Did the seed ever exist | Fishnet 002

My period hasn't come yet, it's been three days late. Sitting on the toilet, she tore the blood-free sanitary pad from her panties and put on a new one. She used to make preparations early. She arrived at the appointed place ten minutes before meeting people. Before speaking, she rehearsed it twice in her mind. Before summer arrived, she threw her skirts and shorts into the washing machine for a few laps. The matter of "postponing" made her intolerable.

She told herself it wasn't a coincidence or I should have bought a lottery ticket. But when the teacher in statistics class said that small-probability events can be regarded as almost impossible, she still sank. Even if the probability is one in ten thousand, as long as she is the one, it becomes one hundred percent for her.

The statistics teacher said the get out of class was over, and the students walked out of the classroom one after another. No one walked with her. Living off-campus with her boyfriend, away from the collective life, left her with little opportunity to develop intimacy with her classmates. Studying alone, going to class, going to the restaurant to eat, she listened to the laughter of the girls around her, and suddenly had a strange feeling: I look no different from them, but there may be a seed in my belly that no one knows about. in gestation. If someone had clairvoyance, he would see that the other girls' bodies were clean and mine was a mess.

If the seed is breaking through the ground, sprouting, struggling to straighten up, how can my body hold it. It would swell me up, like the bumps in the roots of the roadside make the road bumpy.

She thought of going to an experimental music gig once, and there was a girl in the band with a young, sharp face but a belly bulging high under a baggy dress. During the performance, she would sometimes put her hands behind her waist and slowly pace up and down with her belly held out. That posture was no different from that of any pregnant woman from ancient times to the present. Girls write bloody lyrics and spit them out of their mouths in a playful manner. She sang a mass of flesh that gradually took on a human form, eyes and lips beginning to be observed.

She also thought that when she was in the driving school, a sister in the same class had already given birth to a second child. Once she asked the sister curiously if she would have stretch marks after giving birth. The sister said why not, when I went to the toilet, I gave you see. In the stinky and stinky women's toilet of the driving school, my sister lifted her shirt to expose her stomach, which was covered with folds and stripes like old tree bark . Before she could restrain her surprised expression, her sister grabbed her hand and placed it on the folds, and the touch made her tremble. It was flabby and shriveled, without any elasticity, as if in her twenties, her belly had aged first and became a seventy-year-old woman.

Maybe she could see the discomfort on her face. My sister said that her stomach was too big when she was pregnant, and the skin was loosened and she couldn't go back. Sister said, don't be afraid, not everyone is like this. She tried to hide the nausea that was surging in her heart and nodded. Flies fly around them.

Why do you clearly recall the touch of stretch marks at this moment? Sitting in the dining room, she suddenly lost her appetite. The seed grows silently, draining her young body little by little, turning it into a dead wood that is dying quickly. The body melts into the body, and the body breeds the body. When the new body touches the foul air of this world, it is the turning point of the old body from prosperity to decline.

Disgusting sensations rose from the depths of the body, and the noise in the restaurant became as distant as it was in another world. She picked up her plate and left her seat, feeling exhausted with every step she took. The seeds were rooting downward, and the roots stretched in all directions, ripping her flesh to pieces.

Back home in the evening—if that temporary shelter could be called home, she began to feel hungry, and after eating a small packet of nuts, she peeled an orange. Her boyfriend heard her movement and said, did you not eat dinner at night? His eyes were still fixed on the computer screen. She hummed, feeling a little bored in her heart. A few days ago, she tried to describe to her boyfriend the anxiety and fear of breaking the ground, but the relaxed look on her face made her give up and say it again.

It may or may not matter if there are seeds. I don't want to own this soil.

Sitting on the toilet, she thought when she saw the red blood on the sanitary napkin.

At that time, she was stunned for a few seconds, then breathed a sigh of relief, her shoulders slumped like a deflated ball. After a while, she laughed softly.

Did that seed ever exist?

(The first draft was written on 2019.8.24 and revised on 2021.6.21)

"Fishing Nets" is a series of story clips taken from daily life, similar to street snapshots, to freeze the rushing crowd. Trying to catch growing desires, miscellaneous thoughts, and hidden emotions.