Project 8

 He isn't that human.The design flaws are all absent, it's unnerving but pretty hot. Like, fucking with something designed to your precise specifications; some kind of high spec Love Doll, the kind that got animated by a very bored and evil god.

I'm trying to impress this maverick film-maker by grinding some telegraph wire. It's really high up, thirty feet or so. I fall off a lot and splutter a mess of bright blood, an arc across the concrete. It leaves me pristine and unmarked, every time. Pretty soon the school-yard looks like the floor of an abattoir, but I've got nothing to show for it.

He is naked on his hands and knees on some kind of occasional table. He's trying to look at the screen through his legs. The table protests, like it would prefer to hold an inkstand or a small bowl of cherries.

"You're so shit at this" He lifts his head and smiles, like my lack of skill is very pleasing.

My refusal to sustain visible injury is becoming annoying, plus the smoking with no hands is making my eyes water. I shrug, like my lack of skill is only in his mind and I'm playing like this intentionally. He buys it, kind of. Looks through his legs again then grimaces at me.

"Oh man - you're fucking yourself up on purpose"

I should have some kind of graze, at least. A bandage? I spit out the cigarette and tell him this. On the screen, I look pretty much like him.

Salt

Speak platitudes like: enough is enough, or
If you put one chair on top of another chair then it's inevitably not stable.
It isn't necessary, you don't need to reach that.
But you hold me on the kitchen floor in the light from the refrigerator when I cry because I can't stem the streams of salt pouring from my fingertips. Not: there is no salt, how could there be? More, it doesn't matter, we have plenty. Don't cry, we can sweep it up later.
When you speak on the phone to the mother of your children I am there beside you taping paper bags over my hands.
Good idea, you mouth.