Inside the Cushion Palace by Holly Rose Gammage
Inside the cushion palace, all we do is smoke. There is little else we love more than a fresh pack of cigarettes. Of course, we must eat a little and sleep a little and empty our bowels and bladders so that we are well enough on the inside. But there is nothing much to talk about. If we needed to talk, we could.
Inside the cushion palace, the seasons do not make sense. Warm Februaries bring about diseases that cause peculiarities in the flesh. We did not understand the colour purple until we saw it on our own skin. Months beginning with J freeze over and usher in crabs. The crabs blow bubbles inside the cushion palace, their mean little mouths agape. The crabs are a nuisance during the months beginning with J. We twist off their legs and laugh and smoke and eat, though we are not truly hungry. We have our cigarettes.
Inside the cushion palace, we have decided, collectively, upon the things that we enjoy. We choose not to keep differing opinions. It would not do, inside the cushion palace. We have decided, most recently, that we enjoy the sensation of another’s feet inside our armpits. And we enjoy the sensation of our feet inside another’s armpits. It is best that it works both ways, we said. We decided that we all enjoyed the joke and laughed. It is mostly something we do while we smoke; something to complement the cigarettes. There are six things that go well with cigarettes. I will list them here for convenience: stacking empty cigarette cartons, imagining god, defecating, laying with our bellies to god, pushing our feet into another’s armpits, holding another’s feet in our armpits. We have decided that six is enough.
Inside the cushion palace, the walls are falling apart. One of us had a bad habit of pulling at threads, but that one of us doesn’t live inside the cushion palace anymore. Clods of yellow sponge bulge out of the walls like fatty deposits, and in some places, the walls are threadbare as fishing nets. We do not have the energy or resources to restore them. We do little work inside the cushion palace. But it is sad to see it go to ruin. We have been here so long that we have watched the smoke from our cigarettes turn the walls brown. Soon the clods of yellow sponge will turn brown, too, and then we will all be depressed.
Inside the cushion palace, we keep a large bowl filled with small coloured lighters. It is a museum, of sorts. There are ones with pictures on the side, and ones that have had the name of a place painted on by a very steady hand. We all like the one that says: Nice is nice. We all agree that it is very clever wordplay. That particular one is yellow with pink lettering, and makes a lovely chittering sound when it’s ignited. The lighters are things we collected along the way to the cushion palace. In life, we could always find someplace to buy a lighter. Even when we could not find cigarettes, we could always find a lighter. Lighters have a habit of being misplaced, forgotten or discarded. So, inside the cushion palace, we choose to keep them in a bowl. It is just something we decided, long ago.
Inside the cushion palace, we eat out of necessity, in occasional bouts. Our diet is limited, for convenience. There are large supplies of beef jerky, and boxes of cereal that we crunch through lazily without milk. There is no milk, inside the cushion palace. We keep foods that can be consumed with one hand, a cigarette alight in the other. We eat the crabs that come in the months beginning with J, and we once ate a calf, but that hasn’t happened since. One of us pushed a cigarette between the calf’s dead lips, and for a while we all looked and then decided it was in very bad taste. There is water inside the cushion palace, and we drink it down when our mouths dry out from the smoke. We quietly thank god, every day, for water and lighter fuel and our cigarettes.
Inside the cushion palace, we have no use for names. We all had names, of course, before we came inside the cushion palace. But our throats are very sore from smoking, so we pretend that we never had names, or else that we have forgotten how to pronounce them. We no longer know ourselves; we have been pretending for too long. Our names are a second language we didn’t think to keep at. Inside the cushion palace, things like that can happen. It is not so hard to believe. I have a pair of feet in my armpits, and I am smoking, but I cannot accurately say who the feet belong to. I cannot accurately say who is smoking, except that it is me.
Inside the cushion palace, I lay on my back and tap the ash from my cigarette and listen to one of us pissing. I inhale first and second-hand smoke and the vegetable warmth of urine. That is how the air is, inside the cushion palace. We would choke on it if we hadn’t been here so long. But we are polluted, all the way through. The cushion palace is polluted, too, but we do not know whether we have polluted it, or it polluted us. We tend to favour the latter. We do not like to think we are the reason for its ruin. The walls inside the cushion palace smell of excrement and crabmeat. There are no napkins of any kind.
Inside the cushion palace, the stacks of cigarette cartons are growing. Each stack is precisely one hundred cartons high. We are very strict about that sort of thing, inside the cushion palace. We feel so much pride towards those empty cartons. We counted seven-hundred-and-fifty-nine stacks this afternoon, but we would have to count again to be certain. It is a blessed time when we add a carton to a stack. We hope to use the stacks during the months beginning with J, to barricade against the crabs. It will take nine-hundred-and-eighty stacks to keep out the crabs. We have almost enough.
Inside the cushion palace, we spend much of our time with our eyes shut tight. We know how everything looks, inside the cushion palace, and we are tired of looking at things we know. With our eyes closed, we smoke and imagine god. We have a fairly clear picture, now. God is close, inside the cushion palace. Except in the months beginning with J, when there is no god, only crabs. We lay with our bellies to god, inside the cushion palace, as though we are each on an operating table. God is the surgeon, of course. We suck smoke into our chests and our thin bellies groan, and we picture god as a surgeon, witnessing it all.
Inside the cushion palace, one of us has night terrors. Night terrors are bad news inside the cushion palace. We use large pieces of beef jerky to stop the screaming, so the rest of us can sleep. We have a large supply of beef jerky; it doesn’t matter if some is wasted. We have all had night terrors inside the cushion palace, at one time or another. They are very bad news, and usually involve crabs or the calf’s head with a cigarette between its dead lips. It is a shame that we have to sleep inside the cushion palace. We would much rather smoke the whole night through.
Inside the cushion palace, there are pieces missing. We jam packs of cigarettes into the gaps where pieces should be. It is similar to completing a jigsaw with eggshell. That is the only way I can explain how it looks inside the cushion palace. One of us looked for the missing pieces, once. But we do not know where the missing pieces went missing. It is very hard to find missing pieces inside the cushion palace. We only know where the pieces are that haven’t yet gone missing. Those pieces are all around.
Inside the cushion palace, we look like family, though we are not. It is something we decided when we came inside the cushion palace: we are not family. So, we have no family, but we have many things, inside the cushion palace. We have cigarettes. And cigarette cartons. And we have boxes of cereal and beef jerky. And we have a large bowl filled with small coloured lighters. And we have water. Inside the cushion palace, we have god. Except in the months beginning with J, when the cold brings crabs inside the cushion palace. In those months, we have crabs inside the cushion palace. But inside the cushion palace, we are missing pieces, and we cannot accurately say who we are. Inside the cushion palace, we are missing.
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Holly Rose Gammage has a BA in Creative Writing and an MA in Creative and Critical Writing from the University of Winchester. Her stories have been broadcast on BBC Radio and she is the winner of the Kurious Arts short story competition 2019/2020. Holly works as a bookseller when she is not writing short fiction.
Twitter: @holly_gammage