[Verse 1 — spoken word only, female smoky raspy voice, intimate and observant, gradually unsettled] I reach the hospital as the entrance sign flickers out The Mountain Man is blocking the doors Breadcrumbs in his pockets Another duck joke already leaving his mouth I ask for the doctor He starts the next one before I finish Then he lunges I duck beneath his arm Turn him into the revolving door And let the glass finish the conversation I can still hear him arguing with it As I step inside The smell catches at the back of my tongue Sour disinfectant over something sweet and rotten The sort of smell you realise You have been breathing through your mouth to avoid The specimens are still here Trolleys abandoned across the corridor Sheets sinking into spaces Where whole people used to be The doctor took them apart with his writing Piece by piece And the pieces still want the last word Jack The whisper comes from under a sheet The doctor Another mouth Farther down the hall Mr Meow A D Four names None of them mine For a moment the walls lean inward A face appears in the wired glass Mine until I look directly at it I open my notebook Press my thumb against my own name The letters stay still I keep walking My notes show the same accusations Passing from mouth to mouth Each one citing the last They have been investigating me too Apparently I am something of a phenomenon Humble Lexi Find the doctor before you start enjoying your own publicity Why him though His face is hardly the question that brought me here I want to know where this work comes from Why his darkness keeps drawing me toward it His notes are so careful Even where the thoughts turn ugly A correction tucked into a margin A sentence left open As though he expected someone else to finish it Then the handwriting changes I put the chair there Lower down Give my fucking body back I stop turning the page Somebody here knows him well enough To return things he thought he had lost And wants something back The closer I get to his work The more this feels like remembering Something I cannot quite reach I check the wards The theatre The narrow office behind reception Nothing Just that smell seeping through the plaster As though the building is breathing over my shoulder The endgame is near I feel it before I let myself say it Please Do not let him be waiting on the wrong side of it This place has Resident Evil corridors And Silent Hill visibility I should have become an e-girl At least somebody might have taught me Which fucking doors to leave alone Wait What is that in the corner That chair was empty a moment ago I have not heard a footstep Should I get closer [Verse 2 — female rapper smoky raspy voice, hard battle rap, tight internal rhymes, controlled aggression, 36 bars] They sent a girl to do a man’s job four men couldn’t finish Four exams four flatlines that’s a hell of a clinic They keep asking who’s behind me like a girl can’t be this vicious Five detectives one delusion none can mind their fucking business Brutus needs a sewer clown to make his punches frightening All that borrowed terror and the bars still need rewriting Pennywise again you couldn’t buy a fresh idea Take away the movie and there’s nothing left to fear Wren turned a guessing game into a full time occupation Still can’t place a punch but thinks a name’s a revelation Four aliases deep still ducking basic verification You investigated me and lost your own imagination Jack Empire needs a mask to make his little theory fit If I wrote those bars I’d keep my name away from it Twenty mouths repeat a lie that’s twenty people still mistaken That’s a fucking waiting room you haven’t built a nation Mountain Man brought duck jokes like he’d found a secret weapon Quacked through his introduction then got folded at reception Living at that height and still this far beneath the standard Whole flock in your lyrics not a single bar has landed Unit Seven brought a corkboard when the battle needed verses Stringing names together doesn’t make a string of words hit All that thread and still your story’s coming loose at both ends You need half the scene to help you lose against my own pen The doctor spoke like royalty that word won’t leave my head Sinder called me royal long before the sickness spread Was she teaching me our history through the stories that she read Is the reason I’m drawn here in the things she never said Could Whut3ver share the realm she kept concealed inside those lessons Was the princess in her stories me before I knew to question Does the pull I feel toward him mean our histories connected Were those riddles preparation for a crown I wasn’t expecting The endgame’s getting closer I can feel the last door calling I pray I haven’t come here just to watch a kingdom falling If I’m the princess of that realm then what was I sent here to do Sinder when you called me royal was he part of what you knew
