Ad Hoc Fiction

Too Much of Anything Can Kill You
At first, it was just an innocuous shopping list. She’d placed it on her arm where it was easy to read. But when she tried to remove it, she found the low-tack adhesive had stuck fast.

In time, to-do lists, telephone numbers, don’t forgets, and reminders started to multiply capaciously. Post-it notes were peeled from their stacks and added to her personage in quick succession to conceal the tasks completed or left undone.

When an email address became embedded in her elbow she started to wear long sleeved tops. Her clothes became baggy, misshapen, housing the sticky appendages.

Her identity slowly smothered; she became a smorgasbord of fluttering patchwork squares, concealing layers of wafer-thin paper cuts, tiny slices in her skin where ink tattooed her veins.

She finally freed herself from the burden of every day responsibilities crushed beneath the weight of words.