Julia Dorit Mergel
Julia Dorit Mergel was born in 1991 in Darmstadt, Germany. Soon enough, she learned to hold a pen and write every „J“ the mirror-inverted way. Script and calligraphy came next, and suddenly, a focus was found: storytelling. Julia went to film school to create images with words and a language from imagery. Her films were shown at international festivals and on German television. Her prose and poetry, however, are still rarely seen out in the wild.
wallpapers that bear [my] load
Fifty-four days and sixteen hours. Recover might be the wrong word. Or exactly the right one, as I re-cover my body with layers of sheets, while it moulders together with the wallpapers of my room. I counted the hours of not leaving my bed. However, it would be more than sad to put those hours into Arabic numbers that describe my time outside of down-filled marshmallowy mountains. I don’t know if it’s my hair that is slowly transforming into something more featherish, or if the pillow-piercing feathers seem more hairy by the minute, but it’s clear that my centre of gravity has perfectly hollowed itself into the mattress.
While calculating once more the time embodying my sorrow, I watch the alcove’s spider. She looks a bit odd, one leg pointing in a weird direction, and somehow, there even seem to be more than 8 of those legs? I send my eye out to wander over the rims of my room, where five walls collide into a ceiling, counting my spiders en passant. Five, six, … number seven is missing. I re-scan it all. Six. All the other dots consist of the flies and midges my eight-legged friends saved me from, leaving them to hang and dry, and finally devour like a well-smoked ham whenever it overcomes them. Six. The gaze stuck on the alcove-spider, I observe her rigidity as well as internal pulsation. My eyes don’t coorperate on the order to make an effort. Instead, I feel for my favourite gadget. The phone’s screen presents a tenfold digital zoom of number 7 (the short-side-wall-next-to-alcove-spider). Sixteen legs, they don’t even look odd anymore, at least after you’ve figured out which ones belong to which spider’s bodies. The thick, round abdomen, a BBL amongst spiders’ bodies, has a firm hold on number 7. Alcove-spider’s body is shivering with pleasure on top of the smaller spider, as if it were close to climaxing. Not for a second do I feel weirded out because I am watching the copulation of two spiders, and even somewhat aroused by it. After all, pornography never did anything for me, and my lack of energy no longer allows me to set my netpals up for thirst traps. As if anyone even believed me if I said I was hot and wild, apart from my body’s temperature (that, indeed, had been in a steady state near an amusement park for fifty-four days – whoooooooop!). I mean, why should I be ashamed if there’s actual sexual activity going on in my room, grinding on my randiness? Gustave Doré’s image of Arachne comes to my mind, in thoughts I trace her oveflexed torso, before flinching in sync with number 7. She climbs off lady alcove while I stay under my sheets, breathing even more heavily than already granted.
The blanket clings to my body. It must weigh me down with about three pounds more than before, while I refill my body with the same amount of water. With that, I’ve finished the fifth bottle that re-fashions my chamber into the land of the water bed. I creak out of it, separating my skin from my mattress. Better get replenishments, now that my body just soaked up some rehydrating goodness. The bottle is swallowed by a bag, while I put on the size XXL dress shirt that, by now, can stand on its own, thanks to the salt incrustation. My feet don’t even bother to leave the ground, scuffing slowly towards the kitchen. Clear liquid reclaims one transparent hull after another, the strap cutting into my sluggish flesh. I grab a crumpled-up date for the road and bring my buttocks down until they reach the sheets. Bottle after bottle, a parade surrounding my bed, a see-through wall, ready for an effortless grasp. My bedside table aches from all the dirty dishes and the stack of postcards, bought on an island but never sent or written.
Returned to the fortress of my pillows, at last. The clammy blanket touches my skin, just like the pillow’s part that my cheek was nestling into just a moment prior. Good thing I stopped smelling myself four weeks ago, like this I can ignore any upcoming urge to change the sheets. After all, there’s no one but my seven spider and me that even comes close to my odour. My head hyperextends above the feathery fortress, as so often, the gaze fixed on that rip, that well-known tear below my ceiling’s wallpaper. I think about the amounts of straw, dust, and debris that would fall down on me like snow if I just slid a scraper beneath it to tear down great lengths of the load-bearing old paper. The spackled crack in my alcove’s upper left corner seems like it is planning to give up under the weight as well. My walls are working, for me, if I can’t do it anymore. As for my wallpapers, they carry all, that I can no longer hold. Maybe that’s actually what I am lacking? An old, restive coating of agglutinated matter, tightly surrounding my body, binding my inmost self? Sounds almost cosy. And sensible. No transparency for outside looks, no piercing and permeating. It would just be a shame if alcove-spider decides to come visit me in my sleep. While I think about my paper walls and what kind of creature I would be when I burst out of my cocoon, it’s already the simple thought of mixing glue that wears me down. I continue staring at the rips and cracks in my ceiling, ignoring those in my very own shell.
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