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I Cannot Have What I Do Not Want

         When the shaking starts again, you think it's just you.
         After all, the cramps have been coming steadily for the last few hours or so. At first it wasn't so bad, just a few rippling tremors in your stomach. Not a problem, you thought. I can deal with this, surely I can find some by then. That was then. Before the well ran dry. Before you ran out of outlets and options and passes. That was then. Now your stomach feels like it's eating itself, a thousand icy knives carving you up like some bloody lost roast. You're shivering. It's so cold out here, with your face to the ground and the wind slapping insults into your body like a sadistic boxing coach. Oh God it's so cold, but you can't stop sweating. For some reason the world is ice and you're soaked in sweat. Like you're going to keep sweating and keep sweating and there'll be nothing left but some desiccated corpse curled up on the ground in a slowly evaporating pool of tainted salt. All I need is one. Please, God, just one more.
         The cramps come again and you feel like throwing up and the tremor makes you lick your lips and you taste dried bile and realize it hasn't been that long since you last vomited. And even then there was precious little to expel, you just gagged and gagged like you were trying to turn yourself inside out and then the cop told you to move along and you were going to say something, this time you were, tell him what the hell does he know because he did this to you, they all did this to you and you were going to let him have it. You really were.
         But the buzzing in your head started again, locusts and ants and beetles all drowning out your voice and then she grabbed you and dragged you along. And now you're here. And so are the bugs and the vultures and the scum all crawling all over your body. Ah, it's all going to hell. We're already there. You're already there. The ground feels like it's rattling. Maybe it's you. God, how can you shiver and shiver and never get warm? Even she feels cold next to you as she whimpers and shifts, caught in her own desolate nightmare. Why are you here? Why can't you think? When did this happen? How? This shouldn't be. It shouldn't be like this. But there's nowhere to go. Your only goal and your only path and your only place is down. Down down down. But you don't want to go. And you may have to. And you're scared to find that you don't care. About that. About anything.
         And the ground is quivering with a pensive trembling. Next to you she screams and cries out. Her fingers brush against you and for a second they feel like maggots. Snarling something indeterminate you slap her away, wondering if she even notices. A second later you're filled with liquid regret and if you had anything left in you to cry, you would. God. Lord, dear lord. This is pointless. What's the point? What the hell is the point?
         Then with your face to the sandpaper like concrete you're sobbing, crying and shaking and the pain just won't stop it just won't go away and goddammit you want to just vomit right here face down and drown in your own stinking blood and juices and let them find you here, let them realize what they did to you and that would be that. Everyone would see. How wrong they were to turn you away. Bastards. All of them. But there's nothing to even fashion your hate from anymore, and the chill leeching into your spasming body is just adding to the pervasive numbness that's slowing spreading like an insidious oil slick. Even she can't warm you, just as you can't warm her. There's nothing left. Your clothes, worn and dirty as they are, won't be protection. Even the layer of dirt you can feel growing on you like a cancer, all grime and filth and unwashed sickness, radiating from the center of your core, is nothing more than an anesthetic that does everything but kill the pain. There's nothing there.
         But the roar is growing louder. That you can feel. And the wind is rising, cutting right through the holes in your veins, slicing its frigid way to your heart, spreading ever outward. She cries out again, maybe calls your name, maybe not. It doesn't matter. The world is trying to burst your ears. The buzzing is rising. It won't stop. Please God make it stop.
         Then a booming bellow punctures the skin of the world, ramming through the air past you. Your teeth grit and lock together and for a second you think this is it and you think maybe that wouldn't be so bad and it won't stop reaching crescendos and falling and reaching until you feel pulled in a dozen directions, a beaten advisor to your own quartering, all your thoughts struck down finally by a monster with the voice of smoke and oil and industry.
         And then suddenly it's quiet. The bellow fades into a rattling echo, almost mockingly so. It's dark and your eyes are closed and you never want to open them again. There's blood in your mouth where you bit your tongue. It tastes like ash.
         The cramps drive their vicious claws into you again and as you gasp and clutch your tender stomach and roll back and forth you wonder how much longer will this last and oh God you realize it's only been five minutes since you last wondered that.          
         And with a half strangled sob you realize you can't do this anymore.
         And you realize you don't want to.
         And you know what the roaring was really trying to tell you.
         It wasn't mocking.
         It was trying to help. In its own strange, detached way, it was trying to help you the only way it could. You find that part of you loves it a little for that. That love warms your cringing body, just a little, and you think, sadly, that maybe if you had had a tiny bit of that love injected into your veins, maybe it would have made a difference. Maybe it would have helped.
         But it didn't come. And with only a small bit of sadness you know this is the only help you can get.
         Still, you're okay with it. You have no other choice.
         So you open your eyes and turn to her and she stares back at you without seeing, her eyes sunken half moons in the filtered light, her lips dry and cracked, her hair tangled and torn and oh God she's never looked as beautiful to you as she does now because you can see past what life is trying to hide and you hope she can do the same, and you take her hand gently, feeling dirt and sweat congealing into a sensitive slickness on her palm and without even saying anything, without even saying a damn thing, you can tell she knows. That's good. Because you're tired of fighting. You really are.
         And as you start to explain in your cracked, bleeding voice, you can feel ever so softly the rumbling beginning again under your body, trying to infuse new energy into your wasted frame. Begging you to wait, just a little longer. Soon. Oh God, soon. Let it be soon. Please.
         As she listens, you feel the crawling tension that's been knotted inside you finally start to relax. Just a little. But that's all you need. All you ever needed. Just one beautiful plan to make it all right again.
         And now you have it.
         Now . . . now you know just what to do.