I didn’t read the text and the teacher scolded me for it. Oh, how I hate him, hate him with every fibre of my being. And in this very moment I swore in the name of all the gory gods that videogames and television have told me about, that I would make him suffer. Suffer, like I did.

I didn’t read the text, but do they ever read the texts? Careful reading, they call it. Scholars, disgusting creatures. Wicked surgery is their craft, dissecting all they can do. Analysing every single syllable, tearing apart the breathing, living being that is a text, ripping out its heart and laying it on a silver platter for all the world to see, all of that while proudly proclaiming that they alone have figured out “Was der Text uns damit sagen will.” And yet, they call me a murderer?

I am not a murderer, I am a cave dweller. I have descended into the unknown depths of that cave Mary told you about. You read it, but did you ever listen to her? Fool, they called me, did you not heed the warnings of all the wicked creatures, come Scorpio, come Death, of all the madness, all the crime and all the terror she summons in her monologue? O ye of little faith, I answered, did you not believe in her final promise, did you not understand that the reward for traversing that cave is gazing at the very Goddess of Poetry and Imagination herself? How could any soul that dares to call itself an artist not be tempted? How could I not be tempted to travel into the epicentre of the black hole that is my own mind?

Oh, the treasures I found buried in those depths. I shall not speak of the Dryads and the Muses that welcomed me into the inner sanctum, I shall not speak of the wonders and the sublime ecstasy that surrounded and imbued me at every step, for my words would only fall on deaf ears. I shall instead speak of the mission that the Goddess gave me: bring justice to my text.

So here I stand above my piece of paper that calls himself a human being. Winding like a worm, tied unto my desk. A desperate scream tries to break through his lips sewn shut. But no word will ever escape those threads, for the only message that this body will proclaim henceforth is now stitched into its burning skin:

YOU SHALL PRACTISE CARELESS READING YOU SHALL PRACTISE CARELESS READING YOU SHALL PRACTISE CARELESS READING