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You sure are in a real bad way, because shit if your piemaker didn't go and break down on you. You don't know how that fucker even works, and you never wanted to know, 'cause you just put your motherfucking sneeze in there and it went and heated it up all nice and turned your sour old slime into sweet delicious miracle pies. Now the slime still goes in and the pies still come out all hot and delicious but the miracles aren't no good no more.
You try to look inside to see who all went and let your miracles out but you get nothing but the hurt in your claws, thick purple that peels and slides all off and bites you every time you touch anything. Of course it does, of course, because a miracle isn't a miracle if a motherfucker goes looking for it and tries to trap it all up in his piemaker, but you need those miracles, your skin all shivers and shakes without them, your insides all doing some sick ass cartwheels without them, so you eat your pies even though you don't much like them anymore.
When you was just a little grub one day you went out swimming. You slipped and slid through the water like you were born there, like your limbs are fins and you drink in salt and water like a fish, you wriggled and crawled, you rocked through the waves but the longer you swum the less you were a fish and the more water you drank, heavy and churning like a stone in your digestive sac. Your whole self was more tired than you knew you could be, like a fire was burning in your veins and no matter how much water you drank that fire didn't go out. Your whole self and even the water around you got heavy like sopor and you went under, clawing for the air and the sky but going down, down, down, your pusher hammering inside you like it wanted to make a break for it and your chest all heavy like screaming but silent as anything.
You think your Old Goat got you back to land that time but you don't remember if that's true or if that's still happening because you still feel drowning all around you, the pressure pushing you so tight you might explode, and maybe your whole life since then was just a dream to make the dying sweeter and you know he ain't coming for you, he ain't got a minute to spare for your sorry ass. Ain't no one here but the seadwellers, harsh faces twisted in cruel laughter at you all alone below the water thinking you could be a fish but you are just a troll and they each got a lusus to teach them how but not you, never you. And even them are gone once you're dragged deep enough down into the black.
You wake up choking and screaming and you know you ain't in the water, you are in your hive, it's only the walls and all that don't look right, but you're used to this because these are the bad miracles, the ones that got in your pies. Those laughing faces are no sea dwellers, they just your clown brethren on the wall watching down on you. Their faces are twisted and they don't look right but you put your faith in your circus brothers and you know the wicked Carnival ain't all mirth and laughter, there's dark things in the shadows too. Maybe these are the miracles you're meant to be seeing but you don't feel good, your walls wiggling like a funhouse mirror, your block burning hot like it's under the stage lights and you still got that fire going in your veins. And you need more pie and that scares you, but you need it and you shouldn't fight the miracles, so you take another dripping taste of the shit.
You don't want nothing to do with these miracles though, this drowning feeling, the way it brings blood and guts and little spiders that skit skit skitter under your skin. And then you realize it's not your piemaker that's broke, it's you. You got something bad inside you, something unholy and wicked like a freak show all twisted up with your pusher. You know because of all the blood, the twisted faces of trolls you know and don't and the way you think about the crunch of the bone and the shiny brightness of blood, you do, sometimes even when you don't have any pie to show it to you. That badness got in you and it rotted your miracles, rotted from the core of your thinkpan and crawling like silverfish in your blood.
You want it out, you need to get it out, so you bash your head against the wall of your hive until you hear and crack and then you pull and claw at the crack, at your throat, at your eyes, at the base of your horns until your fingers are wet and sticky and purple. And once you done that, once you got some of that wickedness out you feel better because your lookstubs turn black and you don't see nothing at all.
You wake up and you got the shakes something bad, and the thought of more pie turns somersaults in you but the thought of no more pie does too. Your hand flops around like a fish and it can't find no tin and you realize you're shaking but someone is also shaking you, too, and you look up and realize your best friend is there. His face is all worried and his eyes are big and round.
"Slow down, brother, you got the room all spinning on me," you say. You feel like shit stirred up, baked, and set to cool, but he's your best friend so you smile at him. He's got his face all twisted up worried for you, but that's just your bro for you, a hard shell with soft cotton candy inside always getting his worried on for a fucker in need.
He starts to yell at you, so you do what you do when he does that and you think about something else until he stops. He uses those big words and you can't make horns or hooves of what he's saying, but you think it's good for him to say what he feels, let that ugly business all out. Usually you think about something else when he gets like this but this time you think about nothing. It hurts too bad to think about anything besides that, and soon your brother goes out of hearing like always and out of sight like what never happened before and you fall straight to sleep again.
When you wake up again, you forget about your best friend until you see the bandages on your arms and your throat and you remember, and if it doesn't just warm your pusher right up that he did that. Your brother isn't there anymore so you guess he left, you don't even know how that fucker got here. But you need a pie real bad, so you crawl around until you find your tin and you dig in.
Soon you're floating again but it's that queasy seasick kind and you're seeing that bad shit again, like that time when you were a little fucker and a fish from the sea came up to say hey and you didn't mean nothing by it but you never saw a purple that bright, you colored your hands up in that shit that was cold like anything, mush and broken bits of bone everywhere but the parts inside were still moving, little coils and tubes like popped up balloons and something soft and slimy that shuddered in your hands like a scared squeak beast. You didn't mean nothing by it, you just had the wickedness in you that time like you've got it in you now.
You see that fucker behind you now, his tubes all hanging out, his face all twisted up like one of your clown brothers and you got the wickedness in you and it won't come out so you grab at his opened up spilling out throat and you squeeze and squeeze and he shudders and chokes like that. You can feel the life that's in him, you can feel where it moves and you can squeeze that out of him easy. This fucker ain't no fish, this fucker is like a little fire, a cozy warm little fire and you know how to put it out. You think washing your hands in those warm bright colors and giving that rapid shuddering little bloodpusher a squeeze, that'd be real nice, that'd be just right, that'd warm you right up, too.
