XXXV. Six Feet Deep

9

Macbeth

Chicago, Illinois

Heart oʼ Chicago Motel

October 31st, 2014

Time: 6:30 AM

__________________________

Crackcrack.

Macbethʼs hunger was a bottomless pit inside him; never satisfied, never filled.

Crippled, limp against the water that funneled out of the bathroom, Macbeth showered with a sense of metaphysical-ness – taking in everything he felt like he were both a spirit and a human. Panting as the water hosed him down, he listened to the pipes gurgle like a baby and hissed as the cold water slapped his marred chest with the force of a whip.

Water sputtered out of the pipes, anemically cold, and as the pipes let out a staggering groan, the sounds amplified, the heat grew warmer and warmer, and he grew trapped. The color in his skin returned, the pale becoming tanner slowly and steadily, but as the blood jutted down his body with the force of fiery pellets, the water lapped at him like little angry waves, and without warning – his eyes grew darker, vicious, ashen like the moon on a blustery eve.

Crackcrackcrackcrack.

Staring into the hotel bathroom's mirror, Macbeth wiped away the sodden steam and massaged the grime and gore from his hair. Staring intently, deeply. The scathing pellets nipped at his skin greedily, feeding the foggy illusion, and his body clenched under the jets of steaming hot water that was once frigid as hell, portly tears gushed from his skin and bled out of his eyes. His cheekbone was stark with the brand of the crimson cross on his flesh, his bone hollow and his skin weak, sickly; his face a bush of tangled, lewd hair.

Crackcrackcrackcrackcrackcrack–

His skin broke underneath him. Cracking underneath the dim of the phosphorescent light. Gritting his teeth, his eyes damn near bulging out of the sockets, Macbeth shifted again. The brittle, decaying bone of the creature inside him shrieking, crying, sobbing, creaking, snarling. Slamming his fists against the sink, the porcelain chips splitting his skin as they collapsed onto the floor. Snapping the bone. Ripping the flesh. Tearing, clawing, worming and weeding out the dead skin.

And he would stave it off–

Crackcrackcrackcrackcrackcrackcrack

– until he tore everything to the ground.

Just like Master Shakespeare said he would.