SYNTHETIC GRASS

Tiger is keeping my head to the wall with his hand. Tiger has been keeping my blood in very good the past week. Tiger likes to see himself in the mirror. I think he is scared when he doesn’t. Tiger looks like my older sister sometimes. Sometimes he is my old neighbor. Sometimes he is no one. Tiger likes it when I tell him what I’m thinking. Tiger scares me so bad I piss myself and then he hates me. Mostly he hates me for no reason.

It’s hard to hear Tiger through his mask sometimes. I tell him I want to hear him better and he claps and pats me on the shoulder and says Bunny, that’s good, but you mean you want to understand me better. He still doesn’t take the mask off. My right ear is cupped to the wall and the left one to his palm. I can hear the ocean. Tiger is scared of the ocean. Tiger doesn’t like water. He forgets a lot to give me any. 

Tiger puts his finger in my butt. This hurts me but I feel sorry. Sorry I tell Tiger. Tiger sighs and it sounds like a growl and he lets off my head and takes his finger out. Poor Bunny Tiger tells me. He fake cries with his hands in fists at the holes of his mask which makes me real cry out of my eyes. Tiger takes off his mask and chews on the latex ear of it. I want to hit you Tiger says but he doesn’t. He spins around and falls to the floor. Bunny, Bunny, Bunny, Tiger says What do I look like now he asks. Sad I say. What not how, idiot he says. 

Tiger’s mask is a tiger but he thinks I don’t know that. Tiger can’t stand up for himself. I hear him when he talks to his mom on the phone. Tiger used to like boys and girls but now he only likes me. His mom is scared because she doesn’t know where he is. He’s standing across the bed and staring at me. Tiger doesn’t like when I look back at him. Don’t look at me Tiger says. He throws a pillow at my head and turns the TV on with the remote. I think he mixed up what he meant to throw. I understand him just fine. 

Tiger’s watching the footage again. I have to pee. I push on my penis with my hands to hold it in. Tiger turns around and sees me doing this. You’re a disgusting old pervert Tiger says. Tiger points at the TV and asks does this get you hard, does what happened to me get you hard. Tiger is staring at me but I don’t look back at him. Go to the bathroom and jack off, you freak Tiger says then throws the remote at me which misses and hits the window blinds. A flash of outside bright comes through. I don’t like when bad things happen in daylight.

I look at myself in the mirror in the bathroom. Tiger’s right: I am old. When I see myself like this—face sculpted with wear and purpuric freckling, his temper camouflaged in my skin’s natural decay, hair whitened and weak like poisoned understory, eyes glazed and glossed and taking harsh gulps of themselves sunken into their greasy sockets— I feel sick. I want to reach into my face and pull it out of itself. I want to no longer be captive in my own home. I want to raise the TV above my head and crush Tiger’s-

The lights turn off. It is Tiger. He is putting my mask over my head and the latex is pulling on my skin. Tiger turns the lights back on and I see him in the mirror through the eyeholes. I knew it Tiger says and hits the back of my head. This makes the long ears of my mask flop down into my face for a second. You always forget he says I can’t trust you. Tiger takes me out of the bathroom and back into the bedroom. Just sit there, Bunny Tiger says. He points to the bed and unpauses the TV. Ridiculous he says. I sit on the bed and say nothing. I didn’t get to pee. 

Bunny has been looking at himself more often than the times I catch him, I suspect. I also suspect he is more lucid than he appears. I’ve internalized and thus dissipated a good amount of paranoia since coming here—chalking up my doubts about him to his exponentially evident senility—but I can’t seem to suppress the feeling that he’s engaging in a mild… humoring of me. Regardless of how deep his belief in my reality ends up being, there is some evidence that he would have to be completely obtuse to refute: the footage, of course, as well as the two wounds on my torso and their shapes. Perhaps this is why he seemingly “goes along” with some things. Perhaps he is then even smarter than I think. 

Bunny is shutting up (for once) while I’m watching the footage. He used to cringe and make stupid, meaningless comments to himself when it was playing. Now he stares at me as opposed to the screen, which I hate—watching me watch it, surely holding in some ill-fitted outreach of comfort. On the other hand, he does seem, recently, to be interested in understanding me better, so he could also be studying my reactions. Either way, his reactions are never right; always bringing up something I’ve already thought of, pestering me with ridiculous questions, having some sort of disruptive bodily function.

As if timed perfectly to maximize my anger, Bunny pisses himself on the bed behind me. He has had so many slip-ups today, I can’t take much more. I take out my dick and start pissing on his face, Since we want to make such a big mess I tell him. It’s not really his face, just his bunny mask, but I’m aiming for the holes in it. This reminds me of the game at the carnival where you shoot water into a clown’s mouth with a gun. This pisses me off more. Bunny, I say, why can’t you let me live. I think he is crying but I can’t be sure because the sound of the piss hitting the latex is extraordinarily loud. I guess I just have a strong stream. 