This fucker's making trapped helpless noises at you and you realize those noises are your name, Gamzee, Gamzee! Those waves of seasickness ebb and flow and you realize the little shaking bleatbeast you got trapped in your claws, eyes all round and grey, ain't no bleatbeast at all but your very best friend. You didn't mean nothing by it, you never wanted to hurt no bleatbeast or no fish fucker but especially not your good bro so you picture a marionette with its strings all cut and you make like that, sliding down limp with your claws loose like they don't belong to you.
Your best friend shudders and gasps like a fish that flopped onto the shore. He's wide eyed and panicked like that fish with pink bruises spreading out across his throat like a drop of blood in the water. And when you killed that fish, no one came around here again for a real long time, no one except you and your hive and the beach and your wicked sneeze. Your face is all wet now.
Your best friend is too good for that, though, he swallows down his scared and puts his hand down on the side of your face in that awkward-shy way he has about him, nervous about being caught out being kind, and he says "Fucking lunatic. You have no idea how lucky you are you caught me off guard."
You press your forehead into the bottom of his shirt and you use that to wipe the wet off your face and then you just stay still like that. He grumbles a disgusted sound at you, but you know he don't mean it, you hear the lie of that in his voice. "Gamzee, what did you do?"
You're too seasick to want to say much of anything, but mumble into his shirt. "Best friend, best brother, I didn't mean no things by it. My piemaker up and broke, and all the good miracles leaked on out of my skull." You can feel the rise and fall of his breath from where you have your head and it steadies you, like your first steps back on land. He's saying things to you, but the dark and the sound is going in and out and you don't listen. He pulls away and lets you slide down to the ground, but while the dark goes in and out you can hear the sound of his footsteps in the room. You focus your thinking on that and none of the bad things happen, just the dark washing over you a little ways.
When it recedes you really want a pie, but you can't find no tins around you. Your best friend is there, though, with you all sprawled out on the ground and your head in his lap. Your whole self is sore all over and those shakes in your hands are bad, but you can see clear as anything, and you can feel your best friend's chest rise and fall and that grumpy rumble in it when he talks.
"What kind of a shitsponge doesn't notice his sopor's gone off? I mean, I know you're face gapingly stupid, but since you actually put that stuff in your ugly feedhole and actively swallow it, I have to admit to actual shock at this failure at basic survival. Don't you know that it rots if you don't change it?"
You sigh and itch a little at the bandages around your neck, steady and content as a wiggler in its cocoon. You knew that shit but it just slipped right through your pan. It doesn't matter. Your brother knew just how to fix you just like your brother always knows, that's why he's the one you love best of every brother you've ever had. You want to tell him about how it's a miracle that he can patch up any part of you like he knows it all to memory, but you're tired and you hurt so you just agree, "rot all the way through, that's just what that was. I'll up and change that shit, won't forget."
But you already know what your best friend will say, "Don't bother, I already changed it for your lazy ass." You're proud of yourself for knowing, like maybe you also could know him good enough to fix up all the spots that hurt. You don't, because he keeps that shit locked up tight from you, but it's a good thought to think that you could untwist all those nasty things. Makes you soft and warm inside.
Your best friend is good to you, he lets you stay there a while getting your cuddle on like he almost never lets you do, before he tells you that you stink and pushes you off. But he doesn't go yet, instead he runs the ablution for you while you work on making your limbs feel real again. He comes back and peels off your bandages and hisses as he reveals the crusty purple all down your arms and neck.
"Be chill, bro, that nasty business will clear up in no time," you assure him. You always are doing dumb shit and getting yourself banged up, but then you forget about it and it's gone. But your good bro still has his concern on.
"I'm plenty chill. Get your ass in the trap while I burn these clothes, they smell like you've been wearing them for a perigee."
It smells pretty bad to you, too, like yourself but a whole lot more and sick besides, but you haven't been able to move much since your pie went bad, and you don't know how long that was, but long enough for your bro to be here even though he always says it's too far to visit. Probably not a perigee, you probably got to eat something besides pie before that long happens, but you don't know for sure. You peel yourself out of those suckers and it makes you dizzy to walk, but you get in the trap and the water's good, not like drowning at all. It burns on your scratches but it's warm everywhere else on you. And you know you won't drown besides because your best friend didn't go burn your clothes after all, he's waiting around outside your hygiene block for you.
You think about asking him to get in the trap too because that'd be nice, he'd be all warm and you could get your motherfucking cuddle on with him. But you don't ask because you don't want him angry. And then it's a miracle because he comes in when you're trying to scrub through the tangles in your hair and uses the water sprayer to wash out all the soap for you. You know he's embarrassed from how he don't look right at you but you aren't, you want to hide nothing from him. You want to never not be this close to him again.
So you say, "You know, I had this dream where I was drowning." He's quiet, just wiping soap out of your hair and pulling through tangles, so you say, "You ever have a dream like that, best friend?"
You don't think he's going to answer, but then he says, all awkward-shy like, "I dreamt one time that I was being crushed. My hive caved in or something, and it all came down on top of me and squeezed me out like fangpaste." You listen to him stop and redirect himself, too, because you know what he'll say. "That's stupid, though, those kinds of dreams are essentially meaningless. Why would you drown when you know how to swim?"
"You're right, brother, how'd you go and get to be such a smart motherfucker?" you tell him, but you smile real big at that. Because it sounds just like what your best friend would say, but also because now you know something. It's just a small thing but you lock it away as a secret that's all yours, one thing that you swear you'll fix someday for him the way you know he can always patch up all your hurts. You don't need nothing else and you think maybe, maybe, he could not need nothing else but you, too.