to wrist mine chestal area but don't.
"Manners?"
"I got mine."
"Good." She turns to me. "Matthew."
Spinach introduces me as Matthew. Not Matty, not Special K, not even HIM. I am Matthew. I am here for the film.
"Yes, please, thank you," I say to them.
"Matthew, why don't you take a seat next to Kendra."
Kendra Kinney has a rash on hers face. When she smiles it scrunches and flakes onto her dress. Black Lincoln has no "pee pee", Kendra Kinney whispers, "because his daddy was a madman who now lives with angels."
I Yes, please, thank you, and wait for the film. I got mine.

I am white-roomed and yellow-ribboned, Live Big! T-shirted and clean, back straight, free-armed, not tied, on a chair at a table between me and Spinach, today with a bow in her hair. I like this. She led me here for videos and pizza to celebrate mine- my progress. In the corridors I shook the hands of other kids and doctors and Oscar and said Good morning, Please, Yes, thank you, like it says in the Big Manners! pamphlet Spinach made me read. Even the big food lady called me "Honeychile" and kissed mine- my forehead and said God bless you.
At the table Spinach shows me a new game called I Got Mine that we must play before we have pizza and videos. She is to read off parts of the body and I am to touch, not wrist, them and say, 'I got mine.'
"Left arm."
I find it.
"I got mine- EEeeenggg!"
Oscar rushes forward to adjust the Grammarator settings. He looks at Spinach.
"Should be OK now. Shall we continue?"
I nod.
"OK, chest."
I look down, put my hand over "Big!"
"I got mine."
"Ears."
This is easy.
"I got mine."
"Right arm."
"I got mine."
"Good. Neck?"
I think a minute, then palm mine- my neck tube, fingerslide deviceward, thumbpress whittlewirepull.
Something has happened. It is loose, but sparkless and there was no shock.
"Neck?"
We stare at each other, into ours eyes.
"Matthew?"
"I got mine."
She waits. "Good. Well, I think that's probably enough. Shall we have pizza?"
Oscar table places a sausage and cheese pizza. The lights dim and Spinach uses a remote to turn on the TV. I, me, Matty the Special K, appear from the view of a camera in the ceiling of the minty green room where I am held. Spinach never turns round to look at the face of me. She watches, I watch black and white Matty skinflapslam the walls, wrist crotchwise, glass gum the windows and tooth his, mine, those, these hands. Mine hands those! These?
I start to faint floorward. Oscar leaps, asshands me, lifts and chair-plops. The lights come on. Spinach turns round. I shake.
"I-"
I fleshpatch mine eye.
"I got mine."
"No. This isn't the game. Nobody but you knows-"
"I got mine."
Spinach sighs.
"It's OK, Matthew. I think we're making some real progress."