Tiger thinks a lot of things about me, I know. He wants me to be something I’m not. I forget which is which now. When he first came here I felt really sad for him. I watched what happened to him. Maybe he doesn’t know that. Tiger thinks I keep things from him. I really just can’t remember what he knows and what he doesn’t. When he first came here I thought he was handsome. That’s why I helped him. I’m stupid for that. I’m sorry for Tiger. I’m sorry I tell him. 

Tiger puts his penis back in his pants and looks at me for a long time. He is breathing really heavy. Bunny he says. Yes I say. Please go away now Tiger says. You did too much today he says. Please please just go away now. I’m not saying anything but he talks like I am. The bed is soaked. I don’t think Tiger will want to sleep in it. This makes me feel sorry. Tiger doesn’t like when he can’t see me. He doesn’t like when he can either. I don’t know where to go. I take off my mask. I get down on the ground and crawl under the bed. Tiger sighs. I feel him sit back down on the bed. I hear the footage start playing again. 

I haven’t been under the bed since I was a kid. Not this bed, just a bed. I must have been a kid a long time ago. I lay on my back and stare at the bed’s wood frame. There is something sticking out of one piece of wood. I reach and touch it. I grab the handle and pull it out. Tiger says something but I can’t hear it. I hold it in my hand. I can see a little bit of myself in the reflection of the blade. I remember now that this is my bed. Tiger moves and I feel it. I think he’s crying. 

Bunny’s had a miraculous stroke of genius: he has gotten under the bed. This may be the first and only thoughtful thing he’s done for me. This move solves a paradox of mine very simply; I want Bunny close but far. It had not occurred to me that keeping him hidden in the room would serve the same purpose until now. Now I can truly watch the footage in peace for the first time since obtaining it. I’ll admit that I haven’t been able to watch it all the way through without some sort of interruption as of now, but with Bunny under the bed, the opportunity presents itself decadently. 

The footage was salvaged for me by an attractive, young PA who allowed me to flirt with him by saying I would make sure to disrobe tastefully in sight of the cameras for him before showering and who was recording the 24-hour livestream on his laptop so he “never missed a thing I did”. While I was in the hospital, the same PA gave me the address of his grandfather’s apartment which was allegedly uninhabited since its former tenant had recently been committed to a nursing home and the current landlord was procrastinating on cleaning the otherwise leasable space. When I arrived, the door was unlocked. 

At first, I inevitably thought Bunny a part of it as well, but as I spoke with him—noticing the quirks in his speech, the erraticism of his memory—I suspended the idea of his involvement, potentially to my own downfall. He may still have played a part. He may still be playing one. The truth is: I needed at least one person to trust. I needed someone to help me recover. I was still wounded. I was still hunted. And there I was— am— in the footage: swimming in that shallow pool alone, ignorant. 

The show was intended to be a more “balls to the wall” (as the audition website had phrased it) version of previously attempted reality programs of the same kind. A constructed, isolated house. A group of strangers from varying backgrounds. Roommates. Uninterrupted surveillance. No challenges or end goal. No prize money to be won. Real life, televised. The production company responsible had to develop its own streaming service to host both the edited episodes and live stream from the house to bypass censoring of any kind. “Yes, you will be on full display.” 

I was swimming in the pool after a fully broadcasted threesome of which I was the central figure. Having just taken a cock in my ass while I fucked a pussy, my legs were sore and I took to floating underwater rather than doing laps. Being in the house so long, I had just started to think of myself—my body—objectively. I was beginning to see myself from the outside. There was an illusory unease to living. There was a muffled sound from above water. 

I surfaced to screams. I wanted to laugh. I was watching myself hold it back. One of them was here, there. He was covered in roommate blood, standing in the doorway to the backyard. I was covered in water, standing on the sports turf lining the pool’s edge. We are motionless on TV. He stabbed me twice before I fell back into the water. On the screen, he’s stumbling around before he falls onto the concrete path and stops moving. In the water, my blood spread out, stung my eyes. I’m not surfacing and the pool is becoming dark. They have done this to me. I could see myself sinking. I see myself sinking. I felt it. I feel it again: the misery of a caged animal. 

by Bex Peyton

Bex Peyton is a writer, visual artist, and cyborg prostitute. Their work has appeared in Expat Press, SELFFUCK, SCAB, Punk Noir, FERAL DOVE, DON’T SUBMIT!, Hobart, Agon Journal, and others.